 As-Salaam-Alaikum-Qibati' Nohaz-Rat' Wasimás, welcomes you to Lecture No. 22 of Marketing for Non-Profits, MKT 628 at the virtual University of Pakistan. The component of learning is going to be integration of all the three levels of the brand-raising process into communications. Meaning, coming up with a communications campaign which is integrative in its nature after it has taken into account all the three levels. In other words, we have our positioning and personality for the cause right in front of us. We also have the identity level and we know what are the communication tools available to us. There are a host of them and we've got to be very astute in picking up those which are compatible with our cause. This compatibility counts not only in terms of the outreach but also in terms of the financial resource and the human resource that we have at our disposal. So in other words, we are talking about making the campaign very optimal and effective. Optimal in the sense that we have earmarked boundaries within which we operate and we do not keep in store any surprises that may embarrass us later during the campaign. And effective in the sense that we have to have all those tools together which do the job of the outreach and get us the kind of response that we have envisaged as part of the objectives. And therefore, we need to be very consistent in order to be optimal and in order to be effective. So in other words, we can say that our campaign is not going to be optimal and effective if it is not an outgrowth of a very serious consideration of the comprehensive brand raising process which comprises three different levels. If that is not the case, the campaign is going to be ineffective. It is going to be ad hoc because it will not be reflective of a consistent positioning and personality platform. And given that, we are going to end up in a situation which is going to be embarrassing not only for the marketing department but also for the organization as a whole. And therefore, we have got to be very consistent to show that we did follow all the requisite steps that formed in the first place the organizational level and in the second place the identity level and in the third place the experiential level where our audiences in particular the target markets start experiencing what we have to offer and the channels through which we offer and the tools that we use in order to offer what we talk about. So we need to count a lot on something which can govern the process of putting together an optimal and an effective campaign. And I would like to take you back to the concept of style guide which I talked about as part of the identity level. That is something that the marketing people and as a matter of fact all in the organization who matter for the communication campaigning have in front of us to make sure that nothing goes unnoticed making things inconsistent and hence ineffective. So how do we ensure that? Well, we have to make the one particular person responsible for the style guide. Now, this is the same style guide which was developed after painstaking efforts on part of so many different people from within the organization meaning people from within the marketing department and people from the very top of the organization who gave the approvals for all the identity marks that we use as part of our communications and also the efforts that were put in by our consultants like people from advertising and promotion agencies and the people who specialize in event management and so on and so forth. We should not shy away from taking help and support of all those people who are into the field and who may not be the part of the organization but are in a position to guide us effectively toward achieving our communication and advertising goals and objectives and therefore the style guide which I am talking about is a result of all those efforts which all the experts have put in. This person generally is a senior person within the organization. In a very small organization the person could be the chief executive himself or herself and in a larger organization this person could be the marketing manager or the marketing director. The objective here is to ensure that nothing comes into the organization as something inconsistent with what we already have designated as consistent parameters, consistent parameters of communication and advertising. So anything which is not in line or not in consonance where the parameters are marked in the style guide we have to refrain from them and this person responsible for maintaining the sanctity of the style guide has to reject all that material that has come into the organization carrying identities and marks which are not really reflective of the true positioning and personality of the organization. Not only that this person could also carry out an investigation into the fact why this kind of inconsistency could have happened in the first place and what in the second place is the remedy to take care of that and this person also has to ensure that this kind of a gross strategic mistake is not repeated again. It is a waste of resources and it does not really send positive signals to the marketplace. Any signals with a sense of inconsistencies are not going to be helpful to the organization as a matter of fact they are going to be detrimental. The implication here is for people like you when you enter such organizations and start working as assistants to the marketing manager or to the communications manager you have got to be fully prepared in terms of your knowledge about all these parameters. Although you will not have the prime responsibility of putting together these campaigns and then executing them with your responsibility but nevertheless you certainly could be extremely useful support to the bosses in terms of pinpointing those factors which are not in consonance with the parameters of the style guide because you are being prepared to enter the gates of the organizations and start helping organizations in every strategic way by making some valuable contributions. Now the question here is in order to make communication campaigns very effective what are the broad parameters that we have to keep in mind and give a very serious consideration to the while we put together these campaigns. I am going to talk about the factors which we already have learned but here you see I would like to pinpoint the relevance of advancing in terms of learning more and more of the course because the more we learn the more we realize that the concepts that we already have learned are intertwined and they play a very significant role in making each other more meaningful and more workable and therefore when I talk about something which already has been taken care of as part of some other component this is not to be mistaken as a repetition rather this is to be looked into an effort to broaden your perspective of the marketing effort in the context of a non-profit which is going to make use of all the concepts that may have to interplay while we put together our communication campaigns. For that matter we put together different strategies. Well first of all we have got to be mindful of the fact that our communications are destined to different audiences. This is something which can hardly be overemphasized. The fact of the matter is that this really is the backbone of our communications and the one mistake at this particular stage and we are going to mess up our whole campaign. What I am saying is that our marketing and communication people have to be mindful of the fact that they are talking with donors at this particular moment and they are talking about particular levels of motivations which cause that particular action on which we have been working so hard. We carried out marketing research in order to realize and reveal as a matter of fact what are the levels of motivation that stir those feelings and actuate these prospects into making donations and then make them donors on a repetitive basis and making them very loyal donors to the organization as long as we have a clear understanding of such motivations and as long as we are keeping our knowledge of those motivations up to date because changes can take place. Your donors may start donating to other causes which are equally noble and therefore your knowledge has got to be up to date in terms of the levels of motivation when you are talking with your donors. Therefore this goes without saying that one set of communications that we have put together for one particular audience does not really work for another. Here I would like to point out another thing. I would like to take you back to the concept of the messaging platform which we put together to make our communication very effective because that is where we talk about all those things that support our mission as well as the positioning and the reflect of our personality in a very comprehensive way because that is a platform which the audience goes through in a comprehensive way educates itself about all the goals, objectives and the steps and measures that we may take to reach our different audiences and make them aware of all that we have put together as part of our programs. It is not just the communication campaign that we are pursuing. It also is an effort on part of the organization to let it be known to its audiences meaning all the audiences what the organization is all about, what it does and where it is destined. Therefore we can say that the messaging platform as part of the identity level is something very primary. It is kind of a generic platform which we use as part of generic and primary communications. You have posters for those primary communications but when it is a question of reaching your audiences with some very particular objectives and goals you need to be a little more precise in terms of choosing your communications. An example of that already has been given while I talked about the distinctiveness between two different campaigns. One belonging to the donor audience and the other belonging to the lobbyists or the volunteers, activists. The point is that you need to bring about changes to communications in terms of updating your status as the program stands in terms of its execution because unless you talk about the updated status you may have to share with the audiences some very interesting stories and this is something which I talked about earlier as well. So you need to bring about a change in the copy of your communication and this is where the importance of the online tools comes in and this is where the dynamism of the online tools plays its role in terms of bringing about that change and making your communication very updated. If a change has taken place to the extent that the organization may start pondering over bringing about a change in the primary of the platform as well so be it and the organization should do it in that particular instance but the fact remains that not very frequently organizations have to undergo that kind of a change. The changes are basically brought about to address different audiences from time to time and another fact that we have to keep in mind that we need to talk about these changes when we go through the different stages of the behavior change model. Here is another concept that we are very familiar with and here is the application or rather the intertwining and the interplay of two different concepts or could be more than two when we talk about the communications and the ability of the communicators to take the audience from one particular stage to another to another and to the final stage until the time the audience really has graduated into the final stage where they become loyal donors or lobbyists or activists. So whatever is the case it all boils down to the ability of the marketing communicators to bring about those changes and to convince their audiences if they happen to be at one particular stage of the behavior change model they need to go to the next stage. So from that particular perspective let us talk about the very first stage which is the pre-contemplation stage. Here you see the objective that the marketing person has to himself or to herself is to offer a beautiful alternative to the audience for which you have put together the program and the basic objective is to bring to light the very fact that an established set of behavior which they are following or which they have adopted is not the one which is socially acceptable and it is not the one which is beneficial for them rather it is detrimental. It is harmful and therefore they have an alternative. They offer another set of behavior which if they adopt they will certainly derive some good benefits out of that and we know the kind of benefits I don't really want to go that far back into the concepts that I really have to talk about the fundamentals all over again but all I'm saying is that it is the duty of the marketing person to convince the audience of the existence of the alternative which is an offering as part of the program and it is an offering as a good alternative for the established behavior which is kind of a negative behavior. For example, your audience is into very heavy smoking or drinking or taking drugs or they are not paying attention to family planning so on and so forth. You need to talk about that alternative very convincingly with the audience that the alternative that you have is a better set of behavior which is going to yield so many different benefits and prepare them to graduate to the next stage which is all about contemplation stage and as the name suggests and we already know that contemplation stage is the one where people start considering very seriously the offering that you have made as a good alternative to the audience and it is the job of the marketing people to here again play a very prominent role in convincing the audience that the alternative carries benefits that far exceed the cost that they may have to pay when they change their behavior. So in other words it is a very formidable challenge for which they are going to prepare their audience into accepting the alternative which they made their audiences aware of in the very stage of the pre-contemplation. So in other words here you people are going to capitalize on the opportunity which you have created by offering that alternative in the first place and then cashing in on that opportunity by highlighting the benefits which you have to convince them are far greater than the costs that they may have to pay. So you see the role of the marketing people that they need to play as part of communications in order to make their audiences more and more aware of the process of behavior change and setting the ground for steering them toward the final stage where the ultimate behavior change takes place and that is the ultimate objective of the marketing department and you people. Therefore with that we get on to the next stage which is all about the preparation and action stage. Here again the marketing people have to play a very important role. A question that may be flashing into your mind. How do marketing people do all this great job with so much effectiveness and make their audiences graduate from one stage to another? Well the answer lies in not just the communication campaigns in terms of the tools that we talked about as part of the experiential level there are some other efforts on part of the marketing people that have to undertake and I'm going to talk about once I'm done with the factors responsible for making your campaigns very effective in the sense that they are really integrated with the three levels of the brand raising process. So let me be done with that first and then I'm going to talk about some additional communication tools that the marketing people have to themselves in order to make the kind of marketing effort very successful I'm talking about meaning taking their audience from one stage to another. Here the marketing people have to prepare their audiences into taking the requisite action. How do they do that? Well this takes us back to the concept of self-efficacy which we learnt as part of one of the components in which I talked about many members of the audiences being confident about their taking requisite actions but feeling at the last final stage a little shy due to any given set of reasons and marketing people jumping in and helping them with the behaviour change. So in other words what I'm saying is there are people who are educated who are fully appreciative of the moves that you have put together and the efforts that you have undertaken in order to have them take the requisite action but then you see they are waiting for people like you to come and talk about this program or this particular step they should take. So in other words they still need the support of someone who can give the whole thing the final push and this is where your role as a marketing expert comes in. This role can be played by way of telling them some inspiring real life stories which they have not heard before and which can convince them that other people have taken similar actions and have felt better of and by the same token you can talk about the motivating factors which have been responsible for people taking action toward the betterment of society. You can talk about the motivations in relation to donors for example and you can talk about different testimonials given to the organization or to your program or to the staff members of the organization by individuals or groups or agencies may those be local agencies or international agencies whatever testimonials stand in your favor you have to talk about those in order to convince your audiences that now is the time they have to take the final action so that they can complete this particular stage of graduation. One more important factor has to be considered here is and that is of theme the meaning what is going to be the theme of the communication campaign whether it is going to be funny or friendly sympathy arousing or it is going to be outright threatening it is going to be friendly if you're talking about improving the environment for example it could also be educative in a way because you want to develop a certain level of awareness on part of your audiences to keep the environment later free and if it is an anti-smoking campaign you can be a little threatening because it is very harmful and therefore you can talk about the number of deaths caused by lung cancer for which the prime culprit is smoking the number of deaths caused by this particular disease or ailment is something that has to be compared with any other cause for death and I'm sure it can bring about some interesting statistical comparisons which will be inviting for your audiences I can give you another example if you are talking about the AIDS it is kind of a disease which results in death no question about that and you can be very convincing and very threatening in your campaign saying that if you do not change your behavior you may die now I'm not saying that we use these very direct words because we still can play with the copy of the communication campaign but then the fact remains that we can be very threatening in terms of the theme it is the mood that really matters so we have to create a mood which automatically homes into the hearts and minds of your audiences who must think that they really are approaching fast toward the terminal day if they did not change their behavior let us now talk about the last stage which is the maintenance stage as the terminology suggests it is this stage where the marketing people maintains the changed behavior of the audiences because this is where the ultimate change takes place and the objective for marketing people is to maintain that change it is just like having loyal customers on the commercial side because once people have started using your product you like them to become repeat purchasers and once they buy your product or your brand again and again they have become brand loyal and exactly by the same token you have to make sure that your audience becomes loyal to your program and whatever role they are playing they've got to play that over and over again and that causes a lot of economies because that's something which is equivalent of a repeat order and that's something I think that I'll be talking about in relation to some other concept as well but the fact remains here is that we need to maintain behaviors because once they have been changed because if they go back to the old behavior we still have the challenge of going back to the earlier stage or earlier stages and start working on those people all over again and we know from research that there are people who go back to their original behaviors but the objective of this stage is to maintain the behavior that already has been changed and here again we can talk about certain motivating stories in order to keep their motivations at a very high level so that they never think in terms of the days which are behind them with this I would say that the factor of communication in terms of having different communications for different audiences is over and we now move to the second factor which is extremely important in order to keep our campaigns because we are very well integrated into the strategic process this takes us to the third factor which is budgeting and the budgeting plays a very important role in terms of pre-planning all the moves in terms of our communication campaigns the factors that many organizations would like to go for huge communication campaigns in order to be very visible and in order to have a widespread outreach but then you see the factor of financial constraints and other associated constraints within the organization that come into play and keep organizations from executing their wishful thinking if I can say that and therefore it is extremely important for the organizations to tie all their plans with limited budgeting it is a good move because it really prevents organizations from running into embarrassing situation later on while they are in the process of executing the program and all of a sudden they realize they have to cut certain parts of the program or they have to cut certain parts of the communication process itself and they are kind of hamstrung to go further ahead with the communication campaigning this is an extremely detrimental situation which outweighs all the positive impact that has been created so far and therefore should be avoided under any given circumstances meaning thereby that we have to resort to budgeting and budgeting exercise basically is like I said earlier tying your plans with the amount of rupees that you have at your disposal if you think you are short of money take it up to see in the board meeting and this is something I talked about earlier and you solicit support not just from the board of directors but also from your donors and all stakeholders convincing them of the effectiveness of the communication campaign that you envisage launching and making use of in terms of achieving your goals and the chances are that you will be in a position to convince all the stakeholders if not all of them, many of them or if not many of them, soft them and will end up generating more revenues as part of the advertising or communications budget having this budget is going to be a safety valve against any embarrassment that may be in store for you if you did not prepare your budget in the first place and therefore you have to be very careful and very considerate of this particular factor the fourth factor is about the competition meaning what the competition is doing and this of course takes us back to the concept of market intelligence as well but I am going to talk about that as part of another learning here I think what is important is that we must know what others are doing and we have to surf their websites we have to subscribe to their newsletter we have to be very analytical about the content rather the quality of content that they have and we have got to pinpoint all the dimensions that we think are responsible for their position of strength in the marketplace and at the same time we also should be critical of all those moves that have failed on their part and have reflected their position of weakness and we as a matter of fact can capitalize on that having known that something our competitors or our peers started or initiated it did not work and therefore we should keep it at a distance and do something which offers us an assurance against a more effective communication campaign so in doing so we also have to be analytical of the factor of interactivity as to how they interact with the different audiences and like I said if you have subscribed to their newsletter and if you go to one of their blogs you interact with them and you know what they are all about and the fact is they can do the same with you and this tells us you see the power of the online tools and at the same time the need for us to be alert all the time and need for us to be very quick all the time in terms of being very updated with all the stories and with all those matters and substances that can be very convincing for different audiences so the four factors that I have talked about in the context of integrating communication campaigns into the strategic process are we are dealing with different audiences and therefore we need to have different communication campaigns and we have talked about to see these communication campaigns in terms of the differential with regard to different stages of the behavior change model so don't forget that we are communicating with them at a time when they are changing their behavior they have started changing their behavior some of them already have changed the stage where they were earlier and now happen to be at a different stage therefore you see that we have to go along those stages with them and as a matter of fact facilitate them in graduating from one stage to another and that is where the test lies and that really is a very formidable challenge for marketing people but then the factor is that is something only they can do and none else on the behalf will do that job and then I talked about the factor of budgeting which is very important because it keeps us very realistic and we can come up with the optimal level of campaigning we can be constrained and restrained to begin with instead of jumping into the water before putting our toes in the first place that is what I am saying now the last factor that I talked about was about competition we learn a lot from competition and given the online tools I think it is no longer the case which used to be more than 10 years ago when people really had hard time trying to find out what the competition was really doing they had to go to the marketplace physically to find out the different moves they had made and then carry out certain studies to find out to what extent they had been successful with the advent of the internet and all the tools that we have to choose from we can be more effective while sitting before our computers this is not to discount the importance of going to the marketplace in physical terms but this is support that we have to ourselves with this the component of integration of communications with the strategic process is over and I am going to talk of the next component this component is going to be about additional tools of communication the reason I call them additional tools because they have not been part of the experiential level to which we all have been exposed and therefore they have their own role to play and they basically are the personal communication and relationship marketing and then internal marketing the fact of the matter is that you people might have thought already how come a combination of different tools of the experiential level have so much potency that they already can make communication campaigns extremely optimal and effective the answer lies in sharing with you that there are some additional tools and with the addition of these tools the communication campaigns can really be made very effective and as a matter of fact in the context of non-profits the tools which I am going to talk about now are really the ones without which the experiential level may not be complete and therefore let me talk about the personal communication to begin with well the personal communicators could have happened to be a very very important and important tool of communications with any organization organizations have the different kind of people there are organizations that have the people who are very good at communications they are highly energetic and competent people which of course is not to say that others are not good at communications are not really competent but the fact here is that some organizations are endowed with this kind of human resource that is they are good for the taking and they do this job on behalf of the organization to connect with their stakeholders and they can personally engage them to a level which is much more effective than advertising this really is a statement that I have made and it is full of substance because whenever you talk with people on one-on-one basis there are so many different things which you can share and you can create a bonding between the organization and the stakeholder maybe the donor, the activist or the volunteer or lobbyist whoever he or she happens to be you can not only immediately connect but you really can engage with those people for organizations that are endowed with such human resource are lucky organizations and they generally happen to be those who are resourceful in so many different terms and are generally large organizations but then there are organizations that do not have for the kind of resource that is good at communication either they do not have the resource or even if they have the resource is a shot off what they really require so on both counts they have a resource level which is inadequate in order to be fully equipped with an adequate level of resource they have to either hire more people or seek more volunteers who can do this job of the personal communications back to personal communications organizations need to have for the people who really are energetic very self-confident and full of vigor and zeal to take on formidable challenges of refusals and resistance whenever and wherever they go talk with different people it never is a level ground it is never a piece of cake therefore the taking they have to go through a lot of hardship in order to convince people in the first place to have them listen to them meaning to the marketing people or to the communicators before they can connect with them and engage them so it really is a formidable challenge and therefore these people need to have some very special skills before I start talking about the skills let me share this thing with you once again that the personal communicators could also have to be mindful of the fact that they must go through the behavior change model the same good old behavior change model which I keep talking about because they have to talk those people into making the graduation from one stage to another and while they do that do not take the loose sight of the fact that they talk with not just the clients meaning people who are part of the program they also talk with the donors with lobbyists and with the volunteers they talk with donors with a very obvious objective they want to raise donations they talk with lobbyists because they want to have support on their side for different people and agencies to lobby on their behalf meaning on behalf of the organization and they need to communicate with the volunteers because they want to recruit them into becoming very useful workers for the cause and this is where the fact that some of them need to become good communicators comes in and those volunteers who happen to be good at communication and happen to be good at comprehension and have good personalities they could become very good communicators on behalf of the organization but the fact remains that different audiences have to be contacted personal communicators have to go to all of them I am not saying they have to go to each and every member of the organization they basically have to go to those who are influencers but once they have talked with the key influencers the ripple down effect will automatically make job they have at their hand easy and effective another factor that they have to keep in mind and other organizations have to keep in mind that these people meaning personal communicators have to communicate with all the audiences that I just enumerated in terms of identifying prospects developing relationships cultivating relationships and developing through communications and personal relationship a sense of obligation on part of the audiences so that they start feeling kind of committed to the cause so that they can take the decision which they have to take to graduate from one stage to the other meaning to have them graduate to a higher level and therefore these people need to have very special skills but before I start talking about the skills let us now summarize with the help of the talking I have done as to what really are the objectives of the personal communicators and don't forget to keep in mind alongside this intake that they are working side by side with other communication tools that we have kicked off as part of the communication campaign so this brings us back to the point what really are the objectives which personal communicators have to achieve first of all they have to do prospecting meaning they have to identify prospects who would be willing to donate and once they have done that they set the process on and what happens next is something I would leave to your imagination of course they have to keep visiting those people and generate more funds for the program the next objective they have at hand is that of persuading once they are in touch with them they persuade them over and over again into making them committed to the cause and this is something that I mentioned earlier they should have the ability to create a sense of obligation on part of the audience to become committed to the cause and it is this commitment which is going to take the audiences from one stage to the other so this is another objective they have at hand the third objective these personal communicators could have to achieve is that of servicing now you might think what kind of service these people are going to provide to their audiences well it could be a lot of information technical information that they may have to share with their audiences because when they are going through different programs or when they are talking with other stakeholders some programs can entail a very in depth kind of the medical initiative and treatment therefore they may have to talk about certain things with the help of their colleagues who happen to be doctors and that is something which they have to share with the audience and that is a service which they render this is just one example that I have cited they may have to give a lot of information on the family planning program or similarly on any other program that requires a lot of professional expertise to impart and then share with all those who are part of the program the fourth objective is that of gathering market intelligence now very interestingly this takes us back to the concept of market intelligence as part of marketing information systems you will recall the two people as marketing support to the organization are responsible to gather such information and nothing could provide a better opportunity than being with your audiences talking about your programs and doing your can meshing for the cause and also in the process of generating information not only about your own programs but also about your competitors or your peers because you also will recall the fact that many stakeholders and audiences happen to be common to different causes people donate to different causes people can work for more than one cause and therefore you may be talking with those key personalities who are connected with the more than one cause so here it is a great opportunity to ask them different questions in relation to so many different dimensions of the total non-profit perspective there is no limitation on asking the kind of question as long as you ask the very relevant and professional question to which you think the answer would lead you a long way in making your strategies more effective the next question also happens to be the very important and interesting and the fact is it takes us to the next level and that is what is it that we should consider before we start either hiring personal communicators or seeking the volunteers to do this particular job what really are the parameters on the basis of which we make the decision here are the people who would do this job effectively there are a few important questions that we have to answer and let me enumerate those questions one by one in the first place you have to be clear about the qualification of the personal communicator and how is that related to the cause for which you think that person should be working if there is a match between the two well I think you should go ahead with hiring or taking that person on board another thing that you have to consider is the amount of paperwork which these people have to do because going and seeing different stakeholders who we believe are professionals in their own right because you go for professionals as your directors as your other stakeholders because you always need their support so you have to go to them very well prepared so the people who need to do a lot of paperwork in relation to a certain cause also becomes the basis of whether or not they can become good communicators and then you see that we have the questions like how much travelling is involved and then the question of to what extent these people can be on their own areas away from the decision making centre do they really need immediate supervisory support or they can make certain strategic decisions in terms of execution on their own and I would say there are the tactical decisions and not strategic decisions because whatever they do in the marketplace is a reflection of the strategy and is a translation that you already have put together as a strategy or a set of strategies and then transferred that into different tactics so as long as these people are good at making independent decisions in terms of different tactics there could be good people another thing we have to keep in mind while selecting the personal communicators do they have the capacity to take the refusals and all kinds of obstacles that may come in their way if the answer is yes they can do that then you should go ahead and recruit them as personal communicators organizations have experienced that that population that have been subject to their programs could also be very good communicators for example those people who have been part of the rehabilitation program of drug addicts can be very good communicators with those who are druggies because they fully understand the kind of situation those druggies are passing through and they also have a very good understanding of what really motivates them to do it and then quit it so with that understanding of the motivations these people who have been subject to your programs can also be very good communicators thanks