The internet was supposed to be the great equalizer, a place where any person—regardless of race, sex, color or creed—could access a wealth of knowledge. But as technology advanced and competition grew, online gatekeepers—marketers included—were smitten with the opportunity to make their websites more dynamic and exciting. They’ve chased after the latest design trends and taken back-end shortcuts to push out more content at a faster pace. But as organizations barreled forward, they unintentionally left a swath of consumers behind: people with disabilities.

The disabled community makes up about one-fifth of the U.S. population—a staggering number of potential consumers. An inaccessible website is akin to a storefront that lacks a wheelchair ramp: Someone may be interested in shopping with you, but you’ve made it virtually impossible for them to do so—at least independently.

For someone with a vision impairment, an inaccessible website may be one that can’t be easily navigated through a screen reader, software that allows users to read displayed text with a speech synthesizer or braille display. A person with auditory impairments may be unable to consume your video or podcast content if you failed to include subtitles or a transcription. Flashing graphics on a website or in a social media post could trigger a seizure in a person with epilepsy. Anyone whose mouse has stopped working can perhaps sympathize: If you can’t easily navigate to a link using the tab key, those who rely on assistive technology can’t access that content, either.

Marketers don’t always intentionally leave these consumers out of their UX designs. But the issue has gained awareness after a recent spate of lawsuits. Those sued have included everyone from Beyoncé’s production company to Domino’s Pizza to mom-and-pop establishments. The European Union has website accessibility requirements for member states, but the U.S. rules are hazier.

As jarring as the prospect of redesigning a website may be, there are also simple, immediate steps that marketers can take. The effort—no matter the size—is worth it, as it opens the opportunity to gain new customers who will appreciate and remember the effort.

A Discriminatory Act

Failing to make a website accessible for everyone can be discriminatory. For example, if a retailer offers a discount code that is difficult for a person with a vision impairment to see, it implies vision ability determines rate.

“Let’s say color contrast is something that you’re challenged with,” says Mark Shapiro, president of the Bureau of Internet Accessibility, which helps organizations audit and update their websites. “If the ad shows orange text on a yellow background, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to see it at all. Those people wouldn’t see that the discount applies to them. Or an email might be sent out and the discount could be an image and the image might not have any alternate text around it. Somebody getting this image might read 123.jpg where somebody that’s sighted might see 25% off if you type in such-and-such a code.”

In 2016, Guillermo Robles, a blind man, filed a lawsuit against Domino’s, claiming the company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. According to the complaint, the Domino’s website wasn’t compatible with standard screen reading software, which kept the man from using the pizza builder feature to personalize his order. He argued that Domino’s should bring the digital ordering tools into compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This January, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Domino’s must make its website and mobile app accessible to blind people using screen-reading software.

Last year, there was a record number of accessibility-related lawsuits filed. 1,053 lawsuits were filed in federal court in the first six months of 2018, compared with 814 in all of 2017, 262 in 2016 and 57 in 2015. The NRF says that companies pay anywhere between $10,000 and $90,000 to resolve the claims.

There’s confusion in how to interpret Title III of the ADA, which prohibits disability-based discrimination in “any place of public accommodation.” The law, invented the same year as the World Wide Web, makes no mention of nonphysical locations such as websites. “At one point the Department of Justice attempted to issue guidance for website accessibility. But the guidance was never finalized,” the NRF said in a 2018 post.

Web accessibility issues aren’t limited to retail goods and services. Websites with poor accessibility can make filling out forms difficult or impossible. “The career section of corporate websites is something that we end up spending quite a bit of time on because that’s a huge issue on a lot of levels,” Shapiro says. “Now you’re talking about employment law because people who are qualified can’t apply. There’s no way for them to get in contact with people because a lot of companies will push everything toward the web.”

The shift toward web-based customer service has also had unintended consequences. Shapiro says one of BoIA’s clients, an airline company, was sued by someone with a visual disability. “Their booking system was not accessible at all for somebody who’s visually impaired,” Shapiro says. “They couldn’t book a ticket. And you can’t [easily] book on the phone and you can’t really go to an office. Online is the way that everyone’s being pushed and they had some real challenges there.”

Every digital asset an organization owns has the potential to be either a barrier or an invitation. A B2B client with a disability could be easily navigating a website with every intent to purchase, only to be stopped in their tracks—sale thwarted—because a PDF with the pricing breakdown wasn’t enabled for accessibility.

When Consumers Miss Out, Marketers Miss Out

Tyler McConville, CEO and co-founder of NAV43, a search marketing agency, learned about the challenges of inaccessible websites through friends. A family member of one friend is blind, McConville says, the result of an illness. The woman wanted to purchase a red dress for a gala and she easily searched Google to locate several options. Once she got to the ecommerce sites, however, she found limited descriptions of the dresses, nothing distinguishing one from the next.

“She actually gave up,” McConville says. “She had a friend meet with her and then help guide her to get to a store and then bought [her outfit] in the store. She doesn’t shop online anymore because of it.”

Most web users are accustomed to ads for products following them around the internet, or custom recommendations based on past purchases; it’s a whole world personalized to their wants and needs. But for people with disabilities, the internet can feel like a place designed against them.

McConville’s theory is that most marketers assume devices and browsers are advanced enough to interpret information on the web for users with disabilities. He suspects that the needle will move toward greater accessibility once marketers identify people with disabilities as an important audience. An accessible website can make for a loyal fanbase. A survey by the National Business and Disability Council in 2017 found that 78% of consumers will purchase goods and services from a business that takes steps to ensure easy access for individuals with disabilities at their physical locations. It stands to reason that accessible websites would see a similar effect. found that 71% of disabled customers with access needs will leave a website they find difficult to use, and 82% of customers with access needs would spend more if websites were more accessible. Households with a member who has a disability are also more loyal to brands than other households, according to Nielsen.

“Think about the [person’s] network for a minute, because that’s where we see the biggest movements,” says Shawn Pike, vice president of User1st, a web accessibility software solutions company. “The person with a disability is now very loyal to a brand because of the accessibility capabilities they’re implementing on the site, but also their family members are [loyal] as well.”

There are also pragmatic benefits to creating a more-accessible website. Websites with higher accessibility have a better Google ranking. “Google is essentially a visually impaired person viewing your website,” Shapiro says. “What that computer is reading is the same thing that a screen reader would read. A site that is more adaptable to work with Google is actually more accessible.” The same content structure and functionality used to optimize accessibility is the same used for SEO. An accessible website is also typically cleaner on the back end, meaning its load times will improve—another SEO benefit—and the website will also be more accessible to users with bandwidth problems.

Ryan Commerson, campaign strategist at Communication Service for the Deaf, says that these ancillary benefits also extend to people without disabilities. “Businesses would complain about the cost of building ramps for wheelchair users, and then suddenly, who uses it the most? Delivery people, parents pushing strollers,” he says. “They use the ramp more than those in wheelchairs.”

The converse is also true: What’s designed as a convenience for people without disabilities can also benefit people with disabilities. Captions on videos are one example. “With more people demanding an audio-off NSFW (not safe for work)-type of approach so they can watch videos without alerting their colleagues or supervisors, captions are slowly becoming the norm, much to our delight,” Commerson says. But consumers with disabilities are often left to wait for the rest of the population to request the change. “We still have a hard time getting movie theaters to turn on the captions because of the complaints of the ‘regular patrons,’” he says. “[Most] movies now are digital. Turning on the subtitles is as easy as a press of a button, but theaters wouldn’t do it.”

Who Will Lead the Charge?

Lawsuits are a great motivator for change, but the movement needs leaders. McConville says that popular website platforms such as WordPress, Wix and Squarespace have an opportunity to play a large role in website accessibility.

“The majority of the internet is made from these platforms,” McConville says. “If they enforce accessibility through their platforms, you’ll see a larger adoption where the internet becomes more accessible, rather than waiting for a large brand that makes up only a small section of the internet. The large brands will come eventually, but if we’re waiting on them, this could be a very long process.”

WordPress, for example, does offer accessible templates, but in its vast array of user-created options, there are also plenty of inaccessible templates. “People like these [templates] that look crazy, with moving carousels and things that are flashing in and out,” Shapiro says, “They want that look and feel for their website and right out the gate they’re not accessible. You have to evaluate the costs and benefit of certain looks and feels on a website.”

The University Libraries at the University of Arizona, in partnership with the school’s Disability Resource Center, is producing content on how to design inclusive marketing. Some of the libraries’ accessibility research and queries have resulted in broad-reaching changes that marketers can take a cue from when evaluating their own tools and platforms. “One of the struggles for libraries is that we use a lot of third-party tools that we have to purchase—subscription databases and ebooks and things like that,” says Rebecca Blakiston, user experience strategist at the U of A libraries. “While we have a lot of local control over our website and have done a really good job of making that as accessible as possible, there are some third-party tools we have less control over.”

The libraries have built accessibility into the workflow for purchasing and why they select a particular vendor over another. The Disabilities Resources Center reviewed the libraries’ discovery tools for its main search, finding some issues with accessibility. “They were actually able to go back to the vendor and make recommendations that the vendor then applied, which improved the accessibility for any library using that tool,” Blakiston says. “If we can improve accessibility in one place we might be able to improve it across all the different users.”

The more marketers speak up to the software developers who design their platforms and tools, the more normal accessibility will become. Some social media influencers have taken up the mantle of improved accessibility, such as Irish writer and broadcaster SinĂ©ad Burke, who includes image descriptions in her posts, or “Queer Eye” star Karamo Brown, who captions his videos.

In November 2018, Instagram took steps toward greater accessibility, announcing the addition of automatic alternative text and custom alternative text to help users with screen readers. The option is in the “Advanced Settings” section in the upload flow, and if users add descriptions themselves in the feature, it will help Instagram educate its machine learning systems to identify similar objects in the future. Plus, the technology has benefits for marketers: Brands will be able to search for images based on text to find customers who frequently use their products or see what related items that person uses to target these consumers with special offers.

Steps Toward Accessibility

As more awareness of accessibility builds, more companies have helped organizations test and redesign their websites. Pike says that his company fixes the problem of inaccessibility by using technology because “without it, it’s too daunting of a task to really fix without some innovation.” User1st and other companies, such as Shapiro’s BoIA, start with an audit to find how a website may or may not be in compliance with accessibility guidelines.

“The holy grail of testability comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),” Pike says. “They put out what are called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is a framework for implementing accessibility onto any web property, whether it’s a web application, a mobile app, etc.”

The guidelines include steps that Pike says people with limited technical know-how can implement. Photos should include alternative text, which is particularly important for product photos. Alternative text is used within an HTML code to describe the appearance of an image. Marketers may be more familiar with alternative text—or alt text—as a way to improve image SEO, but these descriptions are also what appear if a photo doesn’t load or if the page is read by a screen reader. Alt text offers more than the simple descriptions from the file name, but aren’t intended to be a series of taggable terms. Think along the lines of “brown dog playing in the leaves,” versus the too-simple “dog” or the tags-heavy “dog puppy autumn fall leaves trees maple october.”

Another simple practice is the appropriate use of heading tags, or H tags. Web browsers, plug-ins and assistive technologies use these tags for in-page navigation, which means they won’t properly read a bold font as a new heading if not tagged appropriately. “H1 are the primary things that you should be viewing, H2 are secondary and it goes in order of one through five,” Shapiro says. “A lot of people are using those as design elements where they have 30 primary tags and then they’ll skip Nos. 2, 3, 4 and then just jump to No. 5. It creates a lot of confusion if you are hearing what the web page sounds like instead of visually looking at it.”

Shelly Black, an associate marketing specialist at the U of A Libraries, says that it helps to have a list of what accessibility barriers to look for in your daily work. Black also runs the libraries’ social media accounts and on her checklist is a reminder to include captions on videos.

For the more advanced accessibility challenges—along the lines of an inaccessible pizza ordering platform—a technology company likely needs to step in. Some flashier elements may need to be scrapped or reimagined, but more accessibility doesn’t mean a boring website. “A site that is completely accessible doesn’t mean that visually it’s going to be just a plain site, like a text-only site,” Shapiro says. “It can have the exact same look and feel, but it’ll just be a little different when viewing it through a screen reader or accessing it just using your keyboard.”

Partnerships can be key to building a more accessible website, whether with a specialized technology company, an accessibility resource or hiring individuals with disabilities. “We were so fortunate as a university to have a partner and collaborator in the Disability Resource Center,” says Kenya Johnson, manager of marketing and communications at U of A Libraries. “They were there for consultation purposes and that’s a real goldmine of information, of expertise right in our own backyard. I would encourage other organizations to identify those resources in their community so that they don’t have to figure it out by themselves.”

Consumers with disabilities are asking brands to make their websites more accessible; marketers shouldn’t hesitate to ask for assistance to comply.

The Website Accessibility Guidelines to Know

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The WCAG is developed through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world. The guidance covers how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. The content refers to natural information such as text, images and sounds, as well as code or markup that defines structure and presentation.

The latest update, WCAG 2.1, was published in June 2018. This iteration includes 17 additional success criteria to address mobile accessibility, people with low vision and people with cognitive and learning disabilities. The guidelines now include information on website timeouts, text spacing, responsiveness and supporting both landscape and portrait display orientations.

It also includes some guidelines on the use of GIFs: Include sufficient description in the alt text of the GIF and ensure any blinks or flashes are in the seizure-safe threshold.

Section 508
In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to require federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. In January 2017, the U.S. Access Board issued a final rule that updated accessibility requirements covered by Section 508, which went into effect in January 2018.

The rule updated and reorganized the Section 508 Standards and Section 255 Guidelines, harmonizing the requirements with other guidelines and standards in the U.S. and abroad, including standards issued by the European Commission and the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Title III
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability at businesses that are generally open to the public. It also requires newly constructed or altered places of public accommodation—as well as commercial facilities—to comply with the ADA Standards.

In June 2018, 103 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking the DOJ to either issue website accessibility regulations or “state publicly that private legal action under the ADA with respect to websites is unfair and violates basic due process principles.” In a September 2018 letter, the DOJ said it believes that Title III applies to the websites of public accommodations, even in the absence of affirmative regulations. But the DOJ stopped short of endorsing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as a legal standard in the absence of further regulation.

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The report found the top three priority goals for nonprofit communicators in 2018 were engaging the community, brand-building and reputation management and raising awareness of the issues.

“The conventional wisdom is that fewer goals and strategies lead to more effectiveness,” says Kivi Leroux Miller, founder and CEO of Nonprofit Marketing Guide. “But the practical reality is that nonprofit communicators have many goals and strategies. What sets apart the most effective organizations are team member expertise and a supportive culture that sees marketing and communications as a strategic function, rather than a long list of tactical to-dos.”

The survey found the greatest barrier to effective nonprofit communications is a lack of support from the rest of the organization.

“For example, do your coworkers cooperate in the creation of an editorial calendar, follow established content creation and review processes and meet deadlines?” Miller says. “The most effective organizations say ‘yes’ more often to those questions and the less effective ones say ‘no.’”

Miller says that the most successful nonprofits are working on three communications areas:

• Building staff expertise to mastery level on specific marketing strategies and skills.
• Implementing clear communications processes and procedures (e.g., editorial calendars and standard workflows).
• Creating an organizational culture that values strategic communications work, including excellent working relationships between communications staff and executives.

Nonprofit Marketing Guide asked nonprofits to rank their overall communications effectiveness on a 5-star scale, from 1 star (not at all effective) to 5 stars (extremely effective). The average was 3.3 stars, or between somewhat and very effective. This is the same overall ranking as the last two years.

38% of nonprofits ranked their communications as very or extremely effective, up from 36% last year. 53% said they were somewhat effective. 8% said they were only slightly or not at all effective.

For five years, survey participants were asked to rate their confidence in their overall job skills. These ratings have remained fairly consistent from year to year.

ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt 10% say they have a lot to learn. This year, slightly more people identified themselves as very capable and confident, with the remaining saying they are comfortable, but want to keep getting better.

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You’re scheduled to speak at a big event and a voice in your head says, “What if I go blank? What if I look like a fool in front of everyone? I don’t know why they invited me, I shouldn’t be here.” 

You have approximately 70,000 thoughts a day, 90% are which are repeats, according to UCLA researchers. Imagine repeating, “I shouldn’t be here,” 63,000 times. It’s no wonder you’re feeling like an imposter.

This event is a big deal, but you’re a big deal, too. The organizers invited you because you are the bee’s knees, an expert with incredible insights to share—despite your inner voice telling you otherwise.

That voice in your head has many names in the leadership world: it’s your inner critic, gremlin or lizard brain. I call my inner critic “Timid Lady Gaga.” By simply calling her an ironic, unrealistic name, I’m able to tame the self-limiting claims Timid Lady Gaga makes in an effort to make me small.

As a transformational leadership coach, I’ve had client conversations about this exact thing. I’ve heard:

“My mindset and lack of confidence are affecting my work in so many ways.” 

“I’m just feeling stuck and unsure. I want to move forward with direction and purpose, but I can’t decide what to do—how to put one foot in front of the other.”

These are high-achieving, creative leaders at the top of their game. They appear to have it all together.

 I’ve had my own coach talk me off the ledge of self-doubt and I want to share my go-to approaches to get out of a self-wallowing, nerve-racked funk for your big event.

But first, a story.

One day before I was set to host a personal branding workshop in Chicago, I finally admitted to myself that I could not power through a sore throat and massive headache. I was supposed to host 15 creative marketing professionals who were ready to light up the world with their voices, but I was barely able to speak. I needed a quick fix; instead, I received a bronchitis diagnosis and a bag of antibiotics from the immediate care unit.

Have you ever come down with a cold, gotten a horrible night’s sleep or had an unbearable stomach cramp right before a big event or a tough conversation with your boss? Mindset self-sabotage, anyone?

Regardless of my circumstances, I was going to show up. Leadership is showing up as your best self against all odds. This may sound trite in the face of the current trend to be authentic in leadership. But to be a successful, relatable leader and create a strong personal brand, you need to practice intention in how you show up. 

In 2017, I sat in the audience and soaked in every word Michelle Obama said during her first public appearance after leaving the White House. Her practice of authenticity is beautifully simplistic:

“Authenticity means Michelle Obama is the same Michelle Obama you see here and with my girlfriends, walking the dog, being first lady,” she said. “It is the same person, and it’s a lot easier because I don’t have to pretend.”

If being authentic were easy, then why would anyone need a leadership coach? We’d all be pure reflections of our highest and best authentic selves—and that’s not the case, at least not all the time. 

But there are ways to generate authenticity, to shift your mindset so the voice in your head stops screaming, “Get out before they discover the real me!”

Create a Relationship with Your Body

Showing up for our work with our minds alert and creative means taking care of ourselves.

I know business owners who have ended up in the hospital with pneumonia from exhaustion. My bronchitis was the result of overwhelm and stress, of not listening to my body.

Notice when your body is asking for rest, exercise or simply a glass of water. 

Self-love is at the heart of my coaching practice, it is where confidence lives and self-expression is generated. I’m not talking about self-care (I, too, roll my eyes at #selfcaresunday), so here’s another way to look at generating a relationship between your mind and body: Self-care is simply an action to practice self-love. Self-love is the intention.

Let’s make this real: How would you treat yourself if you were your best client? What would business look like if you were your biggest asset? 

Most of my clients have fully booked schedules and meditation is not on their radar. Instead, we craft ways to practice self-love that work for them. Consider that self-care may be listening to extremely loud house music for three minutes, drinking tea or doing 10 burpees. Whatever is going to bring you out of the self-sabotage mindset and into the present right away.

Keep a list of self-care practices on your phone. Use these as a mind-body workout to create a larger capacity for energy, self-love and intention to crush your big goals. 

Dress the Part

As a leader, your reputation precedes you. It’s not fun to think that people are talking about you when you are not there, but it’s the truth. Generating your best self and expressing your intention are crucial. This is the core of personal branding.

If I were to look at you, what would I think is your personal brand? How does it shine through your leadership and how you show up? What would you change about your schedule, your look, your mindset and presence to reflect your intention?

Let’s be honest, we make a judgment when someone walks into a room, especially a speaker or a leader: Does this person reflect someone I want in my life? It’s an easy decision when your intention is clear and in alignment with how you show up.

Show up with a mindset of intention and dress for your personal brand. This is especially true at an event. People want to get to know you; your positive attitude and energizing presence are a quick insight into your personal brand and leadership style. 

Train Your Mindset

I could have brought all the internal funk I created to host my personal branding workshop. I could have powered through. Instead, I paused and realigned with my intention for the event: to teach brave, creative leaders how to light up the world.

Before any event, I purposefully create time to clear my head. I take out a piece of paper and free-form write all the ways I could screw up. I play my victim card to the nines. “I should cancel, who wants to listen to a leadership coach who can’t even take care of herself? I’m dizzy and sweating, this is going to be awful.” Then I pause and recognize that this story is my Timid Lady Gaga trying to convince me to play small.

I take a deep breath and write my intention. I quickly meditate on that and dance to “Glorious” by Macklemore to increase my blood flow. Pick a place—I choose the bathroom—and practice what works for you.  

Training your mindset is a daily—sometimes moment-to-moment—practice.

Your inner critic zaps your energy and sucks away your power. If there was a power leak in your house, you would fix it. Why not fix the voice that is limiting your greatness? 

ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt the Author | Lisa Guillot

Lisa Guillot is a transformational leadership coach, brand strategist and founder of . She coaches executives, entrepreneurs and teams within organizations, Lisa speaks about creative leadership and purpose.

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Brands that support a cause can see powerful results. In January, Gillette released an ad rallying against “toxic masculinity”—namely bullying and sexual harassment—that drew both praise and calls for boycott. Whether consumers loved or hated Gillette’s ad, it drew 65.4 million views on digital platforms within the first two weeks. Procter & Gamble Vice Chairman-CFO Jon Moeller told investors that Gillette has been “pleased with the level of consumption;” large viewing numbers seemed to translate to sales.

But was Gillette’s ad truly cause marketing—an attempt to use its brand to bring attention and change to a social issue—or was it simply a public relations gimmick? The ad certainly had potential to help a cause beyond a donation, says Cody Damon, co-founder of social impact and nonprofit marketing agency , but Gillette didn’t give viewers a next action. Instead, the ad sent people to a that featured an application for nonprofits to receive a $1 million donation from Gillette. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America will be the first nonprofit to receive the donation.

“It’s a great message that was pulled off and executed well—it created a conversation,” Damon says. “But when we get to that landing page that Gillette was sending people to from the ad, there’s not a lot to do. That’s where organizations that are more focused on community and keeping folks engaged do a better job.”

This, Damon says, is where a greater focus on what comes next for consumers in Gillette’s cause marketing campaign could have continued the conversation by creating a next action.

When brands pair with causes or nonprofits, the effects can be tremendous—just think about Gap’s (Red) campaign, which has raised more than $10 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, or suing the federal government in defense of two Utah national monuments. These campaigns were certainly cause marketing, but they didn’t seem forced and both drove toward change by making consumers care. For brands that care about an issue, cause marketing can attract loyal customers, drive sales and make a difference in society.

Consumers want more brands that care, according to , which found that 64% of consumers will choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues. Brands have taken note and spent more on cause marketing: The IEG Sponsorship Report says that spending on cause sponsorship will reach $2.23 billion in 2019, up 4.6% from 2018.

For brands and nonprofits to successfully run a cause campaign, they’ll need to do more than just donate money. Here are five ways to think about cause marketing that can help brands and nonprofits work together on a campaign that can make a difference. 

Change, Not Just PR

Brands often fall short of taking the next step. Joe Waters, a cause marketing consultant and author of the , says that the Gillette ad is a good example of the challenges brands face in cause marketing. Gillette committed to donating $3 million to causes, but it’s a $6 billion company; is their intention to initiate change or is it simply good PR?

Gillette hasn’t taken a next step toward working with a nonprofit with its toxic masculinity campaign, save for its promised donations to three nonprofits over the next three years. Nike faces the same issue with its Colin Kaepernick campaign; Kaepernick framed his in-game protests as criticisms of police brutality in the U.S., but Nike hasn’t partnered with any nonprofits addressing this issue, save for a , as reported by The Associated Press. In donating instead of pushing for an actionable step for consumers, Damon says that both companies are losing an opportunity to activate people who were moved by the messaging.

“The challenge for them then becomes are they going to stick with it?” Damon says. “Does this end now because they had a good campaign that got a lot of attention? Or do they come back and say, ‘Not only are we putting financial resources behind this, we’re making this a part of who we are?’”

Brands Must Find a Genuine Cause

Waters often asks his clients, “What do you really care about?” If a company doesn’t truly care about a cause it’s investing in, he says that the campaign won’t get traction.

Some companies try to find what their customers care about and use that issue as their cause, Waters says, but he believes that the cause needs to come from within the company. This could mean a cause the CEO and C-suite greatly support, or it could be doing what GameStop did: surveying employees to find out what they care about, then backing that cause.

“They have a great relationship with ,” Waters says. “What was great about that is employees who have autistic family members stepped up and became ambassadors for the program nationwide. That really encouraged the rank and file to get involved.”

Don’t bother getting involved with a cause you don’t care about, Damon says. Customers are smart enough to figure out when a company doesn’t truly care about the cause it’s pushing. But they also notice when corporations aren’t doing anything. “Consumers want to hold you accountable and we want you to have a stand on something,” Damon says.

NPOs and Brands Must Find a Common Cause

Nonprofits don’t have the same resources as brands, nor do they know who to reach out to at a brand for a collaborative campaign. Waters says that NPOs need to know what they’re looking for in a partner.

“What ends up happening is the nonprofit will take whatever they can get,” Damon says. “They just want the opportunity to partner with the big brand, particularly because they believe that that’s the solution; if we could just get in front of more people, it’d help what we’re trying to do. But if they were better aligned with what they were both trying to do, they could be better matched.”

For nonprofits, a good partnership often means more money and bigger marketing channels from the brands they’re working with.

“Corporations are influencers,” Waters says. “They have a solid, engaged audience behind them. And by aligning that audience with the cause, it can really elevate what the nonprofit does.”

Brands must look for nonprofits that already have an audience, Waters says. Brands now see cause marketing partnerships as new marketing channels. If brands can have a great strategy while also winning over a new audience through partnering with an effective nonprofit, the campaign will be well-aligned and likely set up a big marketing win. 

One example Waters gave was the involvement of veteran service organization . Team Rubicon is a small organization; by partnering with the MLB during its biggest moment of the year—there were 14.3 million viewers during the 2018 World Series—it was able to raise more money and awareness. This partnership worked well, Waters says, because Team Rubicon has a growing reputation and already does a good job marketing itself, but it also worked because troops are a loyal audience for brands.

“Veterans really turn out to the brands,” Waters says, “They say, ‘I’m going to support that brand because they support me.’”

Keep Standards High

Through each cause marketing partnership, brands and nonprofits must hold their partners and themselves to high standards. Care for their cause must be integrated throughout the company.

Waters mentions that Gillette still charges more money for women’s razors than men’s razors, even after their campaign asked men to do better by women in society. Waters also says that brands’ words ring hollow when they get involved in cause marketing without addressing their own issues.

“When people get into cause marketing, one thing that they have to realize is there’s going to be accountability from consumers on a lot of different levels,” Waters says. “You can’t just institute one program. You have to say, ‘We’re going to look at our supply chain and see how we can become more sustainable. We’re going to see whether we’re paying employees a fair wage.’”

Damon says that cause marketing is a moving target, something that companies will have to measure like any other marketing campaign. Brands can’t just hope for the best—they must listen to consumers and change when necessary.

Find Inspiration

Brands can also look to the examples of organizations who have been successful with cause marketing. Patagonia is the pack leader, donating its $10 million tax return to causes. Patagonia also ran the campaign, where it tried to raise awareness of the effects of consumerism on the environment and offered to repair or recycle old jackets rather than sell new ones.

“They’re the ideal,” Waters says. “No company gets there overnight, but companies have to know that this is part of a process. If we don’t see them evolving in that process, we’re going to recognize this is just spin and we’re not going to give you the credit you’re looking for.”

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Goal

For every $100 in donations New York-based nonprofitreceives, it’s able to forgive $10,000 in medical debt. The nonprofit uses data to localize campaigns and find the debt most in need of forgiveness. Since RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014, it claims to have eliminated $500 million in medical debt.

Audiences are captivated by RIP Medical Debt’s proposition because of just how many U.S. citizens are crippled by medical debt. A study by the Urban Institute found that the total medical debt owed by U.S. citizens is $1 trillion. Another study by NerdWallet Health finds that almost 2 million new people file for bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills each year, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds that 20% of Americans have at least one medical debt collection item in their credit reports.

“It’s something that unless you are sick or dealing with the issue of debt, it’s easy to think that people do it themselves, that they overextend themselves,” says Daniel Lempert, an account executive at DVM Communications, who has run the PR and communications campaigns for RIP Medical Debt since 2017. “But when it comes to medical debt, no one chooses to get sick. That’s a huge part of the messaging.”

The nonprofit’s captivating proposition has led to plenty of media coverage. Lempert says that the novelty of RIP Medical Debt means the stories are often picked up by TV news stations and local newspapers. Sometimes, RIP Medical Debt’s campaigns go viral—it has been featured on NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” and HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver. These shows are opportunities to spread awareness of RIP Medical Debt and ensure that when people receive yellow envelopes in the mail saying that their debt has been paid off, they know that it’s not a scam. “A lot of people assume that it’s just too good to be true, that there really isn’t anyone on their side, which is understandable,” Lempert says.

One recent local campaign, driven by two women in Ithaca, New York, has been one of the most powerful in RIP Medical Debt’s young history. The campaign started small, but contributed mightily to RIP Medical Debt’s goal of empowering donors to forgive billions in medical debt.

Action

RIP Medical Debt often partners with TV news stations that will pay off debt in its coverage area, then do a story on those whose debt they paid. In the case of RIP’s appearance on John Oliver’s HBO show, Oliver wanted to outdo Oprah Winfrey’s 2004 TV record of giving away $7 million—he donated enough money to forgive $15 million worth of medical debt.

But sometimes a local campaign driven by supporters outside network television becomes an even bigger story. In summer 2018, two New York residents—retired chemist Judith Jones and psychoanalyst Carolyn Kenyon—decided to raise money for RIP Medical Debt to create awareness for the , legislation that promises healthcare coverage for every New York resident.

Jones and Kenyon’s campaign was laudable but not unique to RIP Medical debt; there are many similar campaigns driven by supporters, most starting on the nonprofit’s website. Lempert says that anyone can donate to RIP Medical Debt, but some people—Jones and Kenyon among them—create their own local campaigns by filling out a form or sending an inquiry through the nonprofit’s website.

Jones and Kenyon told RIP Medical Debt what upstate New York counties to include in their campaign. The nonprofit told the women they’d need to raise a minimum of $12,500 to trigger a donation that would cover the debt in the area. RIP Medical Debt then gave the two women a URL to a Qgiv page—a website used by nonprofits to accept online donations. The money raised by Jones and Kenyon was bundled into RIP Medical Debt’s next bulk-debt purchase. Within weeks, the nonprofit told Jones and Kenyon that the yellow envelopes would soon be in the mailboxes of people in their communities.

“When it came time to contacting local press, I was happy to source contacts [Jones and Kenyon] couldn’t get their hands on,” Lempert says. “This wasn’t specifically a media campaign, but when there is interest from the organizer, I’m happy to buoy their efforts. And in this case, it was great because the story was really powerful and they are both really interesting individuals.”

The story was also politically timely, as candidates frequently discussed the New York Health Act during the state’s midterm election. Local publications picked the story up, as did The New York Times.

“It created this great ripple effect,” Lempert says, an effect that continued well after the

Result

Campaigns by RIP Medical Debt supporters like Jones and Kenyon are akin to “playing with house money,” Lempert says. If the story breaks big, great—if not, the money is still donated, the medical debt paid. In this case, the story broke big.

First, the debt: The $12,500 raised by Jones and Kenyon was used to forgive $1.5 million worth of total debt for 1,300 upstate New Yorkers. Then, their campaign led to a December 2018 piece in The New York Times, a newspaper with more than 3 million paid digital subscribers. On the Times’ Facebook post of the article alone, the story was shared 8,500 times; it also received 38,000 reactions and 600 comments. RIP Medical Debt values the media exposure from The New York Times story at about $200,000, which Lempert says could relieve $20 million in medical debt.

In addition to the media exposure, Scott Patton, director of development at RIP Medical Debt, says that the number of new campaigns—those similar to the campaign created by Jones and Kenyon—has been “staggering.” In early January, about a month and a half after the Times article ran, he says that the nonprofit was coordinating nearly 80 requests for new campaigns. This is twice as many requests for new campaigns as RIP Medical Debt had received in the previous 12 months.

Lempert and others working with RIP Medical Debt never truly know what campaigns will go viral, but he believes that there are peaks and valleys to media exposure. “It’s fine to have this explosion of coverage and then to let things calm down a little bit,” he says. “Then, we can do good, important internal work and look at what the next innovation is.” One thing RIP Medical Debt is working on next, Lempert says, is how to further customize debt relief so they can relieve debt for a specific illness just as they can for a specific geographical location. But even without the innovation, untold campaign dollars will be driven by The New York Times story, leading to millions of dollars of relieved medical debt. By offering a simple, almost passive way to allow supporters to start their own local campaigns, RIP Medical Debt has activated its supporters to become its most active fundraisers. The stories of donors have spread and inspired others to start their own campaigns. “I haven’t worked on an account like this where there was so much user-generated interest from people in the community,” Lempert says.

Company
RIP Medical Debt
Founded
2014
Headquarters
New York City
Campaign timeline
New Yorkers Judith Jones and Carolyn Kenyon started raising money in the summer of 2018; The New York Times reported on the story in December 2018.
Campaign results
RIP raised $12,500 and forgave $1.5 million of medical debt in upstate New York; The New York Times story was shared 8,500 times from the newspaper’s Facebook post; RIP received $200,000 in media value and 80 requests for new campaigns since December 2018, twice the number they had received in the previous 12 months.

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Nearly 80% of middle market companies reported that their revenue has increased over the past year, the highest percentage ever, according to the

Even so, the rate of growth is down quarter to quarter, from 8.6% in the third quarter to 7.9% in the fourth quarter. This decline is driven by upper middle market companies in sectors such as services and finance.

“The retail trade and construction industries report notable increases in the rate of revenue growth this quarter, and manufacturing continues to report strong growth,” the report authors write. “Despite the overall drop, revenue growth is higher than one year ago and remains a full point above the MMI average revenue growth rate of 6.9%.”

In 2019, 60% of middle market companies expect that their revenue will continue to grow. On average, middle market executives expect to grow at 5.9% this year. Most (89%) middle market leaders also feel confident about their own local economies in 2019, but their confidence in the global economy fell from 80% in the third quarter to 73% in the fourth quarter. Confidence in the national economy stayed above 85% throughout 2018. Despite all the changes, NCMM reports that all confidence metrics it measures—local, national, global—when taken together “remain well above the averages recorded by the MMI over the past seven years.”

Thomas Stewart, executive director of the NCMM, says that confidence in the middle market is always similarly weighted—local economy is most important, then national economy, then global.

“This is because middle market companies are deeply rooted in local economies; they know them best,” Stewart says. “They are more confident, perhaps the same way a person walks more confidently in a neighborhood he knows than in one he visits less often.”

One problem area for the middle market may be employment growth. While growth remained solid (55%) across 2018, the rate of growth has declined for the past two quarters, NCMM reports. In the third quarter, growth was 6.4%; it fell to 5.4% by the end of 2018.

“While the data suggest that the rate of employment growth may have peaked for the time being, middle market companies are still hiring: Only one in 10 firms reports a decrease in headcount compared to last year,” the report says.

Despite this, expectations for growth have fallen—43% of firms say they will increase their workforce in 2019. Companies project that employment will grow 3.8% in the next 12 months, down from 4.6% in the third-quarter of 2018. Larger middle-market companies have higher expectations; they expect a 5% growth in employment in 2019.

In response to an NCMM question about short- and long-term concerns, middle market leaders say that they’re most concerned with maintaining growth over the next 12 months—many executives wonder how they can attract and retain the best employees. In the next three months, middle market executives worry most about costs associated with imports, exports and tariffs.

“There are several issues with the global economy: slowing growth in China, Brexit anxiety and—clearly—trade war issues,” Stewart says. “You can see in the last [Middle Market Index] that we put a spotlight on tariffs and their impact. Tariffs and uncertainty about the future direction of trade policy would both reduce global confidence.”

While middle market confidence is down, with challenges that appear “more diverse and more daunting,” middle market executives still want to invest in innovation, open new markets and build new facilities. If these middle market executives are seeing warning signals in the economy, NCMM says that they aren’t yet slowing down.

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We all have that one daunting project that seems too time-consuming, too complicated and too cost-prohibitive, the project you wish you could hand off to someone else. With this in mind, the Portland, Oregon, chapter of the ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű (ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX) created ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX Agency, a program that aims to take those projects off the shoulders of nonprofits’ staff and place them in the hands of skilled marketing professionals.

A Partnership with Portland

In 2007, ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX started a program called Community Outreach to pair groups of volunteers with nonprofits to provide pro bono marketing work. Last year, the program was rebranded as ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX Agency to better represent the professional services provided by this initiative.

Teams of volunteers from ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX work with local nonprofits to execute a six-month-long marketing project. Over the past 12 years, the program has completed a variety of marketing work for dozens of nonprofits by using the skills of more than 100 different volunteers. The agency is run by a pair of ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX volunteer board members who oversee the entire process each year.

Giving Back with Expertise

Past ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX chapter leaders saw a chance to assist other nonprofit organizations the best they knew how: with marketing. The agency partners with Portland-area 501(c)(3) nonprofits and accepts applications from August to November each year. The final selections are made by a committee of ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX board members.

Ideal partner organizations:

• Have been established for several years.
• Have at least one paid staff member.
• Can dedicate 10 to 15 hours per month from January to June to work with volunteer teams.
• Can identify a project with measurable results.

ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX Agency had their largest pool of applicants ever this project period, with 19 different nonprofit organizations and 30 volunteers applying to be part of the program. The six nonprofits we selected for 2019 include an organization that helps foster families obtain supplies and assistance and an organization that provides affordable resources for creating independently published media and artwork. Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, which advocates for systemic change and better access to food, is one of the nonprofits selected for 2019.

“As nonprofits, it’s hard to find the time to be innovative, and this program gives us the chance to collaborate and improve our marketing,” says Lizzie Martinez, director of development for Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon. “It really adds to our capacity.”

The project for Partners is centered on creating an outreach strategy to bring brand awareness to a fundraising event that wasn’t meeting attendance and visibility goals. Martinez says that for her organization and other nonprofits, it can be difficult to find the time to be innovative.

“From the very first meeting, our (ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX) Agency marketing team was generating ideas we hadn’t even thought of,” Martinez said. “It’s not often we’re able to get that level of marketing expertise.”

An Opportunity to Gain Skills, Experience

Volunteers assigned to project teams vary greatly in career experience and industry. The projects call for an array of skill sets and bring together a unique mix of marketing and marketing-adjacent professionals.

The requirements for volunteers are:

• Willingness to commit five to 10 hours a month to the project for a six-month period.
• Ability to attend in-person meetings in Portland at least once a month.
• Experience or a strong interest in marketing.

Current ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX Agency co-director Ashlan Glazier-Anderson started out as a program volunteer in 2016.

“I first decided to get involved because my work responsibilities were centered on e-commerce,” she says. “The program was a great opportunity to learn and use skills in digital marketing that related more directly with what I wanted to focus on in my career.”

Soon after her agency project was complete, Glazier-Anderson was able to use these freshly-honed skills to get a new position at a digital marketing agency.

A typical project team consists of the following roles:

• Graphic designer
• Project manager
• Copywriter
• Marketing strategist
• Digital marketing specialist

ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX Agency gives volunteers the opportunity to grow their portfolio and give back to the community. In return, Portland’s nonprofits have a chance to leverage local marketing talent, develop richer volunteer and donor bases and evolve their marketing strategies.

“Our volunteers get exposure to a new group of people and can help set them up for success,” Glazier-Anderson says. “We’re able to implement marketing that can benefit an organization for years to come.”

Celebrating Community

As the program has evolved, ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX Agency is able to do more pro bono marketing work in Portland.

Glazier-Anderson and fellow agency co-director Joe Dunn have plans to expand the program capacity to be able to sustain shorter-term projects in conjunction with the standard six-month timeline.

 â€œThe problems that the volunteers are working with nonprofits to solve are real-life challenges,” Martinez says. “It’s gratifying to see professionals giving back.”

Advice from ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű PDX for Starting a Pro Bono Agency

Start small: Our program has become what it is today over many years. Start out small by working with one or two nonprofits.

Identify established nonprofits that have well-defined marketing challenges: Your volunteers need clear goals and objectives.

Give your volunteers a chance to prove their worth: Take the time to get to know prospective volunteers and find out what they want to gain from the process. Empower them to succeed.

Make time to check in: Our agency directors have regular check-ins with each volunteer. The majority of our current board members and volunteers started in this program.

Construct a diverse team: The best project teams are made up of people with a variety of career and life experiences.

Project timelines are key: For the sake of all involved, stick to the timeline you set at the start of your project.

Don’t be afraid to be picky: Setting criteria for your nonprofits and volunteers makes it possible for you to enable the best possible outcomes.

Make outreach part of your core values: For the first few years, our pro bono program felt separate from the rest of our chapter initiatives. We saw a big difference once we tried to tie it in with our chapter goals.

Celebrate success: Whether it’s one project or six, you’re giving volunteers experience and nonprofits valuable marketing work; be proud of your effort.

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Marketing is in the midst of a precision crisis. The new world facing marketers has been described in many ways, each accurate in its own way, but none speaks to the fundamental shift now roiling marketing. Pundits preach second-order consequences of a deeper transformation at the very foundation of marketing. That transformation is one of precision.

The most over-used quote in marketing is the variously attributed statement to the effect that half of all marketing or advertising is wasted, we just don’t know which half. It’s a tired, old saw but it captures the very essence of marketing. This is the existential kernel of marketing, or the basic reality that has shaped how marketing is conceptualized, designed and executed. Simply put, marketing has been built on a presumption of imprecision.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this presumption better than the media model introduced in 1961 by the Advertising Research Foundation, developed to sort and organize various metrics for evaluating ad buys. It was depicted graphically as a left-to-right winnowing down of an audience, not the upside-down pyramid of consumer decision-making that it was turned into later. Either way, it represented marketing as a process of management through imprecision.

The basic idea behind any purchase funnel or consumer journey map is that marketers don’t know precisely who will respond—or even how—but if marketing can get in front of a large-enough group of consumers, sufficient numbers will make a purchase. Factors such as reach become critical in navigating this imprecision. For example, if past experience or research establishes that 10% of consumers reached will buy, then marketing has to reach enough consumers such that 10% adds up to sales or profit targets. In this way, imprecision can be turned into success.

One critical nuance is that the historic imprecision at the heart of marketing is that of individual consumers, not aggregate groups of consumers. Marketers have known with precision that, say, 10% of a group will buy if reached. What marketers have not known is precisely what individual consumers will be part of the 10% who buy. But it is the lack of individual precision that creates the cost and time inefficiencies.

Certainly, marketers have been looking for ways of operating that are better than intentionally over-spending to ensure a critical mass. But precision has been elusive and the traditional infrastructure of big agencies, big media and big budgets built to cope with imprecision has endured.

In the past decade, a sea change in precision has thrown marketing into crisis. Data, digital, algorithms and AI have unlocked the ability to study and engage with individual consumers in personalized and predictive ways. It’s not a revolution in data or digital per se, nor merely a handoff of execution to algorithms and AI. All of these things are critical and all play a part. But what’s fundamentally different is the precision at which data, digital, algorithms and AI now enable marketers to operate.

Having access to greater precision doesn’t automatically lead to better marketing. Lots of modeling continues to show superior returns for TV advertising over digitally directed ads. But these findings are misleading. The biggest impact of precision is less in placement and more in personalization. Getting in front of the most-likely buyers, and only those buyers, is most effective when it is done to deliver products and services customized for individuals. Predictive personalization is the power unleashed by precision.

Bad predictions create sizable inefficiencies that people must pay for and endure. No one wants to waste money on a product they won’t like or use. Better prediction can eliminate, or at least minimize, these sorts of unproductive inefficiencies. There is a lot to be said for serendipity and discovery, but not when they create improvident inefficiencies. Fewer inefficiencies will have a dramatic impact on people’s lives.

Many marketers might feel that predictive personalization is old news, but such prediction is in its infancy. Entire categories are on the verge of being wholly upended by predictive personalization, including foods, beverages, financial services, media, entertainment, retail, travel and insurance.

In a recent interview with Strategy+Business magazine, Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Bank of Singapore, explained that the business model of insurance is one of “socialization of risk,” which is to say it is rooted in imprecision. Actuaries know that a certain percentage of people will suffer some kind of loss, but the precise individuals who will be affected can’t be predicted. Insurance business models are built around this imprecision; insurance enables a group of people to protect against individual uncertainty by pooling premiums to cover the few of them who wind up suffering a loss. However, as Gupta notes, if those specific individuals could be predicted, there would be no need to socialize risk. Once better predictive models are commonplace, “kaput
goes the insurance industry,” says Gupta, or at least insurance as we know it today.

This is exactly what is happening in marketing. Old models built around imprecision are being toppled by data, digital, algorithms and AI. New models built on better prediction are taking their place. The organizational imperative for future success is to nurture and invest in predictive skills. Skills with data, digital, algorithms and AI are a necessary part of that, but only part of it. Unfortunately, too many companies feel that once they have mastered data, digital, algorithms and AI, they have what they need in place. But they’re just getting started.

Predictive skills also require new metrics, different infrastructure for execution and logistics, a commitment to rapid learning and continuous change, a deeper understanding of probabilistic thinking, comfort with acting and reacting under uncertainty, and a willingness to weed out entrenched cognitive biases built into corporate culture and established decision-making processes. 

Most importantly, brands and businesses must ask different questions. Companies should not ask how to make existing models work better in the new world of precision. Instead, companies should ask what new models better fit a world of precision. For example, don’t ask how to make shopping better, ask how to eliminate shopping altogether by knowing precisely what people want. That’s what Amazon Dash Replenishment Service is trying to do. Don’t ask how to better act on what consumers say they want, ask how to better anticipate and predict what consumers want. That’s what the recommendation engines of Spotify and Netflix are trying to do. Don’t ask how to better sell consumers on a product’s features and attributes, ask how to deliver a product or service with a more precise fit to the features and attributes of individual shoppers and consumers. That’s the kind of personalization that many of the new fast-growth start-up brands are bringing to the beauty products category.

Precision will continue to create a crisis as long as marketers are unwilling to move outside the comfort zone of imprecision. The only way forward is to fully embrace the new imperatives of prediction and precision. 

ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt the Author | J. Walker Smith

J. Walker Smith is chief knowledge officer for brand and marketing at Kantar Consulting and co-author of four books, including . Follow him on Twitter at @jwalkersmith.​

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Are leaders allowed to show vulnerability and weakness? Or is it best to always present an armored posture on behalf of the enterprise?

In her latest book, , author BrenĂ© Brown suggests the key to successful leadership is a willingness to share vulnerability, which builds trust while letting us lead during disruptive and challenging times. From digital technology disruption to globalization and geopolitical disruption, leadership isn’t getting any easier.

With that as context, Brown asks, “What, if anything, about the way people are leading today needs to change in order for our leaders to be successful in a complex, rapidly changing environment where we’re faced with seemingly intractable challenges and an insatiable demand for innovation?”

Brown’s answer is powerful: “We need braver leaders and more courageous cultures.”

The book’s thesis emanates in part from the perspective of Theodore Roosevelt, who said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again
 who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

In Dare to Lead, Brown articulates this challenge in today’s marketplace and provides a well-defined roadmap for what individuals can do to become braver leaders in disruptive times.

Brown’s book isn’t only for executives. Brown defines a leader as “anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.” At some point of our lives or another, that is a role each of us undertakes.

Brown establishes three principles that are at the core of daring leadership:

1. You can’t access your courage without rumbling with your vulnerability.
2. Self-awareness and self-love matter; who we are is how we lead.
3. Courage is contagious. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations and whole hearts are the expectations, a culture where armor is not necessary or rewarded.

Reading Dare to Lead, I was reminded of my training in brand management and an encounter I had when I was CMO of a publicly traded technology company.

The rules I was taught as the CMO and chief brand officer were simple and highly armored: Keep on message, keep your CEO focused, keep the armor up, never show weakness, repeat the core message at least three times, don’t digress and—certainly—don’t appear vulnerable. Yet my CEO was more effective when he broke the rules and demonstrated vulnerability and spoke candidly.

On one occasion, he opened an on-the-record interview with a leading technology writer by divulging he’d been fired from a previous job and what he’d learned from the experience. While I bit my tongue and wondered, “Why did he go there?” his candor built trust with the reporter and led to a long-term editorial relationship and very positive media coverage.

My CEO was a daring leader who was willing to engage on human terms. He knew he wasn’t perfect and he assumed a world of abundance. He always sought to learn, was kind and was willing to take risks.

Brown’s book is full of examples comparing daring leadership with more traditional armored (or defensive) leadership. A few examples from her book include these armored leadership approaches compared with daring leadership examples:

• Driving perfectionism and fostering fear of failure vs. modeling and encouraging healthy striving, empathy and self-compassion.
• Working from scarcity and squandering opportunities for joy and recognition vs. practicing gratitude and celebrating milestones and victories.
• Propagating the false dichotomy of victim or viking, crush or be crushed vs. practicing integration—strong back, soft front, wild heart.
• Being a knower and being right vs. being a learner and getting it right.
• Hiding behind cynicism vs. modeling clarity, kindness and hope.
• Using criticism as self-protection vs. making contributions and taking risks.

Brown takes a research-based and scientific approach in writing Dare to Lead. She offers customized frameworks, lists and tools that emerging, established and even faltering leaders can  immediately employ. 

There is an important discussion of psychological concepts, such as shame and how shame can get in the way and impede leadership. There’s a wonderful examination of our human nature and how we often imagine the worst-case scenarios when stressed, along with the damage it can do to our ability to lead. These illustrations are powerful and insightful and make Dare to Lead a more effective book. Building on leadership lessons throughout history, Brown provides her own guidance to advance the field of leadership in a way that is relevant, contemporary and accessible.

As you read Dare to Lead, you will find many common-sense points that you can immediately put into practice.

If you’re the type of CMO I once was, who thought that my CEO shouldn’t show vulnerability, you may start to question some of the old rules of armored leadership.

ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt the Author | Michael Krauss

Michael Krauss is president of Market Strategy Group based in Chicago.

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Nonprofit marketers know that stories can compel donors, but it can be a tricky endeavor to procure those stories. Nonprofit beneficiaries may feel less driven to talk about one of the most challenging periods of their life. They may feel embarrassed or as though they’re being defined by their experience.

“Some ethical concerns are the same as with any other marketing efforts, such as always ensuring you have permission from someone to utilize their image,” says Rick Cohen, chief communications officer and COO of the National Council of Nonprofits. “Nonprofits have an added layer of sensitivity in that some of the people who utilize their services would prefer that others not know.”

Finding someone comfortable with sharing their story can be difficult enough, and many marketers may breathe a sigh of relief when they find a willing subject: The hard part is over. But to tell a story that will empower the person or community and motivate the audience, marketers need go beyond the problem-then-solution formula.

“You can’t tell a story about a whole person unless you ask about the whole person,” says Kate Marple, director of communications at the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership.

Marple says that she began thinking differently about nonprofit storytelling about four years ago, when her best friend agreed to speak at a nonprofit’s fundraising gala. Leading up to the event, the nonprofit organization proposed edits that removed personal parts of her friend’s speech. “She had been asked to share something deeply personal, but to fit her experience into a predetermined narrative created by the organization and its goals,” Marple recalls. “I witnessed how that made her feel, and the strength she demonstrated in pushing back to maintain control of her narrative and ensure her perspective was included. It drove home for me this need to truly partner with people if we are going to ask them to share their stories.”

Always Seek Stories, Not Just When You Need Them

Nonprofit marketers reach for stories before a major campaign, while planning an event or when a reporter requests a comment. But only seeking these stories when needed can force them into narrow boxes.

“When the need for a story is urgent, it can put pressure on both a client and on a staff member, and eliminate the chance for more thoughtful conversations where that person is not only in control of their narrative, but also in shaping the larger message,” Marple says. When looking for a story at the last minute, marketers may only seek out anecdotes that have the happiest ending, versus searching for someone in the best position to tell their story, a teller who would likely benefit from doing so.

The person should guide the storytelling, not the other way around. Marple recommends that nonprofits create a culture inside the organization where clients and community members served by the organization collaborate to determine what stories should be told. “I think our job is not just to ask people for their stories, but to ask for their guidance in what stories to tell and how and where to tell them,” she says.

Nonprofits should actively and regularly build a speaker’s bureau, an ongoing narrative project or have a regular opportunity to submit stories. “It’s important to engage with people who are not in active crisis and those who are no longer using an organization’s services so that there is less of a chance someone will feel obligated to share if they don’t want to,” Marple says.

Don’t Reduce a Person to Their Problem, and Don’t Make the Nonprofit a Hero

Overcoming a challenge may be an unforgettable experience. It may even define a certain period of a person’s life. But it doesn’t tell their entire story. “If you’re interviewing someone, it’s important to ask not just about what happened to them, but about who they are, about their family, about what they’re proud of,” Marple says. “Before a story introduces a problem, it should introduce a person.”

Focusing on a person’s problem can unintentionally victimize them. Oftentimes, the nonprofit gets involved in the issue after a person or community has already been trying to right a wrong. An over-simplified story can paint the organization as the hero, making the nonprofit bigger than the person’s story.

Marple gives the example of a mother who blew the whistle on management about lead paint in her building. She had been trying for months to get her city involved before the nonprofit stepped in. “Focusing on mom’s advocacy in the story still acknowledges the problem,” Marple says, “but it conveys the bigger problem of substandard housing and shows that mom was the one trying to do something about it, not only for her family, but for others. An organization’s work should be mentioned, but never in a way that evokes a savior image.”

Showing a fuller picture, one that starts before and continues after the nonprofit’s involvement, humanizes the subject beyond their challenge. Marple herself encountered the issue in her work as a documentary playwright. “As part of my theater work, I started telling stories about my own experiences with childhood illness and as a queer person,” she says. “I began to ask myself if I would want to share those stories in the context of a nonprofit campaign focused on health care or LGBTQIA+ rights.” Marple says that her biggest fears about sharing her story were that she would be reduced to one thing or she would be used for someone else’s agenda. “I came up with some criteria I’d want followed if someone were asking for my story, and it’s what I now follow if I’m asking someone to share theirs in a nonprofit context.” This includes framing the story through that person’s perspective, giving them complete control over how it’s shared, aiming for informed consent and allowing them to review the final product before publishing.

Cohen echos the need for giving final permission to the subjects. “Nonprofits that work with sensitive populations will usually have policies in place that go a little further in not just asking permission to use an image or story,” Cohen says, “but also give those people the chance to see exactly how those stories are being told and where before granting permission.”

Empathy Is Greater Than Sympathy

Marple published a guide on empathetic, partnered storytelling, called “Who Tells the Story?” In the guide, she writes that sympathy leads to charity, while empathy leads to change. She says that a story focused solely on a person’s problem or the details of their circumstance causes the audience to feel sympathy or pity. Research shows that sympathy can elicit donations, but pity also runs the risk of putting distance between donors and beneficiaries.

“When stories are overly focused on circumstances, it’s easier for those hearing the story to feel like, ‘That’s not me,’ or ‘That could never happen to me,’” Marple says. “But when we tell stories that more fully depict who someone is—what kind of parent they are, what they find joy in, the incredible advocacy they do for themselves and their community—alongside the story of what happened, it is easier for people hearing it to recognize themselves or their families in that story, in that person and in that community.”

Focusing on the trials of a person or community may elicit donations, but it may also fail to connect donor with cause in a more foundational way. If a donor can see themselves in the affected person or can see that there are relatable layers to their story, the story creates a connection. Those connections may be the difference between getting a one-time donation and creating a lifelong supporter.

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