Why Most Activation Plans Fail and How to Fix Yours.

Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:00]:

Activation is turning attention into action. I think it's the hardest part. I think it's the scariest part. Marketing and communications is like deep psychology and behavior change and understanding the human mind and understanding media.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14]:

Can we make it easy for them to say yes? It can. We tell a story that makes it feel like it really impacts them directly? These are the things at the end of the day, no matter what digital techniques or in-person techniques we put into play, at the end of the day we're trying to convince people to make a decision. And how do human beings make decisions?

Eric Ressler [00:31]:

If you don't have a plan and a culture around activation in your social impact organization, my opinion is that should be your number one priority to start to change.

Jonathan, today I'd love to talk about how to activate your community of supporters and we've spent a lot of time in past episodes talking about brand and brand strategy and even digital and marketing, but we haven't really hit too much on specifically how to activate supporters and what different forms of activation might look like for different organizations. And I know that you've been part of many different activation campaigns and strategies for different social impact orgs. I thought this would be a great topic for our listeners. Are you down?

Jonathan Hicken [01:21]:

Yeah, it's worth the time. Let's do it.

Eric Ressler [01:23]:

When I think about the way that we help our clients who are nonprofits and social impact organizations, I really break our work down into three core pillars. The three core pillars are brand work, digital work, and activation work. And what I've seen over time is that activation work is actually the pillar that our clients struggle with the most. And so the problem really is that we can do an amazing job building out an incredible brand with a solid brand strategy and good messaging and positioning, good visual identity, et cetera, et cetera. We can build incredible digital experiences that serve as the home base for that brand with great content and user experience and deeply integrated and all the tech and bells and whistles and all of that. But if we don't have a strong activation pillar either that we're helping with or that our clients are doing on their own, then the investment in those first two pillars, I don't want to say is pointless because I think it still has a lot of value, but it doesn't have nearly as much value or return on investment as it should or could with strong activation as the third ingredient.

Jonathan Hicken [02:30]:

I think it's the hardest part. I think it's the scariest part. So it makes sense to me that your clients are struggling the most with that pillar. I can't wait to hear how you think about it and how you're helping social impact organizations breakthrough.

Eric Ressler [02:44]:

The irony to me here is that when you talk about marketing or communications, this third kind of activation pillar is usually what people are thinking about. They might not even be thinking about brand so much, or even the word brand might feel kind of foreign in the social impact space or they're not thinking about the website as part of marketing. The website's just the website and it sits there and marketing happens in social channels and email or whatever. But I actually think despite that this is still the place where clients struggle the most. I think there's a lot of reasons for that. I think sometimes it comes down to capacity. There's just someone doing too many jobs and this is their second or third job, so they don't have the time or the energy that's necessary to do this well. And frankly, I think for a lot of organizations, even having one full-time employee is not nearly enough to do this work properly.

[03:34]:

The second would just be expertise where they've got someone in charge of this, but people sometimes think marketing is sort of easy and anyone can just do it. How hard could it be to just post some stuff on social and write some emails? You laugh, but I think it's honestly true, and I think really marketing and communications is like deep psychology and behavior change and understanding the human mind and understanding media. And so I think there's sometimes just an underestimation around how difficult and how important this work is. And so it's like, oh, well, we'll get the intern on it or employee X can also do that. They seem to be pretty active on social media. I'm sure they can figure some things out and look, that can work sometimes, but I think it's just underestimated how much care and attention and time and energy needs to go into doing proper activation work. And so I've struggled with this because we can hand our clients really solid strategies, starters or even evaluation on this work, but if they don't have the proper resources and time and expertise in house to execute on it, then it's inevitably not going to be very effective.

Jonathan Hicken [04:45]:

Yeah, I think the first question that comes to mind immediately right now Eric, is when your clients are talking about activation, what is the nature of that activation, right? Is there a result in mind that you are imagining when you talk about activation?

Eric Ressler [05:02]:

Yeah, so I really love the word activation, but it is probably worth defining and at least the way that I think about it. And the reason I love the word is because it's a nice way to bucket a couple different complimentary synergistic actions that I think are important. So some things that to me would fit into the activation bucket in no particular order would be fundraising, would be trying to court donors. Smaller or large would be trying to mobilize volunteers would be trying to advocate for your work and influence policy or lawmakers would be behavior change campaigns or public information campaigns. So anytime that you are trying to activate any particular audience, maybe even your internal team could be considered activation work when you're trying to motivate them to make some kind of change, some kind of action. The way that I actually sum up activation is turning attention into action, and both of those steps are required for activation.

[06:04]:

If you get a lot of attention but you don't convert that attention into action, then it's just attention. But if you don't get that attention, then you don't even have the first ingredient to turn that attention into action. So activation is a pretty broad pillar that encompasses marketing, fundraising really to me, this is the actual change that you are creating in the world or the change that you need to create in order to be properly resourced to make the impact that you're trying to make if you're running other programs. But even program work, I think to an extent is a form of activation

Jonathan Hicken [06:40]:

To me. I hear what you're saying and I think about the word fuel, right? It's like much of the change that we seek. We need people fuel, we need people writing letters and making calls, giving money, sharing time, sharing information, and that to me is the fuel to make impact. So how do we activate people as fuel for the impact that we seek? Is that fair?

Eric Ressler [07:12]:

I love the word fuel. I think about the work that we do as being an impact accelerator. And so to me, these terms are very synergistic and they work really well together, but how do you get that traction and how are you focusing that traction into action? And so the word activation to me is really encompassing of all of those things. I have a couple big ideas around what is required to do activation work. Well, my first big idea, and we've talked about this before in certain episodes, but my first big idea is modern content creation. And what I mean by modern content creation is that you have to be able to create and distribute content in a way that actually breaks through in our attention economy. Remember, activation is attention converted into action. So attention is the first step. If you can't get the attention of whoever you're trying to activate, then how are you expecting to actually get them to take some kind of action? What do you want them to actually do? How can you persuade them to do that, remind them to do that, nurture them to do that. All of that requires capturing attention, and I think we can all relate to how difficult it is to capture sustained attention today when our attention spans are shorter and shorter and more and more organizations and people are vying for our attention at the same time.

Jonathan Hicken [08:35]:

Does it matter if we're talking about vying for attention dedicated to a cause or an outcome or attention on your organization, or does it matter?

Eric Ressler [08:48]:

I mean, I think it does matter, and I think ideally you need both. So in the example of capturing someone's attention for your organization, you're kind of by default capturing attention for your cause area at the same time, right? Because if they're supporting you, if they're giving you their attention, then by necessity they're also giving your cause and your cause area or the niche that you're in attention. So let's say a climate action organization, if you're a climate action organization and you're getting attention from one of your constituents or audience segments, then by default they're also giving climate action attention. But I think you bring up an interesting point, which is that sometimes people are interested in the category of climate action, but maybe a different organization or maybe not any one organization at all at this point. So sometimes it is building that trust and that awareness for your brand that hey, you are a leading, credible, respectable organization in the climate action space and you are worthy of and deserving of attention.

Jonathan Hicken [09:50]:

By the way, in real time, I'm mapping everything that you're saying to the work that I do at the Seymour Center, especially as it relates to activating our community to show up for climate action activities. So right now I'm actively mapping your concepts to my work, and we have demonstrated the ability to turn attention into action, but we have a unique advantage, which is when people are in our building, their attention is present for the most part, unless it's a parent on the phone sitting on the couch, like wait while their kid plays, otherwise we have their attention and we've attempted to turn that attention into action a few ways, which we can get into.

Eric Ressler [10:28]:

Yeah, we should just go there because I think it's an interesting case study. You have a captive audience essentially, and I think this is actually one of the reasons why the end of year gala is such a prominent fundraising strategy is because you're just literally getting everyone together, getting them excited and emotional about your cause, and then there's a clear call to action and opportunity to get that in front of people when they're paying attention. And that's a tried and true strategy, and that's still a strategy worth pursuing for some organizations, maybe not all, but I think the idea of in-person activation is in this category, but also today more and more activation is happening through digital channels, and those digital channels are noisier than ever. I mean, we're coming out of a very noisy election season to say the least. I think we can all relate to this.

[11:15]:

I don't know about you, but I probably got between 10 to 15 text messages from both sides trying to fundraise against me no matter how many times I said stop or learned, that you could use some other choice language, which also I subscribe you pro tip for those of you out there, but I think we have to look at activation more holistically. But yeah, my big idea number one is because so much of this is digital modern content creation because so much of getting people's attention these days is through content, right? Content is a broad idea around really just sharing ideas and perspectives and motivating people to take action at a certain point in the right part of the life cycle. And I think that the really important word in that big idea is modern because content creation for such a long time, especially in the nonprofit and social impact space, has been, I'm going to send you my article.

[12:10]:

I'm going to send you my report, my annual report or my impact report, maybe a donor appeal or something. But it's been a little thought of as this kind of old school communication and the pace of culture and digital culture and platforms and channels is just rapidly changing, and I fear that many social impact organizations have not kept up with that change. And so figuring out how to do modern content creation I think is really under indexed in terms of how important that is, and people are still using old playbooks there. We should break down what I mean by that in a little more detail, and then I'd love to get your thoughts. So we've covered this in previous episodes. We'll link to some in the show notes, but I want to break it down into kind of three key elements for modern content creation, a distribution first mindset being number one, channel proficiency being number two, and community feedback being number three.

[13:07]:

And lemme just break each of those down briefly. A distribution first mindset is really about understanding how to create content that is appropriate culturally for whatever channel you will be distributing it into, and thinking about that distribution strategy before you create the content, not after. So a common thing that we see is, well, we're going to make an article and we're going to write the article and then we're going to title the article and then we're going to promote it on our email list or in our social or whatever it is, a distribution first mindset says, what are we trying to accomplish with this piece of content or this strategy? Where will we be distributing that content and how might that channel influence what we should even be distributing in the first place? So very simply, that's a distribution first mindset. I want to just pause and give you a chance to react to that before

Jonathan Hicken [14:00]:

I get to some of the others. Going back to my organization and the way that we are taking attention and turning it into action when people are present in our building, that is an opportunity for us to create in a sense, distribution first mindset. We are putting resources out for somebody who is physically going to touch something

[14:21]:

And can do something with whatever it is they're doing. For example, we had a campaign where we were encouraging our community to write postcards in support of a shipping vessel protection measure. I won't get into the details, but what we did is we put postcards out, very easy to access, very easy to fill out already pre-written with an opportunity to add a little coloring or a little picture or a little poem or something. And we knew given our particular distribution form that that was going to perform well, but in contrast, when we put that call out online to speak up, it didn't work. And so in a sense, we developed a distribution technique that worked for that in-person, person campaign, but it didn't work digitally. And that was just the lesson that we learned as we tried to take on this new role in our community that really having that attention and creating things for people to do in the moment in a really easy way was successful for activation in our case.

Eric Ressler [15:24]:

Yeah, I love that example so much for two reasons. One, because I often think about distribution channels as digital channels largely where our work is happening, but it's really interesting to hear about in-person distribution. Just that framing is really intriguing to me and very valid. And then secondly, your reflection, which I think is the big aha here, is that you can't just expect distribution to work the same in every channel. That actually leads great into the second one, which is channel proficiency. And that really is just a fancy way of saying you need to understand what actually works in each channel or platform or experience. So in your example, you had designed a program and probably had a distribution first mindset around, we know this program or this activation is going to be happening mostly in person and probably I would guess put 90% of your attention and energy towards really nailing that experience, but you probably didn't think as much, or it sounds like you didn't think as much around how you might promote or distribute that content digitally. And so it essentially became kind of an afterthought, and because of that, it wasn't successful. And if you had thought as deeply or even just maybe even a little bit more deeply about the digital distribution, the digital activation, that could have been helpful in terms of just promotion and getting that idea out there, getting that activation out there more effectively.

Jonathan Hicken [16:50]:

Yeah, we probably could have produced more letters in support of this particular campaign had we put the attention there to that

Eric Ressler [16:55]:

Channel. I think the reason why these two points work so well together is because if you think about a distribution first mindset, if you use a distribution first mindset and make choices around your distribution channels, it allows you to be a lot more effective within those channels. But B, also figure out what channels should you even be in because if you can't be everywhere and you shouldn't try and be everywhere for any one activation or even at large for your activation efforts, getting really good at a couple key channels is way, way better than just trying to shotgun blast everything all over the place and not really being all the good in any one channel. The third main point around modern content creation is community feedback. So building feedback loops in through dialogue, through interviews, through pulse checks online. This might be through engaging with comments or email in person. This might be just checking in with people there or doing little pulses or having conversations or a retrospective on the event. Really getting that feedback from your community is, in my opinion, probably the most important part of modern content creation. It's not thought of as a megaphone, it's thought of as a conversation. And I would

Jonathan Hicken [18:10]:

Take that even a step further and say community feedback, not just between your community and your organization, but between community members themselves. So there's almost like a three-way conversation happening. I think that would be a really important piece of this too, at least in the case of the campaign I've been talking about in this conversation so far, is that once we were able to get this campaign going in our space, it created a conversation with our partner organization who was really leading the campaign. We were just fueling it with people power, but now more conversations started happening between our community and their organization. So it created this community feedback mechanism that I think really and ended up propelling the campaign quite a bit faster.

Eric Ressler [18:59]:

That resonates a lot and we'll get more into community feedback in a little bit. I think the number two big idea here is evaluation and iteration, and this is in response to how to do activation work exceptionally well. Because if you think about this kind of old school way of doing content and activation, you think about a year long editorial calendar where you have some big moments and big campaigns often at the end of the year or around giving Tuesday. I'm not necessarily saying you shouldn't be doing that, but I think the days of these kind of big splashes and then going away behind the scenes and big splashes, I just don't think that works anymore. I think that we are in a new era where you have to constantly be earning attention, building trust, nurturing relationships in an ongoing way the same way that you do with a friend if you're the kind of friend that throws a big party once a year and then never picks up the phone anytime throughout the rest of the year. I mean, is that really a deep relationship at the end of the day? I don't think so, and I think that's been the strategy for a lot of social impact organizations is these big capital campaigns, these big end of year campaigns, and I think those have a place, but they should be bolstered and supported and lifted up by every day having some kind of ongoing activation with your community.

Jonathan Hicken [20:18]:

And that's where the iteration comes in. If you're doing these activities daily or weekly or whatever you are learning almost by nature, you're going to be improving as you go. I mean, obviously you need to put some attention and some discipline into that, but what you're certainly going to give yourself a better chance of iterating and evaluating and improving if you're doing these things more consistently.

Eric Ressler [20:46]:

I think the other big part of evaluation and iteration is understanding where are you at in the attention funnel. So I think about this and there's a million ways to just break down attention or marketing funnels. A very simple, but in my opinion, still very effective way is kind of looking at top, middle, and bottom of funnel segments. Let's break this down more for the social impact sector compared to a standard marketing funnel. The way that I think about top of funnel is this is where you are trying to move someone from being unaware of your organization or your mission or your activation to being aware. So maybe they've never heard of you or maybe they have just some very preliminary knowledge, they've heard your name, they've seen your logo, but that's basically all they know. Top of funnel is really about trying to open doors to a new relationship.

[21:37]:

I think this has implications on the content strategy around what you might be putting out in the top of the funnel that's going to differ from let's say the middle or the bottom of the funnel. So top of funnel, you can think about as introductory copy or introductory content. The middle of funnel is really about nurturing, and so people who are getting middle of funnel content are already aware of your organization, but they maybe don't know too much about what you do yet, or even more so they're not convinced that you're meaningfully different or better or more trustworthy or more credible. So I think a lot in the social impact space about the middle of funnel being about building credibility, which might be through showcasing your impact, telling impact stories, social proof, getting any of your campaigns out there that show that you've had an effect on the world, that you're moving your mission forward.

[22:27]:

So this is about trust building, credibility building, and if someone knows about your organization but doesn't see this content, they might never get past that stage. They're like, oh yeah, they're doing some stuff. I don't really know what they do exactly. I'm aware of their brand, but I don't have any trust, I don't have any real relationship with them. Bottom of funnel content is essentially trying to convert people who are aware and interested and have some level of trust and credibility to actually take that action. This is the step that really moves someone from attention to action at the end of the day. And so that action might be a call to action, donate a call to action, sign this petition, a call to action, join this virtual or in-person event or in-person activation, so you're moving someone from being aware and having some level of trust into actually moving from that state into taking some kind of action. I don't think this works sequentially in the real world, but I think this is still a very effective overall content strategy and a way to just think about your activation efforts because if all you're doing all the time is only one of these three funnels, especially only bottom of funnel where you're just asking people to donate, asking people to volunteer, asking for support, but not giving anything back or showcasing your impact or building trust, you're just not going to activate your community.

Jonathan Hicken [23:44]:

Major donor fundraisers who are listening to this podcast should be nodding their heads vigorously. This is something that we talk about in our trade a lot around how do you bring a donor along this continuum and every think tank in the country who thinks about fundraising has their own little version of this, but it's the same idea that you've brought up. But what I think is really cool about what you're saying is you're applying this method to your entire community, your entire audience, right? Fundraisers. We're constantly thinking about whatever the 10 major donors in our portfolio and how to get them from aware to engaged to ownership, and we have techniques in that space to do that. It's a much higher touch. It's often very personal, but for all you marketers out there or all you program managers out there, what Eric's talking about applies to your work too, because you can bring along your community and your audience and bring them through this funnel. One technique that I think that probably a lot of organizations are using is some sort of email drip campaign, some sort of automated or triggered email campaign. Sometimes we might think of it as an email journey or something like that. And I think a very simple way to get started on what you just described is to build those steps into your email journey and to build those levels of engagement into that sequence in some way and level people up as just a really easy way to start the work that you've just described.

Eric Ressler [25:18]:

Yeah, I completely agree, and I think the distinction between this framework for fundraising and for broader activation is I think a really important one because I think there is some similarity and there is also some differences. The way that I really think about this is almost like a check when we're producing content. So going back to big idea number one being modern content creation. When I'm putting content out on LinkedIn, let's say, or through our email newsletter or through any other activation work that I'm doing, I am constantly thinking about our balance between these three core stages. I want to make sure I'm not doing too much top of funnel content all the time, because as much as that's going to get a lot of engagement and attention, if you're doing it, that top of funnel content should be your highest performing content with regards to reach and engagement and comments and likes in the digital world, or maybe for example, in a real world application or activation rather, at the Seymour Center, you did an event that was an open community event with a lot of different vendors, and there were scientists there and different booths there, and that was just a really cool, in my opinion, kind of top of funnel event.

[26:26]:

There was no ask at all. You weren't really even doing that much storytelling about the Seymour Center. It was just like, Hey, everyone, come here and be part of the community and get people activated into the space. I think that's a brilliant strategy for you. But if that's all you ever did, that would probably have zero impact on your fundraising longterm. So I think about this really largely from a content perspective, but of course it could also be applied to more bespoke, high touch actions for fundraising. So yeah, I mean, it has a lot of different applications.

Jonathan Hicken [26:57]:

I immediately go to the Marion Public Library Instagram. If you've never seen it, it's a hilarious account, and they do incredible content about this public library. And as you're describing it, I'm thinking to myself, that's all top of the funnel content. I wish I could get in front of 'em and be like, okay, now move me along the spectrum because your stuff is amazing, but what next?

Eric Ressler [27:21]:

It's so interesting. We could talk forever about this because that is a strategy, and that's almost in my mind, kind of like a brute force strategy, which just we are going to get so much attention that it's almost organically just eventually going to get us bottom of the funnel. But that only works if you literally go viral where you have huge, huge, huge amounts of attention. So I mean, even thinking about YouTube, for example, as a channel, you can be really, really, really successful on YouTube with a massive, massive, massive account if you produce the kind of content that is broadly applicable for all different ages, all different demographics that is kind of just entertaining almost, I don't want to say lowbrow content necessary. Still a lot of work to produce this well, and it's not an easy feat to do this, but that kind of content is really hard, I think for social impact organizations to produce.

[28:16]:

So when they are successful there, I think everyone's really excited about it because breaking the mold and it is a strategy, but I think there's also a completely different strategy, which is to have a very small targeted audience and produce really high quality, valuable content for that audience, never expecting to reach even thousands of people in your list, but being extremely persuasive with the type of people that you're reaching for a bigger ticket ask. So this would be essentially describing major donor fundraising at some level. I feel like with our show, we're kind of in the middle somewhere where we're not trying to reach millions of listeners. I think we're a pretty niche show, but I want to be broadly valuable to social impact executives, social impact marketers, and not get so niched down that there's only a potential target audience of a thousand people in the world who are going to care about what we're talking about. So you have to figure out what the balance is for your organization.

Jonathan Hicken [29:20]:

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the pitfalls I guess that I'm imagining right now is as I'm envisioning bringing this to my marketing team now, and so having this conversation with them, I wonder, Eric, at what point does the theory get in the way of the practice? I think that's just something that a marketer could get caught constantly trying to figure out the theory of it all. And I guess I'm just hungry for what's a really good first step to get someone who's new to this concept just to get their feet wet?

Eric Ressler [29:57]:

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think it's hard for me to answer questions like this sometimes because it's so dependent on a lot of different factors. How big is your organization, how much capacity you have, where are you starting from? What kind of content do you have? So when an organization approaches us for activation work, we really start at the beginning with what are you trying to do? What is the action that you're working towards? And honestly, often the way I ask it is, if you could wave a magic wand, what are the outcomes that you would wave that wand for in the next one to three years? Put all the content strategy aside, put marketing and branding aside just for your organization. What are you trying to do? Maybe some of this is coming out of the strategic plan. What I find really interesting is these answers almost never match the strategic plan, which is interesting to me.

[30:49]:

Sometimes there's some overlap, but it's often even just framed in a different way, which can be really helpful. So starting there, what are you trying to achieve? And then we can reverse engineer. Well, based on that, what are some of the raw ingredients that we have to work with from a content standpoint, from a storytelling standpoint, from a brand standpoint, from a strengths standpoint and differentiation standpoint is your organization. So the Seymour Center, one of your unique strengths and assets is a beautiful location and a beautiful building with an aquarium. Not every organization has that. Not every climate and coastal organization has that, right? So that's a raw ingredient, a really powerful one that you can work with. You don't have to, but you can. So we're looking at what are the goals, what are the raw ingredients that we have to work with to create this?

[31:37]:

And then what's the capacity either internally or from a budgetary standpoint to invest in this work in a way that is sustainable over time? And then we start to figure out, well, how will we measure if we're successful or not in these activation efforts? What are we trying to do? Are we trying to touch a thousand new donors? Are we trying to convert a hundred of our major donors into becoming recurring givers? This all depends on what the actual goals are for the organization, but I would say to break it down at a high level, think big. Use the magic wand question, put KPIs behind that, figure out what your resources are, and then start to build activation plans. You can even use the MVS framework for some of this that we talked about in previous episode.

Jonathan Hicken [32:19]:

I was just thinking, I was like, what if we, and I was literally thinking about my team. I was like, what if we picked one person in our audience and tried some things with one person, whether or not they knew about it? We were like, we're going to try to convert Tom a giver and we're going to try these different techniques and we're going to see if we can get 'em there. And I'm thinking that might be an easy and sort of achievable way to get this work started. I'll be honest, as an executive director, I'm listening to this, and it sounds powerful. It sounds powerful. It also feels daunting. Where do I begin? Who in my team am I getting on board with this? How am I coaching them on this? How do I get started? How do I get them started? How do I get them to build the confidence to dive into this work? And so that's where I came up with this idea of just a one person strategy. How do I convert that one person?

Eric Ressler [33:16]:

Yeah, the Guinea pig example is hilarious, and I think there's something to it. I might suggest maybe just a slightly larger sample size, 10,

Jonathan Hicken [33:25]:

A hundred, 10, 10 even,

Eric Ressler [33:26]:

Right? Because there's so much that is dependent on one individual person, right? One, what's going on in their lives, for example. So having a little bit of redundancy, but the idea you are on the right track with the idea. And I think just to wrap it up here, the daunting nature of it I think is true. But I also think when we think about social impact organizations who are feeling stuck or feeling like they're not getting the attention that they deserve or that they want to, or they're just feeling like people don't care as much about their cause as they do, and they're kind of curious about why that is. I think activation is the answer to all of those questions at some level. Because at the end of the day, if we want to get traction and make progress as an organization, we have to activate. We have to activate. Whether that's a small group, I mean, your activation group might be 10 lawmakers who need to pass a bill or bring a bill to Congress or whatever it is, but your activation group might also be the entire next generation of climate action leaders worldwide. So I think about the power of that. I think what it really comes down to is if you don't have a plan and a culture around activation in your social impact organization, my opinion is that should be your number one priority to start to change.

Jonathan Hicken [34:42]:

I keep coming back to this idea that at the end of the day, there's a human being that's going to have a decision to make whether or not they're going to write that letter or they're going to make that donation. And what are the fundamental human factors that go into deciding whether or not I'm going to spend time, money, attention, whatever, social capital on this thing that I'm being asked to do. And for me, it comes down to a couple of things. And actually I have a recent personal example where I got invited to be a participant in a local measure. It was a climate resilience measure, something I'm passionate about. And I got involved with this local political measure in a way that I had never before. And I was like, coming into this episode, I was thinking, why did I get involved in that measure in a way that I've never before done in a period of my time where I'm busiest? I've never been busier, but yet I still did that thing. And what were the ingredients? Because I'm a human. I was probably just one little number on their plan to activate 10,000 people, but it really worked for me, and I'm a human making decisions with human factors behind me.

[35:53]:

And it was like I got a personal ask. It was a cause that I care about that impacts me and my family directly. It feeds into my professional life. So there was kind of a win-win for me in there,

[36:10]:

And there was a community around it, a community of people that I knew and I felt comfortable with and people I wanted to meet more of. And so I said yes. And I was like, why did I do that? And so I just think in terms of activation, we have to be thinking about those factors too. Can we make it easy for them to say yes? Can we tell a story that makes it feel like it really impacts them directly? Can we build a community of like-minded people, or not like-minded people, but people that they want to be around? These are the things at the end of the day, no matter what digital techniques or in-person techniques we put into play, at the end of the day, we're trying to convince people to make a decision. And how do human beings make decisions?

Eric Ressler [36:52]:

Yeah, I mean, I love this line of thinking so much, and I spend a lot of time thinking about this too often when I choose to take an action to support an organization, to donate, to volunteer, whatever it is, I do the same thing where I reflexively look back or reflectively look back and say, why did I say yes to this? Just because I have my own personal curiosity on this. And also I'm thinking about how did this organization convert me here? And I do think there's many reasons why. I have a follow-up question for you that I'd be curious to see if you can even remember before you said yes or as you were in that point of deciding yes, how much priming had been done for you, how much trust building had already happened before you decided to say yes? And if so, how did that trust building occur?

Jonathan Hicken [37:37]:

I was invited to be a part of the group that formed the beginnings of what the measure was going to be, and I was invited by a personal friend.

Eric Ressler [37:48]:

So you had personal trust, you had a spokesperson or a close friend that you trusted, and because that friend invited you, there was some instant trust built.

Jonathan Hicken [37:58]:

That's right.

Eric Ressler [37:58]:

Yeah, that's right. That's probably the most powerful form of trust you can

Jonathan Hicken [38:01]:

Have. Yeah, and that was a friend I'd had for years, right? It was, and for me also, it happened to overlap with my professional, my day job and knowing that it benefited my day job if this measure passed. So there were dual motivations, but I don't think I would've shown up to that first set of meetings if it weren't for that personal invitation from a friend I trusted.

Eric Ressler [38:25]:

Yeah. Well, we could go on forever about activation. I'm sure we'll be doing more episodes that cover many of these topics in the future, but I think this is a really interesting primer on it. For those of you listening, I think the appeal here is really to just make sure you have an activation plan, because this is often how action actually happens. Think about modern content creation. Think about how you're actually going to build trust over time. Remember the top, middle and bottom of funnel model as a just simple way to think about are you hitting all of those buckets? Remember to be distribution first in your efforts, and more than anything, go out there and activate your community.

Jonathan Hicken [39:03]:

Thanks for bringing this up, Eric. This was a good one.

Why Most Activation Plans Fail and How to Fix Yours.

Episode Highlights:

Notable Quotes:

Resources:

Transcript:

Stay Connected

Ending Low Pay in the Social Impact Sector

How to Stop Planning and Start Doing

Signs You’ve Lost Touch with Your Community

Getting Community Input Without Getting Derailed