Advertising smart guy Roy H. Williams asks Are Your Ads Getting Enough Complaints?
It's something fundraisers should ask too. As Williams notes, the most effective ads also get the most complaints. That's because they make their point sharply, that have a clear and powerful perspective, and they're repetitive. All these things bug some people. And make ads work. Smart advertisers are unfazed by complaints.
There's also a strong correlation between complaints and success in fundraising messages. For exactly the same reasons. Plus one additional reason that pulls in the most complaints of all:
When you make the case for giving very strongly, you create a painful cognitive dissonance in nondonors. They know they should give, but they don't want to or can't. That really feels awful. To escape the discomfort, they can change their mind and give, wait for the feeling to pass, or blame the message for making them feel lousy.
Like the majority of ads that are written to avoid offending people and thus ineffective, most fundraising is carefully crafted to avoid complaints. That avoidance does incalculable damage.
As the man once said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Want your fundraising to be more effective? Remove fear of offending people from your list of requirements.
It's that simple (assuming you also do a good job of making the case). While the complaints trickle in, so will the revenue. Try it. It works.
(See also Donor complaints: often good news and How to Survive Donor Complaints in FundRaising Success magazine.)
Technorati Tags: fear, complaints, philanthropy
More people notice your ads, certainly. Controversy might even bring press coverage and even more people seeing your ads. Wonderful. But does it actually bring in the money, or just make people blame the message, striking up negative correlations between the charity and potential donors?
Enable's recent adverts in Scotland showed young people with Downs Syndrome and slogans such as "If I ate out of a dog bowl would you like me more?" and "Would you like me to sit up and beg?". They received a mixture of condemnation, and people trying to ignore the message they didn't want to hear.
The message was that half as many people give to charities for the disabled as to animal charities. There was plenty of publicity (for a week or so) because people were shocked by the images, and the message, since they revealed something that most people didn't know.
However, it also put animal charities on the defensive, saying that the don't recieve Government funding which mental health charities do. (and you know what - I'm in the sector, and I had to check which charity it was that ran the campaign a few months ago).
Now I doubt you'll ever get them to say it didn't work, but there was no fanfare saying that it did.
Attention is great, if that's your aim, but I'm a cynic. 'make poverty history' raised awareness of people living in poverty and dying of hunger. So now that we all know it's happening it's OK? Shouldn't we actually have DONE SOMETHING about it?
If awareness is your game, negative ads, and shock tactics might work, but if it's money you need, I'm not so sure.
If a negative message will bring in the cash, go for it, but if a positive one will, then I think it'll help bring in more long term cash, and it'll make your donors feel good about helping, not guilty about not helping, or not helping enough.
Posted by: mikemuses | 11 June 2007 at 16:40