Direct response is what it says

Direct response is what it seeks: not a delayed action, but an immediate response. "Call today!" "Order now!" etc. They are the rally cries of direct marketing. Thinking about employing some direct response? Consider:

1. Copy is king. The right words in the right place at the right time have the power to grab attention, keep attention and get a response.

2. Definitions drive response. Define your audience and you create the pathway to their response. Insights on the target audience should drive your copy, your images and your desired response.

3. Media matters. Proper placement is one thing, proper negotiation matters even more.

4. Return rules. Measuring for the response can be "easy" but only when you have the proper tools in place.

Above all, design matters. When effective tactic is combined with effective design, well, look out. The results are unmistakable. The design doesn't need to be award-winning but it does need to be brand consistent.

Curiosity Sparks Action

Frame your communication to play to people's curiosity. Craft the right set of questions and you might be surprised at how curiosity about answers sparks people to action. Dan Heath shares a post he received about how the right questions drove attendance at a church finance meeting.

What's your question?

Red herring, anyone?

It strikes me that Claire Gaudiani's call in an August Chronicle of Philanthropy sparks good conversation but may not be constructive for the very organizations represented by the "sector." She calls for use of "social-profit" to reflect the "investment, risk taking, and entrepreneurial imagination that have always been so essential to organizations that serve the social good.” Since nonprofit organizations, even while called nonprofits, can focus on investment, risk taking and entrepreneurial imagination, important energy needed to communicate that focus may be diverted. Rather than spend time discussing a new name for the nonprofit sector, we suggest spending time telling your social-profit stories to staff, clients, board members, donors and community. Talk about risk and return. Show results. Be accountable. Worry less about the name of the sector and more about creating the common good.

Positivity Plus

Penelope Trunk, blogger, Yahoo! columnist, and author of The Brazen Careerist, often points to the study of positive psychology to explain her views of the work world. One of the tenets of positive psych is to spend more time focused on areas of strength than trying to improve areas of weakness. Part of the reason is that people are happiest when doing what they do best every day. Does your organization focus on improving its strengths? Do you talk internally about identifying those strengths? How could your employees start daily doing what they do best?

Risk for Reward

A reminder we all need from time to time: there is no box. In idea-based businesses, most of our limitations stem only from habit to censor before we create. We hate to be wrong, to look foolish or to appear vulnerable. But to move beyond business as usual, we have to risk all three so we can tap our innate creativity.

Need a push? Read these tips to overcome mental blocks:
http://www.copyblogger.com/mental-blocks-creative-thinking/#more-428

Straight Talk by CEOs: a place to start

Couldn't agree more with Frank Luntz that the time is past for CEOs to start talking in language that Americans actually use. It can be tough to change, but a great place to start is elimininating acroymns. An even smaller first step, don't shorten the name of your organization to an acronym when you write about it. The second step of that challenge, don't do it when you talk about it.

Magical Insight

Words from The Amazing Randi: “Allow people to make assumptions and they will come away absolutely convinced that assumption was correct and that it represents fact. It’s not necessarily so.” Necessary for magicians, yet dangerous for the rest of us -- whether as consultants, coworkers, family members or individuals simply striving to do good in the world -- dangerous when someone else assumes something and it truly isn't necessarily so. Reinforces the power of clarification and connection.

Clarity helps with complicated GenXers

Want to get Gen X into your world, don't tell them what they are going to get of it. Create a sense of community, create an opportunity for connection. Respect the fact that many were shaped in a world filled with lies and they are always on the lookout for the next half-truth or false-proclamation. Since they are complicated, be clear in the true value you deliver.

If you're in the arts, read a post by Bridgette Redman that offers her research-based and first-hand experience on how this applies to arts marketing.

Connecting on your target's turf

Take a lesson from artist/activist Eve Mosher, who seeks to personalize the effects of global warming on New Yorkers through "High Water Line." Her chalking of a 70-mile line to show where waters could reach during storms if climate change trends continue stops people. They watch. They ask what she's doing. They open the door for her to share her compelling story about keeping the water from ever hitting that mark. The project is simple and relevant to her audience. High Water Line connects people in the familiarity of their environment and daily routines. It not only captures their imagination as they envision what that line represents but also invites connects them with the cause.

How do you connect with your audience? Do you engage them on their turf? Step back and find some creative ways for your customers to interact with you.

More information on Mosher's project is available in the August edition of Free Range Thinking.

The stories of your brand

David Pollay writes at Positive Psychology Daily, "Our life is not a series of facts only. It is mostly a set of interpretations we have made about events in our life. These interpretations add up to a story -- a story of who we think we are, what we have experienced, and what we're likely to do in the future."

This is true for your organization as well. Your brand is not simply a series of facts. While it stems from fact (a quality product or service), it is created from the interpretations of your customers and employees. It is in the stories told -- the ones you craft carefully as well as the ones you might never hear. Gather stories. Conduct a communications audit. Survey. Take steps so that the stories of your organization reflect your brand and your vision of achievement.

Building Better Nonprofit Board Leaders

Nonprofit leadership is as much about an effective Board as it is about a visionary staff. Well-meaning, yet ill-intentioned, business leaders can wreak havoc. Help them help you. When staff clearly explain the Board member's role and the responsibilities, they can all be better leaders. Add these four things and you've got business people who will build and support better nonprofit leadership:

1. Take responsibility. Nonprofit service isn't about building a resume and it's more than feeling good about "giving back." Nonprofit leadership is about being accountable for moving the organization forward from a position of strength. Take responsibility for asking questions and making tough decisions.

2. Bring a business mind to the table. Board members need to bring the same business sense to making decisions on a nonprofit Board that they would in their own Board room. Yes, there are differences between not-for-profit and for-profit operations, but limited resources make the balance between them all the more important.

3. Commit to communicate. Consensus-building is often the norm on Boards. Business leaders committed to clear communication that aligns stakeholders can facilitate the type of progress that converts leadership into progress. Communicate clearly, communicate often.

4. Build a better bottom line. Business leaders need to operate from the mindset of fiscal responsibility that bends to mission. It isn't about turning a profit, but it's not about losing money either. Deficit budgeting is dangerous for any organization. Business leaders can bring their financial goal-setting expertise to the table so that the strategic direction of the organization is strengthened by balanced budgets.

Transformation begins inside

How can you transform your organization? Start with your employees.

In a discussion about change at Merrill Lynch, Diane Schueneman emphasizes how critical it is to facilitate learning opportunities for workers. Develop training programs, offer innovation incentives and support coursework at all levels to allow employees to lead your company’s evolution.

Never forget: people are the organization. Create new ways for people to grow and your business will do the same.


From the archive: Build them, you build your brand.

Going up ...

You press the button, and wait. The familiar bell dings. The doors open; you enter. You wait for the doors to close. Someone rushes in with an appreciative smile. "Thanks. New to the building and can't believe how slow this elevator is ... I see you're one floor above us, what do you all do?"

There it is. The set-up. Respond well, you may have a new client, a new boss, a new friend. Stutter, you botch your first impression and could lose more business than you even know about -- since the power of a network is powerful indeed.

Follow the basics. "Thanks for asking. I'm (name) with (company). We (purpose) for (target audience)." But don't keep it all about you; reciprocate with a question. Start a conversation. The best thing that could happen would be for it to get interrupted at the 12th floor so that you can reconnect later.

Go ahead, press the button.

Don't let a white paper make your reader blue

The white paper. A potentially valuable tool for connecting with your audience. Yet, too often, in an effort to sound authoritative, the white paper author wanders, loses focus and drones on for too long. Don't let it happen to you. Make it relevant. Make it engaging. After all, any communication that doesn’t hit those two marks is a waste of time for the recipient. Craft it with consistent objectives and a sense of clarity in mind. Looking for tips? Consider Michael Stelzner’s upcoming seminar, Creating and Marketing Winning White Papers, or his book on the topic.

Thought for the Day: Storytelling

"The important point that I'm trying to make is that storytelling has nothing, whatsoever, to do with logic. Logic is a limping stepchild of the true processes of the spirit. It's an illusion. It's a defective little parlor trick. Associations are the way that we perceive. Electrical connections caused by the juxtapositions of experience. That's the way we are really built, and storytelling takes into account that truth."

-- David Milch, co-creater of HBO's John from Cincinatti

Seeking to move forward in connecting people with your mission? Suspend logic, allow your mind to free associate, find a clear truth and, then, only then, connect it with your business objective.

Simple constancy for stronger identity

Authenticity is the ability to remain true to oneself in the face of pressures to change. But we are never the same today as we were yesterday, or will be tomorrow. Since change is the only constant in life, how can an organization retain its authenticity and communicate it effectively? Stagis points to Marimekko pattern design for inspiration on staying true to your core purpose while leveraging your “brand’s learning potential” to fulfill your mission in new ways. We are most true to ourselves when embracing how we inevitably change.

Decisions are powerful forces for progress

Progress hinges on decision-making, not decision-building. Good decision-makers gather input efficiently and make a decision based on it quickly. Don't fall into the trap of collecting, opining, rethinking and rebuilding. Make a decision; move forward; and learn from the process.

The upside of silos

Organizational silos may have a redeeming quality by improving specialization within individual groups. Look to the silo-intensive IT industry for tips, and remember to stay focused on clear communication. Don't allow a lack of clarity to sidetrack good work. Connect the task to the mission, bring staff together and foster curiosity -- you just might find the upside of those silos.

Rekindle Curiosity

In today’s competitive, innovation-hungry market, it’s time to recondition how employees look for answers. Author Dennis Stauffer clearly understands this as he advocates “practical creativity” in his book Thinking Clockwise: A Field Guide for the Innovative Leader. Without a sense of discovery, an organization can’t adapt and evolve:

• allow people to share information and admit mistakes
• encourage questions
• rekindle habits of curiosity and you can move an organization in the right direction

Trends in Giving

In a recent study by the Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University, four long-term trends in charitable giving were synthesized from the past 40 years of philanthropic activity.

The first trend reflects the rise of foundation giving and charitable bequests. Since 1964, foundation giving has increased 469% and charitable bequests have increased 242%. This is in addition to a 213% increase in corporate giving and a 176% increase in individual giving. Although they may seem like stunning increases, they are merely commendable compared to increases in the economy and income levels. Foundation giving and charitable bequests are becoming important fundraising options for nonprofits.

The second trend shows a consistent 'share of giving' throughout the United States. Although giving in inflation-adjusted dollars has increased, giving as a percentage of the GDP, income and profits has stayed relatively constant. Total giving as a percentage of the U.S. GDP has remained around 2% over the past 40 years. Why are people not donating more even though their assets are increasing? How can the nonprofit sector get people to move above and beyond historic donation levels?

The third trend links government funding and private giving. If a nonprofit receives funds from the government, they tend to receive fewer funds from individuals, and vice versa. The United States gave $1.8 trillion to nonprofits in 2000, and this type of funding had a significant effect on individual giving. Troubling is that when nonprofits receive government funding, they tend to decrease their fundraising expenditures and staff, yet government funding is now diminishing in many area and these may have difficulties reestablishing ties to and relationships with individual donors.

The fourth trend tracks the increase of nonprofit organizations in the United States -- and their increased segmentation. In 1995, there were roughly 630,000 registered nonprofits in the U.S. By 2005, this number had reached about 1 million (a 67% increase). More amazing is that donations to these organizations have kept pace with the growth. Perhaps the increased specialization makes that possible as people who wouldn't have donated before are now asked by new organizations that match their particular interests and concerns. But for those who do have a history in philanthropy, it can become complicated when the time comes to select one organization to receive your donation.

The future of philanthropy looks bright, particularly with the impending 'trillion dollar transfer' as the aging Baby Boomers give their money to children and to nonprofits. And, it raises the bar for nonprofits to enhance accountability and responsibility for managing charitable interests and donations.