Philanthropy Is All About The WHY

Philanthropy Is All About The WHY: Positioning For Mission-Driven Organizations

An Interview With Jason Rogers of Argonaut Productions

Modern marketing is a mix of challenges and opportunities. Digital marketing platforms and channels mean that even teams with limited resources have the ability to reach a worldwide audience. At the same time, the presence of so many voices competing for attention mean that it’s essential to cut through the noise to get your brand noticed.

Start-ups, small businesses, and growing non-profits have to get their messaging right if they want to make connections that last. They also need to find the right mix of channels and platforms if they want to reach their audience without breaking their budget.

With all of the gurus and growth hacks flooding their inboxes and social media feeds, a lot of marketing professionals have gotten pretty jaded. We think the solution is to focus on fundamentals. After all, if you start with a solid foundation, you can build almost anything you want. What’s right for your organization will be unique but the building blocks are fundamentals we all have in common.

Positioning is Fundamental to Marketing Success

One of the downsides of having so many options available in the mix of marketing tools and tactics is that we all have to fight the urge to give in to “shiny object syndrome”. Every marketing service claims to have the solution—whether it’s SEO, content marketing, email, or social media. But there is no easy button that you can hit to get set-it and forget-it marketing success.

That’s why we’ve decided to do a deep-dive into the fundamentals that go into the creation of a solid marketing strategy that any organization can use to build a plan that will move them toward their goals.

In this article, we’re going to dig into the idea of positioning as an essential element of branding and messaging. We got together with Jason Rogers of Argonaut Productions to learn how he uses this fundamental element of marketing strategy to deliver branded video storytelling for his clients.

Argonaut Productions Creates Impact Stories to Position Their Clients

Jason Rogers is the Principal and Creative Director at Argonaut Productions. He founded the agency more than a decade ago with the goal of helping mission-driven organizations discover and tell their stories in ways that would amplify the resonance of their messages.

Jason’s focus on video storytelling and his experience working with nonprofit and mission-driven organizations make him the perfect person to talk to about positioning strategy.

We sat down to talk to Jason about how he uses the fundamentals of effective marketing in his approach to finding, clarifying, and capturing stories for organizations with a mission-driven mindset. Take a look, then let us know how your business is using positioning strategy to increase your brand’s visibility with customers in your industry.

The Interview: Market Positioning With A Mission-Driven Mindset

When we sat down with Jason, we wanted to hear what he had to say about positioning as one of the basic building blocks of a solid marketing strategy. With more than a decade of experience working on mission-driven marketing and impact storytelling, we knew he would have a lot of good insights on how positioning can be adapted to a mission driven mindset.

Steven Rafferty, Euphonia Communication Partners (SR):

Hey Jason! Thanks for joining me today . . .

Jason Rogers, Argonaut Productions (JR):

Thank you! I’m happy to be here.

Brand Positioning in Broad Strokes

SR:

So, before we get into the details, I think it’s a good idea to talk about what positioning is and how marketers use positioning within a broader business strategy.

Typically, when a company decides they need a positioning strategy, there is a process involved. They start with an audit or review of their company, their customers, their competitors, and anything else about the relationship between their brand or a specific product or service and the target audience they want to market to.

In the for-profit world, there are common types of positioning that come up over and over again. Those include:

·        Features and Benefits

·        Price

·        Quality

·        Uses and Applications

·        Competitors

Successful positioning identifies strengths and opportunities that a brand or product has within a market or with a particular audience.

Whether we’re looking at brand positioning or a positioning statement for a product or service, the concept is basically the same. It starts with research, it moves to analysis that can identify strengths and weaknesses, then proceeds to create a positioning statement.

JR:

To me, positioning is all about competition and differentiation. It’s about the space you occupy in the minds of the audience you’re targeting. It’s the way people think about you and what they have to say about your brand.

Going back to the origins of the term, branding was a way for ranchers to differentiate their livestock from their neighbor’s. Now when we talking about brands, we’re talking about strategies to create an image or an identity for consumers. Something that offers a definition of a brand, product, or service through advertising and other messaging.

It’s not just aspirational. A brand has core values. An example might be quality, service, or longevity. It’s about more than a feature or benefit. It’s something that is so imbued in the products and processes that consumers can’t differentiate the product from what it stands for.

It’s about perception, but positioning strategies can’t go off the map. That’s why when Argonaut works with a client, we start by identifying core values that define the brand.

The Positioning Statement: Parallels Between Transactional and Mission-Driven Mindsets

SR:

Let’s talk about that a little more. I know that you work with a lot of brands in the nonprofit sector and a lot of mission driven brands. Does that change your approach to positioning at all?

What are the parallels and where do you think you have to adapt the standard approach to your process or depart from it entirely?

JR:

Well, the first thing is that when you talk about positioning strategy or a positioning statement, you’re talking about brand positioning or market positioning. You’re talking about a target market, a target audience, and competitor analysis. So, on a lot of our projects, we find that our clients have already done that work and they’re looking for marketing strategies or advertising content.

In the industry sectors we work with, it’s usually less about competition and more about differentiation. Elements like price, features and benefits, and competitors don’t always fit into the stories that will be most effective for positioning or repositioning a brand. A core value can differentiate a brand without confrontation or competition.

We typically don’t work to position a luxury status symbol but our customers often have a business strategy that goes after the same target customer or target market that a luxury status symbol would. Whether we’re helping identify positioning strategies or working to create a perception of a brand that will occupy a particular market position, we find that core value is a great place to start.

SR:

So, when you finish up your discovery process, how many core values do you typically include in your plan for moving ahead?

How is working with a core value different from working with some of the more common positioning elements?

JR:

We’ve found that 6 to 8 core values are manageable and digestible when it comes time to turn from discovery to design. We can start out with dozens of core values on the table as we talk to Board Members, Program Staff, Donors, Supporters, and Constituents.

Our approach is similar to a positioning strategy in the sense that we’re looking for a marketing message. The delivery and the distribution will be the same as they would be in any industry or market. But when we have the ability to draw out elements like:

·        Core Values

·        The Founder’s Story

·        The Brand Story

We get to treat those elements as features of the brand and put them front and center in the message.

Positioning Strategy: The Differences Are in the Details

SR:

Let’s dig deeper there. We both work with a lot of nonprofit and mission-driven organizations. How does competition factor in there?

Is there room for competition in mission-driven marketing, branding, or storytelling?

JR:

There’s a lot of overlap in the nonprofit world—locally, regionally, and nationally. It’s a small world.

On the one hand, mission-driven organizations still need to strive to achieve a reliable value structure. That goes to their respect for their constituents and their staff. That respect connects to donors. An organization like Charity: Water is a great example of how innovation is a feature that can be marketed to create differentiation.

At the same time, we’re not an ad agency. We don’t spin a client’s story into something marketable. That’s why you and I talk about discovery—we’re hoping to find something that is both unique and inspiring.

In discovery, we’re looking at the what and the how to see the ways they compare to competitors and how that distinguishes our client.

SR:

That’s something I keep coming back to. I’m not sure how to frame it clearly. There’s the difference in attitudes toward competition on the one hand, and your emphasis on discovering a client’s WHY on the other.

Can you talk about those two elements a bit more?

I’m interested to know what you think those two concepts have to do with the shift to a mission-driven mindset as it relates to the practice of positioning.

JR:

Sure . . . I’ll do my best. But I’m not sure that I’ll be able to pin down anything like a clear answer to that question.

WHY doesn’t really fit well in the mix of elements that go into positioning strategy for fast food or coffee, or even a luxury brand or product. A WHY isn’t transactional. If it’s going to be used in positioning, it can help to draw comparisons that clarify a brand’s current position or map out the path to a new market position.

WHY, on an organizational level, is the aggregate of a client’s leadership, team, constituents, and donors. We talk to a lot of people to discover and explore the WHY before we attempt to retell it in an impact story.

The WHY is the Pied Piper. It’s the banner we can march under. It is capable of bringing people in and bringing them along.

SR:

What typically happens when you draw customers’ attention away from market share and get them focused on WHY?

JR:

The WHY steers things away from a transactional mindset. Organizations need to have transactional conversations behind-the-scenes but their marketing messages need to be more relationship-based. They need to communicate that they understand the needs of their team, their constituents, and their donors.

When organizations see the interviews we conduct with their donors, they usually get new insights on their WHY. Storytelling success depends on finding things that the organization needs to know to know their market better.

An impact report and an annual report are very similar. But it’s the stories we tell that help build the culture, the loyalty, the forward momentum. Good marketing understands the difference. One type of story sells a product. The other inspires philanthropy. We think both turn out better when you start with WHY and focus on the mission.

SR:

I think that I heard something in there that closes the circle for me.

In market positioning, a brand or product wants to occupy a market share of a target market. They use positioning to stake their claim to that market share and deploy advertising to solidify the perception that they own that space in the minds of consumers.

In a mission-driven mindset, it isn’t about a slice of the pie. It isn’t a zero-sum game where your win comes at the expense of a competitor. It’s about growing the size of the pie through aspirational and inspirational messaging that draws directly from the WHY.

Does that make sense?

 JR:

Mission-Driven positioning has to start with WHY. To borrow a term from my partner Jude Charles, it all comes back to a “dramatic demonstration of proof”. It’s something you and I have discussed as social proof. If you can capture that on film, an impactful story practically tells itself.

If you look at a typical mission statement, it’s all about who, what, and how. If that was good enough to inspire others to support your mission, then organizations would just post their mission statement. When you focus on WHY you get access to something specific that is more effective because it gets effects through affect.

You could look at the stereotype of the Don Draper/Mad Men approach to advertising. It might be a strawman in the context of this conversation but it helps draw a clear distinction between competing for market share on the one hand and marketing your mission, cause, or purpose on the other.

And how do you get there? You form relationships and you work to understand motivations. You listen to learn what people care about. Nonprofit marketing can’t be transactional. Donors aren’t moved by efficiency. They’re moved by affect—they WHY.

SR:

I see that we’ve run out of time and I don’t want to take advantage of your generosity. Is there anything else that you want to say before we wrap things up?

JR:

Well, I think the take-away from this conversation is that traditional marketing strategies and the building blocks like positioning that we use to build them aren’t all that different from the ways that we market with a mission-driven mindset. It’s a difference of degrees not a difference in kinds.

At Argonaut, we focus less on competition and more on differentiation. That's because, at the end of the day, the position that matters most to a mission-driven organization is the one that puts them at the intersection of their supporters and their constituents.

The causes and missions at the heart of the stories we get to tell aren't ones that are going away any time soon - unfortunately. So, there's no need to accept the transactional mindset or the misperception that marketing is a zero-sum game. Stories that inspire grow audiences and build relationships so there is room for everybody.

SR:

If someone reading this interview wants to have Argonaut Productions give them a hand negotiating the shift to a mission-driven mindset, what should they do?

JR:

They can visit the website at www.argoprod.com.

From there, they can schedule a free initial consultation and let us know what they need. We’re here to help and we love hearing new stories and helping our clients “do good better” by amplifying their missions.