Entries Tagged 'communication' ↓

Patrick Hanlon takes a broad view of ritual. He sees any repeated process, whether it’s settling an insurance claim, getting married, or using an ATM as a ritual.

So what does this have to do with Primal Branding and making an emotional connection with your audience?

If you take a thought approach to these many repeated interactions, you have the ability to create a powerful, positive, and remarkable experience for your audience.

Here are some examples:

• Aveda salons have made their “welcome the customer” ritual include giving them herbal tea and a scalp massage,
• Progressive Insurance has made their “accident claim response” ritual involve sending an agent to the accident scene to write a check on the spot,
• Lego made their “welcome toy professionals” ritual that reminded the adults what life is like for kids from birth through adolescence.

I can fully see how these rituals would make the customers build stronger connections to the companies.

What does this mean for a community organizer?

Think about some of the rituals you have with your members, volunteers, and activists:

• What are your rituals for thanking volunteers? For thanking donors?
• What are your rituals for welcoming new members?
• What are your rituals for starting meetings? For ending meetings?
• What are your rituals for starting presentations?

How can you make these experience special and pleasant for people?

Here are a few ways to implement this that come to mind for ICPJ:

• Begin all our events with something for spiritual grounding. We often do this already. It can be tricky, since “interfaith” isn’t a religion, but offering something to ground our events in a sense that peacemaking is a spiritual act is a way to make a meaningful ritual.
• Enthusiastically welcome new members. How can we create a process where new people immediately feel warmly welcomed, connected to the community, and invited to get more involved?

What are your rituals? How can you make them more positive for your audience?

(For more of my thoughts on primal branding, visit the table of contexts post, photo by ionushi)

Primal Branding describes icons as “quick concentrations of meaning that cuase your brand identity and brand values to spontaneously resonate.”

They can be images, sounds, smells, textures, characters, tastes that resonate with your audience. Here are a few examples:

• The OXO “fins”
• The VW Beatle
• The Apple startup tone
• Mickey Mouse
• Wedding Dresses
• Oreos
• Gandhi
• The smell of an Aveda salon (yes, they are conscious of it)
• yellow ribbons

An icon gives your audience something concrete to latch onto. Hanlon doesn’t explain how to create this, it may well be an intuitive process that is more felt than taught. He does share some lessons from some folks in the business of icons. I must admit, though, I’m left wondering what in the world ICPJ could use as an icon.

I’m open for ideas.

(For more of my thoughts on primal branding, visit the table of contexts post)

The second asset that Patrick Hanlon describes in creating a Primal Brand is a creed.

What is it you believe in? What are you about?

The focus of Primal Branding, after all, it to get people to believe in you. How can they believe in you if you don’t believe in anything yourself.

Hanlon lists some effective creeds:

• All men are created equal [and women!]
• Save the whales
• It’s the real thing

A creed is the thought that lies behind a mission statement, though your creed may not be a long, formal, or stuffy as most mission statements are. It may tie in with your tagline or motto. Whatever it you call it, it’s how you and your audience know what you are about. It ties in with Guy Kawasaki’s call to “make mantra” in The Art of the Start.

At the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, I think there are two elements to our creed, and hashing them out is something we need to work on.

One part of our creed is that we believe that we make peace by bringing people from different faiths and backgrounds together around our shared concern for justice. We are stronger together, and ICPJ brings us together.

The other part of our creed is that we believe that peacemaking is a spiritual act, so we offer “social change with spirit.”

When I speak, I do speak about our origin story, which ties in to our creed of being stronger together. It does help people know where we came from and what we’re about.

What do you believe in? How do you communicate that to your audience?

(For more of my thoughts on primal branding, visit the table of contexts post)

The first asset that Patrick Hanlon identifies in Primal Branding is the origin story.

This tells where the group, product, or person comes from and indicates where it is going. It provides context. It provides something for people to connect to.

Often, a creation story invokes a quest or a vision for the future. For example, Nike’s founding story involves trying to create the perfect running shoe. Starbucks’ founding story is about serving the perfect cup of coffee. MoveOn’s tells of trying to get the country to move on from the attempts to impeach Clinton and get on with the business of the country.

Creation stories also often involve overcoming adversity. FedEx’s founder going on to start the company after his marketing prof. laughed at him. A free South Africa emerging despite the oppression of the Afrikaner minority.

Storytelling guru Andy Goodman recommends that every nonprofit have a bank of stories at hand, one of which is the creation story, and I’ve found it useful to be able to tell ICPJ’s creation story to explain our origins in bringing people together from different faiths and backgrounds to work for peace.

(For more of my thoughts on primal branding, visit the table of contexts post)

Primal Branding is a take on how to create something that people connect to on an emotional level–something they believe in.

Whether it’s a product, a cause, a company, a movement, a person, a religion, or whatever, Patrick Hanlon discusses his take on how to make this into a powerful, “primal brand” that people connect to.

Hanlon identifies seven pieces of the “primal code” that help create something (he uses “brand” to refer to all of these) that people connect to:

• the creation story,
• the creed,
• the icons,
• the rituals,
• the pagans,
• the sacred words, and
• the leader.

I’ll take a look at these seven pieces and how Hanlon brings them together in subsequent posts.

But first, does his premise makes sense for community organizations.

It depends.

For organizations like ICPJ, the NAACP, MoveOn, I think it does. Even if we’re wicked-effective, we won’t have funders or activists if we don’t create positive, emotional connections with people.

For some organizations, however, I don’t think it does. I’m not convinced that GetDowntown needs people to believe in the organization to convince people to change their commuting behavior. They do need businesses and employees to believe that biking, bussing, carpooling, walking, or telecommuting are good commuting choices, but they may not need a “primal brand.”

If Peter Brinkerhoff is right, I sure do.

That is, if I want to reach younger audiences. In his latest Mission Based Management Newsletter he writes,

My daughter Caitlin, who is a college sophomore and 19, informed me last summer in no uncertain terms that “no one uses email, no one listens to voice mail, Dad.“

And this is a story I’ve heard from other people in higher ed.

Last night, ICPJ hosted a Dinner and a Movie, and let me just say that the crowd was decidedly not of the Facebook generation. So, if we want to stay relevant (or maybe become relevant) to a younger generation, this tells me that we’re going to need to actively invest in working with them on their terms, using their technology.

Facebook it is.

Just don’t make me twitter.

So, after complaining about how we always need to start from scratch to come up with campaign plans or other lessons from other community organizers, I turned to the true font of all wisdom and knowledge, Google, and found a few resources to help with ballot initiative campaign plans.

First of all, the Campaign Plan for the Florida Minimum Wage Campaign is quite interesting. The fact that this version is hosted on a conservative website tells you something, though. If nothing else, when running a ballot initiative, don’t say that it will change the outcome of a presidentatial election right there on page one. That’s a no-no.

Next, we have a PowerPoint presentation about successful transit funding ballot initiatives. There are some very interesting points in there about how to frame the issue and neutralize opposition. It also led me to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. There’s not much on their website, but I’m hoping for some good things from them.

And finally, the Sierra Nevada Alliance has a great organizing manual that includes both a chapter on campaign plans and a sample campaign plan.

There was plenty of other information on candidate campaigns, but I’d still like to see more campaign plan swapping for both ballot initiative campaigns on non-lobbying 501(c)(3) campaigns.

If you want to open a Subway franchise, the company will walk you through the whole process from marketing plans to HR policies.

When community organizers plan campaigns, we often are making it up as we go.

For example, right now at ICPJ  mobilizes a Washtenaw County coalition for the Health Care for Michigan Campaign, we’re on our own for creating a campaign plan that includes outreach methods, coordination, media, volunteer, and funding.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Why can’t we have access to sample campaign plans from other campaigns like the Massachusetts health care campaign or the Florida minimum wage campaign?

One of the exciting developments in the human services sector is an effort to learn from effective programs and standardize their lessons. For example, the DC Central Kitchen has developed a kick-ass program for training formerly homeless people kitchen skills so that they can become competitive workers and have a sense of accomplishment when they finish the program. Now, they have standardized this program so that other communities can copy it.

Consider it open-source social services.

Why can’t community organizers go open source? Why can’t we post our campaign plans (after-the-fact of course) as well as an analysis of what worked and what didn’t?

I would love to see as many successful grassroots campaigns as there are successful Subway franchises, but we won’t get there if we always have to make  up our campaigns from scratch.

How do you respond to lies and bigotry?

Today I received a troubling email from my uncle. You may have seen it, it’s the one spreading lies calling Barak Obama a radical Muslim.

This is wrong on so many levels:

1. Barak Obama is not Muslim. The email is full of fabrications.

2. The dream of the United States is one of religious freedom, not religious intolerance

3. There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim

So, how to respond?

You can read my response below. I tried to touch on common themes, especially Biblical teachings,  to create a common ground and a basis to reject the bigotry.

I confess, it’s a bit snappish, and it does nothing to defend Islam as a religion. Anyone have other suggestions for how I could have responded?

-Chuck

—————–
This email says:

> We checked this out on “snopes.com”. It is factual. Check for yourself.

Well, according to snopes.com, this email is false. Here’s the link:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

After reading that, it might be good to read Exodus 20:16, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”

Dr. Martin Luther said: “I’d rather be ruled by a competent turk, than an incompetent Christian.”

Remember, when Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan, there was considerable tension between his Jewish audience and the rival Samaritan religious community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan)

Therefore, when Jesus extolled the virtue of the Good Samaritan, he was teaching the goodness and mercy can come from people of all faiths and backgrounds. Jesus himself taught that people of all faiths and backgrounds are our neighbors.

Senator Obama is a baptized Christian in the United Church of Christ. He writes and speaks beautifully of his faith. (see below). The Apostle Paul taught that we are “one body in Christ” and nobody can say “Christ is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. In that spirit, it is unseemly for those of us who follow the life and teaching of Jesus to denigrate the faith of our fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Yes, there are other Christians with whom I disagree vehemently regarding faith and politics, but I will not betray the body of Christ to demean their faith or spread mistruths about them.

Check the facts. Reject religious intolerance.

-Chuck

Osocio points us to an interesting information campaign, “I’m an asshole and I park wherever I please.”

The idea is that members of Streetpanthers would stick these stickers on cars parked illegally so that they block pedestrian access.

I can say from experience that these stickers would be quite satisfying. I can see that dark, vindictive side of me really enjoying putting them on cars that are parked on sidewalks, blocking access for folks in wheelchairs, with strollers, or who just don’t want to walk in the street.

The question is, do they work?

Do they change the behavior of the offending parke