ACS and Advertising,
by Andy Goldsmith
I joined the ACS nearly six years ago, not because I felt passionately about the mission (though I do). But as a brand and advertising guy, the opportunity to work for one of the best known brands in the world, which also faced a ton of interesting business problems, was highly attractive to me. The opportunity to practice my craft at a high, high level, while doing work that had tremendous societal benefit, wooed me too. And finally, the outstanding caliber and quality of the people who were already engaged at ACS was both surprising and invigorating. And so here I am.
As the head of advertising and brand strategy, I can say that we are very fortunate to be able to use paid advertising as a strategic tool. Many non-profits cannot. Nonetheless, there are a variety of ways to think about precisely how we use advertising. We are a large and complex organization and there are many, many jobs to do -- and just as many different perspectives on what success (in advertising) looks like.
Our advertising success doesn't come in a vacuum: there is only so much attention that people will give to our message, among the estimated 3000-5000 brand messages they're exposed to every single day! Given the pressures of day-to-day business, and the need to continuously show progress, it's valid to question whether our ads should be about (a) building our brand & raising awareness, or about (b) moving people to take immediate action.
This "brand-building vs. retail sales" discussion takes place in every company, for-profit or not-profit. As one of the people who has "raising awareness" in my job description ... I think both sides of the debate are valid. Simply raising awareness without an end-game in mind is of course a fool's journey. However, let's think about the goals of the ACS. For the sake of argument, let's say that fundamentally we have two kinds of goals ... I'll call them "10-day goals" vs. "10-year goals." Our 10-day goals are clearly about how we help newly diagnosed patients, gain Relay For Life supporters, acquire donations, etc. All critically important (and we won't be around to worry about 10-year goals if we don't get these right). But if all we focus on are the 10-day goals, that too could be costly to our success.
Here's the theory. See if you agree. Think of the hundreds of thousands of people who'll unfortunately be diagnosed with cancer this year. Now think of the millions and millions who won't. They don't necessarily need us today or even tomorrow. They don't necessarily want to be part of the "cancer club." But ... if we can predispose the latter group to turning to the ACS ... telling them what we do, how we are winning, how we can help ... we're setting ourselves (and them) up for the future, when they need us (to use services, to volunteer, to donate). If we don't bother doing so, we risk becoming less relevant and less able to do our job vs. the 10-year goals. That's part of what we're trying to accomplish with the Birthdays campaign. Specifically, to deepen people's knowledge and maintain (or regain) contemporary relevance. I'm not arguing that we always get the balance exactly right. Only that: our ambition to raise awareness (knowledge, relevance) with a firm eye toward what we want to accomplish in the future is crucial. And so we're working hard every day ... to get the recipe just right.
