4.21.14 Films from Found Footage

 

Recently, I put together this video from a Worcester Sharks game from footage that a staff member filmed. This was a slightly different experience for me because usually I do film and interview all my own media, so for this video, I had to watch each clip extra carefully—not knowing what to expect. Luckily, it was to my advantage that the Sharks game was a lighthearted, celebratory event where there was no key dialogue or interviews. This made my job a lot easier!

In the end, I’ve mashed up photos and footage from the game to create a fun, feel-good video!

 

Thanks for reading and watching.

4/13/14 Response to “Storytelling, a marketing tool”

This week I read a wonderful article by Jeffrey Benabio for Family Practice News about the power of storytelling. In this short article, he says that customers are overwhelmed with social media and advertising, but “when well told, stories are easier to remember than facts and statistics.” This statement really jumps out at me because it is the reason behind nearly all of my marketing efforts at BBBSCM—before writing a blogpost, article, or creating a video, I ask myself, “do we know of anyone here with a really powerful story?”

 

This thought process is probably most evident in my videography. For the National Women’s History Month video, I made sure to include things like “she inspires me to go to college” and “she makes me want to be the teacher’s pet.” These statements, while succinct, are still stories. They tell us something unique about the relationship, they have a different effect than saying “she’s improved my GPA” (although that would also be good to note). Another example of this storytelling would be the Avidia Bank partnership article I wrote. In the interviewing stage for the article, I discovered that one of the bank employees had come from a very difficult childhood that in many ways mirrored the underprivileged childhoods that many Littles have. With her permission, I used a direct quote about her difficult upbringing in the article. Quotes like these are way more compelling to read, and stick in your memory better, when they appeal to your emotions, memories, and experiences.

 

One thing this article reminds me of is to tell more specific, intimate stories. During the interview process for the National Women’s History Month video, one match told me that the Big texted the Little’s mother asking what her favorite cake was and surprised the Little with the cake on her birthday. This is a really sweet story that I was lucky have in film, but unfortunately it just wasn’t relevant enough to the theme of the video to include. In the future, I would like to tell more stories like this, just short 30 seconds or less stories, whether in video form or in a quote, that are easily read/listened to/ and shared!

4/6/14 Response to “A Generic Concept of Marketing”

Today I chose an article with many parallels to prior ones—this one is also by Philip Kotler and the Journal of Marketing but actually predates his other one (“Strategies for Introducing Marketing into Nonprofit Organizations”, 1979) being published in 1972. I’m actually very glad I chose these two articles, because the transition between the thinking and modes of defining “marketing” is clear just in the years these two articles span.

As Kotler reiterated in his 1979 article, he originally stated in “A Generic Concept of Marketing” that “in 1969, this author and Professor Levy advanced the view that marketing is a relevant discipline for all organizations insofar as all organizations can be said to have customers and products.” While in the other article, this thinking was already beginning to be accepted an acted upon by entities such as nonprofits, here, this thinking was novel and still very criticized.

Kotler organizes his article by outlining three “consciousnesses” or, ways of thinking, about marketing. The first was a very traditional idea of marketing, that marketing “is concerned with sellers, buyers, and ‘econonmic’ products and services. […] The objective is an exchange of goods for money or other resources.” The second “consciousness” is what Kotler and Levy proposed, that “marketers do not see payment as a necessary condition to define the domain of marketing phenomena. Marketing analysis and planning are relevant in all organizations producing products and services for an intended consuming group, whether or not payment is required.”

My first thought was that my work at BBBSCM would fall into this category, because we are not exactly “selling” anything, no tangible products, and even the mentoring “service” we offer does not cost money (to our volunteers). Kotler says that “consciousness two replaces the core concept of market transactions with the broader concept of organization-client transactions. Marketing is no longer restricted only to transactions […] of economic resources, [but] is relevant where one can identify an organization, a client group, and products broadly defined.” By this standard, we can certainly label products and client groups of BBBSCM. We have three major products: site-based mentoring programs, community-based mentoring programs, and corporate-based mentoring programs. But also offer other “products”, like the Rodman Ride for Kids that we are always apart of. In this sense, BBBSCM has at least three or four “products” by Kotler’s thinking. As for client groups, BBBSCM has many: mentors, mentor alums, mentees, mentee alums, community mentors versus corporate mentors, corporate mentors versus site mentors (college students), and let’s not forget about donors and sponors. These are a good portion of BBBSCM’s client groups. By “broadly defining” these terms, it is clear that BBBSCM is a good candidate for marketing efforts based on Kotler’s newfound consciousness that marketing extends beyond just economic transactions between buyers and sellers.

Kotler expands upon this notion with “consciousness three”, wherein “An organization may engage in marketing activity not only with its customers but also with all other publics in its environment, [i.e.] […] the organization’s supporters, suppliers, employees, government, the general public, and other key publics.” And here is where my second thought came in about BBBSCM—perhaps all of our “client groups”, many of which do not directly affect our “products” or programming, like donors and sponsors, makes BBBSCM more of an example of this third consciousness about marketing. According to Kotler’s thinking, BBBSCM must routinely communicate with many key publics, as I listed before, that are not solely associated with our “products”. With this in mind, BBBSCM is a good example of this further broadened notion of marketing.

Lastly, Kotler asks: “What then is the disciplinary focus of marketing? The core concept of marketing is the transaction. A transaction is the exchange of values between two parties. The things-of-value need not be limited to goods, services, and money; they include other resources such as time, energy, and feelings. Transactions occur not only between buyers and sellers, and organizations and clients, but also between any two parties.” In fact, Kotler seems to be examining not only the ever-changing definition of marketing, but also the definition of the “transaction,” because at this point, it cannot solely be an economic definition. If it were, BBBSCM’s marketing efforts would not be considered marketing at all.

In the end, I don’t think Kotler provided a “generic concept of marketing”, rather, an influential piece on the new form of marketing, that proved to have even greater impact just a few years later when he wrote his article on how nonprofits use marketing.

4/3/14 Response to “Strategies for Introducing Marketing into Nonprofit Organizations”

The other article I read today is called “Strategies for Introducing Marketing into Nonprofit Organizations”, a very very outdated article from the January 1979 edition of the Journal of Marketing.

I chose this article knowing it was outdated in order to get a better understanding about how the practice of marketing seeped from for-profit corporations into the worlds of the “third sector”, as author Philip Kotler considers non-profits to be a part of. This article did describe this quite well, starting with how the difficult economy forced universities to attempt marketing, in turn inspiring hospitals to do the same, and eventually non-profits caught on.

“Ten years ago, Sidney J. Levy and I advanced the thesis that marketing is not just a business function-it is a valid function for non-business organizations as well-and that all organizations have marketing problems and all need to understand marketing (Kotler and Levy 1969). The article created considerable controversy. Many academic marketers attacked it, saying that marketing made sense only in profit oriented enterprises. However other marketing professors found the idea stimulating and, without necessarily agreeing that it was valid, began to study and experiment with it.”

This quote indicates that discussion of marketing in the “third sector” began in 1969 (’69!!!) but wasn’t taken seriously. I find this very interesting considering now, nearly 50 years later, it goes without question that non-profits should take marketing efforts seriously, perhaps even more seriously than others! I think one possible explanation for this distract change in trend and in thinking is of course, the economy, which was a MAJOR pressure for organizations of all kinds to be much more active in making profits, but also the effect of the Information Age, wherein consumers are so overwhelmed with advertising and products that organizations have to try harder to differentiate themselves and stand out (the internet and Information Age came full force 10-20 years after this article came out). Interestingly enough, Kotler goes on to say: “It is likely that within
10 years, much of the third sector will have some understanding and appreciation of the marketing concept.”

“Marketing will lead to a better understanding of the needs of different client segments; to a more careful shaping and launching of new services; to a pruning of weak services; to more effective methods of delivering services; to more flexible pricing approaches; and to higher levels of client satisfaction. Altogether, marketing offers a great potential to third sector organizations to survive, grow, and strengthen their contributions to the general welfare.”

Updating this conclusive quote would be beneficial to think about in what ways my role as Marketing Intern is or isn’t achieving these things. Firstly, “a better understanding of the needs of different client segments” can definitely relate to the inclusion of social media within marketing strategies. As part of the research for the social media plan I created for BBBSCM, I learned that each network should be used for a different purpose (at least slightly) considering each network is comprised of a different market. It is the duty of the organization to discover who these different markets are and what kind of content they prefer. This could also pertain to the e-newsletters, in the sense that each segment of the newsletter is aimed at a different client segment (alums, parents, sponsors, donors, volunteers, etc.).

As for the other effects of marketing, I’m not sure that my position covers these things. However, it goes without saying that with every marketing effort is the desire and hope to “strengthen contributions to the general welfare”–making people see why what we do is important, making people want to volunteer or sponsor, ultimately aiming to close the achievement gap in the lives of many underprivileged youth.

 

4/3/14 Response to “Organizational Brand Identity Management: A Critical Asset […]”

Today I read the article “Organisational brand identity management: a critical asset for sustainable competitive advantage by non-profit” by C. Olusanmi Amujo and B. Adeyinka Laninhun for the January 2013 edition of the Third Sector Review journal. As indicated in the title, I thought this would be a fitting read for my work with BBBSCM given their status as a non-profit. Also, considering my position as Marketing Intern, I feel knowledge about BBBSCM’s brand identity, management, and communication of such is always beneficial to my work.

One interesting thing about this article is that with every discussion of non-profit brand x, y, and z, it presents the alternative definition or perspective that pertains to FOR-profit corporations. The article states that branding has ability to facilitate donor understanding and support of non-profits and that brands remain a largely underutilized strategic asset within the non-profit sector. I think BBBSCM has an advantage in this area because of its status as a chapter, or local section of a national and international organization. This means, BBBSCM already has a lot of set branding tools–a recognizable/familiar logo, one consistent mission and vision, to name a few. One thing BBBSCM does well is make sure that its logo is tied to nearly everything it puts out to the public/donors. As I noted in a recent blog post about the National Women’s History Month, I made a very unfortunate mistake of forgetting to include the BBBSCM logo as a watermark or free standing logo in the video, which is not only important for brand recognition and identity management but also for consistency reasons (the last video I did include the watermarked logo throughout). So this would be one thing to improve upon.

“In order to prevent multiple brand personalities being held by a non-profit’s internal stakeholders, or brand identity dissonance among its external stakeholders, effective, consistent and unified organisational brand personality redeployment is crucial. The non-profit’s brand identity strategists should consistently reaffirm its organisational attributes to the stakeholder groups. Consistent and clear articulation of these attributes –which include the organisation’s mission statement–through various communication media is essential in order to reaffirm the organisational personality to the non-profit’s stakeholders.”

This paragraph brings to mind one way BBBSCM could improve upon its brand identity and management. I’ve noticed that many staff members (and there is a small total staff of 15) either don’t have an email signature at all or have one that varies greatly from others’. While this is just one small form of communication media, it is a very simple and clear way of consistently making the same point about the brand-you’re-aligned-with’s identity. I’ve noticed that in my own life, I constantly check people’s email signatures for credibility about who they are, where they come from, what they do, and how to reach them. With this in mind, one small step BBBSCM could make towards more consistent brand identity would be to have a universal format for email signatures that include the logo, contact information, name, position, website URL, and maybe even a slogan ( “Helping Kids Soar” is one of ours). I think  this is definitely the intention of BBBSCM, but somehow has not been fully implemented.

“Consistent redeployment of brand personality attributes–such as caring, trustworthy, passionate, accountable, transparent, empathy and innovative–by a non-profit to its stakeholders is essential for organisational personality differentiation.”

Continuing on this note, one of the ways I was hoping to improve upon “brand personality redeployment of attributes” was by creating our Social Media Strategy. While I often find myself without enough time to consistently check and update our social media platforms according to this plan, the goal I had with this strategy was to create a system in which followers are familiar with/know what to expect for the types of things we post. By posting certain types of content on a consistent schedule, BBBSCM would be able to communicate a–again–consistent and clear message about who we are and what personality attributes we hold.

“Two critical challenges of non-profit effectiveness are management effectiveness and programme effectiveness (Sowa et al. 2004). Non-profits with high performance measures that deliver a high social impact on society may be attractive to key stakeholders. Donors may thus show greater interest and commit to funding their services.”

Lastly, one thing BBBSCM does relatively well is communicating its “impact statistics” clearly and often (when applicable). One example of this is in the 2013 Annual Report, which of course will go directly to stakeholders and donors. As you can see, throughout the PDF there are many highlighted statistics, reiterating the tangible effect BBBSCM makes and can make in just one year. While I would be surprised if an organization DIDN’T do this well, it’s nice to see that BBBSCM is properly leveraging its impact on society in order to be attractive to stakeholders and entice donors for funding.

 

3/30/14 Response to “To Communicate Better, Think Like a Donor”

This week I read the article “To Communicate Better, Think Like a Donor,” an article by Caroline Bermudez for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. I was immediately interested in this article because it pertains directly to the work of BBBS of CM/MW on numerous levels; it deals with getting and keeping donors, utilizing newsletters, and effectively using Twitter. All of these subjects are areas that matter specifically to BBBS of CM/MW, and as Marketing Intern, I am involved directly, and sometimes singlehandedly, in these efforts.

“Too many nonprofit organizations fail to keep donors because they don’t do a good job of making their work interesting.”

This article asserts that “traditional marketing” was about “thrusting your stuff in front … and interrupting” as opposed to “content marketing”, which is about “attracting” people via your communications efforts. While I’m not well-versed in marketing terms, I take a bit of issue with the terms and definitions she’s aligned here. Marketing has always been about content—how can you communicate or market something without content?—so I think it may be more fitting for “content marketing” to simply be “modern marketing”, or, as a noted transition in the definition of marketing. I think Bermudez is definitely right in noticing the recent trend to actively engage your audiences. In the Information Age, it’s more important than ever capture people’s attention, to speak to them directly, to make them notice you, care about you, and interact with you instead of dismissing you. In this sense, Bermudez accurately notes the difference between “thrusting” content into audiences’ faces versus actually engaging them.

“A lot of nonprofits publish newsletters that are just about the nonprofit’s work. It ends up being a narrative of the staff’s to-do list for the last month. With a content-marketing approach to a newsletter, you would know what the readers of your newsletter are interested in and write content that they’re going to be excited to read.”

I like what Bermudez says here because I think one thing BBBS of CM/MW does well is tailor the e-newsletters (which I have a major part in creating) to different audiences, recognizing what our different audiences want to hear about (and engage in!). For example, in March’s e-newsletter, we featured the following sections: an article on a corporate partnership, photos from a sports event, an event Save the Date, a video on National Women’s History Month, among others. The article on a corporate partnership was the first item in the newsletter for a few reasons: 1. because we want this partnership to share the article and hopefully get other corporations to work with us, and 2. because we want sponsors and donors to see how our partnerships are making a difference, and continue funding us. The photos from a sports event also apply to two of our audiences: our younger crowd, that will follow the link to Facebook and engage with us in social media, and our donors, who supplied us with tickets to the event and who will see how great it was and be motivated to continue donating to us. The Save the Date section is for an event geared nearly solely to our sponsors, donors, and adult audiences. Lastly, the National Women’s History month is a very personal, face-to-face, real life way for ALL of our audiences to see the impact of what we do. Also, at the end of the newsletter, we included a story of the strong bond one of our matches has, inviting viewers to share their own stories with us. In all, I think we address Bermudez’s concern by taking special care to tailor our e-newsletters to different audiences and make it more engaging than a “to-do list”.

Finally, Bermudez states that many organizations still do not understand how to properly use Twitter, and are using it as a place for 140-character mini-press releases. She notes that organizations that use it well “share a good mix of timely, helpful updates on their issues, combined with responsiveness to their followers.” I think “updates” on issues will pertain more to when BBBS of CM/MW launches a fundraiser (which is coming up). When I did research on created a social media strategy, one thing I found reiterated a lot was responsiveness to followers. This one thing that we actually do really well with on Twitter, and I am trying to incorporate it into our Facebook page, which also gets a decent amount of interaction.

3/26/14 Visuals, Visuals, Visuals

 

This is a graphic I made for the March e-newsletter. It uses content from an email that BBBSCM received from a Former Big. We wanted to figure out a way to include this lovely story in the e-newsletter, but didn’t want to just copy and paste the email. This was a visually appealing way of retelling his story.

 

 

This graphic is of Avidia Bank CFO Margaret Sullivan and her Little, and this graphic was used towards the end of the article on Avidia Bank in March’s e-newsletter. The idea was that people may be more likely to want to continue reading the article on our blog if the article preview in the newsletter ended with this graphic… We’ll have to see how it fairs!

3/26/14 One Hundred Percent Me

I created this month’s e-newsletter NEARLY 100% from scratch!! Check it out!

While I’ve worked in Constant Contact before, and while I did pieces of February’s e-newsletter, this is the first time every section was created by me!
Section by section breakdown:

• Article on Avidia Bank: Written by me
  • Photo graphic: Designed by me
• The BIG Celebration: Written by me
• National Women’s History Month Video: Filmed by me
• Positions Open: Edited by me
• Sharks game: Edited by me, photo layout by me
• Intern Spotlight: Written by me
• Greater Worcester GIVES: Edited by me
• Wedding story photo graphic: Designed by me

The fact that I had a HUGE role in this e-newsletter really makes me happy because I think the greatest type of work is when you can see a project through from start to finish. For me, this e-newsletter not only marked an entire e-newsletter under my belt, but also the completion of the video, the graphics, and the article. It was a lot of work in March, but it feels good to see it all pulled together in the e-newsletter.

 

 

3/26/14 National Women’s History Month Video

My National Women’s History Month video, my second video for BBBSCM, has been posted!

 

I think this is the best video I have ever done—I really challenged myself to get interesting, dynamic b-roll, and took more liberties with zoom/cropping and creating an emotional tone of the video. I really like the messaging of this video because it speaks to the power of mentoring and especially the power of female mentoring, BY females FOR females. It highlights Women’s History not by beating the viewer over the head but by creating an uplifting vibe that encourages the viewer to believe in the importance of female mentoring.

I am also very proud of this video because of the restraints it had. I made this video in two weeks, interviewed seven people, had very limited filming space, and had a lot of unexpected fall-throughs: like Littles that were absent the day I was there, interviewees that didn’t have access to quiet filming spaces, and a deadline that was pushed back sooner than I thought.

The one thing I wish I did differently was to include the BBBSCM watermark as well as a large ending logo. I can’t believe I forgot these things. I remembered the watermark for the first video, so not only does this video now show inconsistent branding, but also flat out ABSENT branding! I would reupload it, but the video is linked to our e-newsletter.

*Noting this down for next time*

3/19/14 Article is Coming Together!

I have great news — I’ve completed the draft of the article on our corporate partnership, and it’s gone over really well with my colleagues at BBBSCM! The only thing I’m waiting for now is official permission to publish quotes with names. Here are some parts that I’ve been working on.

When Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Mass/Metrowest (BBBS of CM/MW) was contacted in the Fall of 2013 by Avidia Bank, the agency was immediately excited about the opportunity to partner with them. Avidia Bank, a well-established, mutual community bank with offices all over Central  Massachusetts and Metrowest, wanted to get involved but wasn’t quite sure how. After meeting with BBBS of CM/MW Chief Executive Officer Jeff Chin to hear more about the agency’s mission and various mentoring programs, Avidia Bank and BBBS of CM/MW began the new year with a partnership of six volunteer staff members from the bank to be matched with local at-risk children who would be their mentees (“Littles”).

This is the introductory paragraph to the article. I basically just began chronologically—answering the who, what, when, where, hows of the partnership coming about. Something that Jeff helped me with was making this part a bit more “outsider friendly”, in other words, getting rid of some of the BBBS-specific jargon that makes sense to us, but may not make sense to others. Jeff made sure to define “Littles” by adding “local at-risk children who would be their mentees (‘Littles’).” I also think this section is particularly important to lead in with because while most people know BBBS partners with many colleges, it is lesser known that BBBS also partners with local companies and communities as a whole.

Perhaps Avidia Bank’s dedication originates from their belief in the power of mentoring and their own personal connections to the cause.

The work of BBBS of CM/MW struck a chord with [Name], [Position] for Avidia Bank. She describes her own turbulent childhood…one all too familiar for many of our Littles:

“I grew up very fast in life, having my mom abandon me at the age of 6 years old with my two brothers. My dad […] was a heavy drinker, [but we did] have our step mom since I was six years old. […] She was always there for us, but I always felt [like] a burden to her. […] It was difficult at times.” So [Name] thought, “What better way to deal with it than to be a role model for a Little Sister. […] I believe a positive role model in a child’s young life is extremely important for a good base to become a successful adult.” 

I really like this paragraph, I think I was really lucky to get such an intimate story from one of the staff member volunteers at Avidia Bank. I love this quote and I think it could be very persuasive for some of the 4,000 people that get our e-newsletter to maybe get their own company involved with BBBS—perhaps they have a similar story and never considered that BBBS could be a great way to give back.

Here’s hoping I get permission from the bank to use full names and quotes! I’m really excited about posting this article, my first article, on both our blog and in our e-newsletter!