Unified Studies - Portland Social Media, Web Design, and Web development

Maybe your non-profit should be in the movie business

Transmedia has been the buzzword in the entertainment business for quite some time.

A long excerpt from a post by Lina Srivastava

Nonprofits engaged in social change initiatives should view storytelling as a necessary component of mission-fulfillment. Any individual institution engaging an audience—whether beneficiaries, funders, board members, community or other stakeholders—is required to convey clearly and artfully what it does, how its does it, where its work is most effective and necessary, and why they should support efforts to continue or grow the institution’s work.

In the larger view of systemic change, storytelling takes on an even bigger role, where a well-told story creates a shared experience and helps illuminate all factors (root cause and symptomatic) that effect social change efforts at both global and local levels, creating a comprehensive, connected, “best practice” view of achieving progress.

Nonprofits dealing with social change don’t need to get into the business of content production or multiplatform distribution—but it is a digital world now. It’s likely time to add storytelling to the task list.

 

Lina has a great point. And with the barrier to entry of digital storytelling continuously falling, and the importance of storytelling ever more important, it would be worth any organization's time to explore how they can best tell their story, and even how they can enlist their own intended audience to help craft that story in a way that will resonate through-out their extended networks. It isn't about user-generated content, so much as being enagaged and in charge of the telling of the story. If you are not telling your story in a way that enlists your audience, then you are producing and directing a potential flop. Remember...all the world's a stage

Advertising as Failure - Jeff Jarvis

Jarvis writes (and videos) on Buzzmachine of the notion of advertising as failure.

He says in part: "the ideal relationship a company should have with its customer is that it produces a great product the customer loves and talks about and thus sells; there is no need for advertising there."

True enough, and this is naturally where the concept of social media and listening come into play, as everyone knows now. Customer evangelists spreading the word, company listens and responds to concerns and problems, a two way conversation.

I think this begs one small question...isn't advertising sometimes used to get a product in front of some consumers, not always because the product is a failure that needs to be propped up by advertising?

New companies should consider the "too small to fail" approach when launching. Launch as small as you can, so you can be as nimble as possible, so you can change your strategy on the fly if need be...or change your PRODUCT on the fly if need be. It's the companies with giant burn rates that have to advertise their way into the consumer's heart. Combining the too small to fail approach, with the conversational tools available, and a targeted media and advertising spend to "grease the wheels" of beginning the conversation might be a good hybrid approach.