While any organization puts itself in mortal danger by taking actions completely contrary to its professed mission and values, matters were made far worse by a lack of internal cohesion and the lack of a united front when the online firestorm started.
Obviously, Brinker and the anti-choice staff members who pushed this decision didn’t do their homework and there is an important lesson for any group embarking on a major change of policy – make sure you have your ducks in a row before going public. There will be some dissention in any group populated by strong-minded advocates, but this can be minimized, in many cases, by advance preparation and the careful processing of issues.
Working this issue through internally may have led Brinker to realize that she couldn’t go public with this immoral decision if her own people were going to fight back publicly.
Clearly, reversing course was the right action, but what follows in terms of staff re-shuffling and new procedures will determine whether they ever regain any of their luster.
The news that the Susan G. Komen Foundation had decided to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program has touched off a firestorm of much-deserved criticism of Komen.
This latest move is part of a global drive by anti-contraception extremists who are trying to end programs that give women control over their childbearing. Caving in to extreme right-wing pressure – even when it comes from within your board – is always wrong for an organization that is so dependent on the support of mainstream Americans. This decision thrusts Komen into a debate that can only detract from its public image and cause donors and Race for the Cure participants to race for the exits.
The irony is that the public reaction was easily predictable because it happened before. Long before online organizing existed, ATT was pummeled in the press and by shareholders when they boldly announced in the mid-1980s that they would no longer fund Planned Parenthood because of right-wing complaints. As Communications VP for Planned Parenthood at the time, we ran full page newspaper ads all over the country under the banner “ATT Hangs Up on Planned Parenthood.” Besides the bad press, allied organizations that held ATT stock organized a protest and ultimately brought a resolution to the floor of the annual stockholders meeting, which was dominated by the debate over Planned Parenthood. What a black eye and what a distraction for ATT. History is repeating itself for Komen and this time in spades because of social media.
The blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter have lit up with anti-Komen posts. This attack on an allied organization will undoubtedly cost Komen many supporters and it will seriously damage its image as a group that values women’s health over politics. Many will shift their gifts to Planned Parenthood to support their cancer screening work.
The lessons for organizations are as follows:
Read and learn from history.
Caving in is far more costly than doing the right thing.
Don’t invite right wing kooks to serve on your board and if you do, don’t listen to them.
By now, everyone’s heard about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s (latest) gaff. When listing the three federal agencies he would move to eliminate when president, he as able to remember… two. In case you haven’t seen it, check out the video below:
The sometimes-harsh truth is that seemingly minor slips like this have huge consequences. It was a front-page story in the New York Times and a quick Google News search shows at least 5,600 articles. Many pundits have declared his candidacy to be effectively dead in the water – remarkable only in the fact that it came after months of missteps, gaffs or offensive comments.
For many of us – including unrepentant progressives like myself – this is a moment of delicious schadenfreude in an otherwise bleak fall.
However, it also calls to mind some of our recent projects. This fall, we’ve been on the road helping several clients train spokespeople for the media. The issues vary from community college and adult basic education to population and women’s reproductive rights. What never varies is the basic principles of speaking to the media. A few basic rules of engagement:
Speak in quotable sound bites that contain your core messages and issues.
Always remember that it’s not the reporter—it’s the audience. Your primary relationship is with the readers, listeners and viewers.
Never say “no comment.” There is always something you can say and if you don’t want to be quoted, say something really boring.
And lastly, never EVER start a statement by listing how many items you’ll talk about. You’ll always forget one.
It remains to be seen whether this gaff will be the proverbial straw that breaks the back of Gov. Perry’s campaign. What is clear is that in today’s vicious and partisan political environment it’s more important than ever to make sure that any spokesperson who’ll be talking to the media remembers these points and keeps in mind that whatever they say tonight can be tomorrow’s YouTube sensation.
Nearly everyone seems engaged by the Occupy Wall Street protests and their spread around the world.
I am heartened somewhat to see that the media has finally begun to show some respect. The tenor of recent coverage has become a bit more objective—particularly when compared to the derisive tone it took at the beginning. Still, most reporters jump at the chance to challenge the movement’s so-called “lack of a coherent message or demands.” It goes so far that I actually heard reporters complain that the protesters messaging failures meant they just couldn’t be taken seriously.
So, let me understand this. If you don’t spin coverage in the slick way I am used to being spun then you can’t be taken seriously? But really, what’s so hard to understand about the message? It seems pretty straightforward to me—the anger of being part of the 99% of the population being screwed by the richest 1%, aided and abetted by the U.S. Congress.
As the movement has picked up steam, shows like On the Media, pundits and some commentators have begun to pigeon-hole Occupy Wall Street as the parallel opposite of the Tea Party. This oversimplification serves the media’s need for a simple narrative of the “two-sided” story more than the public’s need for balanced information about a new political movement. The media is so focused on their frames that anything that is outside just doesn’t make sense.
The real problem I see is not about Occupy Wall Street’s messages. The movement has simply disrupted the master narrative that the media has been honing for the last few months—namely that the economy has doomed Obama, the 2012 election will end Democratic control of the Senate and the White House and nothing can be done about any of it. The disruption of that narrative requires a new one and what that would be is far from clear.
Will the protestors have an impact on the Democrats’ messages or policy agenda? Will they inspire or erode confidence in any of our current political leaders? Will they put forth their own candidates or stay outside the process? Will anger continue to build? Who knows?
One thing is clear. Occupy Wall Street has tapped into many Americans’ outrage over growing inequality and our disgust over the complicity of government and big business interests to shamelessly enrich themselves at the public’s expense. Literally everyone on the streets—Main Street to Wall Street—is talking about it. If that becomes the new narrative we could really see some change.
I had been feeling really low after traveling to Vermont and seeing the horrendous damage done by Hurricane Irene’s flooding. Roads and bridges were swept away and more importantly, people’s homes and livelihoods destroyed. I saw countless acres of crops destroyed by polluted flood waters, home after home disgorged of all their former occupants’ possessions, just pile after rotting pile.
In some ways the flood – which came on top of record unemployment and political paralysis – reminds us why we need strong public services managed by competent professionals and why our national treasury must step in to help. In the Catskills, my brother reported being astounded by the resolve and competence of the Army Corps of Engineers who literally flew in bulldozers with giant helicopters and made short work of cleaning out the creek bed in front of his house and rebuilding the washed out road that had left him stranded in his cabin.
And yet, in Washington, the disaster touched off a new round of partisan fighting rather than a unity of purpose. And the bickering continues today.
There are some points of hope, though. On the Saturday after the flood – a beautiful sunny day – we went to the weekly farmers’ market in Montpelier, Vermont’s quaint and yet vibrant capital and the smallest state capital in the US.
Despite the recent disaster, dozens of stands were set up as usual, populated by amazing smiling young people who had brought stores of gorgeous healthy organic produce, cheese, baked goods, honey and meats displayed with signage trumpeting the virtues of healthy eating and environmental protection. Buckets were set out to collect contributions for flood victims. Musicians performed.
As I looked around, I found my spirits lifted by the energy and dedication of these intensely creative people trying to build a lasting livelihood out of the simple, virtuous act of growing pure foods. I can only imagine the time and learning that they invested in raising livestock; making and bottling honey mead (think Beowulf); or becoming a cheese maker. They aren’t doing any of these things to get rich and perhaps that is what makes what they are doing so important. They are actually creating something of lasting value – a healthier planet with healthier people – and in so doing creating a different form of wealth than that we are taught to value.
In Montpelier, people are working in community with others, meaningfully engaging with their friends and neighbors in a way that is neither mediated by high-tech gadgets nor afflicted by Wall Street’s “values.” I think there is something there for all of us to learn from, even our political leaders in Washington. There is another way to live and work that can transcend the vagaries of current events, the devastation of natural disaster and the tyranny of the marketplace.
At this year’s Communications Network Meeting in Boston, I heard a great presentation by MoveOn.org founder Eli Pariser.
Among other sobering observations that can be found in his recent book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, Pariser points out the stultifying impact of the ever-increasing use of the word and concept of the “Like” button on social media sites to determine the value of an idea, issue or event’s worthiness of attention. “Likes” are increasingly used as a metric to gauge an organization’s popularity – for example, this recent article in The Guardian that uses “Likes” as a way of showing the reach of Britain’s top 100 non-profit organizations.
Hitting a “Like” button suggests to your followers, friends and contacts that they should pay attention. But it actually ends up shutting out important stories that none of us “Like” but still deserve notice and response. We may want our friends to pay attention to a tsunami, Rick Perry or genocide, but wouldn’t comfortably assign “Like” to these scary phenomena. Currently, social media does not offer an alternative way to call attention to negative stories in any other way.
Crowding out the negative by using the “Like” button skews Internet searches and reinforces the online media echo chamber. Spoon feeding people only information that Facebook or Google’s algorithms think you want to hear is a potential threat in our dangerous times.
How about a few other buttons on Facebook and other sites? What about “Beware” or “Heads up?”
We’re examining the process of branding – everything from picking a name to developing a logo. It’s a challenging and rewarding process that yields some of the most visible and memorable products Douglas Gould and Company creates. Feel free to share your branding experiences in the comments!
Now that the mark is chosen, it is time to play with color and make the logo come to life. This might seem like the easiest part. Just throw some colors together and you’re good! If only it were that simple, again there is a lot of thought and purpose behind each color choice. Colors have different meanings and can often convey hidden emotions or perceptions.
It was clear that the logo needed to speak to a diverse range of audiences – from policymakers to adult students – but what was the best way to go about it?
After a brainstorming session; research; and gathering ideas and color swatches, we nailed down some options. We knew that we didn’t want to go the neutral and organic-looking route, since it wouldn’t properly convey the vision and scope and could actually completely drive the feeling of the initiative off track. From that initial decision we decided on a set of colors that were fresh, energetic, inviting, uplifting. Most importantly they had to have a vibrant energy that would compliment and work together with their existing branding for A Breaking Through Initiative.
Here’s a little peek of some of the initial color options that we developed:
From there, color palettes were mixed and matched, thrown out and put to the side as a ‘just in case’ combination. We sent an initial five options to the JFF leadership team, including the executions above.
From the initial options, we worked with the JFF team to select the strongest option, which both conveyed the brand criteria and worked with their other active brands. A few colors color tweaks later we had the final product.
For the next several days, we’re examining the process of branding – everything from picking a name to developing a logo. It’s a challenging and rewarding process that yields some of the most visible and memorable products Douglas Gould and Company creates. Feel free to share your branding experiences in the comments!
Making the jump from an evocative name to a visual brand is just as much of a creative process as creating the name itself. A good logo will convey the personality of the initiative and leave the audience with a memorable experience.
Simple right?
Well, not exactly. From the initial work developing the name , the DG&Co. team developed a detailed list of criteria that the logo had to convey. Chief among them was a logo that was strong, vigorous, inclusive and inspiring. It had to convey opportunity and success in a way that adult learners – many of whom had very negative views of education – could see themselves.
Other core values the logo needed to represent included:
Jobs/work
Opportunity
Economy
Using this list we went to work. We developed an initial set of nearly 20 different executions, some of which had variations in font treatment, graphic size or placement to demonstrate the flexibility of the design. From this, we whittled the options down to the concepts we felt best represented the criteria and successfully balanced the need for a professional look while avoiding something that felt too “corporate.”
We sent 10 designs to the JFF leadership team for their review and feedback. The initial designs were presented in black-and-white so that all parties could focus on the potential logo’s form, the way that the font interacts with the visuals and the overall shape of the execution.
While the client is reviewing the concepts, there is always anticipation and more than a little nail-biting on our end. In the end, they settled on the concept below:
We’re examining the process of branding a new initiative – everything from picking a name to developing a logo. It’s a challenging and rewarding process that yields some of the most visible and memorable products Douglas Gould and Company creates. Feel free to share your branding experiences in the comments!
Last time, we discussed developing an initial set of names for a new initiative led by Jobs for the Future. After developing the initial list, it came down to choosing the right one – a name that would convey the values and messages of an initiative that aimed to do nothing less than revolutionize the way that adult education is administered.
Picking a name had an added challenge in this project. The group of decision makers included funders, partners and JFF leadership spread across the country. While they met occasionally, waiting until the next in-person meeting was not an option. Clearly some creative problem-solving was in order.
The leadership team was committed to moving forward with a brand a quickly as possible and we were able to settle on a process that included a combination of meetings, moderated webinars and conference calls. In order to narrow the field, we asked all the stakeholders to review the full list and come up with a list names they liked and those that they absolutely could not live with. From there, then held a series of webinars where these shorter lists were discussed, weighed and even argued.
From these discussions we were able to narrow the field down to five finalists, which quickly became three options as we conducted online research to find if the name was being used elsewhere. After the final review and a legal check, the final name became clear:
Accelerating Opportunity: A Breaking Through Initiative
The name conveys the size and scale of the initiative in a memorable and compelling way. It also pays homage to the previous work JFF has conducted in the field while remaining clear and concise. Finally, and just importantly, it is an aspirational and distinctive name that works both as the basis for a national level and a recruitment-ready brand.
For the next several days, we’re examining the process of branding a new initiative – everything from picking a name to developing a logo. It’s a challenging and rewarding process that yields some of the most visible and memorable products Douglas Gould and Company creates. Feel free to share your branding experiences in the comments!
Coming up with the right name is exciting. It’s fun. It’s also hard.
Whether it’s for a new or an existing initiative, developing a new name is challenging – and sometimes daunting – task. To select a good name, leaders and other stakeholders must come together and agree upon what will end up as the single-most important aspect of a brand. A good name must communicate much more than the meaning of a few words – it must convey the values of the organization or initiative it represents.
Recently, Douglas Gould and Company developed a name for a new, multi-state, multi-funder adult education initiative led by Boston-based Jobs for the Future. The process started with a series of on-on-one interviews and an in-person brainstorm that included representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the four other funders, the three partner organizations and JFF leadership.
From this initial discovery work, the DG&Co. team developed a document that outlined the criteria that needed to be satisfied in order to have a successful brand. These included core values, personality traits, adjectives, key audiences and visual considerations. For this initiative it would be critical to select a name that was wide in scope, described the vision and promise of the initiative, and paid homage to Breaking Through, JFF’s previous, ground-breaking work in the field.
From the brainstorm session, we developed an initial list of over 100 names. The potential names ranged from an evocative phrase to a literal description and from one word to a phrase with a tagline.
From here, it just came down to picking the right one.
