AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION
AMA.ORG
MARCH 2018
Taking the Emotion Out of NonproFIts How to set sentimentality aside and focus on the business
MARCH 2018 NO.
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table of contents AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION
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SEEN ON AMA.ORG
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ANSWERS IN ACTION • Snapshot • Core Concepts
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AMA INTELLIGENCE • The Middle Market
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EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS • Vikas Mittal • J. Walker Smith
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CAREER ADVANCEMENT • The Marketer’s Role • On the Record
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#OFFICEGOALS
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How to Merge Without Emotion
For nonprofit mergers to succeed, each party must strip away old loyalties and favor shared vision over sentimentality.
The Smithsonian’s Spectacular Traveling Fundraiser
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How a TED Talk-style road show helped the Smithsonian fund the largest cultural institution campaign in history.
How Marketing Banned Microbeads
A Chicago-based nonprofit used media, marketing and social networking to push for a microbead ban. But with a small staff and big issues, how can the Alliance for the Great Lakes use the ban’s blueprint for future victories?
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MARCH 2018
VOL. 52 | NO. 3
LETTER FROM THE CEO
AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION
Mary Garrett Chairperson of the AMA Board 2017-2018
Make Yourself Useful
Russ Klein, AMA Chief Executive Officer rklein@ama.org
he likes of Amazon, Uber and Apple have elevated the game of customer experience such that there are now equally high expectations among every category for utility, ease and convenience. No industry is an island. Consumers expect renting a car to be as effortless and frictionfree as queuing for a cab. Whatever you’re selling, it better be a one-click, one-command experience. You cannot waste what has become more valuable than the customers’ money: their time. Customers must be able to glide across an omni-channel world, and falling short of these new standards is viewed as incompetent. If you don’t deliver on your customers’ expectations, they can do more than stop buying—they may create an overnight movement against your brand. I want to pose the idea that so-called brand loyalty may be a thing of the past. Usefulness and utility will be the new frame of reference for consumers who are more oriented to categories than brands, per se. Modern marketers are following that cue. They’ve stopped selling and begun helping their customers make the right buying decision. Art Saxby and Pete Hayes report in their book Growth Gears that brand loyalty as a determining factor in buying decisions has dropped to just 25% in the U.S. Further, consumer brand loyalty has been on a steady decline since the Great Recession. The opportunity to grow a brand is maximized when many differentminded people can be satisfied by a powerful and unifying solution for something in their lives. The role of usefulness is even more important than so-called “purpose-driven” orientations.
Phone (800) AMA-1150 • Fax (312) 542-9001 E-mail editor@ama.org
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Solving a relevant problem or offering a new source joy is purposeful, and being useful ought to be religion enough. J. Walker Smith made a compelling case on the distinction between purpose and politics in the June 2017 issue of Marketing News. This month he describes the disappearance of mass markets as consumers rally around brands that provide personalization— usefulness at the most granular level. Technology has redirected us to functionality and usability. We’ve become like children playing with toys who will set down a broken one and pick up one that works without any hesitation or emotional attachment for the toy that broke. If something works better, people find out fast and switch to it, and loyalty just becomes a sentimental artifact. In such times, go back to basics: Make sure your product or service works better than anyone else’s.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Molly Soat, Editor in Chief msoat@ama.org Michelle Markelz, Managing Editor mmarkelz@ama.org Zach Brooke, Staff Writer zbrooke@ama.org Hal Conick, Staff Writer hconick@ama.org Sarah Steimer, Staff Writer ssteimer@ama.org Bill Murphy, Designer wmurphy@ama.org ADVERTISING STAFF
Fax (312) 922-3763 • E-mail ads@ama.org Sally Schmitz, Production Manager sschmitz@ama.org (312) 542-9038 Michael Gay, Account Executive mgay@yourmembership.com (727) 329-4421 Nicola Tate, Account Executive ntate@yourmembership.com (727) 329-4437 Jordan Berthiaume, Media Sales Representative jberthiaume@YourMembership.com (727) 497-6565 x3409 Marketing News (ISSN 0025-3790) is published monthly except June/ July and November/December (pending) by the American Marketing Association, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Circulation: (800) AMA-1150, (312) 542-9000 Tel: (800) AMA-1150, (312) 542-9000 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Marketing News, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, 60601-6320, USA. Periodical Postage paid at Chicago, Ill., and additional mailing offices. Canada Post Agreement Number 40030960. Opinions expressed are not necessarily endorsed by the AMA, its officers or staff. Marketing News welcomes expressions of all professional viewpoints on marketing and its related areas. These may be as letters to the editor, columns or articles. Letters should be brief and may be condensed by the editors. Please request a copy of the “Writers’ Guidelines” before submitting an article. Upon submission to the AMA, photographs and manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, adequately stamped envelope. Annual subscription rates: Marketing News is a benefit of membership for professional members of the American Marketing Association. Annual professional membership dues in the AMA are $220. Annual subscription rates: $35 members, $145 nonmembers and $190 libraries, corporations and institutions. International rates vary by country. Nonmembers: Order online at amaorders.com, call 1-800-633-4931 or e-mail amasubs@ebsco.com. Single copies $10 individual, $10 institutions; foreign add $5 per copy for air, printed matter. Payment must be in U.S. funds or the equivalent. Canadian residents add 13% GST (GST Registration #127478527).
RUSS KLEIN CEO
Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for all content (including text, representations and illustrations) of advertisements published, and also assume responsibility for any claims arising therefrom made against the publisher. The right is reserved to reject any advertisement. Copyright © 2018 by the American Marketing Association. All rights reserved. Without written permission from the AMA, any copying or reprinting (except by authors reprinting their own works) is prohibited. Requests for permission to reprint—such as copying for general distribution, advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works or resale—should be submitted in writing by mail or sent via e-mail to permissions@ama.org. Printed in the U.S.A.
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Change the World
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onprofit marketers are, by any account, in it for the greater good. But what happens when they must make tough decisions? They put their emotions aside and drive ahead with a cold, calculated conviction. Staff writer Sarah Steimer explores how nonprofit marketers have successfully navigated the oft-fraught and oft-emotional rebrand after a merger and how they manage to get their teams on board. “For a nonprofit merger to succeed, stakeholders are often challenged with emotionally detaching the organization’s brand from its mission,” Steimer writes. Easier said than done. When a nonprofit finds massive success with one project, the challenge lies in repeating the process. Staff writer Hal Conick spoke with the Alliance for the Great Lakes about how it pushed the microbead ban forward through “a perfect storm” of earned and owned media. “The virality, research and marketing came together to galvanize the anger of Great Lakes supporters into political action rather than stopping its momentum at the ‘like’ button,” Conick writes. Though it’s tempting to try to apply that success to every important initiative, the trick is engaging people on one issue. “We can’t do everything, but
when we discover an issue that we are concerned about, we want to educate our supporters,” says Jennifer Caddick, head of marketing and communications for the Alliance. “We always want to give people an action.” It’s by galvanizing support—both internal and external—and encouraging action that marketers will change the world. What action do you want people to take? And how are you making it happen? MOLLY SOAT Editor in Chief @MollySoat
CONTRIBUTORS
J. WALKER SMITH
DEBBIE QAQISH
Smith is chief knowledge officer for brand and marketing at Kantar Consulting and co-author of four books, including Rocking the Ages. Follow him on Twitter at @jwalkersmith.
Qaqish is principal partner and chief strategy officer of The Pedowitz Group. She manages global client relationships and leads the firm’s thought leadership initiatives. She has been helping B-to-B companies drive revenue growth for more than 35 years.
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How to Beat Micro Glitching and Prevent Losing Customers
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icro glitches are a common problem for e-commerce companies, especially during the holidays. These glitches can go unseen until they’ve already sapped the business of thousands of dollars. Customers—perhaps frustrated by their inability to check out or a page error that leaves them unable to read about an item they want to purchase—often take their business elsewhere when a micro glitch hits. Marketing News spoke with Ira Cohen, co-founder and chief data scientist at Anodot, to find out how companies can make their websites glitch-proof.
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How many micro glitches occur each year on average? How much do they cost companies?
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Glitches happen all the time; that’s why they get treated like the weather, as something inevitable, but they can be prevented. Our customers tell us that every incident that negatively impacts sales during regular shopping days typically costs around $40,000 in lost revenue, but this is highly dependent on the type of e-commerce provider, what they are selling and to whom they’re selling it. Recently, the 2017 Customer Rage Study found that 62 million families experienced at least one
shopping glitch in the past 12 months, leading to frustration and anger and putting more than $300 billion of future sales at risk.
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What are some common ways micro glitches occur?
Incorrect pricing, online service outages due to sudden spikes in website traffic and products being incorrectly priced or incorrectly coded for checkout are all common micro glitches.
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Do these micro glitches tend to have a greater effect on larger or smaller companies?
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Any online company can be susceptible to micro glitches. However, the larger the company and
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the larger its customer base, the more granular KPIs need to be tracked. For example, a small company that sells one product in one location can easily track that scale using a dashboard, but a company with 10 products in 10 locations that needs to track seven different operating systems already has 700 (10 x 10 x 7)Â specific metrics that need to be tracked. Big Data is prone to more glitches and needs artificial intelligence rather than traditional, manual tools to keep track of it all.
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What can companies do to prevent micro glitches from affecting sales? Is there a way to make websites glitch-proof?
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To beat micro glitches, online retailers need to learn to identify and rectify them in real time. This
involves sifting through the massive amount of data that drives decisionmaking and finding revenuesiphoning micro glitches before they happen. First, it’s important to track what customers are doing on your website or in your app, including pages, page elements or products that show sudden drops or spikes in traffic. Second, monitor third-party data, including competitor advertising data, weather data, social media data, fraud detection and security data, as well as any other data from thirdparty sources that may dramatically affect your business. Third, make sure to monitor a combination of in-store and online data. Finally, integrate development operations and IT with your business data to find the root cause of the glitch. —HAL CONICK
62 million families experienced at least one shopping glitch in the past 12 months, leading to frustration and anger and putting more than $300 billion of future sales at risk.
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What Nonprofits Can Learn About Customer Experience from the Met’s Rebrand
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he Coca-Colas and Apples of the world know what makes them irresistible to their mega fans and have distilled it down to an emotion. Like muchloved consumer brands, nonprofits and cultural organizations can leverage emotional connections, too. “If you know how to build a human relationship, you know how to build a brand relationship,” says Cynthia Round, senior vice president of marketing and external relations at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s built on trust, authenticity, consistency— and it’s a two-way [street].” Round built a strong emotional connection between the Met and its visitors in a 2016 rebrand. Prior to the rebrand, traffic at cultural institutions had been dropping. Despite its notoriety, few knew the Met consists of three separate museums—even many New Yorkers missed this.
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The Met needed to fight the perception that it had become an elite institution. The museum wanted to make itself accessible to a more diverse audience. It found 34% of visitors are first-timers, and 50% have not visited in many years. The consensus was that visitors were overwhelmed and under-informed, with 45% reporting they felt the Met wasn’t for people like them. “The magic question is, how is our brand significant in the lives of our loyal users?” Round says. “You have to distill that to its essence. Be clear about what the answer is. You can expand that to grow support among many others.” Those who really loved the Met found it to be very lively; the idea was to bring life to art to increase reach and relevance. To do this, the organization undertook a rebranding that simplified its messaging. “We wanted to go beyond relevant to become irresistible,” Round says. “We want to invite visitors
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to use the museum to make it part of their lives.” Replacing the old logo, which looked like a Vitruvian letter M, a new wordmark reading “The Met” made its way onto the front of the building, an essential piece of branding that was missing in the past. “It was kind of arrogant not to have the sign out there, to just assume [visitors] would know,” Round says. The Met invited Instagram users for #emptymet experiences, private guided tours outside normal hours. On its website, the Met featured contemporary artists who discussed the links between modern and ancient art. Special late-night events were promoted to New Yorkers, and collaborations with other cultural institutions were created for “Teens Take the Met” visits. As a result, the main location of The Met, on Fifth Avenue, saw a fiscal 2016 record high 7 million visitors, 37% of whom were 18 to 35 years old. “You have to view your brand as a relationship
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beyond experience and into a two-way conversation,” Round says. “Know and remember that everything you do—whether it’s security guards checking your bags or the way your accounting department handles a credit card issue— is a 360-degree experience and an irresistible relationship.” —SARAH STEIMER
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answers in action
SNAPSHOT
Two Scoops of Hunger Awareness Feeding America teamed up with the Ad Council and Facebook Creative Shop to send an ice cream truck across the country to raise awareness of summertime childhood hunger BY SARAH STEIMER | STAFF WRITER
ssteimer@ama.org Goal Summertime for kids is celebratory. Vacation from school means more time for popsicles, hot dogs and other summer treats—but not for all. Twenty-two million children receive free or reducedprice meals through the National School Lunch Program during the school year, but in the summer that number drops to fewer than 4 million. Feeding America went on a mission to highlight this 18 million-child gap. “Very few people have any real awareness of how many kids go hungry every summer,” says Catherine Davis,
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chief marketing and communications officer at Feeding America. The nonprofit partnered with the Ad Council, with help from Facebook Creative Shop, to create a mobile awareness campaign in the summer of 2017. Action The “Hungry to Help” campaign was anchored by an ice cream truck, one of the most symbolic signs of summer for American children. The outside of the truck was painted with statistics about child hunger. Instead of serving ice cream, it distributed family action plans to raise
awareness of hunger in the summer. The truck visited seven cities and traveled more than 3,800 miles. The truck started in New York City, then passed through Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Its Facebook page chronicled the journey with updates from the road and an inside peek at local food banks in each city. “Being able to livestream is one of the key features of Facebook that is particularly appealing to us,” Davis says. “It gave us the opportunity to focus on this from a national perspective but also from a local perspective. The livestreams reflected the personalities of the food banks.” The videos showed volunteers and leaders giving tours of their respective facilities. Las Vegas’ Three Square Food Bank featured a young volunteer playing bagpipes for the camera, and a few celebrities—Leighton Meester, Adam Brody and Tiffani Thiessen—appeared at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Feeding America engaged with the audience during each of the videos, answering questions about how to connect with local food banks and providing national and local hunger statistics. Davis says the goal of the engagement is to spark an emotional connection with viewers. “Not only with the idea of hunger, but the individuals facing hunger,” she says. “An objective of every campaign is to create empathy for the people who are hungry.” Visitors to the campaign website can download the family action plan that includes conversation starters on the topic of hunger, community action ideas, a children’s activity sheet and a summer checklist to help end hunger. The landing page also provides additional statistics, links to local food banks and instructions for creating fundraisers.
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SNAPSHOT
Results Just as real ice cream trucks draw people out of their homes, the “Hungry to Help” campaign drew a robust and curious audience. Heidi Arthur, the Ad Council’s head of campaign development, says the campaign videos garnered more than 15 million views and drove more than 200,000 clicks to the campaign landing page. She says there was a 9% increase in Facebook ad recall lift, and polls of Facebook users who viewed the ads showed a 10% increase in intent to help end summertime child hunger. Feeding America’s brand got attention as well. Arthur says when respondents were asked if they had seen information about Feeding America, their aided communication awareness was at an
all-time high during the campaign in June (30%). The organization averaged less than half of that (10%-14%) from 2013 to 2016. “People’s passion for hunger has increased in the last 18 months to 2 years,” Davis says. “We’re at this really interesting moment where people are more receptive to our messaging.” The nonprofit doesn’t plan to do another ice cream truck road trip this year, but it does plan to continue efforts to end child hunger with another large push this summer. “This year, millions more kids and their families will struggle to fill the summer meal gap,” Arthur says. “As we look ahead to summer 2018, we will again develop a social and digital effort that aims to raise awareness and drive empathy for hungry children across the country.” m
answers in action
COMPANY
Feeding America HEADQUARTERS
Chicago CAMPAIGN TIMELINE
Summer 2017 RESULTS
• Videos produced for the campaign drew more than 15 million views and drove more than 200,000 clicks to the campaign landing page. • Nine percent increase in Facebook ad recall lift, along with a 10% increase in viewer intent to help end summertime child hunger. • Aided communication awareness of Feeding America was significantly higher when the campaign was active in June (30%), compared to earlier in the year (15% in January/ February).
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CORE CONCEPTS
How Marketers Can Have Better, More Productive Days Many Americans work long hours in stressful jobs, often becoming sick or dissatisfied in the process. Caroline Webb wants to help them have better days. BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER
hconick@ama.org
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aroline Webb loves her work. Case in point: she was called “the happiest person at McKinsey” by a co-worker when she worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Despite her job satisfaction, the long hours and late nights took a toll on Webb. Three years into her job as a consultant, Webb got sick. An infection of her central nervous system put her out of work for six months. She fought back to health over the next eight months, gradually increasing her workload until she was well enough to work full-time. However, she found herself at a career crossroads: Long hours didn’t always mean better work, she thought, and they certainly didn’t mean good health or a sustainable personal life. “I had to acknowledge that
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I did not have infinite stamina,” Webb says. “I became very interested in how to do more with less. That was one of the turning points in my career.” Trained as an economist, Webb became interested in how she could work smarter—“do more with less,” as she puts it. She pored over hundreds of psychology and behavioral economics books and studies and applied the techniques to her life. Webb compiled her research into a book, How to Have a Good Day, and founded Sevenshift, an advisory firm that helps people use science to excel at work. A 2017 Gallup survey found that 51% of American employees aren’t engaged at work while another 16% are “actively disengaged,” showing their discontent in their words or actions. Employees are
also working longer hours, despite the long-promised shortened work week— including a famous 1930 prediction from economist John Maynard Keynes, who said advancements in technology would mean a 15-hour work week within a century. However, it’s 2018, and the work week remains long: The average American works anywhere between 34.4 hours each week (per data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) and 47 hours each week (per a 2014 Gallup survey). Gallup reports that 18% of people work longer than 60 hours each week. Webb and others offer insights on how marketers can improve productivity, do more with less and have a better day. The Myth of Multitasking Many people spend their days clicking from browser tab to browser tab while answering texts, having a conversation and thinking about what’s for dinner— periodically wondering where time went. This is multitasking and it doesn’t work for most. A study from the University of Utah finds that only 2% of people are good multitaskers. Though many people brag about their multitasking skills in job interviews, most multitaskers create more work for themselves—or someone else. A study from the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University finds that people who do two tasks at the same time take 30% longer and make twice as many mistakes as those who do the same tasks in sequence—which Webb calls “single-tasking.” Multitaskers, Webb says, make between two and four times as many mistakes as single-taskers. “The conscious part of your brain can only do one thing at a time,” Webb says. To avoid multitasking, she suggests batching similar tasks to avoid constant switching, designating “zones” throughout the day to tackle batches of tasks and setting rewards for good behavior such as setting a timer, taking a
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answers in action
CORE CONCEPTS
break or simply crossing completed tasks off a list. Give Me a Break, Please Knowing when to step away for a break is an art, Webb says, and most American workers are barely painting by numbers. A survey by Right Management finds that fewer than 20% of American workers regularly step away for lunch, while 39% skip the break altogether to eat at their desk. This paucity of breaks may lead to what Webb calls “decision fatigue,” putting the mind on autopilot. On autopilot, the mind sees the easiest choices as the most attractive, and it is sapped of insight, self-control, concentration and effective thinking. To fight autopilot and decision fatigue, Webb suggests planning deliberate downtime throughout the day. This may mean scheduling breaks between batches of tasks (approximately every 90 minutes), grouping intensive tasks to do together when the brain will have the most energy and scheduling meetings at intervals of 25 or 45 minutes instead of 30 or 60, creating natural breaks throughout the day. And yes, fighting decision fatigue means stepping away from the desk for lunch. Block Out Online Distractions Attention was at a premium for Warren Benedetto in 2010. He’d wake up early to work as a freelance web designer and web developer, but he would instead find himself wading into the internet’s ocean of information. Benedetto says he’d lose track of eight hours, then work until 4 a.m. “It was an endless cycle,” he says. Benedetto—now the director of software engineering for PlayStation Now—created a simple code for Google Chrome to solve his problem. The code set timers on a self-curated list of websites, blocking them until the next day when time expired. He decided to share the idea, titling the extension “StayFocusd” and uploading it to the Chrome web store. Within 24 hours, his creation had 15,000 users. Eight years later, it has more than 700,000 users, all
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setting their timers to avoid wasting time on websites like Reddit, YouTube and, for more than 80% of users, Facebook. People may shudder at the thought of limiting time on their favorite—and most distracting—websites at work, but studies show that employees waste a lot of time online, killing their productivity. A 2016 CareerBuilder study, for instance, found that 19% of employers believe their employees are productive for less than five hours of the day, with the biggest focus killers being cellphones and texting (55%), the internet (41%), gossip (39%) and social media (37%). Webb vouches for StayFocusd’s efficacy, saying it helped her focus when writing How to Have a Good Day. “I didn’t make it so that I couldn’t look at Facebook at all, but I set it for 10 minutes a day,” Webb says. “It really was a treat if I clicked.” Use the ‘Positive No’ to Avoid Pointless Meetings The average employee spends 31 hours each month in unproductive meetings, according to Atlassian. Their meetings are spent daydreaming (91%), feeling overwhelmed (45%) or doing other work (73%)—which is sloppy and unproductive, as studies have shown. Though not every unproductive meeting is skippable, Webb says employees should dare to say no to meetings if they need time to work on more important tasks. Employees can use the “positive no,” Webb says, a counterintuitive technique that leads with a yes instead of no or “Sorry, but …” Here’s how the “positive no” works: First, Webb says you should show appreciation to the person requesting your time, enthusiastically letting them know what your current priority is (leading with what you’re saying yes to). Then, explain that your current priority means that you can’t give up your time to the invitation. End the interaction with warmth, making a helpful offer or suggestion that you can do without distracting from your priorities. “If you lead with the yes, then it puts the other person slightly less on the defensive by leaving with something positive, especially if you can make it
speak to them and the things that they care about,” Webb says. Some Peace and Quiet As more companies choose open office layouts, more employees lose privacy at work. The open office can be a productivity killer—especially for introverted employees, as Susan Cain points out in her book Quiet. A Steelcase study of 10,000 office workers finds that workers in open offices report losing an average of 86 minutes per day due to distractions. Another study from Exeter University finds open offices cause a 32% decrease in worker well-being and a 15% drop in production. But with the money open offices save for budget-conscious corporations, these layouts are likely here to stay. To find peace and privacy, Webb says employees in open offices will have to be clever. Webb suggests a technique she used in the past: putting on headphones and posting a visible note that says, “thinking time.” People can interrupt if they really need to, but the headphones and note are clear signals that an employee is busy. If that doesn’t provide enough space for concentration, she suggests searching for an open meeting room. “I used to be quite proactive in asking myself how I was going to find the mental space to get done what I want to get done,” Webb says. “Once you know your brain needs rest as much as it needs activity, then it seems obvious,” Webb says. “The trick is to know how to get people who haven’t had a health crash to reach the same insight.” Less-than-mindful work environments are why Webb wrote How to Have a Good Day: Employees who work in difficult situations under challenging bosses can take control of their lives and seize opportunities for more meaningful work. “We can be at our best more often,” Webb says. “It’s much easier to do that if you’re on a team where these conversations [about productivity and balance] are happening, but I’m really keen to encourage people to look for what’s possible within the constraints that they’re operating under.” m
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ama intelligence
THE MIDDLE MARKET
Mighty Merging Power Players! Just as their large counterparts, middle market businesses are driven by a quest for inorganic growth BY ZACH BROOKE | STAFF WRITER
zbrooke@ama.org
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new report from the National Center for the Middle Market singles out mergers and acquisitions as a powerful and even predictable force behind sector success. “Middle Market M&A: What Executives and Advisors Need to Know to Make the Most of Mergers & Acquisitions” uses data from Thompson Reuters to determine that approximately 2,000 middle market deals are struck every quarter. 2017 was no different, despite 60% of middle market companies reporting they perceive an uptick in merger and acquisition activity. “It feels up, but it’s not,” explains NCMM executive director Thomas Stewart, who points to historical Middle Market Indicator data showing a definite cadence in the transactions. “Those charts are as predictable as a marathon runner’s heartbeat. Just constant rhythm. … What’s different is there is [now] a lot of money out there looking to make deals. That means two things: Price is going up and the structure of the deal has changed a little bit. Less banks, more equity.” Regardless of the cyclical evolution, NCMM research shows that 1 in 5 middle market companies makes an acquisition every year, while 1 in 20 sells outright or divests a portion of the company. Though less frequent, sellers often have stronger impetus to act. Many times a middle market business is a family operation. If there is no apparent succession plan, and the owner decides to exit while the getting’s good, often the decision to divest partial ownership is tied to an owner’s desire to liquidate a portion of the long-term investment they’ve made
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in a business over time. Whatever the motivations, a sale can rise abruptly. In many cases people don’t sell until they’re propositioned, Stewart says. Common reasons to buy include acquiring new customers or capabilities. Interestingly, many respondents view expansion not as a luxury available solely to businesses enjoying an abundance of cash flow in the best of times, but as a necessary component of survival. Stewart says there’s an acute fear of being overshadowed and boxed out by growing competitors if businesses stand pat. “A lot of people told us that they felt that they had to get bigger to compete with consolidation,” Stewart says. If fear defines the beginning of the purchase cycle, exuberance colors its final stages. Of companies that do participate in the acquisition phase, 60% report buying is vital to their growth strategy and signal they expect a deal to account for 26% of future growth, which Stewart says comes from a mixture of “data and hope.” “That suggests that [respondents] are hoping for more than bolt-on sales, that they’re hoping for positive synergies. One and one is going to make 2.3,” he says. The eye-popping growth numbers paired with an appetite for expansion in the sector might suggest that middle market execs are old hands at deal-making, but their responses say otherwise. Forty-one percent of companies that reported completing a purchase within the past three years say they had limited experience in acquisitions, and almost a third (29%) were participating in the M&A process
for the first time. This inexperience can cause missteps that cut into the value of the deal, says Ed Kleinguetl, a transaction services partner at Grant Thornton LLP, which contributed to the report. “There are a number of novice mistakes,” Kleinguetl says, such as the misconception that the acquirer and acquired businesses are functionally similar. “Even if it is a common business, there are many dynamics that can create differences,” he says. “First among these is the overall cultural alignment, which is often a reflection of the owneroperator.” Further, some businesses are highly disciplined with strong systems
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THE MIDDLE MARKET
and controls. However, many middle market companies are run by gut feel and intuition. Overcoming these obstacles begins with a checklist. Employees, health plans and operations all need methodical synchronization. Even more important is prioritizing plans to retain top talent and customers post-acquisition and developing a communications plan. “Communication to customers must be proactive to thwart nimble competitors who see an acquired company as distracted and its customers as prime targets for poaching,” Kleinguetl says. “The same holds true for key employees.
The old adage is true: In the absence of communication, people create their own realities. It’s better to proactively communicate to each key stakeholder group.” Of course, all this maneuvering presupposes middle market buyers and sellers have identified a target. Yet, here too, amateurs operate. The report finds that middle market sales searches are helmed most often by internal advisers. Only a third of buyers consult outside law firms, and fewer request help from investment bankers. Sellers are even less likely to make use of external experts. Though logic would dictate
ama intelligence
an experienced guide gives a buyer or seller an advantage during the search and negotiation process, Kleinguetl says would-be dealmakers often operate illogically and are less likely to accept help even if an expert is consulted. “In likely half the cases where an owner is involved, there is a gut feel or intuitive decision to go forward with the deal,” he says. “Sometimes it is hard to overcome these types of decisions, which have emotionally already been made. ‘Buyer beware,’ is always sage advice.” Expertise is particularly valuable when considering valuation, which can be difficult to assess and laden with emotional baggage, yet paramount to any deal being struck. Forty-one percent of buyers report they find it very difficult to value a business they are purchasing, and 43% of sellers say the same thing about their own business. “In many cases, the valuations can be off because of optimistic estimates of synergies or deal value to the acquirer or unforeseen market conditions,” Kleinguetl says. “There is a correlation between the depth of initial diligence and the ability for a deal to deliver the anticipated results. … As an example, one client closed a transaction, and a few weeks later discovered the roof in a distribution center had to be repaired—an unforeseen $1 million expenditure. The problem is that just looking at financial statements and tax returns in a data room will not find the leaking roof, unless the target discloses it.” Finally, motivated buyers and sellers might encounter a longer process than they had anticipated. Most deals can be completed in under a year, but becoming “deal-ready” is a multiyear process. “Deal readiness is an interesting concept,” Kleinguetl says. “The reality is that most buyers do not like to see ‘lumpy’ results in a target’s history. They like the proverbial upward growth history and implied trajectory. If the plan is to sell a company, it is important to focus on performance quickly and maintain a continuous improvement mindset.” m
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executive insights
STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
What For-profit Businesses Can Teach Nonprofits About Customer Satisfaction Nonprofits often fall into the trap of satisfying internal needs, alienating their most important stakeholder: the customer
BY VIKAS MITTAL
vmittal@rice.edu
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onprofit organizations differentiate themselves from traditional businesses by their profit focus. Of course, businesses are customer-focused—they exist to make
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money from their customers. Nonprofits believe they exist to fulfill a mission and vision and to meet every stakeholder’s needs. All too often fulfilling the mission becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that
distracts nonprofits from meeting the needs of their customers. Confusing myriad stakeholders, such as employees and suppliers, with customers, nonprofits can become internally focused, dedicating themselves to costly initiatives that consume organizational resources but do not improve customer satisfaction. Nowhere is this more evident than in one of the largest nonprofit enterprises worldwide, the U.S. K-12 public school system. The superintendent of an underperforming school district told me the district’s strategy was based on key initiatives, such as “datadriven decision-making” and “aligning cultural values.” The former initiative led millions of dollars to be dedicated to data management systems, and the latter led to extensive training and countless culture-building exercises. Proud of its investments, the district leadership remained puzzled as to why its customers—students and parents—were leaving the district for private, charter and home-schooling options. We conducted a district-wide study to measure the state of parent satisfaction in the district. It revealed low parent satisfaction driven by low academic standards, perceptions of unsafe schools and perceived lack of parent engagement. When asked about the disconnect, the superintendent responded, “Of course we care about parents. That is why we are completely focused on data-driven decision-making and cultural alignment. These initiatives reinforce our mission to become the best school district possible.” What’s causing the disconnect? The school district started with its mission, not with the needs of its customers. This systematically subordinated the customers’ needs to the mission, values and vision of internal stakeholders— teachers, staff and administrators. Though all the stakeholders claimed to care about customers, they were really driven by an inward-looking approach. As a result, the district invested more in internal initiatives that did little to satisfy customer needs. Dissatisfied, the
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STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
customers migrated to other providers. This migration only dampened the morale among front-line employees, with the district declaring an intensifying need for cultural alignment. The downward spiral of lowered customer satisfaction, followed by the launch of internally focused initiatives, continued unabated, even as a growing number of students and parents sought to explore other options. The way out of this spiral involves embracing lessons learned from successful businesses. Define Your Customer, Unambiguously Strong organizations are customerfocused. They do not confuse their customers with other stakeholders— even as they recognize the importance of other stakeholders in satisfying customer needs. While it is fashionable to lump all stakeholders in the same bucket and treat them as customers, it is strategically dysfunctional to equate customers with other stakeholders. Consider a nonprofit such as a hospital. Nurses, physicians, pharmacists, administrators and suppliers are a hospital’s stakeholders. Its customers include patients and their families. Most stakeholders are a component of the value chain that should satisfy customer needs. Every nonprofit should ask itself: “Mission aside, whose needs does the nonprofit organization exist to serve?” Hospitals exist to serve patients, not physicians or nurses. Schools exist to serve students and their parents, not staff and administration. Start by Satisfying Customer Needs Satisfying customers’ needs should be the starting point for conceptualizing any nonprofit organization, not a distant byproduct of activities, processes and initiatives. Profit-oriented businesses are much better at starting with their customers’ needs. Walmart understands the importance of satisfying its customers through low prices, convenience and
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variety. Amazon starts with the premise that it is critical to satisfy its customers through convenience and competitive pricing. Apple satisfies its customers through innovative products, online engagement and unparalleled service. For these businesses, the linkage of customer satisfaction with sales, profits and shareholder value is clear. Nonprofits have a harder time understanding the benefits of satisfying their customers, but they should not. A strong body of evidence shows that patient satisfaction is associated with increased compliance, better clinical outcomes and improved patient health. In education, our research shows higher parent satisfaction is associated with improved academic performance, lower dropout rate and higher student retention. These nonfinancial outcomes are critical to the survival of nonprofits, and they are driven by customer satisfaction. Identify Satisfaction Drivers Smart businesses have a clear understanding of their satisfaction drivers. Walmart, for example, understands that overall customer satisfaction is based on low prices, convenience and variety. Many nonprofits have very little, if any, insight into the drivers of their customers’ overall satisfaction. Hospitals may not understand the relative weight of the check-in process, physician interaction, nursing support or the cleanliness of facilities as drivers of overall patient satisfaction. Public schools may not know the relative importance of family engagement, safety, academics, extracurricular activities, school leadership, teachers and academic standards. Nonprofits should identify the drivers of overall customer satisfaction and ascertain their relative importance to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. The process of identifying satisfaction drivers cannot be accomplished by ad hoc engagement initiatives, focus groups or one-off surveys. Rather, it entails a structured
and systematic survey process to listen to the customer’s voice and measure overall satisfaction, satisfaction drivers and customer loyalty. To illustrate this process, my colleagues at Rice University and Texas A&M University conducted a nationally representative study of more than 7,000 parents of schoolchildren to measure overall satisfaction and its drivers. Overall satisfaction was found to be unambiguously associated with student retention, academic performance and attendance. Overall satisfaction with schools was found to be driven by family and community engagement, school safety and academics. Interestingly, extracurricular activities did not drive overall satisfaction. These results suggest public schools need to focus on family and community engagement, followed by safety and academics to improve satisfaction. The study identified several levers for improving family and community engagement, including creating opportunities for parents to be involved in school activities and give input on important school policies, as well as communicating with parents. What Now? Nonprofits that start with the fundamental premise of satisfying their customers’ needs will also prioritize initiatives that support a customer focus. Their planning process will provide concrete guidance for a customerbased execution and strategy that clearly measures customer satisfaction, identifies satisfaction drivers and provides a roadmap for achieving meaningful outcomes on the customer’s behalf. For such an enlightened nonprofit, customer satisfaction serves as the focal metric that singularly advances the cause of customers while also aligning other stakeholders. m VIKAS MITTAL, Ph.D., is a member of the faculty at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University in Houston.
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STRATEGY
Growth Looks Small As personalization increases, brands will find growth opportunities in niches rather than mass markets
BY J. WALKER SMITH
jwalker.smith@kantarfutures.com
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rowth looks small these days. Most large, multinational brands are finding it difficult to grow not because growth is unavailable, but because when growth looks small, big brands struggle to see it. This shift is
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here to stay. An analysis by the Financial Times Stock Exchange reported that profits for its more than 700 global firms located in developed markets declined by a jaw-dropping 25% in the five years prior
to 2017. Yet at the same time, profits of smaller, national firms rose by 2%. Admittedly, profits aren’t the same as revenue, but this pattern of profitability is illustrative of the shift in the marketplace. More to the point, an analysis by the competitive intelligence firm Craft found that the combined sales of Fortune 500 firms dropped from 2014 to 2016, largely due to poorly performing large companies, which have a disproportionate influence on aggregate results. When individual firms were broken out and assessed, nearly twice as many grew as shrank. Growth was occurring, just among the smaller firms, not the large ones. From 2013 to 2015, Kantar Worldpanel tracking of fast-moving consumer goods
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(FMCG) categories worldwide showed a shift of nearly two points of aggregate share from global brands to local and regional brands. Boston Consulting Group has estimated that from 2011 to 2016, the shift of share from large to small or midsize FMCG firms in North America totaled $22 billion in topline sales, and Europe experienced a similar shift. The mounting clout of local brands is visible in the WPP/Kantar Millward Brown BrandZä Power Index as well. For example, the power of local Chinese brands has been growing. In 2016, for the first time, the average power of local Chinese brands exceeded that of multinational brands; 15 domestic brands are now in the Chinese Top 100 ranking, up from seven in 2010 and just one in 2006. Similarly, in India from 2014 to 2017, there was an increase in the number of local brands in the Indian Top 50. Across the board, the big propositions that dominated the marketplace in years past are now behind the curve when it comes to the future. Certainly, big firms still earn most of the revenue, but they no longer dominate growth opportunities or command much, if any, of the growth. Smaller brands are producing most of the dynamism that is churning the marketplace. Globally, this is compounded by the fact that in emerging markets—which will account for the bulk of growth in future demand—the consumer preference for smaller brands over big brands jumped from 46% in 2016 to 54% in 2017, according to Kantar Consulting Global MONITOR. Shifts in demand are not new; companies have dealt with them successfully before. But this time, shifts in demand are part of an historic pivot in the marketplace. Big, established companies have built their position by mastering a particular confluence of macro forces, consumer lifestyles and competitive situations, but those forces have shifted, and lifestyles and market demand have changed as consumers have adapted to new conditions. Big companies entrenched themselves in the old environment, embedding their outlook and operations to monetize it at scale,
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but competitors have moved into this evolving configuration and found growth outside the boundaries of the previous environment. When change is contained and uncomplicated, big companies can migrate in measured ways that sustain their dominance through the barriers to entry they have erected. But change doesn’t look like that anymore. Incumbents now find themselves a step behind new, smaller competitors that move with greater agility and speed. The advantages of size have been lost to outsourced production, expanded retail options and digital marketing channels. Going forward, mass markets will not be available. Every brand knows this, but the imperative of scale keeps big firms from following the ongoing shifts in demand. The first requirement of growth is to identify an available market large enough to scale. Conventional metrics favor a big, cohesive opportunity, so the comfort zone in which most companies have operated is to scale mass markets into big brands. Even strategies like segmentation that divide mass markets into smaller pieces are just tools to give companies manageable entry points into mass markets. Nowadays, growth opportunities are coming more from the edges than the center. In accordance with the insights surfaced by Kantar Worldpanel and others such as Byron Sharp (author of How Brands Grow), companies are adopting penetration strategies on the notion that brands are built by growing the number of buyers, not by deepening the loyalty of buyers. Inherently, this means achieving scale by adding up small, disparate niches. The standard operating procedure of scaling one product for everybody is not transferable to a marketplace that requires customization for niches, particularly personalization for niches of one. Scale is still needed, but the available market will be an ensemble of individualized, granular pieces, not a single, unified base. Success will come from scaling small niches into big brands. Some experts have characterized the scaling of niches as a “conglomerated
niche” strategy in which production, delivery and marketing have to be done for an aggregation of small batches. Companies that have begun to make this transition are finding that it requires relocating production facilities closer to buyers, digitizing supply chains, utilizing predictive technologies, adopting faster learning systems that guide production and employing greater flexibility in procurement and hiring. In effect, a whole new way of working. Brands will have to master “reverse segmentation,” which is to say, putting lots of small things together rather than breaking one big thing apart. In the past, mass markets were segmented from the top down into smaller pieces. Going forward, niches will have to be aggregated from the bottom up into bigger pieces that give companies a sizeable enough platform on which to scale niches into big brands. Many of these new segmentations will be problem-specific, and all of them will require rich, integrated data sources. Companies that are growing nowadays are not encumbered by the weight of expensive assets or large investments; they can innovate and adapt at speed. They thrive by trying new angles. This is the only way to win at a small scale. Big brands are lumbering giants that have always relied on a large footprint to keep erosion and irrelevance at bay. In today’s environment, big brands must make a conscious effort to fight off the risk aversion inherent in large organizations. Innovation scholar Clay Christensen once said that mustering the resources it takes to compete outside a company’s comfort zone is like flapping one’s arms in an effort to fly because it runs contrary to the ingrained ways in which big companies work. But big brands have to do better. Otherwise, they will not measure up to the challenges or enjoy the opportunities of a marketplace in which growth looks small. m J. WALKER SMITH is chief knowledge officer for brand and marketing at Kantar Consulting and co-author of four books, including Rocking the Ages. Follow him on Twitter at @jwalkersmith.
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How to Merge WITHOUT EMOTION
For nonproFIt mergers to succeed, each party must strip away old loyalties and favor shared vision over sentimentality
By Sarah Steimer
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John Pfeiffer and Andrea Ziel are describing the still-fresh merger of their respective nonproFIts. Ziel, director of Skills for Good, starts to explain her organization’s name change. She pauses for a moment, apologizing for being a bit tired.
“I have chocolate!” Pfeiffer exclaims, fishing through his desk drawer. “I have the chocolate you gave me for Christmas.” He proffers a few bars for Ziel to choose from, along with a couple of napkins. The generous give and take between the two is symbolic. On Jan. 1, Ziel’s organization, previously known as
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WomenOnCall, merged with Chicago Cares, where Pfeiffer serves as chief operating offIcer. From their telling and their effortless interaction—passing questions back and forth or reinforcing the other’s point—the tie-up has been fairly seamless. Their professional and interpersonal ease comes from months of careful planning.
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The branding challenges that arise in mergers— often emotionally charged—can cripple their success. A 2016 Report from the Metropolitan Chicago Nonprofit Merger Research Project found the naming of a merged organization or its branding were cited as difficult issues in 44% of the cases studied. Excluding federal cases, 50% of the mergers involved difficult naming or rebranding issues. A study published in Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Why Nonprofit Mergers Continue to Lag,” examined nonprofit merger activity between 2007 and 2012 in Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts and North Carolina. The report identified three emotionally charged issues that are frequent stumbling blocks, one of which was “blending the brands.” Name changes and other image-related tweaks can have a resounding effect for nonprofits. Studies show nonprofit brands can be leveraged for fundraising; driving long-term social goals; and strengthening internal identity, cohesion and capacity. For a nonprofit merger to succeed, stakeholders are often challenged with emotionally detaching the brand from its mission. The Argument for Merging The Chicago research report analyzed 25 nonprofit mergers that occurred in and near Chicago between 2004 and 2014. Perhaps the most compelling finding was that 88% of the nonprofits reported that after the merger their organization was better off in terms of goals achieved and increased collective impact. Despite this positive finding, report author Donald Haider wrote that mergers can seem alien to those in the nonprofit field. “In some ways, it’s little wonder that mergers have so few champions within the nonprofit community,” wrote Haider, an emeritus professor of strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “They are often associated with leadership failure, financial distress and good intentions run amok.” Instead, the Chicago report found nonprofit mergers can be used as a strategic tool to advance mission goals, improve services and expand impact. The merger of three suburban chapters of Big Brothers Big Sisters with the Metro Chicago organization “turned a largely insolvent operation serving 100 or so at-risk children in 2005, into a $4 million sustainable enterprise promoting high-
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In some ways, it’s little wonder that mergers have so few champions within the nonproFIt community. They are often associated with leadership failure, FInancial distress and good intentions run amok.
quality services for 1,800 at-risk children in 2015,” Haider wrote. In another example from the report, the Eleanor Foundation merged with the Chicago Foundation for Women in 2012 under their mutual mission to help female-headed households. After four years, the combined CFW organization doubled its asset size, increased its donor base and grew its projects. Katie Smith Milway, a partner in nonprofit management consultancy the Bridgespan Group’s Boston office and co-author of “Why Nonprofit Mergers Continue to Lag,” says merger opportunities can identify themselves as inorganic growth options. “Boards constantly talk about organic growth: How are they going to find the next funder? How are they going to get the current funders to give more?” Milway says. “Too rarely do they talk about inorganic growth, where you actually acquire growth. That conversation alone is a strengthening one to focus on what you should build, what you should borrow, what you should buy.” She says nonprofits should consider a strategic partnership or merger when, for example, there’s a leadership transition or the organization wants to innovate. There may be another nonprofit already doing the work. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 may convince nonprofits to consider mergers. With an increase in the standard deduction, fewer people are expected to itemize their taxes, meaning fewer taxpayers will be able to claim the charitable tax deduction. With fewer people able to benefit from the deduction, experts are anticipating a drop in charitable donations. According to estimates from the Tax Policy Center, these changes would reduce charitable giving by $12.3 billion in 2018, a 6.5% decline. State and federal budget constraints may also nudge some organizations to pool resources. The number of registered public charities in the U.S. grew 28.4% between 2005 and 2015, according to IRS data. Crain’s Chicago Business reported in 2017 that Illinois has “too many nonprofits,” citing a 2015 study by the Nonprofit Finance Fund that found 73% of Illinois nonprofits reported an increased demand for their services, but only 53% said they had thefunding to meet demand. Roll Up and Reset Illinois started 2018 with one less nonprofit, due to the merger of WomenOnCall and Chicago Cares. Each sought a partner to fill gaps in outreach and programming.
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WomenOnCall had shifted its focus from a national level to home in on the Chicago community. At the same time, Chicago Cares was bringing on additional program staff and considering its investment strategy. “Both of us were at inflection points at the same time, without even knowing it,” Ziel says. The conversations began as an opportunity for strategic partnership before morphing into merger discussions. WomenOnCall is an online network that connects professionals with skills-based volunteer opportunities. Chicago Cares’ approximately 20,000 volunteers typically engage in activities like painting schools or helping to combat isolationism at senior care centers. “This (merger) allows us to offer a richer array of opportunities,” Pfeiffer says of Chicago Cares, which is 75% corporate-funded. “It speaks to companies’ interest in doing more of that skills-based work. And frankly, we just want to offer as many options to people as we can. Some people gravitate toward lending their knowledge or expertise to a nonprofit. Other folks want more of a social experience. They want to engage with people and do some roll-up-thesleeves work. We want to offer the full menu.” The Chicago Cares and WomenOnCall coupling was technically an asset transfer, although they prefer to use the term merger in the spirit of collaboration. When a larger organization absorbs a smaller one, the branding strategy is usually clear. With Chicago Cares’ $3.3 million budget and WomenOnCall’s $450,000 budget, the latter is now considered a program and sub-brand of the former.
The branding and naming decisions are less clear in other acquisition scenarios. For comparison, hospice nonprofit JourneyCare merged with Horizon Hospice & Palliative Care and Midwest Palliative & Hospice CareCenter in 2014. In 2013, JourneyCare and Midwest had similar revenues ($34.8 million and $33.2 million, respectively) and market share (each with 6%) while Horizon was a good deal smaller ($12.9 million in revenue and 2% market share). Because two of the three organizations were of similar size, there wasn’t a clear case for keeping the largest group’s name. More than 300 names were vetted, including hyphenated mixes, but these options resulted in confusion or failed to register as hospice-type names. Other names were eliminated because they were already trademarked. The new board finally opted to use the JourneyCare name because members said it conveyed “excellence and innovation in care, expertise and leadership, and a responsiveness that the organization delivers to patients and facilities every day.” Rather than choose a new name that would be unfamiliar with the public, they opted for a known, trusted identity. Mergers can also be an opportunity to rebrand if the new joint mission represents a shift from the legacy missions, as was the case for WomenOnCall. As it merges with the Chicago Cares brand, WomenOnCall is being renamed Skills for Good. “We decided early on that Skills for Good would accept individuals of all gender identities,” Ziel says. “WomenOnCall has always enjoyed creating
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a community of female volunteers, but we knew that moving forward we would need to change the name so it would be open to all.” As WomenOnCall became a program under Chicago Cares, the team wanted its updated mission to be reflected in the name. The name Skills for Good, Pfeiffer says, makes the program’s goals clear. The Chicago Cares brand also evolved during the merger in 2017. Pfeiffer says that although Chicago Cares is a well-known brand, its name is a little vague. A new tagline adds clarification: “Do more good: Volunteer.” News of the Skills for Good rebrand and merger with Chicago Cares spread to the community mostly through digital platforms and local press. The merger was official on Jan. 1 but was marked with a kickoff at the Feb. 7 Meet and Match event, a signature program run by WomenOnCall for the last 11 years. It was an opportunity for the two communities to meet in person and move forward with their combined mission. Combining, Waiting, Then Rebranding Legacy nonprofit brands have to tread carefully when they merge. Milway’s research explored the merger of two legacy Boston nonprofits, Crittenton Inc. and The Women’s Union. The former was founded in 1824 and served women and families, and the latter formed in 1877 as an advocacy organization, conducting programs and research on social and economic issues faced by low-income women and their kin. Crittenton and The Women’s Union had more than 300 years of history between them, and donors would certainly notice if those brand names disappeared overnight. “When they merged, they had a lot of equity in both of their brands,” Milway says. As such, they rebranded as Crittenton Women’s Union in 2006. The new name identified their deep roots and histories but didn’t speak as much to the future. Before the organization could rebrand with an identity that better reflected their vision, Crittenton Women’s Union proceeded slowly and cautiously. It hired a new executive director to combine the two organizations. As time wore on, the board naturally rolled over and members previously loyal to either Crittenton or The Women’s Union moved on. About one year ago, with fresh board members and about a decade of equity as a unified system, the organization changed its name to EMPath.
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“They took the power of the research on the Crittenton side and the access to women and helping them with livelihoods on The Women’s Union side and pulled them together into an amazing resiliencefocused effort moving women from economic dependence to independence,” Milway says. “They call it a path to economic mobility: EMPath.” Separating Name and Mission One of the greatest barriers to a successful nonprofit merger may be the emotional connections people have to the brands—especially those on the inside. The Chicago study found internal stakeholders care more about the naming than the external community. Chicago Cares’ Pfeiffer has punched the clock at other nonprofits and has seen this attachment firsthand. “It’s human nature,” he says. “We’re all protective of our organizations, of our brands. We’re proud of them. It’s hard to truly be mission-first in orientation. It requires a little bit of detachment. You have to make decisions based on how you can advance the mission most effectively. That’s hard for people because it does mean they have to give up some personal attachment.” Ziel credits WomenOnCall founder Margot Pritzker for imparting the need to sever emotional ties to the brand name. “She continues to emphasize that if this is going to help us get to that end goal, we shouldn’t have pride of ownership,” Ziel says. “Our work is to continue to serve nonprofits and to help professionals find relevant volunteer opportunities. A colleague of ours said that ‘me’ is usually one of the biggest barriers in a merger.” Milway found that nonprofit boards can confuse their stewardship of the mission with stewarding the organization, becoming married to the organization’s identity versus its impact. There’re also external attachment to brands, and nonprofits don’t want to lose the equity built up with donors and volunteers. One of the simplest ways to maintain brand equity is to keep original names in some capacity—at least temporarily. Arizona’s Children Association (AzCA), for example, acquired seven organizations over a decade. Milway says AzCA kept each of the brands as programs or sub-brands—similar to Skills for Good under the Chicago Cares umbrella—so donors could identify the nonprofit to which they were loyal. Eventually, the sub-brand names were phased
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out as donors became familiar with AzCA. AzCA placed one board member from each of the acquired organizations onto its board of directors, thus shifting the members’ loyalty as well. The keys to a nonprofit merger are humility and a focus on the mission over all else. Unless they are regrouping under an entirely new name, organizations should examine which brand has the best name recognition and best represents the future of the organizations and how they want to grow. Chicago Cares and Skills for Good hired a consultant, who Ziel says helped guide and support the process, acting as a sounding board and brand expert. But what has helped seal the two organizations together was the mutual interest in their combined mission. It’s still very early in their partnership, but Ziel and Pfeiffer are looking forward to upcoming rollout plans and how each organization can support the other’s growth. Chicago Cares is an affiliate of the nationwide Points of Light network, and there’s an opportunity for the Skills for Good volunteer program to be replicated in other U.S. markets. “We’re building more potential for Chicago, but also for the whole network,” Pfeiffer says. “In five years there could be versions of Skills for Good all across the country.” Ziel chimes in: “We can easily see the amplification of our work and the ways that we can, together, be much stronger than we could be on our own.” m
The keys to a nonproFIt merger are humility and a focus on the mission over all else. Unless they are regrouping under an entirely new name, organizations should examine which brand has the best name recognition and best represents the future of the organizations and how they want to grow.
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H T I M S E H T SPECT
A
TRAVELING F
HOW A TED TALK-ST YLE ROAD SHOW HELPED THE SMITHSONIAN FUND THE L ARGEST CULTURAL INSTITUTION CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY
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T HSONIAN’S
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ACUL AR
G FUNDRAISER
BY ZACH BROOKE
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T
he pavilion at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles was filled to near capacity. The 4,100-square-foot space was
designed to bridge worlds and reflect a proud hybrid identity. Combining Japanese and American influences, the room’s wall of windows offers an intimate, insulated view of the National Museum’s Historic Building next door, once a Buddhist Temple and later a government-commandeered processing center that pushed around the paperwork necessary to exile thousands of WWII-era Japanese-Americans to years of wartime confinement. But that sober, sensitive topic was not what the 300-strong crowd had gathered to discuss this night in September 2015. Nor were they there to explore the Issei generation of Japanese immigrants who came to America at the end of the 19th century or any contemporary JapaneseAmerican trends or personages. Rather, those in attendance were there to see 10-minute presentations on topics as disparate from Japanese-American culture as outer space history, given by Smithsonian employees who had flown in from as far away as Washington, D.C. The visiting presenters spoke passionately about what they do, why they do it and what it means for America. The diverse roster enlivened a crowd whose interests extended beyond the museum’s purview. Some in the audience, like Scott Tennent, the Smithsonian’s director of advancement communications, were looking forward to a particular speaker on the program, only to be captivated by a different topic entirely. “There was a curator from the Hirshhorn Museum that was there to talk about the work of the artist Robert Irwin. That’s what I wanted to see,” Tennent says. “But then there was another speaker, Pete Marra from the National Zoo, who specialized in saving birds. I have
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not studied birds in my life. I don’t go birdwatching. I listened to him speak and was so enthralled by everything that he had to say. He really opened my eyes. [He brought me] to these ‘wow’ moments that the Smithsonian and its scholars are responsible for.” Rounding out the program that night were Eric Jentsch, a curator at the National Museum of American History, and Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum.
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PHOTO BY STEPHEN ELLIOT
The quartet gathered at the behest of the Smithsonian’s fundraising arm, which had groomed them and 27 of their colleagues to bear witness to the unique possibilities for preservation and advancement offered by the Smithsonian. In brief snippets, each described what their work meant to them and why it is vital to the fabric of American culture. That night’s scene repeated itself 20 more times by the end of January 2018. In cities across the country, this traveling lyceum rolled out under
the banner “People>Passion>Purpose,” and from the start it become a lynchpin in one of the world’s largest fundraising campaigns.
$1.5 billion is a lot of money. If a new country formed tomorrow with a GDP of $1.5 billion, it would eclipse the economies of 28 nations. If that sum were distributed to a random human, that person would become the
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generosity of the public to finance the remaining $500 million—and hopefully more—of the project. What’s more, it was important that each of the 30 entities the Smithsonian comprises hit their lesser goals, which when aggregated, totaled the topline $1.5 billion. Many of the largest donations came with strings attached and could not be distributed to parts of the Smithsonian with the greatest needs. Koch’s $35 million gift was earmarked for renovation of the Smithsonian’s dinosaur hall. Winfrey tied her $13 million donation to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. And Boeing poured its $30 million into the National Air and Space Museum. Those donations funded capital projects at just three of the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, all of which had ambitious plans to renovate and expand. And the museums were but a single constellation operating within the Smithsonian’s vast galaxy. An additional 10 research centers, plus the National Zoo, were encompassed by the
PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES FRANK
world’s 1,376th-richest individual. In terms of fundraising, it’s the largest sum in history raised for a cultural institution. “People>Passion>Purpose” was the Smithsonian’s first capital campaign. Fundraising began in 2011 and for three years extended solely through the upper strata of society, soliciting contributions from America’s wealthiest and garnering eight-figure support from contributors such as David H. Koch, Oprah Winfrey and Boeing Co. Other prominent supporters among the 60,000 elite early benefactors included fashion designer Ralph Lauren, director George Lucas, actress Eva Longoria, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When the campaign went public in 2014, it had already reached two-thirds of its goal, $1 billion dollars. A commendable start, but one which still left a sizeable summit before organizers. With the ultra-wealthy tapped out, the Smithsonian needed to appeal to the
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Smithsonian’s mandate. Organizers needed a campaign that would appeal to all segments of the Smithsonian, as well as tout the big picture of the institution’s footprint, which includs 6,500 employees and 155 million objects. They needed a pitch that would highlight the full spectrum of knowledge preserved and furthered in each corner of the organization. They needed something different. This assignment to encapsulate the Smithsonian was given to Penne Kirkpatrick, then a decade-tenured employee. Designated the assistant director of programming, she ideated the public-facing campaign as a series of TED Talk-style presentations featuring museum employees who would highlight the importance of their work and what excited them about it. This was not to be a series of dry, academic seminars, but an emotional account of the professional lives and impact of the Smithsonian’s specialized workers. Not only that, but they would travel the country, bringing their enthusiasm to communities far away from the Smithsonian’s home base in Washington.
The mountain would go to Muhammed. It was a fresh idea that stood alone in the thickly templated world of nonprofit fundraising. Almost too fresh. “We often talk about how we cleared this major hurdle,” Kirkpatrick says. “It was such a turning point in the life of the project. [Our leadership] didn’t know what it would look like, they didn’t know how it would all come together, so there was a big leap of faith.” Part of what helped Kirkpatrick sell the project internally was its name. The campaign was dubbed “People>Passion>Purpose,” a recycled phrase originally used as the title of the Smithsonian’s 2013 internal report. When first released, it resonated with the institutional community instantly: Here are dedicated, noteworthy researchers and educators pursuing their lives’ work and furthering the mission of America’s foremost national repository of artifacts. “We relied so heavily on talking about our collection—we have over 155 million objects, and they are treasures, they truly are—but what brings them to life is the people,” Kirkpatrick
Adriel Luis, of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, describes a museum’s soul at the National Museum of African Americal History in Washington, D.C. on July 27, 2017.
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Geologist Liz Cottrell delivers a powerful presentation about volcanoes at the National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C. on July 27, 2017.
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says. “As magical and beautiful as they are, [the objects] come to life when somebody tells you the story behind them.” The approach also touched on all four themes of the campaign: Spark discovery, tell America’s story, inspire lifelong learning and reach people everywhere. Granted, financial considerations were the primary driver of “People>Passion>Purpose,” but the novel effort tackled items the outreach arm of the institution had been searching for ways to address. Chief among them: that outside the Beltway, the institution was viewed largely as a capitol creature, a strip of grandiose buildings set against the expansive National Mall. The Smithsonian is a Washington destination, and not terribly relevant once tourists have boarded their flights back home. Additionally, there was a common misconception that the Smithsonian’s funding came from the federal government. It’s museums are free; some deep-pocketed entity like Uncle Sam must be picking up the tab, right? In reality, federal appropriations account for little more
than two-thirds of the Smithsonian’s budget; 30 cents of every budgeted dollar comes from private support. “We had to start telling that story,” Kirkpatrick says, but first they had to talk about the experience that people have in the museum. “They’re inspired, they’re in awe, they’re in wonder. We had to create that experience away from the museum. We had to get people to take a new look at the Smithsonian [to understand] that it isn’t just a place you come on your sixthgrade field trip, that you can engage with it across the country and around the world.” Beyond raising funds, the goal of the campaign was to reach as many Americans as possible to show them that the Smithsonian is relevant to their lives and relies on private support, Tennent says. To get the message out, Kirkpatrick enlisted Atlanta-based creative agency Ideas United to scale “People>Passion>Purpose” to a national level. The 17-year-old outfit was founded by four Emory students originally looking to put on a film festival. That project, Campus Movie Fest, has grown to become the world’s largest
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movie festival, showcasing the work of more than 1 million students around the world since its inception. This gave the organizers a desirable network of creative contacts, who morphed into go-to freelancers when Ideas United converted into an agency. Ideas United already enjoyed big-fish status as agency of record for the world’s largest sports agency, PGA America. Yet the wideranging scope of the Smithsonian’s mission was a supreme challenge to distill into a speaker series. “The exceptional breadth and depth of the Smithsonian was both an incredible inspiration and challenge,” says Ideas United CEO David Roemer. “They were able to tap into our expertise in scaling the event.” The Smithsonian highlighted its reach within the communities where events were held. There are more than 200 Smithsonian affiliates around the country, which are local museums like LA’s Japanese American National Museum that enjoy a special relationship with the Smithsonian. Partnering with these museums promoted the Smithsonian’s regional presence throughout the
country. When these affiliates geographically overlapped with a donor hotspot, they formed the ideal venue for “People>Passion>Purpose.” In addition to hosting the event, many of the affiliates offered up ambassadors who could connect Smithsonian fundraising to their network of donors. Kirkpatrick selected and groomed Smithsonian employees to headline the events. The genius of the campaign was its ability to rely on the Smithsonian’s academics and researchers to be the stars of the outreach effort. “We had [previously] leaned heavily on our directors and our leaders,” Kirkpatrick says. “But we learned in talking to our donors and our audiences that they actually connected more with the specific work [of our researchers]. When they could envision somebody going out into the field and working with elephants in Africa or bringing a new artist to a world stage, that is what people really responded to.” Speakers were selected based on their charisma and marketability. Smithsonian
Greg Adams, a processing archivist, performs banjo folk music at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on June 9, 2015.
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I say that we live on this earth by permission of volcanoes.” Others, like Adriel Luis of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, gave cultural context to their work to showcase its relevance in Americans’ lives. When Luis became a curator, most of his friends had no idea what that meant, but one distilled it perfectly: “You’re like DJ—except for things,” his friend said. “I’ve been carrying that with me ever since. As a curator, as a DJ of things, my job is to meet you with that thing at your mood, at your moment, that will help you complete your story,” Luis says. All styles were merged into what Kirkpatrick calls a tasting menu that presents a common theme: the American experience from hundreds of angles. “We asked them to step outside their comfort zones,” she says. “[They] get 10 minutes to talk about what [they] do, why [they’re] passionate about it, and what difference it’s making in the world. And we ask them to do it through their personal lens.” The presenters were specifically advised not to ask for donations.
PHOTO BY STEPHEN ELLIOT
Pete Marra details his fight to save birds during an event at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York on September 20, 2016.
employees had long known who among their colleagues radiated the most magnetism, so they hustled to secure those people for the effort. But charm was not the only requisite to speak. Some of the vetting process was tied to donation targets. Speakers were chosen from fields whose targets were still unmet. Kirkpatrick also aimed to represent public-interfacing workers, as it was important to highlight that researchers toiling in the field were on the same footing as the museum educators who guide patrons through the archival treasures. The results were spectacular. Some of the presenters reflected the awe of the subjects they worked with. Liz Cottrell of the National Museum of Natural History used her presentation to illustrate the awesome majesty of volcanoes. “It’s not a coincidence that the things you’re respiring are the same things that come out of volcanoes,” she said. “Water and carbon dioxide. That’s because volcanoes have made our atmosphere. They have made our planet habitable. And that’s what I mean when
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That task was handed over to fundraising specialists who reached out to audience members through phone calls and e-mail.
The campaign was an unequivocal success. The target goal of $1.5 billion was reached by October 2016—more than a year before the campaign was scheduled to conclude—and kept growing. By the time “People>Passion>Purpose” presentations wrapped in January 2018, the donations totaled $1.8 billion. The Smithsonian is now preparing for a gala that will celebrate the seven years of work and thank members for showing their support. Though the need for “People>Passion>Purpose” has dissipated, the program proved popular enough that discussions are in place about the
future of the campaign.“We have heard loud and clear from our volunteers and from our audiences that we need to keep our presence at regional activities,” Kirkpatrick says. “They want to stay connected with the Smithsonian, and we’re committed to doing that.” A future effort might entail filmed versions of the presentations on the campaign website or social media, in addition to the sizzle reel that exists online today. It also may mean turning the events into a touring act that visits paid venues across the country, which Kirkpatrick experimented with once during the initial campaign. Nothing has been finalized, however. The Smithsonian first is implementing a new strategic plan that will take the organization through 2022, and there’s the happy problem of having to allocate the remainder of $1.8 billion not already accounted for. But the popularity of “People>Passion>Purpose” has ensured the campaign will survive in some form, having earned a place alongside the other 155 million objects held in America’s attic. m
Curator Ariana Curtis speaks at an event at the Rasmuson Theater of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. on April 2, 2016.
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HOW MARKETING
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BANNED MICROBEADS A Chicago-based nonprofit used media, marketing and social networking to push for a microbead ban. But with a small staff and big issues, how can the Alliance for the Great Lakes use the ban’s blueprint for future victories? By Hal Conick Photos by Lloyd Degrane
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“D
on’t just clean; deep clean and invigorate your skin,” actress Hayden Panettiere exclaims in a 2007 Neutrogena ad, a light blue cream with tiny dark-blue dots splattering across the screen as she splashes water over her face. These dots are
“icy blue microbeads,” the ad says, solid plastic particles that were used in soap, toothpaste and facial scrubs starting in the late 1990s. Nearly every large distributor of cosmetic goods—including L’Oreal, Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Neutrogena parent company Johnson & Johnson—laced consumer products with microbeads.
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As consumers slathered their faces and teeth with microbead-filled creams and pastes, experts estimated 8 trillion of the microbeads— ranging in size from 10 micrometers to 1 millimeter in diameter—separated from the goop and traveled down the drain with the water each day, according to a 2015 opinion published in Environmental Science and Technology. Eight trillion microbeads is a “conservative” estimate, researchers from Oregon State University and University of California, Davis wrote, but it’s still enough microbeads to cover more than 300 tennis courts daily. Circling down the drain of a consumer’s home, these trillions of microbeads are sucked into sewer systems before flowing into wastewater treatment plants. Wastewater plants are efficient at filtering out most debris, but anything smaller than 1.5 millimeters can float past the gates of most systems, along the surface of the water, above the sludge and detritus and into nearby bodies of water—bays, rivers, oceans and, according to what Dr. Sherri Mason found in 2012, the Great Lakes. Mason, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Fredonia, was the first scientist to research how many microbeads had floated into the Great Lakes. In 2012 and 2013, she sailed the
Great Lakes—Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan— bodies of water that contain 6 quadrillion gallons, or one-fifth, of the world’s surface fresh water. Mason captured samples to measure plastic in the lakes. Plastic content ranged from 7,000 to 230,000 particles per sqaure kilometer, increasing as the chain of lakes extends to the Atlantic Ocean. Millions of tiny beads and other pieces of plastic successfully floated from the bottle to the drain to the Great Lakes. According to her research, 75% of the plastic found was smaller than 1 millimeter in diameter— “like a period at the end of a sentence,” Mason said during a 2016 TED Talk. “We are the problem,” she says. “But that also means that we are the solution.”
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n 2013, as Mason’s microbead research became public, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a Chicago-based nonprofit with the mission of protecting the Great Lakes, hired Jennifer Caddick. Caddick, whose career has been dedicated to water advocacy nonprofits, was hired by the Alliance to establish a marketing and communications team to break down internal silos and improve communication to supporters. Caddick wanted to use human stories to inform and appeal to
Alliance supporters, but she also wanted each message to be a springboard for action, whether it be donating, volunteering or sharing news on social networks. The Alliance’s key issues would stay the same—Lake Erie’s toxic algae bloom, clean drinking water and invasive species, such as Asian carp— but Caddick wanted to focus the Alliance’s marketing to efficiently galvanize its base. She revamped the Alliance’s website, adopted new communications tools and ensured campaigns were measurable. The Alliance seemed a perfect fit for Caddick, a lifelong lover of the Great Lakes. Caddick grew up in upstate New York, near the Saint Lawrence River, an inlet that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes. One of Caddick’s fondest childhood memories is walking with her grandfather atop peat and plants to the edge of the river. She was 10 years old and the day was foggy. She fidgeted, trying to locate the foghorns blowing in the distance. As the fog peeled away, she watched the water with wonder, peppering her grandfather with candid curiosities. What does a foghorn mean? Where are the ships going? The thinning fog uncovered rippling water and roaming ships as he patiently explained the world revealing itself in front of them.
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“I started to get a sense of the vastness of the river,” Caddick says. “He helped me understand our place in a bigger system.” Decades later, in 2013, Caddick had just started her job at the Alliance when her sense of place turned into a sense of disbelief. She saw Mason’s microbead research and wondered: Why are so many companies using plastic microbeads? Other companies, such as Burt’s Bees and Palmer’s, use
apricot and cocoa shells as natural alternatives for exfoliation products—items that biodegrade quickly, unlike plastic, which may take 1,000 years. Caddick and the Alliance went on the offensive, using marketing, traditional media outlets and social media to lobby for a nationwide ban of microbeads in consumer products. “This is a commonsense problem that we can prevent,” Caddick says. As the Alliance’s policy team lobbied Illinois and
other state governments for a consumer microbead ban, Caddick communicated directly with the Alliance’s supporters. Each message conveyed the seriousness of the situation and listed steps they could take toward a microbead ban. “The first step [is] to keep an eye out for products that you’re purchasing,” Caddick says. “The second [is] encouraging our supporters to write their elected officials. We organized letter-writing campaigns,
WHY ARE MICROBEADS BAD? Microbeads carry chemicals like ultraviolet stabilizers and flame retardants, just as every piece of plastic does. In the water, they can pick up other toxic chemicals—such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), banned by the EPA in 1979—and morph into what Mason calls “little poison pills” that are consumed by fish and, perhaps, humans. “If it’s in the water, it’s in us,” she said during her TED Talk.
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action alerts and saw a huge outcry from our supporters.” Social media became an explosive medium for the Alliance, particularly Facebook. The nonprofit’s most successful post— shared 855 times—was an infographic showing how microbeads are sucked into the Great Lakes and eaten by wildlife. Caddick and her team realized the great potential of social media to hold the rapt interest of supporters. Microbeads have what Caddick calls an “ick factor;” for example, many dentists spoke out about finding microbeads in patients’ gums and teeth. Microbeads were already a visceral issue for supporters, but Caddick and her team wanted to show what the beads looked like outside globs of gel and cream. “We did an experiment in the office,” Caddick says with a smile. Her team ran a microbead-laden facial scrub through a coffee filter in the Alliance’s kitchen. After the beads dried, Caddick dipped her finger into the beads— some blue, some clear, some white, all varying sizes—and took a picture. Newspapers and users across social media picked up the photo, Caddick says. Mason’s research became well-known in public conversation as large news organizations, such as NPR and The New York Times, wrote about microbeads in the Great Lakes. In 2014, the campaign’s virality paid off: Companies began setting timetables to end the sales and production of consumer products with microbeads.
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Then, the state of Illinois became the first in a wave of state governments to ban microbead-laden cosmetic products. “Lake Michigan and the many rivers and lakes across our state are among our most important natural resources,” thenIllinois Gov. Pat Quinn said in a statement. “We must do everything necessary to safeguard them.” In 2015 New York, Ohio and California had their own microbead-banning legislation. Caddick and the Alliance celebrated each victory with a message to supporters, compounding the earned
media campaign with its own awareness and letter-writing campaigns to keep supporters active. “Microbead progress in Wisconsin!” a 2015 Alliance for the Great Lakes Facebook post says, linking to a form letter that supporters could send to their legislators in support of a microbead ban. Anxious Great Lakes supporters didn’t have to wait long for a nationwide microbead ban. H.R. 1321, the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, was signed into federal law in December of that year. The bill banned the manufacture of consumer products containing
microbeads in July 2017 and will ban sales of those products in July 2018. Caddick scored her first big victory as the Alliance’s marketing leader, taking advantage of what she called “a perfect storm.” The virality, research and marketing came together to galvanize the anger of Great Lakes supporters into political action rather than stopping its momentum at the “like” button. “We can’t do everything, but when we discover an issue that we are concerned about, we want to educate our supporters,” Caddick says. “We always want to give
people an action.” Now that it has scored a big victory against microbeads, the Alliance’s next action must be equally evocative.
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ometimes, Caddick says, it’s hard to keep supporters aware of and fighting for issues that will take decades to solve. Most Great Lakes issues, like plastic pollution, are difficult to see, hidden by 6 quadrillion gallons of water. In a Loyola University lab in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, Timothy Hoellein, an assistant professor and aquatic
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ecologist, works to uncover the hidden plastic. In Hoellein’s lab, foil-covered jars, glasses and petri dishes line the shelves, most filled with water and sediment from across the U.S., many stacked perilously above computers and microscopes. Other jars contain fish set to be dissected, pulverized and examined for plastic in their guts. Hoellein picks up a beaker of water and turns it in his hands, sediment slushing across the bottom; there are likely plastic fibers—even smaller than microbeads—in the sediment, he says. These fibers compose most of the plastic that Hoellein and his students find in bodies of water. Rachel McNeish, a post-doctoral research fellow in the biology department at Loyola, leans over a microscope, looking at fibers they’ve found in samples of fish and water. She can tell the first sample isn’t plastic because it’s frayed; it
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looks like a hair with a split end. “See how the end comes apart?” says McNeish, smiling as she motions for others to look in the microscope. The next two samples she examines look to be synthetic, she says; one curves like an S, the other like a C, neither are frayed. Both look like a loose piece of plastic curling under the heat of a flame. Plastic fiber comes from garments made with artificial material—such as polyester or acrylic. The fibers come off in the wash, on the ground or even in the air, floating away and landing in the water before being gulped down by wildlife. Hoellein says they’ve found plastic pieces, mostly fibers, in approximately 96% of fish studied in his Loyola lab. When asked if these fibers end up in the fish humans eat, Hoellein says he isn’t sure, as no U.S. studies have been conducted yet. However, he says European researchers
have found plastic pieces of varying sizes inside of fish at seafood markets. Although banning plastic microbeads in consumer goods was an easy decision for most—especially for Great Lakes supporters who knew there were biodegradable alternatives—Hoellein says that plastic is ubiquitous and the pollution it creates is not easily solvable by a ban. Plastic is in our cars, our clothes, our smartphones and even the construction of our buildings. In 1950, the world produced almost no plastic, per PlasticsEurope; by 2014, there were nearly 300 million tons of plastic produced each year—most pieces completely disposable and entirely unable to biodegrade. “We’re all participants in the pipeline of plastic products in ways that affect everything that we do,” Hoellein says. “It’s more about trying to understand our relationship
with the material and where it enters our bodies, our behavior and asking what the responsible use of it is.” Back in the Alliance’s office, Caddick sits in a room overlooking Chicago’s Millennium Park, just west of Lake Michigan. It’s bitter cold—5 degrees—and Lake Michigan, sitting just beyond the park, has crystalized. Somewhere under the ice, plastic pollution churns and bubbles with the fish and water. Plastic pollution is a big issue, bigger than the 95,160 square miles of the Great Lakes, and supporters always want to know how they can help. However, the Alliance’s supporters are human and have finite attention spans. Caddick knows that bombarding them with unfocused e-mails and social media posts is more likely to overwhelm than galvanize. Microbeads were an emotional issue and had a spark with supporters, but other issues, such as the unseen plastic fibers that come off our clothes, are more esoteric. That’s the frustrating part about understanding and protecting the Great Lakes system as part of a small nonprofit, Caddick says. The staff of 25 at the Alliance for the Great Lakes can’t protect everything, nor can it spur its 13,000 Facebook fans, its list of e-mail newsletter recipients or its 150 ambassadors into action on each issue. There isn’t enough attention, let alone people. Therein lies the importance of a focused, wellplanned marketing campaign. If a campaign isn’t grounded
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in research and doesn’t spark the interest of supporters, Caddick doesn’t believe it will be effective. When asked what issue the Alliance will attack next, drinking water is Caddick’s immediate answer, but plastic is still an issue. Then there’s the toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie, which can now be seen from outer space, and Asian carp, an invasive species of fish swimming evercloser to the Great Lakes. As Caddick and the Alliance staff members debate the next big push, the crux of the Alliance’s marketing—fundraising, volunteering, storytelling and disseminated information— continues, undaunted. The Alliance’s Adopt-aBeach program sends 15,000 volunteers from across the country to remove litter from beaches, a program with data Hoellein has studied. Nearly 87% of the litter found by volunteers is plastic— namely cups, straws and food wrappers. Caddick doesn’t have the next big push ready and doesn’t believe the process can be rushed. To attack drinking water, the Alliance needs help from researchers and scientists like Mason and Hoellein, members of affected communities and Alliance supporters across the U.S. The Alliance needs the spark that made the microbead campaign successful, but it also needs support, planning and expertise from outside its walls. “The marketing comes second,” Caddick says. “Everything is grounded in our strategic goals and the needs for the lakes and the
THE FIGHT AGAINST PLASTIC CONTINUES In early January, the Alliance for the Great Lakes and the Illinois Environmental Council released a joint resolution to fight plastic pollution in local waterways. “About 22 million pounds of plastic flow into the Great Lakes each year,” Jennifer Walling, executive director of IEC, said in a statement. “Banning microbeads was a critical step in fighting plastic pollution, as research released in 2013 showed the presence of microplastics in all five Great Lakes, as well as the many rivers and tributaries that feed them. The impact this law will have on the health of our waters and the people and animals who depend on them is significant; however, there is much more work that needs to be done.”
people who rely on the lakes. Then we ask how we can use our communication tools to help our policy, planning, volunteer and education staff meet their goals. These stories have to work to further those campaigns.” Just as Caddick thinks of her time with her grandfather by the Saint Lawrence River,
the best stories make people think of their own fond memories by the water and wonder: Am I leaving a better world for my kids? “These issues impact real lives every day,” Caddick says. “It’s essential to find those stories, tell them and use social media to get those stories out there.” m
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career advancement
THE MARKETER’S ROLE
B-to-B Marketers Are Having an Identity Crisis Between stubborn misconceptions about marketing’s value and a flood of new technology, marketers face a tough job of defining their role in the modern business BY DEBBIE QAQISH
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ost marketers today feel like their role is constantly being redefined, and they struggle with their identity. Factors contributing to this stress include internal legacy thinking and market drivers of technology and
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customer control. A major contributor to the marketer’s identity crisis is the antiquated way in which marketing’s capabilities and value are regarded by other business functions. I recently worked with a new
vice president of marketing who was supposedly hired to transform marketing from a cost center to a revenue driver. However, every change she tried to implement—from how to allocate the budget to how to build her team—was met with resistance by the executive team. My advice to vice presidents and CMOs looking to take on a transformational role in a new company is to consider an organization’s actions rather than its words. Actions are your best guide for how much you can change. Sales and marketing alignment remains a big problem. In most companies, especially larger ones, the sales team still views marketing as its support system and a cost center. I find in working
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THE MARKETER’S ROLE
Today’s marketer needs to have a laser focus on what they want from their career. They need to find the company where they can grow their skill set, not wait for something to happen to them. with my clients that younger, fastgrowing companies with younger sales and marketing folks tend to realize that marketing is a critical element of today’s revenue engine. Nothing has changed marketing more than the rise of technology. The traditional marketing skill set must be greatly expanded to include data, analytics and technology—full use of leftbrain capabilities. Still, recent studies indicate that investment in marketing technology is beginning to drop. Why? Because marketers can’t even use the tech they have. Many of the marketing executives I work with are hiring marketers not with a specific platform expertise, but an ability, capability and
curiosity to adopt and use multiple technology platforms as needed for the business. This is a smart strategy as there are more than 5,000 pieces of technology available and major shifts in the core elements of a successful martech stack. In addition, marketers are working cross-functionally, so communication, consulting and influence skills are critical. This all must be placed into context for achieving the business goals of the company and the marketing organization. Add to this impressive mix of required skills the critical need for a better understanding of the customer. The customer is now firmly in control of the buying process and decides how and when to interact with your company. I
career advancement
am shocked by B-to-B marketers’ lack of knowledge about and interaction with their customers and predict this will be the single biggest change in the B-to-B marketing organization this year. Marketing will move from having to ask sales what they think about the customer to being the ultimate relationship manager of the customer. Marketing will be able to provide real-time insights to customers and will share that information across the organization. Ultimately, how companies make decisions based on customer knowledge will be enabled by marketing. To successfully navigate this everchanging and fast-moving environment, today’s marketer needs to have a laser focus on what they want from their career. They need to find the company where they can grow their skill set, not wait for something to happen to them. Finding a way to thrive in today’s marketing environment will continue to be a required capability. Your role will continue to evolve. What you control is your company environment. Choose wisely. m DEBBIE QAQISH is principal partner and chief strategy officer of The Pedowitz Group. She has been helping B-to-B companies drive revenue growth for more than 35 years and is author of the awardwinning book Rise of the Revenue Marketer.
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MARKETING NEWS | MARCH 2018
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career advancement
ON THE RECORD
New Year, New Headshot Fear not the headshot. A great picture helps you stand out and can be had simply by picking the right photographer and following instructions. BY ZACH BROOKE | STAFF WRITER
zbrooke@ama.org
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ew York photographer Peter Hurley is a headshot honcho. In addition to capturing mesmerizing images of celebrities such as Chris Matthews, Sofía Vergara and Mikhail Baryshnikov, he’s also authored The Headshot: The Secrets to Creating Amazing Headshot Portraits and launched the Headshot Crew, a coaching platform and referral engine that encompasses a global network of photographers nearly 14,000-strong. Marketing News recruited Hurley to give us the lowdown on capturing our good sides.
Q A
Why do professionals need a set of headshots?
In this day and age, we have this digital identity. It’s like your calling card. Business cards are out, headshots are in. It puts a face with a name. Companies and personal brands are starting to get that. Anybody that is entrepreneurial needs a headshot, even if it’s just going to sit on LinkedIn. LinkedIn profiles without headshots look ridiculous.
Q A
How often should you refresh your headshot?
You should shoot a headshot session every year—or for any major changes—and have different shots you can use for different things. I grew my hair long, then I grew a beard, then I shaved my head and then I shaved my beard. It’s nice to update the headshot for the look you currently have. If you don’t change your look, you can probably get a couple years out of them. When somebody changes their profile picture on a social media platform, it gets the most likes out of anything they posted that year. The people following you on these platforms want to see you. They’re looking for you.
Q A
What is your basic headshot recipe?
Clean and simple. Most people are looking at these headshots on a
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career advancement
ON THE RECORD
mobile device or online, and if you put someone on a clean background, they are going to stand out from the noise. I prefer black, white and gray. When your headshot is being taken, convey some approachability and confidence. When we get in front of cameras, we tend to not have a clue as to what to do. We certainly don’t know what our face looks like, but our brain will try to tell us. We have to rely on a photographer to coach toward what a confident and approachable shot will be.
front of a camera. It’s not always easy to shoot models. It’s really on the photographer to get that person to have an enjoyable experience. If you’re with somebody who’s knowledgeable and does this on a daily basis, you have to let them do their thing. Have faith in your photographer. Some people have PAS, which is picture avoidance syndrome. A lot of people don’t want to be there. I always tell the people that are with me: Do it once, do it right, and you’ll be set for a while.
Q A
Q A
What’s the No. 1 request your clients make?
Make me look good. People want something that they are proud to present to others, but we don’t have a clue what [that looks like] until we see it. Everybody looks at themselves differently. Usually we’re our harshest critic. It becomes challenging for people who are tougher about their appearance to chill out and give something that’s interesting.
Q
It’s easy to photograph models, but what about those who feel they don’t make good portrait subjects? What advice would you give on why they should get a headshot and how to enjoy the experience?
A
There’s a misconception that models know what they’re doing in
How do you choose the right photographer?
First thing you look for is consistency. If the person’s portfolio is all over the place, it’s probably not somebody who has streamlined their workflow and knows what they’re doing as an artist. Second, do the people in the pictures look confident? Would you want that picture to represent you? See if you can imagine yourself in one of those pictures and if you’d be proud to have one for yourself.
Q A
What should people know about the cost of headshots?
The cost of headshots is dependent upon the photographer’s skill and the marketplace they are in. If you’re looking to spend $99 on a headshot, chances are that person’s not a full-time, headshot professional. Costs can range
You put yourself in front of a camera and you start to think about what your face should do. That’s where it gets dicey and a little strange. You need somebody to coach and get the best out of you. 58
anywhere from $99 up to thousands of dollars. It depends on what you’re looking to get out of it.
Q
Would you advise people to include a headshot on their résumé?
A
I think so. In Germany, a headshot is required. If you think it’s going to promote you as an individual, it should definitely be on the résumé. If the headshot isn’t quite up to snuff, I would get a new one before I even considered putting it on a résumé—or avoid it altogether.
Q A
Any advice on outfit, hairstyle or expression?
I want people to get a range of expressions—from serious to cracking up and everything in between. Most people that I shoot aren’t going to use a laughing picture, but their kids or parents might love it. If you’re a guy, you can do it with a jacket, shirt and tie. For a woman, you don’t want jewelry that will stand out because it’s so close up, it’s going to take the attention away from you. You might want to stick to subtle jewelry like studs.
Q A
Do you feel your role is at risk with the emergence of selfies?
Not at all. There are a lot of photographers who worry about that kind of thing. I think photography is so specialized. There are even these automated headshot booths coming out where it just gives you a clean white background and decent lighting shot in an automated booth. I don’t worry about that stuff at all because I know it is so difficult to get yourself to behave [naturally] in front of a camera. Cameras do things to people that mess us up. We don’t think about our expression all day long. It’s subconsciously driven. You put yourself in front of a camera and you start to think about what your face should do. That’s where it gets dicey and a little strange. You need somebody to coach and get the best out of you. m
MARKETING NEWS | MARCH 2018
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advertisers’index
ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Quick source for contacting the suppliers in the March 2018 issue of Marketing News. 2018 AMA Calendar of Events ................................................................... p. 21 ttp://ama.marketing/events18 URL: h 2018 AMA Fellows .................................................. p. 23 ttp://ama.marketing/fellows18 URL: h 2018 AMA Marketing + Public Policy Conference .............. inside back cover ttp://ama.marketing/MPP2018 URL: h 2018 AMA Nonprofit Marketing Conference . .............................................................. p. 13 ttp://ama.marketing/nonprofit18 URL: h AMA Digital Marketing Bootcamp ....................... p. 15 ttp://ama.marketing/Bootcamp18 URL: h
AMA Professional Certified Marketer® Content Marketing Program ................................................ p. 25 URL: http://ama.marketing/PCM-CM AMA White Papers ................................................. p. 27 Email: anelmes@ama.org URL: http://www.ama.org/whitepaper AMA’s Marketing Resource Directory .................................................................... p. 5 URL: http://marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org Funnelback ................................................... back cover URL: http://www.funnelback.com/Secrets Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies . ................................................. p. 9 URL: http://scs.georgetown.edu/lead
AMA Foundation 2018 Ric Sweeney Chapter Volunteer of the Year Award / Outstanding Academic Marketing Awards . ............................................ p. 18-19 Calls for Nominations open until April 6, 2018: ttp://ama.marketing/BerryBook2018 URL: h http://ama.marketing/NPMY2018 http://ama.marketing/4U4018
Marketing News ...................................................... p. 56 Email: sales@ama.org ttp://www.ama.org/mediakit URL: h
AMA Job Board ....................................................... p. 59 ttp://jobs.ama.org URL: h
Salesforce ......................................... inside front cover URL: h ttp://www.SFDC.co/Sierra
Get in Touch! . ............................................................ p. 7 URL: http://www.GetInTouchAdvertising.com
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#OfficeGoals A peek inside the marketers’ offices that make us drool
less than two years ago but retained architecture firm Eastlake to design a larger space in the same Chicago building to accommodate the growing global packaging design and branding firm. Equator wanted to display in-progress work and wall tattoos. Whimsical sea-creature line art gives the workplace a creative twist fit for a design firm. The murals communicate Equator’s design process to both clients and recruits. m
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PHOTOS: STEVE HALL @ HEDRICH BLESSING PHOTOGRAPHERS
EQUATOR just moved into a new office
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