Integration is the solution.

Have you been seeing what I’ve been seeing lately? Real, quantifiable evidence that some organizations are not just leaving money on the table, they’re putting their individual giving programs at risk over time. Not going to lie, it’s keeping me up at night.

Here’s the problem: It’s becoming clear that some organizations are investing in “awareness advertising” (intended to create a positive impression in a donor’s mind) at the expense of fundraising (intended to generate a donation to fund the actual delivery of the mission). Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge proponent of creating positive impressions in the donor’s minds, building brands and making people feel good. But if we’re not closing the loop and making an ask, how are we going to afford to deliver those missions?

I’m not here to name names or point fingers. I’m here to say that both disciplines (awareness advertising and direct response fundraising) are important and necessary. Here’s an example – and a solution…

Silos are for grain. Not for raising money.

I recently attended a one-day conference where a VP, Brand Strategy, Marketing & Communications from a health charity (who had previously worked at a well-known global advertising agency) shared a case study of their new “creative campaign”. You could call this charity a heritage brand that needed to be modernized, and she did say that, revealing that the brand had felt stodgy and old-fashioned. She said they were also interested in debunking myths associated with the disease, for instance, that it only affected white males of a certain age. In reality, it also affects women and diverse populations in large numbers. They wanted to show how good life could be living with the disease and that past campaigns traded on guilt or the sad parts of living with the disease. She also said they knew they needed a bold creative agency to develop a bold, brave new direction for the organization to reposition it in the hearts and minds of the public.

Then they showed the spot which featured a white man of a certain age living his best carefree life before the final slogan appeared. If you were looking for a logo or any signifier of brand to indicate which organization produced this spot or the URL, and you’re a human who needs to blink to keep your eyes moistened naturally, you would have missed it.

It was clear they ultimately had one audience for this spot (which in an article I recently read about the spot, they admitted). They were only speaking to people who live with the disease. At the conference, when asked why they didn’t profile the brand more prominently, she said they were not interested in competing with other organizations who do the same work and that the goal wasn’t to enhance the brand or generate donations for their own organization. She did admit there was healthy debate within the organization about whether the brand should be profiled more in the spot or whether there should be a call-to-action, or a reason to give a donation, a case for support if you will. But she won the debate and none of that was included.

In fact, they confirmed that their fundraising team had no involvement in the spot, and that they did not integrate it with any of their fundraising channels. They were thinking they “might do something for the holidays though” but there were no definitive plans as of yet.

Sizzle vs. Steak

First, full disclosure: I spent over 20 years of my career in the commercial agency world. I started as a copywriter in Direct Marketing but in the mid-90’s, working on accounts like Apple, Royal Bank, Volkswagen, and American Express to name a few, it became clear you needed to be an integrated creative person or you needed to change careers. I worked with and am friends to this day with brilliant, strategic mass agency people who appreciate work that needs to generate a quantifiable result AND be creative, on brand and work in every channel – aka Integrated. I knew very little about the non-profit sector when I fell into it 15+ years ago but what I came to learn very quickly was that the disciplines of brand-building, awareness advertising, and response marketing are more similar between the non-profit sector and the commercial world than they are different.

As ST clients prove every day, you can build a brand, create awareness, show need, and ask for money to support the mission of the organization – all at the same time. You can do that without “flies in the eyes” or depressing creative. You can do that by creating an emotional connection between the person interacting with your creative, your organization and the beneficiary of your mission. You do that with emotive, authentic storytelling that resonates with your audience – regardless of channel. And of course, you do that by being everywhere your donor is with consistent creative messaging that respects each channel for the job it’s intended to do.

Your individual giving program should be driven by evidence-based decision making and strategy (steak) that’s not overpowered by creative for creative’s sake (sizzle) but enhanced by it. And by “evidence-based”, I mean testing, learning, and testing again.

Collaboration is key.

There is no secret to the solution if the problem is a lack of integration, born of a lack of understanding and communication (as proven by the example I gave at the beginning of this article). We need to respect each discipline for the job it does because at the end of the day, the world needs steak and sizzle. It needs collaboration between the mass team who generates positive awareness for the cause and the response team who generates a donation to support the mission. At the end of the day, everybody should win. Integration is the solution – especially with the Canada Post strike affecting so many organizations. We can’t rely on one channel anymore and expect the message to be seen by or resonate with a donor. And integration has to mean phone, text, email, social and yes, awareness advertising. It’s all hands on deck now more than ever – while mail sits in a warehouse somewhere.

If you’d like to continue the integration conversation (or debate my assertions with me), I’m all ears. The goal is always to help raise your organization more money. We should always be discussing the best ways to do that. I can be reached at bryant@stephenthomas.ca