 Assalamu alaykum khawatin wa sraat. Wasim As-Sahab welcomes you to lecture number 19 of Marketing of a Non-Profits, MKT 628 at the Virtual University of Pakistan. We know that communication is an outgrowth of a very comprehensive strategic process, which has three different stages. The one is the organizational stage or level for that matter. The other one is the identity level and the third one is the experiential level. We have gone through the first two levels and have understood very comprehensively how significant the whole process is for different strategic considerations to put in place and then come up with the final positioning for the organization. If we have the right positioning, we will have the right personality for the organization. Once we have clarity on both the aspects, meaning the positioning and the personality, we can put together effective communication campaigns. Therefore, we can say this is something which is not short-term. It is a long-term process and the comprehensiveness of the process ensures that we have the right positioning and right personality and hence accurate reflection of those two features into our communication campaigns. There are a few important measures that we have to take before we get on to developing understanding for the next level, which is experiential level. These measures are really kept in mind before we know what exactly is the mix of tools that we have to have to ourselves in order to make our campaign very effective given our financial situation and given our human resource capabilities. In other words, what I am saying is there are so many different tools. It is not important that we put together all those tools and bring them to application in order to make a campaign very effective. So the answer lies in going for those tools which are compatible with our capabilities and our competencies. Therefore, this component of learning is going to be about measures for effective messaging. The first one is that we need to take stock of the competitive landscape. We as marketing people have to monitor the competitive landscape on a continual basis. In other words, if we are into a long-term process and are out to develop a communication campaign truly reflective of the personality of the cause, then we have got to understand and know what exactly is it that our peers or our competitors for that matter are doing. Because that allows us to develop a sense of context. And in that context, we can compare ourselves with others. And we really can size ourselves up in terms of where we really stand. Stand in terms of different campaigns, whether it is more important for us to go for a prince or it is more weighty for the organization to follow the online course and so on and so forth. There are so many different ways by which we can develop insights into what competition is doing. And the fact is, this takes us back to one of the components that we already have learned and that is the marketing information systems. You will recall that marketing intelligence systems as part of the overall marketing information systems is the concept that I am referring to. Marketing people have got to be not just intelligent in terms of applying the knowledge to the concept of marketing but they have to be very smart in generating information on part of the competitors. What they are doing, what is it that is working for them? What is it that is not working or that has not worked for them? And therefore, the lesson that we can learn from it, the kind of things that we should look into. How do we go about putting together different pieces of information into a proper perspective is another challenge that we face as marketing people. Well, we develop our insights by picking the bits and pieces from publications, from newsletters, from online material that the competitors have posted in relation to their programs and we also collect information from stakeholders who happen to be common in the marketplace because there are donors who are common to more than one cause and therefore talking with such people bring to us a lot of insight into those things which will allow us to make better decisions about our communication process and our communication campaigns. These bits and pieces of information collected from so many different sources may those be highly structured print materials or online cyberspace, information collected from activists, volunteers, board of directors of other organizations. All those pieces have to be put together into a proper form. How do we do that? That is another challenge that we face. Well, it is just like getting out secondary research which we put together by looking into different sources and develop certain formats, giving them different captions and whatever we think belongs to one particular caption we take it there. If you take a look at the very traditional index cards way of the category of research because you will know what I mean but it is not really confined to index cards because you can also use your laptops and have the different formats defined in terms of, for example, donors, people who are involved in the programs, meaning people who work for the organization and people who are not part of the organization but they really matter in terms of offering their help. Again, I would say like the activists, the volunteers and community leaders who keep working for the organization and are helpful toward execution of your programs because you can have your format divided into different sub formats giving them different captions in terms of all those stakeholders who matter to the organization and whatever information you collect in relation to any one of those you can take that piece to the relevant portion of the format. Once you have put together all those bits and pieces you can synthesize that information into a cohesive whole which makes a lot of sense. And I would again draw your attention towards secondary research you carry out with the help of so many different books, periodicals, newspapers other publications obtained from the Chamber of Commerce, etc, etc and put those pieces together and give those a shape and form which makes sense as a consolidated piece of research. It is a secondary research and that is precisely the reason that marketing intelligence systems form the part of the marketing information systems which has in its fold the marketing research as well. So in other words, this you can say happens to be a counterpart to the marketing research process very important from that point of view that we take stock of the competitors' moves and their formulations in terms of their strategies and their execution tactics in order to make sure that whatever we have put together in terms of our communication campaigns as part of the communication strategy is still relevant to our organization and if it is relevant then we are on course if we realize that we are losing relevance somewhere along the line we have to look into that and of course that will take us back to the organizational level or the identity level of the organization. I would say the more so to the organizational level and less so to the identity level because identity level is an outgrowth of the organizational level and therefore we have got to take a very precise look at all the things starting from the vision right down to the positioning and the personality of the organization and hence the cause. So monitoring the competitive landscape is a very important measure that we should not lose sight of while we are putting together different tools of communication to give the final shape and form to our communication strategy. The second one is about the fact that many NPO's do not really give due importance to the fact that all communications have to be carried out from the standpoint of our audiences until the time they start talking in terms of for the audiences they will not take the desired action. In other words, it is the responsibility of the marketing people from the nonprofit side that they talk in such terms that the audiences develop a sense of self. What is the sense of self? This basically is a sense of developing a personal relationship with the cause and with the organization. If organizations think that by talking about their strengths, their resources and their expertise and so on and so forth, they can convince the audiences into taking the desired action, they are mistaken because until the time audiences are in a position to relate themselves with the cause by developing the motivational side of their inner self, they will not take the desired action. This is the essence of this particular point. Now, what is it that we talk with the audiences? Well, we basically talk about the benefit exchange and that is something that has to be brought home that by taking the desired action the audiences stand to gain and what the gain, we talk about that as part of the messaging platform. You know, we talk with different audiences. We talk with donors, we talk with all those who are responsible for the programs and we talk with all those who are advocating on our behalf. Therefore, we've got to make sure that whatever we have as part of the messaging platform addresses concerns and interests and motivations of all the audiences. Here the question is, how can we talk in so many different terms? Well, the answer lies in having a messaging platform where we talk about so many different features of the program. We also talk about testimonials and inspiring and motivational stories which they can relate with real life situations and therefore we've got to have a comprehensive messaging platform which carries appeals for all the audiences. However, we can say here that when we are executing programs we need to have different communications for different audiences and there we've got to be very precise in terms of the messages that we carry as part of the communications. And again, you see that we go back to the level of motivations because what is it that motivates a person to donate and what is it that inspires a person to start working with a lot of passion for your program without any motives just on altruistic basis. So these are the kind of motivations that we have to unearth and relate those with the cause and talk about the benefit that different audiences will derive by making their respective contributions toward the program. Whether they make those contributions by giving money or they are going to make contributions by working for the organization or they make contributions by doing some lobbying for you among the legislators or among the media because these two constituencies have become extremely important for nonprofits all over the world. Whatever your cause is, if you have support from the media and also from the legislature, you are going to have a lot of advantages in terms of execution of your program. Going back to what kind of communication you should put together so that you can be very convincing for all the audiences, you have to keep a couple of other factors in mind and those are the factors of the right mood of communication and the right moment when the communication is sent and the right messenger who carries the communication. Mood of communication in terms of your programs is just like packaging on the commercial side but what packaging does for a particular product, communication on the non-profit side is something that has to do the complete job. The reason I say complete job because on the commercial side you have the package for the product which does a lot of communication by itself and then you have the punchline or the tagline and whatever you are communicating as part of the total communication campaign carries your message all across the communication spectrum but here you see on the non-profit side you are constrained to only deal with your communication message because of the fact that we do not really have something very tangible with which we can play. I will give you the example of a toothpaste, for example, a manufacturer trying to highlight the mantle factor of the toothpaste that would like to introduce a package which is predominantly green because he is conveying the message that this is cool by the same token the manufacturer of a toothpaste that fights cavities would like to give a package which is predominantly red. Now, this is not the case with the non-profits and therefore we have to create the mood by way of having a communication which is very effective and which reaches the audience not just physically where they are but a communication which reaches our audiences where their mental and their emotional locations are. This is extremely important and in order to reach their mental and emotional states you have to be very smart with developing a sense of self on your audience's side so that they can relate themselves with the cause. In other words, when you are talking about the nursing home you have got to give your communication the mood of hope and happiness and satisfaction and no worries because you are communicating to the relatives of those elderly people that these elderly people are going to be very well looked after and therefore the years of their life are going to be full of happiness and hope and not hardship. So therefore the mood of the communication has got to coincide with the mood of those who make the decisions. In this particular case the decision makers or the influencers are the family members, the young couples who just cannot afford to have their elders in their homes because they all work and there is nobody at home to take care of their elders and therefore when it comes to developing the mood of communication it has to be in total sync with the mood of those who make decisions for that particular cause or for that particular decision which is going to bring improvement into their lives which brings about social welfare and which fulfills a certain social responsibility. Similarly, we have to have the right messenger to put our message across. Now this may sound very trivial but the fact is this carries a lot of seriousness because there is a general tendency on part of all of us that we like to hear what other people are doing and especially we like to hear what those people who are people of authority, people who are liked, people who are respected, people who are our heroes, people who are our peers and people who are our family members what they say and what they do is something which really carries a lot of appeal for us and therefore if we as marketing managers at nonprofits are putting together a campaign we've got to be very watchful of who the messenger is going to be for the message. So in other words, people give a lot of importance to the message which somebody else is delivering because the message delivered by somebody else carries an extra punch. This is the basic psychology of all of us and this takes us back to the concept of the social power. Here lies the proof of the social power what others are going to say and do we like to follow them and like I said earlier especially if it is said by somebody who really matters to us and I would like to draw your attention to one of the more successful and impressive campaigns in which our correcting hero Vasim Akram talks about the fight against diabetes. There can be other examples as well but the fact here is that most of the nonprofits all over the world bring people from different walks of life of which film stars, celebrities, sports people authorities in their respective fields like doctors, professors and like I said earlier even peers happen to be the part of the campaign as messengers. Peers seem to carry a lot of influence over the target market and I would like to give you an example from the academia. Many universities like to show those students who have graduated from their universities and are settled into the practical world enjoying good positions and they give testimonials as part of the advertising programs. So this is an example of peers. Now you really get impressed by somebody telling you his or her story in terms of their success and in relation to an organization or a program which really has mattered to them and in the process that convince you of the utility and of the strength of that particular program. So these are the examples of having good messengers to carry and deliver your message because if you deliver the same message by yourself it may not be as effective as it is if delivered by people I have given examples of. In certain situations the family members could happen to be the very good influencers as the messengers. Wives can be good effective messengers as part of advertising campaigns because they really can convince husbands in terms of their being regular to check blood pressure and test their blood sugar levels. Non-profits do cast role models as messengers when it comes to convincing that population which consists of husbands and therefore I have given you this example from the real life. The third aspect of having a good communication go across is the moment meaning in addition to mood and the messenger. We have got to find the right moment when to shoot our communication to the target audience. Not all the time the communications really home in to the hearts and minds of our audiences and therefore just like the concept of aperture in a camera which captures a particular scene at a particular moment we've got to capture that particular moment during which your audiences are open-minded and they are thinking of taking the action. This also takes us back to the various stages of consumer behavior and in particular the stage where your audience is just about ready to take the desired action that you hammer in at that time with your message and therefore you've got to be quick and smart at picking the right moment. I think one example which I gave you earlier in this particular regard but in a different context is about collecting donations just before the advent of the month of Ramadan. People already have started thinking about giving donations to different causes and yours could be one of the prime candidates and therefore if you capture that particular moment and the kick off a convincing communication campaign which has all the features of a good strategic formulation the chances are you will end up raising the requisite amount of funds that you have budgeted for yourselves. So these are the kind of subtle features which the good communication campaign must have to themselves when you are putting together your campaigns but the main point here is what is it that you communicate? What exactly is it that you talk about? And once again I will say that it is the benefit exchange and therefore you've got to be very sensitive to two different factors one is the motivational factors behind actions which different audiences take meaning donors, activists, people from media, people from the government and community leaders, so on and so forth. All these people have their own motivations because they derive different benefits out of working or out of contributing toward the cause and therefore developing those relational lines and relating those to the cause is the name of the game. Motivational factors can be established with the help of marketing research and this takes us back to the exercise of segmentation in which I gave you the example of what motivates different people to donate. I think there are four or five different adjectives which basically can generalize different levels of motivation whether we talk of donors or other stakeholders and those could be generalized as the conviction, the sympathy religious, benefits, altruism and even publicity. People like to do things which look very noble and which are noble but they have their own person's publicity as an ulterior motive. So be it. If they think that way, let them think that way you have to capitalize on the way they think so that you can communicate with them in that particular mode so that you can stir their feelings in their subconscious to take the desired action. So here the key is not just reaching your audience rather getting into their inner conscience to start their feelings into making the final decision. Two things that I've talked about and also having said that they happen to be very important number one is developing the relational lines and the other one is talking about the benefit exchange or things which generally the NPOs forget to talk about. They put their competencies and their strengths in front of these two factors and talk in their own terms and that is something which generally does not work. In order for communications to be very effective they've got to take stock of these two features i.e. the motivational factors and the benefit exchange. So we can say that after we have developed the motivational factors and the relational lines and developed a proper perspective on the part of the audiences about who we are and what exactly is it that we do that we are all set to put together our communication campaigns and we are in a position to choose the right channel that we need in order to reach our audience and I would again say reach them not where they are physically but reach them in terms of their mental and emotional locations. The third measure that the nonprofit managers have to keep in their mind is that most of the nonprofit organizations are cash-starved and they do not really have the kind of financial resource they may like to have in order to be able to have the kind of visibility and outreach which everybody desires. Who doesn't really want to have a great outreach and a very high level of visibility when one is working on marketing programs? May those programs be from the commercial side or may those be from the nonprofit side? The challenge on the nonprofit is much greater because of the financial constraints. Here I would like to draw a distinction between large organizations and medium to small organizations. When I talk about large organizations I am essentially referring to those organizations which happen to have adequate financial resources and these are the organizations which can put together their communication programs in all the possible manifestations of communication tools. In other words, they can have access to all kinds of print media all the kinds of online facilities and they can be very effective in person when it comes to conducting seminars or other galas where they need to spend a huge amount of money in order to be close to their audiences but these are the kind of factors or other situations which are not the luxuries enjoyed by those nonprofit organizations that happen to be within the bracket of small to medium sized organizations. The question here is what is it that these smaller ones or those who do not really have adequate financial resources do when it comes to putting together communication campaigns? Let me be quick here in adding one more fact that goes to the favor of large organizations and to the disfavor of smaller ones and that is the presence of larger organizations online. They can afford to have their presence online by having beautiful impressive websites which are interactive and they also can afford to bring about technology updates every couple of years whenever those are warranted but small to medium sized organizations that do not really have that kind of financial resource are constrained to do all that. As a matter of fact, one research tells us that many nonprofits even within the United States are having difficulty in trying to understand what really thinks like YouTube and Flickr are going to mean to them because they are not in a position to keep up with the developments that are taking place from time to time. This is one example of the kind of constraints that smaller organizations are those that are not really financial resource rich facing in terms of having very effective communication tools at their disposal. So the question here arises what exactly is it that these organizations that are constrained can do? Well, what they can do is be a little organized and be a little proactive in their management and marketing style. Now this may sound very traditional but the fact is here lies the answer to the question that I raised because these organizations could have got to be very professional in terms of putting together the budgetary requirements for the coming year. And when I talk about the budgetary requirements they have to take into consideration complete marketing programs including communication campaigns that they envisage taking place during the year. And when you talk about budget of course we're talking about costs meaning all those costs that are associated with different activities, marketing activities, communication activities that will take place. And this also includes the good staff members because here we have one constraint which keeps many organizations from being effective and that is the shortage of good staff. So these organizations having taken into consideration all the budgetary requirements for the coming year can be very convincing in presenting those budgets to the sponsors of the organization and all those stakeholders who matter for making the program successful. So in other words you can put those budgets before the board of directors and you can also have major donors attend those meetings and you can have all those stakeholders be a part of that process who can be helpful to making your programs successful. Now those people may not give you hard cash to begin with but they really can be very supportive in kind. You have directors and sponsors and other stakeholders who happen to be from the commercial world and they are part of huge important meaningful commercial enterprises because that generally is the case with most of the nonprofits. They go for the board of directors comprising of people who are influential basically on the commercial side. Those people can offer support to your marketing and communication departments from their resource bank because they have a sizable resource in terms of their marketing department or their communication department and they can always lend you support and make your job a little less difficult or a lot less difficult and lay the ground for making a program successful. Here you need to have the good staff. No question about it because we are basically talking about a long-term approach. The measures that we need to take are going to be mindful of in order to have effective messaging all relate to the long-term strategic process and whenever we talk about the long-term strategic process good staff members are a key to that because without the good staff members situation is always extremely stressful in putting good strategies together and also executing good strategies the way any good team of strong professionals would like the whole thing to unfold and therefore you also have to put into the budgetary requirements your staff requirements. Now those staff members which may still not be a part of your organization even after you have presented the budget you at least can get support from your sponsors the way I just explained. They can lend professional support to you from their staff members who happen to be very meaningful to their respective organizations. Another strategy that you can make good use of is cost marketing. Let's go back and talk about the concept of cost marketing. You get into cost marketing because you want to strengthen and leverage your position as a non-profit organization and the commercial enterprise wants to prove itself that it is a socially responsible organization and in the process it leverages its own brand. It is a win-win situation for both the parties so you can get into that kind of a situation and even then you have to put all that as part of a convincing budgetary process or a budgetary exercise which has to be presented to the board of directors and then seek their support in tangible terms. The fact is that your cost partners can offer you a lot of support in making your marketing program very effective in addition to the features of authenticity and legitimacy. You will recall all these features that I talked about as that particular component. Here the summary of this particular measure is that we need to keep everything in a very well-planned perspective and we have to be proactive in realizing and in envisaging that what exactly is it that is coming our way and what are the strategic measures that we need to undertake to make our program effective within our financial constraints and put all that as part of your budgetary exercise. Another important factor to summarize here is that whatever you do, it has got to be in line with your marketing programs which are a reflection of the organizational level and of course also the identity level of the organization. Another thing that we should be mindful of here as well is our ability to monitor the competitive landscape all the time because we are in a position to collect some very significant small bits and pieces of information which when put together form such a whole, such a cohesive whole which becomes as significant as finding of the marketing research program at times, if not always. Here I would like to add a couple of more points in terms of summarizing this particular measure. We've got to develop a complete system of monitoring the budget that we have put together. In other words, we need to have a complete reporting system which highlights what has been achieved as against what was budgeted and what are the variations in terms of the spend from time to time. You need to have daily reports, weekly reports, monthly reports and then of course yearly summaries. Now these are the kind of things which again take us back to the marketing information systems and here I would like to point out another thing that all these things are interrelated and this is the beauty of building knowledge blocks by relating one particular concept with another so that we can develop an understanding of how things work in the practical world when we have all the concepts in our mind the but are working with all of them at the same time so which are the ones which we can draw on immediately and therefore drawing relationships between different ones at this particular moment could well develop that particular understanding. Marketing information systems and you will recall that the very first component of that system is the internal reports. We have to have reports on which management starting from the top management right down to the lowest level of management could have to count on because those reports tell us what is happening within the organization day in and day out. So what I am saying is whatever is happening or whatever has happened over a certain period of the past we have to take stock of that in light of what we had budgeted earlier. All the spending that we had envisaged would be allocated or was allocated to different activities are we making the use of those funds and are those activities being executed in the right way and in the right manner are we on track? Are we off track? If we are, what are the reasons? So it is not just a question of putting together certain financial requirements as part of the budget and presenting those before the board of directors for their approval it also is a question of having a very well structured professional marketing management that can move and execute its programs according to a pre-planned formulation in which we can look at the variances what is it that has been achieved within the budget and what is it which is causing overruns and what are the causes of those overruns? Are we not very mindful of the extraneous factors which have caused those overruns or are we not even aware of the internal requirements which all of a sudden have come our way and have caused those overruns? So there could be so many different developments and happenings which will make you scratch your brains and looking into the overall situation from so many different angles and dimensions to dissect the overall situation and then pinpoint where have you gone wrong and where did you go, where you went right. And this is something which can be connected with monitoring the landscape when you monitor the competitive landscape and try to establish what they are doing and what is working for them and what is not working for them and make a comparison with what you are doing and what is working for you and what is not working for you you end up establishing what exactly are your strengths and what your weaknesses are and whatever your strengths are you try to reinforce those and here you see you bring about a change in your strategic thinking and this is linked with the organizational level where you started the whole thing and you have to go back to those stages where something might have taken place that has caused certain weaknesses If the objective is to ward off the threats as part of the SWAT analysis then you have to overcome the weaknesses so that you can cash in all the opportunities which the marketplace offers and you can cash in those opportunities only if you can easily capitalize on your strengths with no significant and meaningful weaknesses So all these things are intertwined and one particular summary of the budgetary exercise has taken us into so many different dimensions of not just this particular measure to keep our communication rather communications very effective but also into other interconnected areas of the non-profit marketing mix that we have learned so far Let me now give you the overall summary of the component that we have covered over the lecture It is a long drawn comprehensive strategic process The outgrowth of which is our communication plan or communication campaign It is not something which is whimsical It is not something which rests on the concept of putting together certain communication tools and then just kicking off those tools as the communication vehicles We go to the print media, we go online and we start conducting different promotional programs and so on and so forth It is not that It is a strategic process which starts basically with the organizational level analysis of the brand raising process and then takes us into the identity level and if we have taken a good stock of the organizational level which starts with the mission rather vision of the organization and then takes us into the mission and values and objectives and then right down to positioning and personality then the chances are that our identity level has been carved out very carefully depending on the positioning and the personality of the organization and the identity level is the true reflection of those two particular features This is what we have learnt and once we have done that we are all set to get on with the third level of the brand raising process which is the experiential level I have not yet talked about the level per se because I think there is a tremendous need on our part to understand the various majors that we need to consider before we start putting together all those tools that form the experiential level Like I said earlier it is not just a question of putting those tools together and then forming a communication campaign it is the question of understanding what we have done as part of the organizational level and identity level Are we on track after being done with these two levels? Well, the chances are yes we are but we have to be very sensitive and very careful in terms of making sure that we have not made any mistakes in terms of considering those factors which are extremely important while we communicate with our audiences and I would like to repeat here as well that the audiences are different for different audiences we have different kinds of communications and we have got to communicate with them in different moods we have to pick up different moments because we have to be very clever and smart about the messengers who deliver our message and we have to be very circumspect and pragmatic in terms of putting together our budgetary requirements and how we put those before the board of directors and all those people who matter in terms of offering their support to the organization because their support matters a lot toward our success So these are the kind of things that we need you to understand and with this understanding I would now like to talk about the experiential level as the next component