Goal

New Yorkers are famously unyielding in their daily walks down busy sidewalks. There’s not much that can distract them from the goal of getting from point A to point B. , a nonprofit New York City homeless shelter, food pantry and soup kitchen open since 1889, wanted to make New Yorkers stop in their tracks with its .

To help get New Yorkers to stop—or at least slow down—Crossroads worked with to get New Yorkers to see homelessness and hunger anew. In the process, Crossroads wanted to motivate city residents to volunteer, donate or become aware of Crossroads Community. To accomplish this, Saatchi & Saatchi’s creative team aimed to make thinking about homelessness and hunger less disturbing and more relatable for the average New Yorker. 

Food was the obvious place to start, says Carolyn Gargano, creative director of art at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. New Yorkers love food—there are approximately 24,000 restaurants in New York City alone—but residents often end up eating on the same street as someone who hasn’t been properly fed in days. To illustrate this point, statistics from —about 18% of the city’s population—face hunger every day.

“We were very aware of the haves and the have nots,” Gargano says. “So we thought, why not go to the source? Why don’t we offer something that’s surprising and different? We thought of doing a pop-up piece of art that could be put in any type of food festival, park or even a corporate event.”

Action

Crossroads Community and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness already had experience together getting New Yorkers to stop and take notice with their Street Fare Social Campaign, which featured illustrated faces with garbage and debris in place of a mouth. and helped increase donations and groceries provided to the hungry by 25% and 50%, respectively. 

With the Erase Hunger Project, Crossroads and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness took a slightly different approach. Drawings were replaced by a pop-up installment that said “Erase Hunger,” with “hunger” spelled out by a series of bamboo utensil packets. Passersby could take these utensils on their way to eat at food fairs and open-air markets.

Those who took a set of utensils may not have realized that within the utensil packet came a card that showed where Crossroads Community is located. The card—which included a listing of breakfast, brunch and dinner times when the hungry could come get a free meal—serves multiple purposes: It is a stealth way to send passersby a message that people in their city are hungry. It also allows the recipient to hand the card off to someone else who is potentially hungry, at-risk or homeless so that they can be fed. 

Crossroads tested the campaign in multiple neighborhoods to see how New Yorkers would react before spreading out to more than 20 parks and food festivals. Gargano says the tests went very well regardless of the size of the installment, which ranged from a small sidewalk display to an 11-by-20-foot display in front of the Flatiron Building. The most successful rollout of the campaign may have been at food festivals, she says, where the Crossroads team was able to interact not just with New Yorkers who could hand out cards, but with the hungry population they wanted to serve.

Scott Carlton, a creative director and writer at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness who also worked on the campaign, says the act of handing the card off to someone in need of food serves as a way to find common ground and connect with New York’s hungry population. 

“Giving somebody something that they can use to feed themselves [helps you] identify with and feel like we’re humans together in this world just helping each other,” Carlton says. 

At the first food festival Crossroads participated in, 240 packs of utensils were taken within 35 minutes. People came up to the pop-up installment and chatted with the Crossroads team, took selfies with the sign and discussed homelessness and hunger in New York. 

“People may grab a utensil whether they use it or not, but we promoted discussion of handling hunger in the city,” Carlton says. “New Yorkers have a lot of opinions, so there was some deep, fascinating conversation with people going by. That’s one of our goals: to start the conversation, whether they hand the card out or not, and to allow people to feel like they are invited to participate in the discussion and take action.” Gargano says the card is also a way for the average New Yorker to connect with someone who is homeless or hungry and make them feel as though they are visible, as though they are a part of the city and not simply a stumbling block during a busy day. In the average daily rush, New York’s homeless population likely does not often have this kind of interaction.

“The simple act of handing someone a card and saying, ‘I see you and I care about you. Here’s something to help you,’ [means more than] dropping a dollar in a box,” Gargano says. “Everyone that we’ve known who has handed the cards out has been affected by that [feeling], and they’ve had a response of gratitude. … There’s a sense of love.”

This engagement is made easier by appealing to hunger as a human issue instead of using pictures of “sad homeless people,” Carlton says, as being hungry is something every human being can relate to. Gargano says the campaign is a reminder that people in the street are actual humans, not just inanimate objects to be ignored or a problem to be set aside for another day. 

“I find that New Yorkers are the most charitable, giving and kind people, but we’re busy,” Gargano says. “Everyone’s trying to race home to their families or their jobs or their responsibilities. We find that you tune out those in need and sometimes you don’t know what to do. You might give them a dollar, you might not. You hope that they’re getting help. The card is a wonderful way of empowering you to actually do something.”

Results

The pop-up installments caught the attention of New Yorkers at every stop. Many people would pause to grab some utensils, others would stop to take multiple cards to hand out to the hungry and chat with the Crossroads team about hunger, Gargano says. 

After each pop-up installment, Crossroads Community and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness would take photographs of the art and videos of the interactions, add a message and post to its social media accounts. In 2016, Crossroads Community saw a 150% increase on Facebook social engagement by posting photos, videos and updates from the Erase Hunger Project installments.  

More important than digital engagement, the number of people fed at Crossroads Community increased by 25% and contributions increased by 21% in 2016. In addition, the Erase Hunger Project and was a finalist in both the pro bono and poverty and hunger categories. Crossroads Community saw volunteers increase by 15%. Carlton says the campaign also helped bolster a fundraising effort by Crossroads Community that brought in $100,000—a lot for an organization of this size. While he does not directly attribute all of this money raised to the campaign, the fundraising effort ran during the Erase Hunger Project. In concert, there may have been a halo effect.

Crossroads Community’s Erase Hunger Project isn’t done yet. Gargano says Crossroads Community and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness want to start moving the campaign into other spaces where people eat food, such as bodegas—which the rest of the country knows better as corner stores—restaurants and grocery stores.

“We’d love to go bigger,” she says. “We’d love it if Whole Foods gave [the utensils] out at the salad bar. It has been a very interesting social experiment and it’s ongoing.” 

The post Nonprofit Gets New Yorkers to Stop and Notice Hunger appeared first on ���������.

I’ve been fortunate to have traveled the world, visiting about 55 countries to date. A standing joke early in my career was if you leave the borders of the U.S., you qualify as an “international marketer.” As a consultant, part of my job was helping multinational companies assess their effectiveness in meeting customer needs abroad. I learned the importance of “picking your spot” after watching successful U.S. companies stumble in international markets.

One big-box home improvement retailer just couldn’t understand why Asian customers in an urban area weren’t gravitating to its stores despite having no car to get there and no ability to transport items back to their high-rises.

I recently returned from the Iberian Peninsula, and I continue to be impressed by Starbucks’ ability to “find its spots.” As you may know, the consumption of coffee is culture-laden. In Portugal, locals belly-up to the coffee bar to drink espresso in small cups and chat with their neighbors. For visitors from the U.S., a key word is “abatanado,” which will get you weaker coffee in a somewhat larger cup. Leaving the shop with 20 ounces of coffee in a paper cup just doesn’t happen. The Starbucks model doesn’t fit those Portuguese neighborhoods. There is no “Starbuckanado.”

In Barcelona, Spain, however, there are five Starbucks within walking distance along the Avinguda Diagonal, a busy thoroughfare housing a large shopping mall, a major hospital, university facilities and international offices. No problem finding your venti coffee there.

While alert to effective marketing in foreign markets, I’ve also observed service processes that left me wondering “Why not in the U.S.?” Perhaps this sounds familiar. You are checking out at the supermarket and the cashier encounters an unmarked item. While the cashier requests a price check, the line backs up and you become the victim of numerous dirty looks. Not so at the Jumbo in Portugal (a Walmart-like supermarket owned by Groupe Auchan). When an unmarked item is encountered, the cashier calls for assistance, rings up the remaining items, freezes the transaction, asks the customer to step aside and processes the next person in line. When the price check is returned, the transaction is completed with minimum delay.

Another service process I’ve appreciated in Europe is paying your bill at a sit-down restaurant. When you flag the waiter and ask for the bill, the credit card machine is brought to your table. You insert the card, approve the amount, and you are done. The credit card never leaves your hand with zero chance of being duplicated in a back room.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Plan Your Trip to an ��������� Conference

Why haven’t these effective service processes, and probably many others, been imported to the U.S.? Maybe it’s technology or, in the case of restaurants, our tip culture. But these seem surmountable roadblocks. Part of the problem is lack of exposure, which brings me to my earlier point: Only about one-third of Americans own a passport, and most who do only cross the border into Canada or Mexico. It’s estimated that only 10% of U.S. citizens have traveled overseas. With limited exposure, customers are unlikely to demand a change in practice. More importantly, state-bound employees fail to detect ideas that could provide a marketing advantage at home. For this reason, I continue to encourage firms to broaden the population of employees they send overseas, if even for a quick trip. You’ll be surprised what they discover.

The post What Insights Are Statebound Marketers Missing? appeared first on ���������.

There’s a lot they don’t teach you in college or in that first management training program. Resilience is one trait we marketers learn experientially on the job.

No one teaches you what to do with a personal or professional challenge. You don’t always get that promotion. Sometimes the raise or bonus is less than you expect. You may get fired. At school or work, no one talks about coping with loss—loss of a promotion, a job, or in Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s case, the loss of her beloved husband and life partner, David Goldberg.

That’s why Sandberg’s latest book, , is a must-read for marketers. Sandberg, the author of the best-selling book, Lean In, was vacationing in Mexico with her husband and friends in May of 2015. Her parents were watching their two children back home in California, so Sandberg and Goldberg could have an adults-only weekend getaway.

Sandberg writes, “We were hanging out by the pool playing Settlers of Catan on our iPads. For a refreshing change, I was actually winning, but my eyes kept drifting closed.

“Once I realized that fatigue was going to prevent me from securing Catan victory, I admitted, ‘I’m falling asleep.’ I gave in and curled up. At 3:41 p.m. someone snapped a picture of Dave holding his iPad, sitting next to his brother Rob and Phil. I’m asleep on a cushion on the floor in front of them. Dave is smiling,” she adds.

A few hours later, Goldberg was found on the floor of the gym where he had gone to work out. Sandberg started CPR. A doctor arrived, but Sandberg’s husband of 11 years, the father of their two children, died at age 47 from an undiagnosed heart ailment. Sandberg and Goldberg had achieved everything two people might desire: professional success, global fame, family happiness. Suddenly, it was gone.

Option B, co-authored with Wharton professor , is more than Sandberg’s story of personal tragedy, intense grief and recovery. Sandberg shares her experiences in a way that will help all of us anticipate and cope more effectively with the personal challenges we will inevitably face.

I admire the book because it is a compelling tale of a woman, a wife, a mother and arguably one of the most successful executives in American business today, opening herself candidly to the reader and sharing both her feelings and thoughts in a way that is authentic and instructive.

Option B reminds us that no matter how successful we might be, life is unpredictable and the future is uncertain.

I also like Option B because of Grant’s influence. As the author of Originals and Give and Take, Grant brings an academic and a psychological perspective to the book. Yet, as a personal friend of Sandberg’s, his contribution is subtle, personal and behind-the-scenes. Grant’s presence enhances the power of the narrative.

Sandberg shares the personal experiences of others who have suffered loss, including those who have experienced rape, violence, physical disability and political ostracism to illustrate that these experiences can serve as guide posts to us all. Each of these stories are reminders to have more empathy and humility as leaders.

For me, perhaps the most instructive segment of Option B was when Sandberg writes, “We plant seeds of resilience in the ways we process negative events. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P’s can stunt recovery. Personalization—the belief that we are at fault. Pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life. And permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.”

Throughout Option B, Sandberg describes how she faced personalization, pervasiveness and permanence and how she once again began to find joy in her life.

Option B is neither saccharine nor condescending. It is personal, intimate and real. Most of all, it is instructive without being preachy. To her credit as a writer, Sandberg makes the reader feel her experiences with her.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Reach Out to Your Local ��������� Chapter for Job Support

Says Sandberg, “Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside of us. It comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck (the sadness). It comes from analyzing how we process grief and from simply accepting that grief. Sometimes we have less control than we think. Other times we have more.”

She continues, “I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface and breathe again.”

Sandberg reminds us of the first noble truth of Buddhism: All life involves suffering. In its many forms, suffering is inevitable, and joyful moments too will dissolve. Sandberg isn’t advocating our conversion to Buddhism or any other religion; she is sharing how she coped with tragedy—by relying on family, friends, co-workers, psychologists, religion and philosophy—and how you might as well.

Sandberg’s description of how it feels when colleagues and friends avoided her or approached her awkwardly in the aftermath of her husband’s death is powerful and sadly informative. Readers come away from Option Bwith a better sense of how to relate to a co-worker who is suffering a loss. But that’s just one of the many benefits of reading this book. Option B gives all of us a way of vicariously experiencing and sharing Sandberg’s loss in a way that prepares us for the future of our careers and our personal lives.

Reading Option B will make us each better managers, coaches and leaders. It gives us a greater ability to avoid arrogance and hubris while maintaining the confidence and certainty to connect with one another and to experience the joys of our work.

Sandberg is more than one of the world’s great corporate executives; she may be one of the world’s great teachers as well.

The post Sheryl Sandberg’s Option B Teaches Marketers Resilience appeared first on ���������.

Turn off the lights. 

Don’t leave the water running.

Separate the recycling from the garbage.

What about the dinner leftovers?

Social awareness campaigns have tackled everything from saving the rainforest to stopping animal abuse to vaccinating children.  (NRDC) is now aiming to add food waste reduction to this list, potentially making “Cook it, store it, share it” the next “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”

The ball is rolling on the undertaking, with the “Save the Food” campaign one year old as of April. The posters have gone up, the media partners have come aboard and, quite importantly, the audience has taken note and asked questions. Once everyone has learned the issue and acknowledged the role that they play in an issue, the definition of social awareness has been accomplished. Truly successful campaigns, though, actually change consumer behavior. It’s difficult to say how many consumers have reduced their food waste, but the table has been set.

Planting the Seeds

The “Save the Food” campaign was sparked by research from Dana Gunders, an NRDC senior scientist in the food and agriculture program. Gunders kept seeing statistics on food waste during her research, and the findings were so impactful to her that she shifted the scope of her work. The result was a 2012 report titled  The paper explores all parts of the supply chain in which food is wasted and found the largest amount of waste occurs at the consumer level.

“Because of all that waste, there’s a huge amount of environmental impact that takes place,” says Nora Mango, senior integrated marketing manager at the NRDC. “Everything from the amount of methane released based on the amount of food that would be decomposing in landfills—food is the single largest contributor to landfills in the U.S.—to the amount of wasted water, fertilizer and crop land that is being dedicated to a product that never goes anywhere.”

This $162 billion in wasted resources seemed to the NRDC an issue easily fixable and apolitical. The potentially wide appeal of the matter seemed the perfect fit for partnering with the , whose bread and butter is looking at which issues need a spike in awareness.

“We felt there was a really good opportunity to use communications to reach people with tangible tips and tools, so they could start mobilizing in their homes to not waste food,” says Michelle Hillman, head of campaign development at the Ad Council. “Right away it’s one of those issues where it wasn’t on people’s radar. And the minute that you raise awareness about it, people start thinking about things they can do to change their behavior.”

The Ad Council, in turn, pulled in ad agency  to design the campaign pro bono. The imagery is simple and highlights statistics from the NRDC. Many of the campaign assets include a photo of a food item—a milk carton, bread, eggs, chicken breasts—stamped with “Best if used.” The abbreviated version of the common food label phrase is intended to underscore the idea that consumers should spend less time trying to decipher labels and more time actually using the product. Each asset also includes the “Save the Food” slogan, “Cook it, store it, share it.” 

 takes these simple instructions much further, providing tips for food storage, cooking and more. Gunders even published a how-to on the topic,  David Serrano, client services director at SapientRazorfish, says his agency has worked closely with Gunders on the campaign.

“This is a combination of Dana’s knowledge at the NRDC, coupled with research that we did internally to understand what the common thread is in food that consumers are wasting and the tips they were looking for,” Serrano says. In year two of the campaign, Serrano says the team is considering how to evolve the content.

Fertilizing the Crops

The team chose to target mothers and millennials, the former being household gatekeepers often pressed for time, and the latter in the early stages of food decision-making, which was seen as a key intervention point to make a food waste behavior change.

“What we didn’t know going into this, and that we’re learning from our continuous tracking, is that PSA awareness and the recognition on the creative is shifting more significantly among millennials,” Mango says. “Not only are they developing habits that could help to make a real long-term impact in this [by] teaching their growing families and their friends, but they’re more aware of what’s happening.”

Millennials’ obsession with food has been well-documented.  that the millennial focus on food is largely the result of technology. Constant screen time has caused some sensory deprivation, she said in the interview, noting this generation senses an increased feeling of isolation. Food creates a near-perfect answer to these two issues: Grab a meal with all its sensory fulfillment, and make it a communal experience.

The “Save the Food” campaign is reaching out to these demographics on the platforms they already use when seeking recipes or other food advice. The Pin Factory from Pinterest, which acts as a creative studio for brands, implemented “Save the Food” messaging on its site, adding to the campaign’s presence on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. NRDC has partnered with Upworthy, Social Native and BuzzFeed. The campaign also worked with the Food Network for a special episode of “Chopped Junior,” in which contestants cooked with food scraps.

“From a media community perspective, every time we pitch food waste among our other campaigns, it just rises to the top,” Hillman says. “People are coming out of the woodwork to partner on this. It’s an issue that is attractive to the media community because it’s an easy consumer action that can have a great environmental payoff.”

Serrano says the campaign aims to inspire consumers by engaging with them through the relevant channels and touch points they use throughout the day. But the messaging matters as much, if not more, than the platforms used, and the team aimed to motivate without shaming their audience.

“There was research done prior to the campaign that broke down these four reasons why people waste food,” Mango says. “A lot of it has to do with people wanting to take care of other people; making sure you’re prepared to provide food if someone came over. It had to do with aspirations when shopping; you hope that you’re going to eat better that week. There’s confusion around storage; a lot of people don’t understand how to store something properly so it doesn’t go to waste or they don’t understand the date labels.”

Whatever the reason for over-shopping or tossing food, the NRDC and its partners wanted to educate the audience because people reported that food waste is an issue, but didn’t believe they, themselves, waste food.

“I think that part of this issue is the lack of awareness that people have,” Hillman says. “The crux of the campaign is to say, ‘Despite your best intentions, you’re wasting food and it has this impact.’ The good intentions piece is really important and deliberate. How do we help people take good intentions and translate that into saving the environment [and] putting more money into their pocket?”

The campaign determined four buckets to focus on that can cause food waste—self-improvement, comfort, security and thoughtfulness—and created tips based on these. Mango says the campaign references back to these tips every time new creative debuts. These tips tend to be widely appealing, Mango says, because of consumers’ great food memories, food storage tips or recipes for leftovers that are passed down through generations.

“It came down to offering tips on how to keep your food the freshest the longest or how to store it properly in your refrigerator or how to use it when you think it might be going bad,” Serrano says.

What motivates people, however, is not one-size-fits-all. For some, the monetary aspect of wasting food will be the most impactful, so the campaign offers estimated figures for how much money a household could save by reducing food waste (a family of four could put $1,500 back in its wallet). Some find the environmental figures the most compelling, so the campaign offers those details (the water wasted when throwing out a single banana amounts to 42 minutes in the shower). For others still, the campaign tapped into an emotional component—by way of a strawberry.

SapientRazorfish created the spot, “The Extraordinary Life and Times of Strawberry,” that follows a single strawberry through its lifecycle. The fruit is picked on a farm, packaged and sent to the grocery store where a little girl begs her mother to purchase the package. Despite the mother’s brief reluctance, the strawberry is purchased, refrigerated and eventually forgotten before it is thrown out. The strawberry even fell in love with a nearby lime along its journey.

“For some people, creating that emotional journey and being able to show the life of the strawberry and the different touch points along the continuum that were wasteful, that really spoke to them,” Hillman says. “And then there are some people who are driven more from that rational facts and figures place. There are some people who were interested in the dichotomy between hunger as an issue in America and the idea of food waste, and we haven’t even tapped into that piece yet on the campaign.”

Whatever the tactic or motivator, Hillman says they’ve consciously ensured “Save the Food” isn’t an anti-consumerism campaign. The NRDC and the Ad Council aren’t asking people to not shop or purchase the things they need. Rather, they’re urging consumers to only purchase what they know they’ll use.

“It’s anti-abundance,” Hillman says.

Time to Harvest

The campaign is only a little over a year old, but the audience appears to have taken note:

• Since its launch in April 2016, the “Save the Food” website has garnered more than 1.2 million sessions.
• ���������t 55% of general market adults strongly agree that food waste is a major problem in the U.S., compared with 51% before the campaign.
• Recognition of the campaign among mothers grew from 20% in April 2016 to 26% in December 2016. Among millennials, this number grew from 31% to 41%.
• 57% of those aware of the “Save the Food” PSAs sought information.

Mango says many people will send the campaign photos of the “Save the Food” posters and billboards they see in their town. They’ve also reached out to the campaign with questions for how to take action on a local level.

“We want to be sending people posters, more tips, linking them with other partners on the ground,” Mango says. “We start to address some of the next steps into donations and things like that through our community management and social channels.”

She acknowledges that it’s tricky to direct people appropriately because awareness campaigns are supposed to be broad efforts. As a result of requests, Mango says the team has been brainstorming ways people can leverage the national campaign locally by creating templated pieces for use in schools or designing draft letters. The campaign worked with the Nashville mayor’s office on the  for example, creating window clings and signs that offer half orders or reminders to take leftovers home.

“We want to engage cities and we’re saying, ‘We want you to tackle waste on every level. Here’s our staff that can help you do that,’ ” Mango says. “But the easy way to start is implementing our campaign’s assets in the city.” By way of cities, “Save the Food” has made its way onto the sides of waste trucks and into farmers markets. Engagement and education have led the campaign efforts.

Mike Walker, president and founder of , a behavior-change marketing and consulting group, says with so many people who are unaware or haven’t given much thought to food waste, marketing is an appropriate first step. He argues, however, that marketing and advertising can only go so far when it comes to social behavior change.

“If the only tool you have as an advertising agency is coming up with clever, catchy ads, then that’s what you’re going to throw at a behavior change challenge,” Walker says.

Studies on the efficacy of public service advertising campaigns show they’re relatively ineffective at changing behavior. Walker says these campaigns are particularly good at the early stages of raising awareness about a problem and providing examples of explicit directions for what the audience should be doing.

“Those two things are insufficient,” he says. “What you really need is a third piece of the triangle to drive behavior change, and that’s sometimes called choice architecture. The concept is that no decisions happen in a vacuum, so if you really want to have an impact, you need to understand and investigate the point at which people make decisions or act. Sometimes they make them subconsciously, sometimes they don’t think about them at all. You need to understand all the forces that are bearing down on that decision and that’s where you find opportunities.”

Walker uses an example from his organization’s past work, which aimed to increase organ donors in the U.S. on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services. They found that the more anyone talked about organ donation, the more squeamish people became. They also learned of a decision point barrier: when the body came into the hospital. The emergency medicine doctors and transplant surgeons they spoke with said they would estimate that 70% to 75% of people who show up to the emergency room have no identification, making the “organ donor” label on a person’s ID basically null. The point of decision actually came down to what the next of kin had to say. As a result, the campaign focus shifted to educating these decision-makers on organ donation.

Walker says the food waste issue has multiple decision points, including those at the store when purchasing food and at home when choosing how to store and cook it. The goal is to approach people at these critical points. The home is a much less complicated environment than the grocery store, he says, because the consumer has far more control and fewer influencers.

“One thing that I like to see in campaigns like this are very explicit instructions for what people should do, and that’s one thing that advertising is great at,” Walker says. “I really like one example on the [“Save the Food”] homepage to keep herbs like cut flowers with their stems in a glass of water. That’s awesome advice. And it’s specific enough that I could do it. What goes wrong a lot of times with behavior change campaigns is we assume people know [what to do next] or we assume that they can translate from a broader goal to a specific behavior. You have to make that translation for them.”

Walker praises numerous parts of the “Save the Food” campaign, but says one statistic—that each person wastes almost 300 pounds of food every year—may have an unintentional effect: It may normalize the practice.

“That’s probably an ineffective message,” Walker says. “It’s social norming the wrong behavior. This isn’t guilt necessarily, but what we think the research suggests is that if you look at this you conclude, ‘If we’re all throwing 300 pounds of food away, I’m not doing anything different than anybody else. So what?’ But a more effective approach is to show examples of how people are doing the right thing.”

Another crucial piece of behavior change is to strip away all possible barriers on the path to making the correct decision. Walker says he would be thinking very hard about what happens once consumer meets food, and he says the prompts provided on the “Save the Food” website are an excellent start. He offers a few of his own examples that could reduce barriers to saving food: asking food grower associations to include tips on the produce stickers to make food last, or creating products that assist in keeping food fresh longer, such as freshness-preserving containers.

Walker says he has told clients to dismiss what consumers should be doing and consider what would actually make a difference in their current behaviors. If a consumer is handed a simple cup intended for herb storage, the barrier of rummaging through the pantry is eliminated. It doesn’t have to be a major barrier, he notes, but campaigns need to consider a “whatever it takes” approach.

One such solution could be through technology. “Save the Food” just partnered with Amazon’s Alexa to  whereby users can ask the device how to store food longer, determine if food is still edible and learn how to revive foods that are past their prime. Hillman says in the future, the ultimate integration could be looping in Amazon Fresh. Consumers could order their groceries through Amazon, and Alexa would know what was bought and could offer information on those items.

“In the consumer journey, what are the different pieces we can look at or the tools we can give people?” Hillman says. “When they’re in their kitchen and they’re preparing food, what if they had a cutting board that has the right portions so they know how much to use and what is waste? How do we plug in and tie in? There are a lot of tech tools that will probably be part of the next iteration of this while we’re continuing to build awareness.”

Whether reducing food waste will be the result of enough tips, tricks or web-connected kitchen tools is, as yet, unknown. Enough attention has been drawn, though, that Mango believes reducing food waste could be the next wave of environmental awareness.

“Food is universal, it’s lifelong, it’s life-sustaining,” Mango says. “That is something that people care more about, whether it’s organics or sustainable or wasted. All of those issues, people are really passionate about. It’s connected to their daily life, it comes into their home and invokes memories. It’s an emotional connection they have. If that’s the way you need to find an emotional connection to greenhouse gases and climate change, great.”

Making Friends With Ugly Food

SapientRazorfish’s interns were impacted by the “Save the Food” campaign’s messaging. The summer interns are assigned the task of conceiving and seeing a project the entire way through. The summer 2016 group chose to promote ugly food.

Former intern Jake Wexler, who helped manage the project, says the group landed on the topic of ugly food because it was something they were largely unaware of, but grew to love. They wanted to make it their mission, he says, to boost awareness of the topic among young millennials. Plus, they were inspired by all the talk they heard about “Save the Food.” 

“From talking to the employees around the office about the impact the [‘Save the Food’] campaign had on them, it inspired us to make that same impact on our target audience,” Wexler says. “We felt like our project was a little brother project to ‘Save the Food.’”

The “Go Get Shelved” website takes visitors through a choose-your-own-adventure-style game consisting of a land of forgotten produce. On the journey, users learn the benefits of so-called ugly foods and that they are just as nutritious and edible as the rest. Plus, these somewhat unsightly foods are often marked down by the grocer. 

The end of the game provides three calls to action, including sharing the game on Facebook, tweeting at a local grocery store with the #GetShelved hashtag or actually purchasing ugly food. According to Wexler, the project received more than 1 million digital impressions and received high praise from users. 

“Presented in the wrong way it can be a dry topic, but presented in the right way it can be an aha moment,” Daniel DeSimone, an account coordinator intern for SapientRazorfish, told AdWeek.

The post NRDC, Ad Council Raise Awareness to Fight Food Waste appeared first on ���������.

When there are barely enough hours in the day, it can feel challenging to spend extra time giving back. , one of Ad Age’s “Women To Watch” and a former design director at Kimberly-Clark, chooses to spend her time with , a nonprofit to end domestic violence and sexual assault. Mau discussed her involvement and how others can choose a philanthropic mission that speaks to them and uses their skills.

Q: How did you get involved with No More?

A: [No More Co-founder and Director] Virginia Witt, who I did not know, sent out a cold e-mail saying, “I am putting together a think tank of thought leaders in advertising, design and marketing in order to put together a new brand to tackle domestic violence and sexual assault.” Within five seconds she got back my enthusiastic “Absolutely yes. Tell me when and where to be and I will be there.”

Q: You started out just offering your design expertise, but how did your role grow from there?

A: They had two think tanks, one in Los Angeles and the other in New York. The first one, in L.A., didn’t really deliver on expectation, and they were a little apprehensive going into New York. We had a fantastic brainstorm and some really strong ideas for going forward. We were walking out and they said, “Thank you so much for your time” and I said, “Oh, I’m not done. I would very much like to remain involved.”

I have been a part of the strategic planning and the reviews on the creatives and research. At that point it was still just an idea, and I said, “I can help you with the design development. I can help with the research of what people actually want and need and how they will respond to this.”

Q: How were you able to use some of your professional skills in the work that you’ve done with No More?

A: They reached out to me because they knew that I had worked on things like U by Kotex, Poise and Depends, which are products that have some stigma that people aren’t as open and willing to talk about. I came in as an expert who knows how to market and make it OK to remove those stigmas.

At this point we were calling [the organization] Zero, and had thought we’d have a simple logo. It would be something that anybody could wear so it wouldn’t matter your age or gender. Something that could be immediately recognized, much like the pink ribbon for breast cancer. We wanted to come up with something that could be so simple that people could use it in conjunction with their logos. This wasn’t supposed to compete with or replace the name of your coalition, the name of your practice or the name of your crisis center. It would start to link all of these together, so people could see the enormity of the problem.

Q: How was this logo created?

A: I worked with the organization as the creative director to tighten the [creative] brief and lead the team through the creative reviews. I reached out to a very talented team from Sterling Brands who donated their time and services. They made something visual and iconic that met that vision that could stand for No More.

Q: The final design is a blue “vanishing point” that evolved from the concept of zero. Describe the meaning of the design.

A: It’s not always overt. It’s a conversation starter. It doesn’t give you everything spelled out. It’s more of an invitation to ask me, and then I can talk about it. Start breaking the silence and making it OK.

Q: You’ve talked about your personal connection to the message and the goal of No More. How would you recommend others choose a cause to get involved with?

A: Everyone who has accepted the invitation to join has a personal relationship with the cause of No More. That’s really important to make that time in your calendar and to feel that personal sense of reward. If I’m not going to have a real personal connection, chances are I’m not going to give it the 110% that everyone around me is. If you pick something that you are personally connected to, it doesn’t feel like work. It just comes so naturally that it doesn’t feel like an extra burden. You actually have a feeling of reward for doing it.

Q: When you have a career and a family and so many other things going on, how do you split your time? How are you able to stretch your time and abilities to really make it count?

A: When I was at Kimberly-Clark, I had great support from the company. If it was something that went into personal time—because it was something that I personally was passionate about—that was a learning opportunity to talk to my kids about what I was doing and why I was doing it.

I’ve seen them since get involved in their schools and in their organizations, and they’re giving back in ways that are meaningful to them.

One of my sons got a grade one day that he wasn’t that proud of, so he sat at his desk and he read and went over things again and again. When he finally figured it out for himself, he created a self-study manual and tutoring guide for the entire coursework of that semester and handed it to the instructor and said, “I want to give this to the next class because it was really hard for me and this helped. This is how I did it.”

Q: What advice would you give someone who is considering becoming involved, whether on a large scale, such as joining a nonprofit board, or on a small scale, such as volunteering?

A: You end up getting back more than what you give. I feel almost selfish in that I’ve had these opportunities. Whenever you take on these personal projects you develop another skill. You broaden your network. You create something that you’re really proud of that then helps you get to that next level in your career.

The post Balancing Volunteerism With a Full-time Job appeared first on ���������.

The corporate philanthropy of yesteryear—images of CEOs handing over giant checks—has been made over. Middle market firms now have an opportunity to step up and get involved in philanthropic initiatives on a level deeper than monetary contributions. Many are choosing personal causes, and they aim to connect with their internal and external communities, steps that benefit both giver and recipient.

The  report by Charity Navigator showed that corporations donated $18.45 billion in 2015, a 3.9% increase from the previous year, and corporate giving made up 5% of all U.S. charitable contributions. A  from America’s Charities found 60% of companies offer year-round giving. The report also found 60% of small to midsize companies offer volunteer opportunities, 37% have payroll contributions and 28% engage in matching gift options.

The opportunities are nearly endless for corporate philanthropy. According to Sandra Miniutti, vice president of marketing at Charity Navigator, options include direct contributions, participating in nonprofit special events, attending galas and buying tables or participating in activities. Some companies also allow their employees to take time off to volunteer or to use part of their work hours to donate their skills and expertise directly to a charity.

Choosing a Cause

There are plenty of causes to choose from: The  in the U.S. include religious groups (33%), education (16%), human services (12%), foundations (11%) and health-related groups (8%). Miniutti says companies should find a cause they have a meaningful connection with.

“If the company is looking to build goodwill among shareholders, consumers and regulators, then it’s important to see that there is an authentic relationship between the company and the charity’s mission,” she says.

Choosing the right organization can matter quite a bit for a company, as the America’s Charities report found 90% of survey respondents said partnering with a reputable nonprofit enhances their brand.

“Look for a strong alignment,” Miniutti says. “Once the company has identified some charities that are good candidates, we recommend that the company vet them to make sure that they’re financially strong, accountable, transparent and that they can speak to the impact of their work.”

Many individuals and companies choose a cause that’s very personal to their lives or the company’s mission. Bradley Schmarak, senior partner at Reed Smith and global co-chair of its private equity practice, is board chairman for the , an annual golf tournament that benefits the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois. Schmarak says the event began from a very personal place for tournament creator Scott Lang. His then-wife worked for NKF of Illinois. Lang reached out for participants from the companies he worked with the most, pulling largely from the middle market business community in Chicago.

Schmarak says middle market companies and the firms that support them can have philanthropy built into their core. For example, 71% of lawyers at Schmarak’s firm did pro bono work in 2016, coming out to 76,000 hours, or $40 million in billable time.

From America’s Charities’ 2015 report, “The New Corporate DNA: Where Employee Engagement and Social Impact Converge”

“Oftentimes, the organizations that the middle market companies choose to embrace happen to have ties to the leadership of those organizations,” Schmarak says. “If you’ve got a CEO who is battling lung cancer, that company might choose to work with the related charity that’s important to him or her. That’s often what we see in pro bono: You have leadership where something is sparked in them and they want to get involved. As they get more fulfillment from the work they’ve done, they make those opportunities available to their employees and other people in the company.”

Another option for companies that may not have a personal cause to pursue is to consider charities that clients or customers are already involved with.  close relationships with customers are key in this market, and demonstrating a tangible interest in the same causes as your clients is an opportunity to strengthen these relationships.

Companies must involve employees in these decisions. The America’s Charities survey found employee engagement receives a boost when supported causes are those that employees are passionate about, not just those the leadership team chooses.

“It’s helpful to give employees an opportunity to help select the causes that the company participates in,” Miniutti says. “There’s been lots of research showing that that’s much more powerful than having it be a top-down decision.”

Community-building Opportunities

One of the lesser-discussed benefits of philanthropic involvement is the opportunity to work with others—both inside and outside of the company. Local volunteer work brings employees together and is a chance to showcase the company’s nonprofit work to the surrounding community. According to the America’s Charities survey, 86% of employers say employees expect them to provide opportunities to engage in the community.

When working with other middle market companies, philanthropy can often lead to highly beneficial networking. Schmarak says the Middle Market Open is one of the few times the leadership of the Chicago business community comes together for a day of charity.

“We’re used to working together, and now we’re coming together for competition, for fun and philanthropy,” Schmarak says. “There may be a dozen law firms [at the event], and we all compete for work every single day. But at the same time, we know each other, we respect each other, we refer deals to each other when we have conflicts. We know at the end of the day, there’s a likelihood these people are going to be on the other side of a deal with us, so it’s nice to have that personal relationship as well.”

The board for the Middle Market Open includes about 35 people who meet once per month. Schmarak says the board members witness one another working on the strategy, planning and execution of the event.

“Any number of people there have gotten work from other board members who have been impressed with the way they conduct themselves at the board meeting,” he says. “We’re doing this altruistically, but at the same time, if a board member who’s with a private equity fund thinks that one of the board members who’s an investment banker is doing a phenomenal job with strategy, vision and execution for the event, that person may likely say, ‘I like working with you in a pro bono context, I’d like to hire you for a deal.’”

PR and HR Benefits

The main purpose of engaging in corporate philanthropy is to help others, but many middle market companies see public and human relations benefits as well. Millennials, in particular, are drawn to companies that give back.

“Increasingly, there are studies coming out showing that millennials really care about the corporations that they work for and their social responsibility,” Miniutti says. “They look for companies where they have opportunities to give back, where it’s baked into the DNA of that organization. [Marketing and PR] have historically been where the focus is for companies getting involved in philanthropic activities, but we’re seeing increased data showing that it’s important for HR efforts as well.”

The America’s Charities report says millennials expect their employers to support their involvement with causes. They consider a company’s social responsibility and support for philanthropic activities when deciding whom to work for. Seventy-seven percent of respondents to the survey believe offering employee engagement opportunities is key to attracting millennial employees.

One of the benefits of hiring millennial employees may also be that they’re tech-savvy, and technology has begun to play a major role in corporate philanthropy: The America’s Charities report found 80% of respondents use technology to allow employees to give money, 65% use it to record volunteer hours and 69% use technology to sign up for volunteer events. Technology has also broken down barriers to entry for small and midsize businesses getting involved in charity.

A company’s social media presence plays a powerful role in getting the word out about charitable giving. Compared with large companies that often have greater restrictions on employee social media use, the report found small and midsize companies believe their employees have higher expectations around social media tools that allow them to post content and promote causes to their peers. Fifty-six percent of employers incorporated social media tools into their giving program in 2015, the report found.

Another promotional avenue is for the company to help disseminate a press release on behalf of a charity, as a for-profit company likely has more PR tools at its disposal, Miniutti says. This sort of give-and-take on the marketing side strengthens the partnership between the two, something the report found is important for companies of all sizes. Strong partnerships between reputable nonprofits and companies are a supreme benefit to all involved, as 90% of survey respondents say they enhance the brand.

Partnerships, whether between colleagues, companies or nonprofits, may be the most important piece of middle market charity. They can help draw employees to a company and a cause.

“I think the charity component plays a significant role,” Schmarak says of the Middle Market Open. “All of these participants can play golf at any course they want, anytime they want, but coming together and doing it for an organization like the NKF of Illinois makes the day a little bit different.”

The post Middle Market Philanthropy Supports Engagement appeared first on ���������.

A Charity Navigator  showed an estimated $373 billion was given to charitable causes in the U.S. in 2015, with 71% of donations coming from individuals. Individuals donate to a variety of nonprofit causes such as religion (33%), education (16%), human services (12%), health (8%) and public-society benefits (7%).

Melinda Gates, a pioneer of the  initiative, argues: “Philanthropy is different around the world, but almost every culture has a long-standing tradition of giving back.” This statement suggests that people donate not just to give back, but to fulfill multiple motivations. Nonprofits can address five specific motivations to encourage donor engagement.

1. Moral Identity

Formalized in 2002,  is the extent to which the idea of being moral is important to a person’s self-concept.

A 2009 examined differences between men and women donating to victims of Hurricane Katrina or victims of terrorism in the U.S. or Middle East. The study found that men, in general, are less likely to donate than women. However, as the importance of moral identity increased, donation behavior increased among both males and females.

Scores of studies with many samples of customers in different donation contexts and for a variety of nonprofits show the same conclusion: Donors who place a higher importance on moral identity also donate more.

In addition to identifying current and potential donors who score high on moral identity through a survey, nonprofits can use simple communication strategies to  among donors. Both of these approaches can enable charities to focus on donors with the highest giving potential.

2. Recognition

Donor recognition is a cornerstone of fundraising. Nonprofits recognize donors in newsletters, on websites, by engraving their names on building facades, using ribbons pinned to donors’ jackets and sending them thank-you notes. Yet, donor recognition does not motivate all donors. Recognition may increase donations among donors who are , but not among internalizers.

Internalizers feel fulfilled by acknowledging the importance of donation to their own self; they do not need any social verification of the importance of donating. Symbolizers, on the other hand, feel fulfilled when others acknowledge their donation; social verification is crucial for symbolizers. As such, internalizers are uninfluenced by recognition, whereas symbolizers cherish it. The moral-identity scale mentioned earlier can be used to identify symbolizers.

A 2013 in the Journal of Marketing found that donation increased among symbolizers, but not among internalizers, when a nonprofit said the names of donors would be published on the charity’s website. Symbolizers also donated more when the nonprofit was willing to acknowledge the donation with a thank-you note. 

Cost-effective recognition mechanisms can increase donations among symbolizers in a nonprofit’s donor base. Low-cost recognition strategies that are effective include listing donor names on a website, sending thank-you notes and utilizing online tools and social media such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

3. Time Versus Money

Is donating time the same as donating money? Are time and money interchangeable means of donor engagement? 

in the 2007 issue of the Journal of Marketing shows that donors who place a higher importance on moral identity prefer to donate time than money, even when the opportunity cost of time and money is the same. This happens for two reasons: First, donors may see the act of giving time as embodying the values of care, social responsibility and being heartfelt. Second, donors may view the act of giving time as more self-expressive and engaging than writing a check. This is especially true when time is donated amid multiple other donors and volunteers.

Donating time is more engaging and socially rewarding for donors than donating money. Nonprofits may start by asking donors to volunteer time. As engagement and self-expression increases, donors may be approached for monetary donations. Even when they give a lot of money, donors can feel more committed if they also give time.

4. Charity Positioning

 is a charity dedicated to helping children get a healthy start in life, an opportunity to learn and protection from harm. Such a charity should be equally attractive to all donors, but in a , respondents saw Save the Children either as a private charity or as a government-managed agency. Among those with high moral identity, Republicans were more likely to donate when the charity was positioned as a privately managed charity. In contrast, Democrats were more likely to donate when the charity was positioned as a government-managed agency.

Another study showed women were more likely to give to charities positioned as providing for other people—even strangers and distant others. In contrast, males were more likely to give to charities with a narrower focus.

No doubt, the overall mission of a nonprofit is critical to gain donor support. Equally important is aligning the charity’s positioning with the broader set of attitudes and values of its donor base. Are the donors generally more conservative or liberal? Do they care more about local or global causes? Understanding these values can be very useful in soliciting donations.

Identify issues that are important to donors, and align your nonprofit’s positioning and brand to be consistent with these issues and attitudes. This will require subtle changes in the messaging and positioning of a nonprofit, but it can go a long way in improving fundraising.

5. Social Media

When donors were asked to like a charity’s profile on social media, donations decreased among some who liked the charity on social media, compared to those who did not. Termed  the phenomenon of liking a nonprofit on social media serves two purposes: It fulfills a desire to present a positive image to others and a desire to be consistent with one’s own values. More generally, it serves the dual purpose of internalizing and symbolizing. Intriguingly, after liking a charity on social media, donors donated time and money if they saw the engagement as being meaningful. Thus, social media engagement can be a useful way to prime donors, but only if donors find the subsequent engagement to be meaningful. 

Nonprofits can strategically use social media to initiate engagement among their donors. Coupling this with meaningful activities can help donors align their values with the nonprofit’s cause and feel more connected to it. Nonprofits should use social media as part of a larger plan to meaningfully engage donors.

Engage Donors by Treating Them as Customers

Successful organizations long ago realized the complexity of customer needs; the same goes for donor needs. Identifying patrons with a strong sense of moral identity and understanding, whether they are internalizers or symbolizers is a key step for engaging them. Once donors are engaged, nonprofits can manage the engagement process in terms of donor time, money and social media presence.

Finally, the nonprofit’s mission, while crucial, may not be the sole driver of donor engagement. Subtle tweaks to how the mission is communicated to donors can garner strong donor engagement. Insights to address these issues can be easily obtained via  with donors. 

The post 5 Ways Nonprofits Can Engage Donors appeared first on ���������.

Trade shows occupy a unique and critical space in the outreach operations of many businesses. Seldom are there opportunities to showcase the mission and value proposition of a brand in front of an invested, captive audience. Delivering at a trade show can be the difference between an average and exceptional year for a company.

There are certain formalities to trade shows, which are fairly obvious to anyone who has a passing familiarity with the events, but exhibit professionals say success hinges on strategy before, during and after the event takes place.

Before

received a call at his business, , from a woman, Lana, from a walk-in freezer producer in Florida. “My boss just gave me the responsibility to manage our most important trade show in Anaheim. What do I do?’’ LoCascio says she asked. 

LoCascio is technically retired but maintains his consultancy in part because he finds trade show tactics so thrilling. He’s been working in trade shows for decades, ever since his father, a graphic artist, needed help with displays at an exhibit house in Long Island City, New York. “I noticed when the client would come in,” —corporations such as IBM, Crane, Allied Chemical— “the shop got cleaned up. I said to myself, ‘I’d like to be a client someday as well.’ ”

LoCascio may have remained on the vendor side for the bulk of his career, but he made that old-school respect for clients like Lana a hallmark of his professional life. And it paid off.

LoCascio counseled Lana to put together a document that stated what she planned to accomplish based on her exhibiting goals at the Anaheim trade show. Along with a pre-show briefing memo, she submitted the plan to her supervisor and used it to get feedback and buy-in. 

Lana’s show was an unqualified success, LoCascio says, because of the preparations she undertook prior to the conference. LoCascio goes so far to say that every company involved in trade shows should have a show manager, a position he held for many years. Much of the work handled by this person involves market research of the show audience.

“[The show manager] evaluates the business as it relates to the audience,” LoCascio says. “For three days you’re going to present and demonstrate the products that are of most interest to your particular market. You need to analyze who’s coming and get a rough idea of the number of prospects that would be interested in purchasing your product in the next 90 days.” 

LoCascio also advocates for late-stage planning to commence on site the night before a show kicks off. 

 The marketing department takes the lead, briefing everyone on the products that will be displayed, the objectives and how stations of the booth operate. 

“[When], the [prospect] steps on the carpet, right away, the [booth worker] on duty says, ‘Aha! This is a prospect. That’s why I’m here.’ He gets into the greeting and introduction, and he starts probing,’ ” LoCascio says.

During

As hinted at above, all that planning only pays off if it is executed properly. That means capturing people’s interest and making them listen. Even if marketers follow LoCascio’s strategy to focus on finding the most qualified prospects, they still must be attracted and persuaded. For that, trade show presenters often turn to attention getters such as . A former stand-up comic, Newman realized in the 1980s that his people skills and smoothness in the spotlight were highly sought after in the corporate world. He founded , which specializes in developing live presentations for clients at trade shows. 

Sometimes this means Newman is the person up on the platform proselytizing for his client like a hybrid of Steve Jobs and P.T. Barnum. Other times, it means he or a compatriot are planted in the crowd as a skeptic or dispassionate observer peppering the spokesperson with product questions. 

“I [could] be a totally geeked-up trade show attendee with two bags full of stuff, horn-rimmed glasses, pocket protector, the whole mess,” Newman says. “Eventually, the audience realizes this is a put-up job. But it’s still 80% content. We’re still getting the message across.”

Marketers don’t need Newman’s slick showmanship to excel at securing the presence of overloaded showgoers, but they do need to be personable.

“If you can show people that you care about their problems, if you acknowledge a problem, that tells them you know what they’re dealing with or what their challenges are. Address that,” Newman says.

Newman’s team will often hand clients a script of half a dozen icebreakers to hook passersby. 

“Read their badge and say, ‘Hey, what do you guys do? What’s your company?’ Nobody’s going to say it’s none of your business,” Newman says, noting that this is where the booth worker should respond, “One of our top clients does the same thing. How are you guys different?”

“Now you’re having a dialogue,” he adds, making it a seamless transition from conversation to demo.

After

By the conclusion of a trade show, marketers should have a good idea of how their efforts are shaking out, but that doesn’t mean the work is done. Some of the biggest movement can come from following up on leads generated over the course of the show. Many people who hesitate to commit on the spot need to be revisited, as do those who were punch-drunk on the trade show floor only to sober up after returning to their bubble. 

“The biggest [misstep] is when [companies] don’t have a strategy after the show,” says Tim Asimos, vice president and director of digital innovation at . Asimos says there needs to be intense planning about the timing and substance of post-event connections in hopes of conversion. Marketers need to be asking how they’ll nurture the contacts made at a trade show.

Asimos argues that rather than first-time presenters, veterans of the trade show circuit can be prone to a lack of post-game vision. 

“It becomes a little monotonous,” he says. “People aren’t necessarily thinking about it strategically, [nor are they] learning from prior trade shows. In addition to the follow-up with contacts, there’s no postmortem [review], a deep dive into what we did, where we were successful, where we missed the mark, opportunities for doing it better,” or, frankly, Asimos says, admitting when a trade show was horrible for a brand.

One step companies can take to effectively manage post-show operations is to identify a measurable goal during the planning period and track its success. 

Or, as LoCascio says, “Justify the time and money that you’ve invested into some kind of ROI.”

The post Trade Show Secrets: How to Exhibit Like a Pro appeared first on ���������.

Their mission: find for-profit work. Not for themselves, but for the dozens of young men and women who shrugged off the chilly showers of late spring for a chance at the American dream.

Upstairs, the job seekers convened around a breakfast buffet before taking seats in front of television monitors projecting the opaque but inspiring slogan, “The Dream Is Free But The Hustle Is Sold Separately.” As they ate, one man nourished their hunger for accomplishment with a pep talk.

“Everyone in here is necessary for this city to thrive,” says Jeffrey Wallace, president and CEO of , a nonprofit that works to build a pipeline between employers and vulnerable communities in need. “There is something in you that no one else can contribute.”

Downstairs, other leaders at the Career 360 event are prepping to process the attendees after they’ve finished breakfast. One station near the main entrance of the gallery is set up to guide people through mock interviews. Another area, overseen by local nonprofit Skills Scout, will walk candidates through simulated on-the-job tasks. Toward the back, employers with a large presence in Chicago—United Airlines, FedEx, C.H. Robinson—have set up career fair booths to pitch their companies to would-be applicants. 

In the middle of the room is a massive black backdrop that reads “Real 7-Second Résumés.” It’s outfitted with flat-screen TVs and flanked by computer terminals and two-person high-top pub tables. It’s a mysterious offering that is being billed as the main draw at today’s event, and it’s the brainchild of yet another nonprofit at the space today, , and its new agency, .    

Launched in 2014, Grads of Life seeks to convince employers to look for talent outside of the traditional academic pipeline. “There are 6 million young adults across the country that fit the opportunity youth categories, and these are young people 16 to 24 who aren’t in school and aren’t in work and who have not yet obtained a post-secondary credential,” says , principal at Grads of Life. “The mission of Grads of Life is to create a functioning talent marketplace that connects employers with opportunity youth as a new source of talent.”

The organization may only be three years old, but Rosenblum has promoted this particular cause for years. “The work really built on about five years of work that came before the launch of the campaign where we were working with employers to identify what was working for them in expanding their talent pipeline to include opportunity youth.”

The phrase “opportunity youth” is used repeatedly by Rosenblum and others at the event. It’s a respectful but coded term. In plain English, it refers to those young adults who entered the workforce right out of high school. Rosenblum has been doing this so long she can remember when such people were called disconnected youth. Whereas in the past, these workers would look forward to the promise of a good-paying blue-collar job lifting them into middle-class comfort, profound shifts in the U.S. economy have eroded the lion’s share of these opportunities.  

Rosenblum also knows better than most the challenges of lobbying companies to place opportunity youth. In a previous role, she brought together employers for the Kellogg Foundation to get their perspectives on this group of young people.

“The responses pretty much across the board for all the employers, many of whom were service sector employers, were like, “What? No, we don’t hire those kids,” she says. “Really no interest, no awareness.”

Since then, however, there’s been significant movement around the employment outlook for working-class, or non-degree adults, as well as conversations about the true value of college and whether higher education is for everyone. This, Rosenblum says, is no accident.

“It’s now in the common conversation,” she says. “There’s been a lot of work by us and others to raise this issue.”

Rosenblum scored an early major win for the cause when, shortly after launching the organization (the name Grads of Life was developed by its first agency, ), she was able to lean on an old connection to land a pitch meeting with the , the nonprofit media company that secures access to creative channels for public service organizations.

“When we heard about the issue of the opportunity gap and about how many jobs were going unfilled because employers weren’t aware of and hiring opportunity youth, we knew we wanted to be a part of the solution,” says Michelle Hillman, Ad Council’s head of campaign development. “We were so happy to find a partner who had a leadership position in the national dialogue around the issue of opportunity youth and who was such a respected voice.”

Ad Council responded by securing donated media in several spaces to advertise the Grads of Life cause. Developed by Arnold Worldwide, the creative included traditional outdoor spots appearing in Times Square and along bus routes and train lines operated by the Chicago Transit Authority showing well-dressed young men and women confronting the tendency of HR professionals to overlook diamond-in-the-rough employees. “To Find A Great Candidate, Give Traditional Hiring Practices the Day Off,” reads one, while another chastises, “In Looking For The Ideal Résumé, You’ve Ignored The Ideal Candidate.”

These static advertisements were also put to use in print media in Sunday editions of The New York Times and The Boston Globe. They were accompanied by TV ads played on the Bloomberg Network and the CNN Airport Network. The campaign also established a strong online presence through . 

“[Forbes] just turned out to be a phenomenal donation to the campaign,” Rosenblum says. “We use that space to showcase important issues around the skills gap, the opportunity divide, talent strategy and we engage thought leaders all across the country to contribute and be guest bloggers on the site. We’ve had tremendous traction.”

The outlets are not the places where the people they serve would congregate, and that’s by design, Rosenblum says. Early on in the partnership with the Ad Council, she pushed to make sure the campaign focused not on reaching out to opportunity youth, but rather on raising awareness and buy-in from prospective employers.

“Initially [the Ad Council] said, ‘Yes we want to do something on the issue of opportunity.’ But the first thought was a campaign focused on the young people to get them to see a world of opportunity out there,” Rosenblum says. “We pushed back and said … if employers aren’t open to opportunity youth, then getting these young people all jazzed up doesn’t really make sense.”

“It was a new thing for the Ad Council,” she adds. “They had not really done a B-to-B campaign before. Most of their campaigns are entirely public-facing. It was a stretch for the Ad Council, [and] it was certainly a stretch for us.”

There are signs it’s worked. Grads of Life’s most recent “Impact Update” from May shows that the Forbes blog has been visited more than 4.7 million times. All told, there has been $76 million in donated media given to the organization since its inception. Rosenblum calls this figure, “wildly successful” beyond her greatest aspirations, which were about $20 million, she says.

All this exposure has helped Grads of Life realize its altruistic mission. According to Grads of Life, general awareness of hiring opportunity youth has increased from 17% in 2014 to 29% in 2017. The number of employers that are planning to fill positions with these workers has grown by 8% in the same period. 

A third-party survey of 600 recruiters and hiring managers found that a quarter had seen the Grads of Life campaign, and nearly 75% believed that hiring opportunity youth is “good for business.” 

Grads of Life also had significant success convincing specific employers to come aboard.

“We work with employers from all different sectors,” Rosenblum says. “We have a partnership right now with the National Network for Business and Industry, which sits at the Business Roundtable, and we’re working with industry associations and their employers. We’re working closely with the American Hospitality and Lodging Association and a number of big companies, such as Hilton Intercontinental Hotel. We’re just about to start working with Marriott.”

It’s important to note that through all this, Grads of Life does not actually work directly with opportunity youth. Rather, it is focused entirely on convincing businesses to recognize these workers and tweak their hiring practices so more of them can find worthwhile career opportunities. It’s important that Grads of Life collaborate with other nonprofits working directly with this group and attend events like Career 360 in Chicago, especially because its next campaign, Real 7-Second Résumés, leans heavily on nonprofits.

“On average, hiring managers are only looking at résumés for seven seconds, which is kind of nuts when you think about it,” says , executive creative director of 22squared. “They have a stack of paper on their desk, and they’re flipping through it. Opportunity youth don’t necessarily have the résumés that everybody else does. They have different circumstances,” he says. The seven-second résumés exercise aims to create an opportunity to tell their stories and highlight their life skills—things like work ethic, tenacity, dedication—that don’t show up on a traditional CV. At Career 360, job seekers are given the opportunity to create a seven-second résumé. First, they fill out their information at one of the computer terminals. Then, they stand in line to work with one of a handful of job experts who will quiz them on their work history and unique job experiences, looking for marketable facets to make candidates stand out during the very brief video clips.

“We’ve had some amazingly interesting stories,” Botfeld says. “Grads that were going to the program who were homeless. Grads who were working two to three jobs. Grads that had to care for their younger siblings while they were trying to go through the program. We’re trying to draw out those stories and those experiences because those are ones employers are looking for.”

After they finish their scripts, grads wait to be called into a room where a two-person film crew will shoot the videos. Then, they will be edited on site and uploaded to each subject’s LinkedIn profile. Those who don’t have a LinkedIn profile will be assisted in creating one before they leave. 

“LinkedIn has also been a great partner for the campaign and has donated both digital space as well as a number of InMail offerings, where we’ve had high-profile employers talk about what they’re doing to build opportunity youth talent pipelines,” Rosenblum says.

All grads will also receive an e-mail link to all the assets they have created today. The seven-second résumés are also the primary creative concept behind Grads of Life’s next big advertising push, set to kick off this month. But, the video résumés will help youth on an immediate personal level by landing them a job offer.

“Anything I can do to get in the door and build a career out of right now,” says Juan Rubio, a 23-year-old grad at the event. Rubio only learned about LeadersUp, the recruitment organization working directly with opportunity youth, a few days prior.

“It was just about a couple days ago, I was sitting at home scrolling though Facebook, and they were advertising,” he says. The advertising struck him as suspect, in the same vein as those spam messages touting the ability to make thousands of dollars a month online while working from home. But he decided to give it a shot and entered in his contact information. 

“The next day I got e-mails and text messages. I followed through and showed up here and it turned out to be legit,” he says. “I think it’s a good opportunity. There are not a lot of opportunities for us here in Chicago. If you go to a staffing agency, they just send a bunch of people to work for a couple of days. Here you get to meet the people who get you in the door and get you a job.”

Rubio has come prepared with a “whole stack of résumés” and seems particularly hopeful that he convinced a United employee to accept one. “He wrote some information on the back. I’m not sure what he wrote, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

Right now he makes a living driving for Uber, but in his life he’s been a lifeguard, an office assistant at a dental practice and a construction worker. He also spent three years in landscaping, where he rose to the rank of a foreman, overseeing a crew of workers, some twice his age.

Its facts like these that seven-second résumés are designed to elicit and highlight. Rubio’s front-line supervisor experience commands a premium in the job market right now, according to Rosenblum.

“We’ve been doing research over the last year with Harvard Business School’s Competitiveness Project and Accenture, looking at talent strategies in the private sector, and one of the things we’ve uncovered is that there’s this really significant pain point for employers in terms of talent around first-line supervisor,” she says. “If you can get employers thinking about bringing opportunity youth in and moving them up and into those first-line supervisor roles, it’s a win-win.”

It certainly would be a win for Rubio, who’s now spent hours hearing from others how much they want him to have a good job. He’s not sure about the seven-second résumé, but he’s willing to do what it takes to get a job.

“At this point, it’s OK to try anything. The only place is up,” he says. 

The post Grads of Life Paves a Path to Employment for Non-degree Opportunity Youth appeared first on ���������.

As the overseer of the fifth-most-visited website in the world, the temptation to allow advertisements must, at times, be enormous. Yet, the refusal to permit outside advertisements is a fundamental component of the foundation’s culture, which means money must be made elsewhere to keep the lights on.  

Heading up the foundation’s media and PR effort is communications director Juliet Barbara. She spoke to Marketing News about the mechanics of her organization’s increasingly successful fundraising efforts.

Q: In Wikipedia’s 2016-2017 plan, there is a program to make the brand more consistent, relatable and easily understood. How did you decide that this was something you wanted to address? 

A: For most of its history, the Wikipedia brand was completely organic. For most of the early history of the foundation, we did not have a significant communications presence and definitely not any marketing. Even today we don’t have a traditional marketing team. We have something closer to a communications and audience development team with marketing expertise. It’s also a complicated brand. A lot of people don’t know that in addition to Wikipedia there are 12 other Wikimedia projects that the Wikimedia Foundation supports. Those are projects like Wikimedia Commons, which is our free image repository, and Wikiversity, which has educational content, and Wikispecies, which focuses on information about species and biology. All of these brands have different logos. 

We want to understand what Wikimedia and Wikipedia mean to people—from our community to our readers to our donors to our partners—and make sure that we can clearly communicate the values that we stand for and why people love Wikipedia. 

Q: The Wikimedia solicitation that most people are familiar with is if everybody gave $3, your fundraising would be over in hours. How did you decide to approach fundraising with that specific messaging? 

A: We listen to our donors and our readers, and we do research. We ask them what messages resonate most, and we do A/B testing on the messages that we use in our banners. We know that people really value Wikipedia, and they will contribute the value that they ascribe to Wikipedia. Much like you would go and get a cup of coffee for $3, is Wikipedia worth at least that much to you?

Q: How many times a year do you hold fundraisers?

A: We hope to create an online fundraising campaign every year in different languages in different parts of the world. But at any given time in one language you will only see banners for a certain period of time. For example, in December, we do our big English-language fundraiser, and that only lasts for as long as we need to reach our goal. This year we were able to reach our goal in a record amount of time and were able to turn off the banner in a matter of a couple weeks. 

Q: How much do you spend on marketing overall? 

A: Our communication budget is a relatively smaller portion of our overall budget. It comprises 3.7% of our overall budget.

Q: This year, you were hoping to raise $63 million. Your mid-year check-in says you’ve already surpassed that number. Where are you now, and how does that figure compare to past years? 

A: We reached our English-language fundraiser in record time, and that was in the $20 to $25 million space. We are pacing really well, and typically we go above that fundraising target because we have other sources of funding that we need to be investing in, including our endowment that we launched in January 2016, which has a goal of ensuring that Wikipedia remains in perpetuity. It’s a rainy day fund to make sure that no matter what’s happening in the world, we still have the money to sustain this incredible resource. And since January 2016, for that fund in particular, we’ve raised $12 million in donations and pledges. 

Q: To what do you owe the fundraising success that you have achieved this year already? 

A: Over the years we’ve become more sophisticated in our fundraising approaches. We’re always testing our banner messaging to resonate more with our readers and donors. We’ve also gotten more sophisticated with our e-mail asks. We make sure that messaging resonates with people. We have a really high open rate on our e-mails, which means that people want to hear from us, but we don’t overcommunicate with them because we want to respect their time. I think it’s a combination of us getting better at this kind of outreach but also the world recognizing that right now we need free, reliable knowledge more than ever. There are debates around fake news and the availability of reliable information online that remind people how important Wikipedia is today. 

Q: It sounds like there’s constant experimentation going on at the foundation with the language or the appearance of the fundraising. What tweaks have you found to be most successful? 

A: We found that, in a counterintuitive way, people want information in these banners. They want text. Rather than a flashy banner that has a few words on it about free knowledge, we find that people actually want to learn. They want to hear from Wikipedia. We also found that people want us to be authentic. They want the banners to reflect the Wikipedia brand, which is accessible, not overdone or over-polished. Staying true to that authentic brand has been really important to how these banners resonate with people. 

Q: The Wikimedia survey conducted by Lake Research Partners from October and November 2015 found the most frequent Wikipedia users tend to be male college graduates aged 30 to 39. These characteristics are similar to those of self-reported donors and donor targets. Would you say you tailor your fundraising outreach efforts for them specifically?

A: No. That survey was specifically of donors and donor targets and I think it was specifically in the U.S. That is one segment that we would market to, but it’s one of many. Actually, we collect very little data about our users, so we’re not able to target individuals.

Our vision is a world where every single person can freely share in the world’s knowledge. We want to serve every single person. Our communications … are framed so they’re accessible to every person. We don’t want someone to feel excluded from the Wikipedia experience. I would say that we are targeting anyone who is a knowledge seeker and who wants to share in knowledge. That could be a man in his 30s, but it could also be a young woman training to be a doctor in India. Or it could be a grandmother in Ukraine.  

Q: Some of the Wikipedia fundraiser messaging gives the impression that the foundation is endangered when it actually looks like it’s doing quite well. How do you address claims that the Wikimedia Foundation overstates its need? 

A: In response to those claims, I would say that Wikipedia is too precious to not give it the resources that it requires to not only exist, but also to grow. We believe that it is urgent every single year to raise money for Wikipedia. We raise our operating budget every year, which is a unique funding model, and it means that the donations that we receive today will be funding our work; allowing us to run the data servers; and pay the staff that supports all of the technology, the community engagement, the legal protection [and] the fundraising. We’re raising money for the following year today. 

In addition to the data servers and all the technology that accounts for about 50% of our budget, we also need to make sure that Wikipedia continues to grow. We have certain programs that invest back into our communities, back into the awareness of Wikipedia so that people continue to know about Wikipedia in different places around the world. And these programs are important to the sustainability and future of Wikipedia. 

Q: You’re not the only nonprofit to employ this sort of language and strategy. Do you feel that Wikipedia is unfairly singled out for criticism? 

A: While we don’t agree with those criticisms, we’re a very open organization. Whenever you have a major brand—a top 10 website—there will be critics. We’re OK with that. All of the information about how we spend our money and how we raise money is available online. We know what our values are, and we welcome constructive feedback.

The post Funding the Future of Free Knowledge appeared first on ���������.