 As-Salam-Alaikum Wa-Alaikum Wa-Alaikum Wa-Alaikum Welcome to the virtual University of Pakistan. We are getting into lecture number 16 of Marketing for Non-profits, MKT 628. The topic of learning is going to be the remaining part of the organizational level of brand raising, the part which falls within the realm of marketing people. You will recall that in the previous component, I talked about all those elements which fall within the domain of the top management, meaning vision, mission, values, objectives and goals. And in this component, I'm going to talk about things like audiences, the positioning and personality because these three are the ones which are typically the marketing centric elements and jobs and therefore have to be taken care of by the marketing people. First of all, audiences, no question about the fact that we need to have a very precise understanding of the audiences that we are dealing with. And we also know the fact that basically there are three classifications of audiences that any non-profit deals with. The first is the fundraising audience, consisting of individuals, groups, corporations, foundations, governmental as well as international agencies. Then we have program audiences. Any audiences that are connected with the program, either they execute to the program or they are at the receiving end and they are the subject of that particular program. It could be communities and we also call them clients. The third classification is advocacy audiences. Here we have people like community leaders, volunteers, activists and all those people and sponsors who really advocate over cause, not only advocated, just advocated, rather advocated with the uniqueness that we have. Since all these audiences are very different in nature, they have the different profiles, different personalities and the different character. It is for this particular fact that the experts seem to believe that we need to look into all these audiences in a more insightful way so that we really can draw lines between different subsets of these audiences. So this basically takes us back to the segmentation exercise and we have to take a very close look at that exercise, not from the point of view of the motivations that we made the basis of while we looked into segments as to what really it is that motivates people to donate towards a certain cause. Now what we can do is we can take a look at the same research design and results and come up with certain more findings by taking a look at our results of psychographics, put together demographics and then come up with those segments which we think are just about appropriate in terms of reachability through different communication tools. There are segments who are more reachable by the internet kind of supports and then there are segments who are more receptive to traditional way of marketing things. But here what experts also profess is that we develop different personas for different segments. So in other words, one particular group of people, whether we are talking of donors or we are talking of other audiences, program audiences or advocacy audiences, we have to draw lines in terms of creating different segments and those segments, the ones created have to be labelled in as precise a way as they can reflect the personality of that particular segment or that particular sub-segment or that particular group. In other words, experts say that the broad terminology like donors is not good enough when it comes to dealing with different audiences with the help of different kinds of communications and different tools that we have at our disposal. And I have given you the example because we have a mix pack of IMC, meaning Integrated Communication Marketing Campaign and depending on what really triggers the mechanism at the receiving end, we describe the persona of different segments. Now, if we again go back to the example of the marketing research program that we carried out in order to unravel the motivations behind donors to the making donations, we also, like I said, can take a look at the psychographic and demographic findings in terms of defining their personalities. For example, donors who are very regular and they are regular because they are convinced on the basis of certain evidence that our program is very effective and that we are a God-fearing company and whatever we do, it really improves the social welfare and takes care of, forget so many poor downtrodden people and so on and so forth. We've got to give a certain personality trait or personality label just like we describe one person as hardworking, as honest, get the full of integrity and so on and so forth. Once we have labeled different groups with different personas, we can come up with the right communication campaigns. To elaborate further on that particular research design and findings, we also can surmise a very important point that we can come up with the most appropriate communication campaigns in terms of our priorities or in terms of our changing priorities. For example, if there's a change of priorities in relation to our objectives, then we've got to see which communication campaign is more appropriate in this particular situation because we here are dealing with this particular audience which happens to be a segment or a sub-segment of donors or of advocates or of program executors. So the appropriateness of the communication campaign depending on drawing these segmental lines is the essence of taking an insightful look at the audiences. It is not just the context of the changing priorities because we can take a look at the appropriateness of communications in so many different ways. For example, again, going back to the segments that we drew up in relation to the motivating factors, we can concentrate on those segments that happen to be regular donors only because we know the kind of personality that this segment has. And don't forget that the personality of the overall segment has to be looked at as the personality of one particular person. I'm going to throw some more light on the personality side of the element, but here in terms of creating personas, we have to look at the appropriateness of which communication is going to be the most suitable to which particular audience. So if it is a question of shifting motivations or rather strengthening the motivations of the donors from their being casual to their becoming rather regular, we can come up with a different communication campaign because the objective is to strengthen the motivation. Whereas we may find ourselves in a situation where the people have started having negative motivations in the sense that they now have started donating to some other cause. For example, the people who say they donate on religious basis may start experiencing certain shifts in their behavior because somebody else has approached them and their motivation to start donating to another cause is still the same, meaning religious reasons. But they think that the other cause is more pressing and therefore it warrants that their attention more than it does for your program or your cause. You are going to come up with a different communication campaign in that particular situation. Go back to the tools of communication at our disposal and you will realize that personal spaces is one of the tools. We can have personal meetings with such donors, face to face conversations. We can get into small seminars where we can reinforce the importance and the uniqueness, so to say, of our program and they may succeed in convincing those people that they still have to continue donating toward our cause. The point here is that different communications are needed for the different kinds of audiences. Audiences have to be divided into different groups and subgroups as long as they contain the essence of their being mutually exclusive and their being entities and groups that will give you differential responses. I mean, the divisions have not to be carried out just for the sake of it. Divisions have to be carried out because you're looking for differential responsiveness and this differential responsiveness is the denominator on which you base your decisions on the way you communicate, meaning the appropriateness of the communication tools and then the communication campaign that you put together to reach different people who you think are going to come up with different responses, they will behave in a different way and therefore they've got to be reached in a different way. Another important feature of this particular element is that the persona that you have given to the different groups has got to be looked into and studied on an ongoing basis because there could be changes in the personas depending on changes in the environment and therefore whenever a change takes place you've got to bring about a corresponding change in your communication patterns and the ongoing study with the help of small surveys, interviews and focus groups that could also be instituted. It is not always that you come up with a very comprehensive and complicated or sophisticated kind of a quantitative research design which should be the basis of your research but once you have carried that out it should remain valid for quite some time to come and you can always supplement that with the help of these aids that you have at your disposal because we never lose sight of one particular reality of nonprofits that they are always hard pressed for funding and it is the job of the marketing people to do more in less. This is the essence. With that let's now move on to the next element of this portion of the organizational level and that is positioning. Here I'm not going to talk about what positioning is. We all are kind of experts on what it really is. We know it is the point of differentiation and the essence is to go to the home into the minds of our audiences with that simple uniqueness. We know all that. Here we've got to take stock of the interpretation that goes into the communicative process and we've got to see to it that we can develop the right links between our positioning and the vision and mission statements and also our personality. This is basically the job of positioning which gets highlighted in terms of our communication campaigns and the level is very important in the sense that it really lays the ground for the next level which is about identity. In other words it is the point of differentiation and our positioning which becomes the basis of creating the visual identity and side by side the messaging platform. We know as part of the messaging platform the vision statement and the mission statement or if we have just one statement which is a combination of vision and mission is extremely significant and is very critical and the positioning flows out of the mission that we have created and established for the organization and therefore positioning becomes the basis of all that which follows the point of positioning meaning the basis of the personality and the basis of the identity level and of course the experiential level because it is a positioning which makes its mark and plays its vital role when we pick up the right tools of communication and put them together as part of the integrated marketing communications. Here one question might pop up in your minds what really is the difference between positioning and the mission? Well it's a very sensitive kind of question and the answer lies in there being not really a great difference between the two. The only thing is that the positioning is internally focused whereas mission is externally focused. We talk about the same things as part of the positioning statement and we talk about the same things as part of the mission statement. However, there is a difference and that lies in the complexity and the details of the mission statement which are not written as part of the statement per se which are written as detailed messaging about which I'm going to talk later as part of another level and as part of another element. But the point is that positioning is something which we talk about in superlatives like we say this is the best program that anybody has seen on the non-profits side. I'm just giving one example. We might say that we have the highest level of qualitative expertise professionals who work for our organization. Now these are the kind of statements which are extreme statements and they are laced with superlatives. This is not the kind of approach that we take when we talk of the mission statement or when we talk of anything that we say in support of the mission because mission is externally oriented and it is externally focused. It is supposed to be read by anybody meaning by all the audiences who come into contact with the organization. Again, it is not just the external audience or audiences it also is the internal audience. Remember I talked about the fact that in the absence of formal expression of the mission statement two or three different people from within the same organization may talk about the same mission in two or three different ways and that's where the disaster may lie. That is why this concept must not be oversimplified and everything has got to be detailed in writing with the help of your seniors and even outside sponsors. The audiences that happen to help us with advocacy, with fundraising and with provision of all that human resource that we do not have at our disposal and that they render that service through the staff members of their own organizations which may either be on the private side or which rather are mostly on the private side including commercial enterprise or any part of the agencies. It is the help which people are more than willing to give wherever they can be supportive. So back to the point of the positioning. It has to be very succinct. It has to be internally focused and it has to lay the ground for everything that follows the positioning, the meaning while describing the personality of the organization and while developing the visual identity of the organization and while expressing all the elements of the messaging platform because everything has to revolve around this pivot. This is the key. Positioning also is the key against which we can assess our organization and against which we can assess whether we are following the right course or not. You will recall that we can do that with the help of small surveys, focus groups, et cetera, et cetera, just to stay on course and make sure that we are following ourselves by the nose and not really drifting right or left just because somebody from within the organization thinks that we've got to be little adventurous and that we've got two monotonous and that we've got to experiment a few more things. The answer is no. Again, whatever you decide at any point of the strategic process, meaning at any juncture which you can relate with one of the elements of the brand-raising process which basically is a translation of the strategic process, you've got to relate that particular juncture or situation with the element, the most appropriate element on that particular grid or on that particular spectrum and then see where is the relationship and what is it that has gone wrong if something really has or if something has not gone wrong just the whimsical thinking or advocating things which do not really have a strategic solid basis and should not make sense to you in terms of making any changes. There's so much for the positioning side of the organizational level of the brand-raising and don't lose sight of the fact that this is part of the marketing realm and with this we move on to the next point or element which is the personality. Any organization has a very distinct personality and personality basically is a function of so many different attributes and organization thinks it has so many different attributes for example it is very hard-working, it is very competent, it is a matter of fact, it is God-fearing and so on and so forth but what is important about all these attributes in the context of personality is that all these attributes have got to be perceived by the audiences in the same way. So this again is a question of perceptions. There is something which you think exists and there is something which the audiences do not seem to think does exist and therefore there has to be a total coherence and rather congruence of the two factors meaning what the reality is and what is being perceived by the audiences. There are so many different ways of finding out the personality of the organization which you are trying to create does match with the perceptions of your audiences or not. You know you can carry out research and I don't really have to elaborate on that the kind of research which you have to carry out just to make sure that the attributes which you think you are enriched with also are the ones which are perceived the same way but the important point here is you create a personality which basically flows out of the vision of the organization. The reason I talk about that is because this factor is kind of inherent just try to look into any of the very well-known established and respectable non-profit institutions in this country like the Cancer Hospital in Lahore or the Geology Institute in Karachi or the Ikea Center, the Hospital in Karachi and all over the country as a matter of fact because you will realize all these institutions have different personalities. Now the personalities which they have or which they have developed have not been developed by an accident. They are not the result of ad hocism. As a matter of fact you see that that is the result of a certain vision. The founders, whoever founded these organizations had a vision and while envisioning what they wanted and while looking into the future they certainly had certain personality traits in their minds of the organizations which they were just about to create or which they have created and therefore the personality is something which flows out of the vision and it gets the developmental increments as the process goes from one stage to another meaning with the flow of the strategic process. Let us take the example of the Cancer Hospital in Lahore in Shaukat Hanum and take a look at the attributes of personality which the people perceive. In other words, which are believed by the audiences who come into contact with that hospital or even those people who do not really have anything to do with the hospital and they all believe in the hospital being a place which is honest, which is modest, which is methodical and systematic. It is state-of-the-art facility, it is competent, it is God-fearing, it is meritorious. So these are the kind of attributes which are part of the list which characterizes the hospital I am talking about and same goes for institutions like SIUT, the Udology Institute in Karachi and LRBT, the ICARE, the Trust Hospital in Karachi or rather all over the country. The personality or the personalities that these institutions have have not been developed by accident. As a matter of fact, they must have been part of the vision of the founders. They wanted their organizations to be like that and then you see they have worked hard through commitment and with a sense of purpose to bring the mission of the organization to life. How do you bring the mission to life? Well, by following all the steps of the strategic process or brand-raising. You may not call that brand-raising within your organization, but the fact still remains that you do something very similar to the process and you do that in a formalized way which institutionalizes all the steps and all the links that present themselves in an integrative fashion and give us the results in terms of very consistent communications. We have these consistent communications because we have the right positioning and we have the right personality. The point that we need to ponder here is that different institutions have different personalities and the personality also is a function of the purpose of the organization and that is how an organization develops itself. So going by a hypothetical situation, let us take a look at that nonprofit you are a part of that wants to operate in the area of human services. You are tasked with developing the brand name, the tagline and the personality of the organization. You will like to have a brand name which is expressive of a friendly attitude because you really want to be helpful to all the victims of different sorts of accidents. You would like to come up with a color, the palette which is expressive of passion and you in all probability would like to go for red color because that is the kind of service you are providing and that in most probabilities seems to have the best match with the passion with which you have created the organization and when it comes to developing the tagline about which I am going to talk in a short while you would like to have a tagline which is expressive of efficiency and which also may have life-saving overtones because you are trying to save the victims of accidents you have to take them to the hospital at a very quick speed and you have to offer paramatical services on the way and therefore efficiency is the essence of the purpose of your existence and since you work toward saving their lives if the tagline also has those connotations so much the better. Another hypothetical situation could be that of an organization that is operating to conserve certain environmental features and you again are out to develop a brand name and it's the tagline and of course other features the question here is how do you do that? Well when it comes to picking the brand name it has to be the one which is expressive of serenity, tranquility and peace but when it is a question of picking the color palette I think we've got to go for all shades of blues and greens that express nature's colors and when it is a question of picking the tagline we have to go for a modern sounding kind of a tagline which carries a strong appeal for all those segments of population that are lovers of environment and prefer to have very neat and clean surroundings So with these two hypothetical examples I think it becomes clear that it is a function of the personality of the organization or the institution which basically lays the ground or the tone and the mood of communications in order to reach our targets more effectively. One with the word of caution here just like I said in relation to a couple of other elements we've got to be conscious about attributes also the meaning attributes of personality we've got to make sure from time to time that the attributes that we think are perceived by our audiences are the ones that are still relevant to our communications because if something has gone wrong with the culture of the organization or a change has taken place in terms of external environment that has bearing on our communication campaign or our personality in one way or the other we've got to look into all those factors and bring about adjustments so that we stay relevant Relevance and consistency are two words which are extremely important when it comes to putting together our communication campaigns with this our elements of the organizational level are complete and we now can say that it is not just vision and mission which should be publicized and propagandized by the organization it also is a function of so many other factors which are equally important and it is the interplay of all these elements that we complete the strategic process and in other words this strategic process for brand raising consists of vision, mission, values, objectives, audiences, positioning, personality now there are certain sub-elements which I'll be talking in the following components but these are the major ones that from the constitution of the organizational level and you will agree with me with no hesitation that these are the elements that really drive the organization they're responsible for deployment of different resources they're responsible for putting together different programs responsible for execution of those programs and involvement of all the human resources and financial resources and therefore they've got to be very consistent they've got to be linked with each other in an integrative fashion and only by doing so we are going to make our communications very consistent and we are going to keep subjectivity out of our communications and we are going to keep them very objective in other words in very plain words we're not going to be influenced by those stakeholders or even people from within the organization who may like to bring about a whimsical change toward any element of the whole process because until it is supported by a change in one of the elements it does not really warrant any implementation and you should not be influenced by anyone who does not think in a strategic way now this is not to say that we as marketing people have to be rebellious which generally people think we are but the fact is that we've got to be very systematic and orderly and logical in terms of following all the steps so that we can keep our communications very effective, very consistent very relevant to the point and the test of our communications for being consistent and logical and so on and so forth lies in answering some of the questions the one is we take a look at our communications in a very introspective way the meaning that we carry out is self-examination by looking into the factor of positioning and personality is it that our communications reflect the right positioning do they reflect the right personality for which you see that we have learned quite a bit so far and are our communications engaging and to what extent they really are motivating different audiences to take the desired action as long as we get answers in an affirmative to all the questions that I have talked about and we are convinced that we have consistency of communications our positioning, our personality are well represented and vision and mission of the organization are also very well expressed and there is no ambiguity about the interpretation of the mission of the organization we should be well content with the communication campaign that we have put together with this I now would like to say thanks and on to the next topic of learning we are now getting into the next level of brand raising which is the identity level this level has the two sub levels the one is what we call visual identity and the other is the messaging platform visual identity consists of things like logo, color, images, topography, etc and images of course are inclusive of pictures and any graphics which we may think are relevant to the visual identity of the organization the messaging platform consists of things like the name of the organization vision, meaning vision statement, mission statement, values statement and then key messages and then a few other elements which I don't really want to bombard you with because they sound very strange kind of terminologies but what we have to keep in mind is that anything that we need to communicate in order to build our brand and communicate through different materials may those be brochures or flyers or advertising campaigns we've got to have different communication supports and we've got to have all these things ready so that we very succinctly and clearly can communicate with the target audiences now it is very interesting here that this is the level of brand raising which basically is associated with the building of a brand because it is logos, it is colors, it is images, topography and of course expression of all the relevant statements which are very supportive of the brand building process here we've got to understand what a logo is as part of the visual identity well the logos could be of different kinds but before I start talking of different kinds let me tell you here that logo by itself is not as powerful as it is while it is supported by other elements for example along with the logo we have for the name and we also need to have the tagline and the certain other features, all creative features so logo does play a very important role, it is something very powerful but it is not extremely effective just by itself until the time it becomes so popular it becomes so highly visible and knowledgeable that the whole world knows what this is all about then just the logo is going to do the trick for your organization here we are talking about a situation in which we are still in the developmental phase so that we can understand the essence of all these concepts logos could be like I said of different kinds the one is just the abbreviation of a name and this abbreviation is not supported by any other feature it is just a few letters and that's the end of it for example if we say LRBT and we do not really support that with the tagline or with the full name we say that this is the logo I'm not saying that it is the logo for that particular institution what I'm saying is that a logo could be just the abbreviation of a full name and a logo could also contain some images some photograph or some graphics or some icons and when that happens logo becomes even more stronger because of the imagery and icons and photographs are things which go across all literacy lines and especially when we are trying to reach audiences who are not really highly educated we need to have logos which are supported by these features and therefore the people on the creative side not all of them are sitting within the organization and the fact is in the context of a non-profit most of the creative people are from outside they are from advertising agencies or consultants who specialize in doing creative work to seek for brands I'm not saying brand building but creative work for the brand building and you can always hire those consultants to carry out these jobs and all the more reason that you need to have clear messaging platform meaning very clear positioning for the organization and vision and mission statements and so on and so forth so that you can provide them with a brief that explains the essence of the whole organization so while developing a logo which may sound like a very small thing or a small article of a big element it still carries a lot of importance in terms of what is it that we need to generate in terms of creativity in terms of resources and in terms of the logical sense that we have to put together a couple of words about the logos that are just abbreviations because the well experts seem to think and there's a consensus on that that those logos are not really effective as a matter of fact they are not the ones who really can engage different audiences you may be thinking at the moment and a counter argument maybe flashing into your mind is when you think of LRBT or SIUT or the abbreviated name for Shakath Khanum you might think to yourselves why is it that these abbreviations are so well known well for the simple reason that a lot of effort a planned effort and investment in terms of time and money has gone into the whole brand building exercise and it is over time that they have become very catchy and that's the difficult side of abbreviated names because you really have to work a lot before you start having your logo acknowledged as something immediately recognizable and that is the downside of abbreviations however once you have the logo supported by a full name then it makes a better sense and the reason the abbreviated names do not make a lot of sense to our audiences because experts again seem to think that those seem to be confined only to the understanding of those who created them and those are not really meant to go across the internal organizational lines into the realm of all those audiences that you need to reach and that makes those lines kind of fuzzy in order to keep them very crystal clear and in focus you need to have names which are expressive and that's why while giving you examples of the two different personalities of two different hypothetical institutions I talked about names expressing particular purpose of those organizations or institutions and therefore it is more sensible so to say to have a name which is complete or it could be just one word which is expressive of the purpose of the organization in other words we are looking into this exercise of logos from two different angles the logos that are just typography meaning just a name it could be an abbreviated name or it could be a full name and logos which also carry some images and photographs or some artwork some creative artwork the essence of a logo whatever the form is meaning just typography or with icons lies in answering a couple of questions and the question is does the logo really reflect our positioning it's the same question that you have to ask about positioning in terms of your personality and so on and so forth does the logo reflect our personality if it does why if it does not why in both the situations you've got to be very insightful because this kind of information is going to reinforce your confidence if you are on the right lines and it is going to allow you to take some corrective action if you think you need to revise your logo and you also need to answer the question whether the logo is engaging does it motivate different audiences does it integrate those audiences and last but not the least is the logo expressive of the vision statement and the mission statement if the answer to all these questions are in affirmative then you are on the right lines in terms of putting together your communication campaign or in other words in terms of creating your logo whatever logo it is it has been created based on certain strategic considerations and it answers your questions in terms of other important elements which have to be considered and not lost sight of when you do this creative work let us now move on to the next element which is about typography typography basically is a matter of style and the type of print it basically is a function of font and size and we all are accustomed to those elements typography has a lot of communicative power when it is a question of reaching our target audience the different kinds of typographies have different levels of characteristics in terms of their communicative power why? because different typographies represent different personalities or different dimensions of personalities of the different organizations where the help of typography you can express the modernism you can express traditionalism and you can express something which is formal and you can express something which is informal now let me give you an example here we are doing a kind of a typography that will be more suitable to the environment conservation cause the one I talked about then a human service for a human service you are going to need to have a typeface which is very serious it may be very bold and it may have colors in a way which allows a passion like I indicated earlier but the fact is the bold typeface and its seriousness can convey the one thing while the flowing typeface on typography express something entirely different and that is why we seem to think as marketing professionals that we have got to standardize the typography of our programs experts could go on to say that all communications within the organization meaning the internal communications and also external communications have got to have the same typography so much so that you know standardized kind of templates for those communications which happen on daily basis are uploaded on websites of different organizations of which you may be familiar and you download one of the template because the organization doesn't really want to make any mistakes when it comes to using the right font the right size and the right justification on the right and left side so on and so forth the trick here is or rather the problem here is trying to standardize the typography when you upload your content on the website when you are dealing with websites and blogs and you are sending email blasts you know you cannot really maintain that kind of consistency of typography and you've got to find yourself in a situation of tradeoff meaning if you try to standardize things you may not get the results at the receiving end because when they download the content it is a question of what is the font and size that happens to be the default of that particular computer and it is because of that reason that people like to go for picture images like in JPEG for example of the matter or the content which they put in the cyberspace but like I said there is a tradeoff it becomes slow in terms of downloads so the organizations have another alternative and that is they like to go for the picture form of just about the logos and taglines and the remaining content can be uploaded in the form of a standardized kind of a font which is the routine standard among so many different audiences all over the world other for example Arial or Times Roman so you have to be very selective here I would like to go back to the tradeoff if you like to maintain the consistency on the net also then you lose in terms of the time pertaining to downloads if you bring about a change in terms of making the download more efficient then you've got to change the font and you've got to keep it as close to your standards as could be and I think with this you are fully in the picture as to what it is that I'm trying to communicate standardization of other typography is something which organizations really pay a very heavy weight to people should get accustomed to something which is extremely consistent in terms of not just the expression not only the expression of the intent meaning the strategic intent they should also get consistent images at every point of exposure at every point of interaction so that they develop and form very consistent images in their minds and it is that consistency which makes our communications effective let us now move on to the remaining two elements and I would like to be very brief on these two, the one is the color and the other one is the photographs and imagery. Well it goes saying that the color palette has got to be the most appropriate and what you have to keep in mind is that basically there are two color palettes every organization in particular nonprofits use because the one is the primary color palette which is just about the two colors generally it is two and the secondary color palette is the one which consists of rather neutral colors which can be added to websites as well and which have the cover and the ability to keep things rather consistent in terms of the photographs and imagery I think it is very clear to all of us by now when we use these elements along with our logos and the taglines and the brand names so to say that we really inject a lot more communicative power into the content because pictures speak volumes and that is what you know what I am talking about and with this we are done with the visual identity of the identity level of brand racing.