Where organising wins and marketing doesn’t

Marketing could learn from community organisers.

Now, that’s a crowd!

I’ve spent the past couple weeks on a roller coaster working with one of Australia’s biggest trade unions. There’s been Chinese food, symbolic tattoos, lots of Mentos™, war stories and political debates. As part of this work I’ve picked up an understanding of what community organising is and how it works. Organising is essentially the practice of rallying people together to act for a shared goal.

When done well, organising is people first, participatory and takes on incredible challenges that push society forward. Pretty much everyone benefits from its work throughout history — people who work, teenagers, minorities. Organising has proven that when joined together, ordinary men, women and children can take on Goliath and win.

Then take marketing. It’s an industry narrowly focussed on acquisition and company revenue. Marketing is taught to set goals that benefit companies, not society. And most of the time, it’s hard to see it’s benefit.

Organisers have a strong vision of making society better. And they do this with far fewer resources than marketing and against bigger obstacles. Marketing is cash rich yet fails most people’s expectations.

So I can’t help see a better way forward. One where we’re marketing makes money and helps society. With all our resources and brains, we should set a larger purpose for ourselves. We might even get more customers in return. And more revenue. WE CAN. WE SHOULD.

WHAT WE CAN TAKE FROM ORGANISING

Set goals that people can believe in

It’s pretty fair to say that labour organisers put people first. They are typically doing this work because they believe in a better future for themselves and their community. In essence, they believe in the ability of ordinary people to improve themselves.

Organisers spend nights and weekends in people’s homes understanding what’s important to them and how their families are affected by things going on at work and within their communities.

They do this to observe common issues and find shared goals that everyone believes in. Organisers know that common goals mean people are willing to work hard to achieve results. People believe in the action being taken and are eager to help. #oneteamonedream

Look for growth in participation, not just acquisition

There are very few easy wins in the labour movement. Organisers need not only strength in numbers but strength in community ties to win. People need to be willing to contradict their boss, strike, make posters, spread the word, etc to create change.

That’s why organisers constantly build engagement among members. When participation and commitment is growing, organisers know they’re heading in the right direction. Growth in commitment is what matters for long-term success, not just growth in numbers.

Be really, crazy ambitious

Organisers create communities of people willing to walk off their jobs and risk their livelihoods for the sake of making things better. In most cases, they do this with little money and in hostile environments. This is freaking impressive.

They’ve achieved some of society’s biggest wins — 8hr. workdays and weekends. Thanks to unions we have superannuation and paid leave. We get to go to high school instead of work as a teenager. Organisers have been so good at their job that most professionals don’t even see the need for unions anymore.

All of this just amazes me. Organisers are incredibly ambitious with very little resources. They push the whole of society forward and don’t back down when things get incredibly hard.

MARKETING AS ORGANISING

If marketing were to act more like organisers, what would it look like? Could marketing widen its role to not just grow companies but also help communities and people? Could it rally people around ideas that actually improve their lives?

Be the champion of ordinary people

Ordinary people need a voice within business. Ordinary people are the people we often call customers. And even though we’re more connected to them then ever before, companies still make a lot of decisions that don’t consider the impact of our activities on their lives.

Marketing should champion these people’s needs and be constantly reacting to things going on in their life. We have the money and resources to play this role. We should be constantly moving companies towards what ordinary people need and want. That should be our primary role within business.

Find goals that people can rally behind

We need to stop thinking we know customers just because we know their age, marital status and last purchase. We need to do the leg work and actually get to know customers as the real, living breathing people they are. We need to see their flaws and frustrations. We need to understand what motivates them and what deflates them. We need to join them at soccer practice, in pubs and interact with them in daily life.

We need to get out of the office and become part of their communities.

It’s only when we truly get to know the people we’re talking to that we can find changes and goals they’re willing to rally around. It’s like a coach getting to know his players or an architect talking directly to the people who are going to use a building and observing them in built spaces. The better we know our audience, the better work we can do.

Growth that benefits people

Growth is not a noble endeavour on its own. Growth means nothing when it only reflects a short-term sales spike that falls off a cliff the minute you bring prices back to normal. To be more like organisers we have to get real about the type of growth we focus on.

Growth is only important when it benefits people.

That means we have to focus on the participation and engagement of our customers rather than just their purchasing habits. We have to become accountable to building relationships with them and reacting to their needs. Some key metrics for this could be:

• the # of actions taken by customers to help one another
• the # of conversations customers have about us with other people in their community
• how willing customers are to spend time testing things

Overall, we should be measuring indicators of community and tracking mutual benefit. We’ve got to be accountable to our shared goals with customers — not just the company balance sheet.

A TEST RIDE

Now, let’s say a bike company took a organising-style approach to their marketing. I love bikes. What would this look like?

First off, the company would stop investing in advertising (because unions don’t have that kind of money) and instead they’d, send their marketing team on rides with people who use their bikes everyday. Yipee. This sounds fun.

The team would listen to riders chatting. They would interact with the group and the bikes. They’d spot shared experiences and common frustrations. They would pick up the lingo and rituals of the community.

Then they would respond to the issues and behaviours they saw during the ride. They’d figure out how to amplify and react to what riders are experiencing.

The next morning, they’d go for another ride.

Soon enough, they’d have real relationships with some of the riders. And they’d start to get a clear picture of what would make the riding experience better.

Let’s say, they hear someone claim she’s constantly frustrated with how long it takes to clean the disk brakes on her bike. There might be some hollers of “OMG YES!” and frustrated snaps of agreement and hollers throughout the bunch. At this point, marketing knows what to focus on. They’ve found a shared goal that they can help solve and that these riders will rally around. BADA BING. GOLD STRUCK.

So, they take it on.

Marketing pushes the company to partner with the local council and together they offer state-of-the-art cleaning stations around the city. The marketing team pushes through all the red tape and overcomes all the obstacles that are inevitable when doing something new. They perservere.

When the marketing team reports back to the riders what it’s doing, they get shouts of “YAS!” and arms throw up in excitement. Maybe even someone pops a no-hands wheelie in elation.

Sophie, the President of the cycling club, might even share it with everyone in excitement, “Because this is really freaking important ladies!” And the marketing team would help her spread this word with posters for her to hand out. In a couple years, these cleaning stations might be the reason someone starts riding all together, since it’s now pretty easy to clean and maintain a bike in the city. It might inspire the city to implement some more bike paths.

Suddenly, growth comes from riders participating in marketing and working on common goals that benefits everyone. Marketing puts its resources into solving problems customers can see and feel. Direct customers benefit but so do their friends, families and the wider community. In whole, marketing helps move us forward while also making money.

MARKETING AS ORGANISING: A CHEATSHEET

I could go on about this all day but that’d get old. Here’s how we can start making some of these changes:

1. Get full-on involved in your community of customers. Drink as many coffees as they do, visit the stores they’re raving about, dance at concerts with them. Wherever your people are, go there. Push your team to get out of the office.
2. Create real relationships. Knowing someone’s age and job doesn’t mean you know them. Make sure your relationships are real and mutually beneficial. Show customers how you’re responding and reacting to what they’re sharing with you.
3. Find common goals and be ambitious…like organiser ambitious.
4. Measure participation of your community to make sure they’re behind you and you’re accountable to delivering on your shared goals.
5. Be brave. None of this stuff is easy but change never is. GO GETTUM TIGER.