The Only Problem…

The default marketing approach employed by most nonprofits, certainly many of our clients, is one of “education,” namely the idea that if they can shower enough statistics and facts on an indifferent public, eventually they will understand the importance of the cause.

Decades of experience have disproven this model of marketing but, because the alternative – eliciting emotional resonance – is far more difficult to achieve, the practice continues.

Here’s a pithy observation by Orson Welles neatly summarizing the challenge:

“I can think of nothing an audience won’t understand.

The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.”