Wednesday, August 01, 2007: The Eight Barriers to Building a Community Reputation
David Finch, Managing Director, Connect Strategy Group
Cause marketing, social marketing, community marketing, community investment, corporate philanthropy, and sponsorship are different terms that share a common strategic objective – to build an emotional connection with a targeted community by investing in it to make a difference. In the last two decades, community-based marketing has grown rapidly as traditional mass media becomes more fragmented and organizations attempt to cut through the noise and deepen their relationship with their targeted audiences. For example, IEG in 2004 estimated that sponsorship activity globally had grown to exceed $28B from an estimated $500M in 1982.
This Connect Insight paper examines the common barriers that marketers face in building an emotional connection with targeted audiences through community-based marketing.
The Eight Barriers
Barrier 1: The Lack of Strategic Integration: This is the most fundamental barrier facing organizations today. For many corporations, community initiatives such as community investments, partnerships, sponsorships and donations are viewed as short-term and tactical. Decisions are commonly made on a reactive basis (often as part of an organization’s budget cycle) rather than as part of a broader corporate strategy. This model may work for traditional advertising and promotions whose goal is primarily to influence near-term consumer behaviour. However, fundamentally, all community initiatives should be focused on the goal of building a long-term emotional connection with a targeted group. It is therefore imperative that these investments be rooted to the foundation of both corporate priorities and corporate values - not an afterthought to them. The core question is - who specifically are you trying to influence and what is your ultimate objective? By answering these questions in advance, you will ensure that community initiatives will be aligned with corporate priorities.
Barrier 2: The Lack of Perceived Value: The second barrier is the lack of internal perceived value from these investments. If community initiatives today are fundamentally reactive – responding to donation and sponsorship requests – it will be very difficult to link these investments to broader corporate priorities. As a result, at the end of a budget year, the core question will be asked by management – “Did these investments make a difference to delivering our corporate priorities?” The answer must lie in empirical measurement linked to defined corporate priorities – the third barrier.
Barrier 3: The Lack of Measurable Return: For decades, compared to measured media such as TV, corporate marketers have given community initiatives a free pass when it comes to a disciplined measurement model for return on investments. The industry culture accepted that these activities were immeasurable and “feel good” and as a result, little attempt were made to quantify the results against clearly defined empirical objectives. Without rigorous empirical measurement, community activities will always be at risk from budget cycles and reactive management decisions. Building an integrated community strategy that is founded on corporate priorities and values will ensure that community initiatives that clearly deliver measured results are recognized and enhanced while ones that do not are terminated.
Barrier 4: The Lack of Focused Investment: Without defined corporate priorities, corporate values, a target audience or measurement, community marketing is founded on nothing more than guesswork. As a result, organizations dramatically dilute the return on their community initiatives by investing in a wide array of activities commonly influenced by the personal preference of the decision maker. This dilution reduces the ability for these organizations to connect emotionally with their community because the attempt to be all things to all people feeds barriers five, six and seven.
Barrier 5: External Pressure to Donate: The lack of a disciplined and defined strategy creates an external perception that all sponsorships, community investments or donations can be rationalized as a benefit to a given corporation. This in turn creates an incredible quantity of external requests for financial support from any and all organizations.
Barrier 6: Internal Pressure: The pressure to donate and support is driven not only externally but also internally from employees. It is most problematic when senior managers or executives exert personal influence in deciding community investment, partnership, sponsorships and donations to support personal passions as opposed to an integrated corporate strategy. Success does require that staff and management be engaged and passionate about a corporation’s community initiatives. However, it is also essential that an objective strategic framework driven by corporate priorities and values be developed prior to considering or evaluating investment options. The problem we have seen over and over is that specific tactical community investment decisions influence and drive the overall community strategy rather than the inverse.
Barrier 7: Resource Demands: A lack of a disciplined and defined strategy in this area has an enormous impact on human and financial resources. Staff time is required to evaluate and respond to sponsorship and donation requests, and also to manage the activation of the wide array of approved but highly unfocused activity.
Barrier 8: Legacy Investments: The final barrier is one of the most difficult to overcome. Fortunately, it is a barrier that is unique to larger and more established organizations. This is the barrier of overcoming years of unfocused legacy investments. Numerous sectors from telecommunications to utilities are challenged by this issue. The lack of a disciplined and defined strategy linked to corporate priorities and values has created in some cases hundreds of legacy investments, representing every potential field from arts and culture to health to international development. The challenge is that some of these investments may have succeeded over the years (though inefficiently) in creating both an emotional connection and trust equity among the affected stakeholders. In many cases, recipients have in fact become dependent on legacy funding and terminating it will destroy the established emotional connection and trust equity. After developing an integrated community strategic plan, founded on corporate priorities and values, an objective empirical audit should be conducted on these legacy investments to rank them against the strategy. Inevitably some will excel and some will fail. To those that fit the strategy, resources must be reallocated and focused to enhance their potential and define the deliverables. To those that fail, they must be individually analyzed to determine the potential damage of termination. In some cases a multi-year phase out plan can be developed to ensure the community partners have sufficient time to source alternative funding.
