How to Project Manage Your Nonprofit Story
So powerful. So sobering. I just watched “The Girl Effect” video for the “n”th time; it never loses its potency. A simple story. Rapidly told. Presenting examples. Playing to our emotions. Offering a solution. Messaging doesn’t get more compelling than this.
In cased you’ve never seen it, The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking is a powerful idea created by a coalition of nonprofit partners: by investing in girls in the developing world, we make an influential investment in changing the course of young girls lives – alleviating hunger, reducing domestic violence, slowing the spread of sexually transmitted disease, increasing educational opportunity and enabling women to thrive.*
This week, Life Coach Tara Mohr is part of a movement to get as many bloggers as possible to write about The Girl Effect. It’s what inspired me to write this post. http://www.taramohr.com/girleffectposts/ Yet before I knew it, I realized that what really intrigued me was not so much the girl effect, but the messaging/medium effect.
What about this campaign has caused it to have such staying power? It’s been around since 2008, when it was originally sponsored by Nike. It’s been viewed by hundreds of thousands worldwide. It reached The Tipping Point (book)) long ago, and has all the elements that author Malcolm Gladwell describes as “sticky.”
Among other things, it’s this stickiness that interests me. If we take a look at J.D. Meier’s Six Principles of Sticky Ideas that he distilled from Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, it becomes clear why this campaign succeeds at every level. Every time we launch a campaign, we should think of these principles :
- Principle 1. Simplicity
- Principle 2. Unexpectedness
- Principle 3. Concreteness
- Principle 4. Credibility
- Principle 5. Emotions
- Principle 6. Stories
So simple. The Girl Effect adheres beautifully, at every level, to the KISS rule of simplicity. The problem is clear. The solutions are clear. The impact of the solutions is clear. How we as individuals can contribute is clear. And it can be pitched in a short, medium or long elevator ride. As I said, it works at every level.
So unexpected. Who knew the scope of the problem? 50 million young girls in poverty, being treated as if they were no longer children by the tender age of 12. “No, really, she is a WOMAN now.” “Not the life you imagined for a 12-year-old. Right?”
So concrete. The Girl Effect is filled with specific descriptions of what will happen to a young girl in poverty unless something is done to change this. No real data, but it “constructs” a picture.
So credible. Even though there is no research or studies backing up the messaging, it is convincing and believable. And the fact that it was sponsored by a consortium of nonprofits only adds to its trustworthiness.
So emotional. The Girl Effect inspires by keying in to intense human emotions. The desire to reduce human suffering. To assure women have opportunity and freedom. Not only that, we’re made to feel we’re doing something awesome. Our contribution is no mere drop in a bucket. It’s part of a revolution!
So “once upon a time.” The way the story is told makes it easy for us to follow. There’s a beginning/middle/end. In fact, there’s a BAD beginning/middle/end and a GOOD beginning/middle/end. And no question as to which is the preferable outcome.
Still, I’m wondering what this triumph of marketing means for us as a society. We’re in the midst of the “sound bite” writ large. The sound bite is so compellingly sticky, that we tend not to look past it. And the velocity with which messaging is coming at us – from multiple channels –makes it difficult for us to do anything but react. Marshall McClune famously wrote “the medium is the message“. McClune’s medium was anything from which change emerges. And message was “the change of scale or pace or pattern” that a new invention or innovation “introduces into human affairs.”
Given the rapid pace at which technology is evolving, it can be argued that the message is now medium – and vice-versa? Perhaps, if it’s both simultaneously, that’s what gives The Girl Effect (and similar social media campaigns) so much power? It’s almost like the chicken and egg. It’s difficult to know which comes first. What interests me is that it’s all about extending ourselves (classically “medium”) and the changes that are thereby effected (classically “message”). Much of the power of this campaign is that the medium and message are almost one and the same. It’s interesting to ponder.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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*I watched the
video numerous times before it hit me that there was nothing suggesting that girls might aspire to anything other than traditional female roles. Some have criticized this perspective. See http://aidwatchers.com/2011/01/so-now-we-have-to-save-ourselves-and-the-world-too-a-critique-of-%E2%80%9Cthe-girl-effect%E2%80%9D/ positing that The Girl Effect might actually harm women in the long run by reinforcing perceptions of “women’s work” and “men’s work”. Or check out The Girl Effect Parody: “The Idiot Effect” . Reasonable people can disagree. The Girl Effect is a serious video with a serious message. What’s of interest to me here is the power of the messaging and medium that turned this campaign into a lasting international phenomenon.
video numerous times before it hit me that there was nothing suggesting that girls might aspire to anything other than traditional female roles. Some have criticized this perspective. See http://aidwatchers.com/2011/01/so-now-we-have-to-save-ourselves-and-the-world-too-a-critique-of-%E2%80%9Cthe-girl-effect%E2%80%9D/ positing that The Girl Effect might actually harm women in the long run by reinforcing perceptions of “women’s work” and “men’s work”. Or check out The Girl Effect Parody: “The Idiot Effect” . Reasonable people can disagree. The Girl Effect is a serious video with a serious message. What’s of interest to me here is the power of the messaging and medium that turned this campaign into a lasting international phenomenon.
