I am back from my break from writing the content of my teaching in the Ministry Marketing Mindset seminar. It has been a very busy season these past weeks. The media campaign I have been working on in Oklahoma ends Sunday (for now). In addition to the statewide media saturation, we made 650K door-to-door contacts. When I have it completed, I’ll post a link to the case study about the campaign. Also, I am going to try to break up my post into smaller bite-sized 500-800 word posts. My mammoth 1500 word posts may be a thing of the past. But who knows, it’s so much harder to be brief! :) Thanks for your readership to this blog, I appreciate it very much!
Thinking Through Your Use of Media
Most of us have grown up using media. We have watched television, listened to radio, surfed the internet, read magazines, received tons of junk mail and blocked even more spam. We have read countless newspapers, seen thousands of billboards, seen high pressure news conferences, and experienced the promotions designed by the finest minds in advertising history. We know what advertising is all about—we have seen Samantha on Bewitched pull an advertising slogan out of her twitching nose more than once. Hey, advertising is easy–it’s not rocket science! (Say that out loud!)
I mean, I watched so much television as a kid–for years I thought I was one of the Brady Bunch children. I even avoided playing ball in the house or wearing Tiki statue necklaces because I saw how my Brady friends were affected by these activities. I secretly have always wanted to eat pork and beans from a flashlight like Bobby and Cindy did when they went to the Grand Canon!
I’ll bet I saw nearly every commercial ever produced when I was a latch-key kid growing up. Hey, I know not to fool Mother Nature , I know what happens when a meatball is too spicy and I know there is an ancient Chinese secret to clean laundry. No matter how many times you have seen popular media jump the shark or seen advertising you still don’t have the information you need to make media effective. Your expertise in media consumption doesn’t make you an expert in media strategy. We are tempted to think we are media savvy to our own demise.
There are three things that make media effective: First media must impact attitudes. It has to touch the emotions of the person. Second, your media needs to carry your information. There has to be a payload of information that you deliver to the person you want to reach. Lastly, effective media marketing causes people to act. There is a call to action of some kind. Let’s reflect on these below.
Think of Media as the Educational Tools You Use to Motivate, Educate and Move People to Act
Your organization’s use of media is meant to get attention and invite response, right? In a sense you are educating people. So start thinking like a teacher. Good teachers don’t just lecture their students about facts they also engage the student’s senses and get them involved emotionally with the subject. They do what they can to get the students working with their hands, being active. In short they think about what students learn, not just about giving them an info-dump!
Take a look at some of the principles used by teachers in Bloom’s Taxonomy and you will see how the good teacher tries to engage the students at three levels: the cognitive (knowing) the affective (feeling) and the behavioral (doing). Every person is different and learns best through one of these ways. So be sure to think through how you are going to use a variety of media to connect with people in as many ways as you can. How will you connect to the feelers? What will you do to activate the doers? How will you give the knowers, the information they crave in an interesting and timely manner?
As I have said in the past in Social Marketing (more posts on this coming down the pike, I love this topic) marketers develop communication that engages people in all these areas: attitude, awareness and actions. As you plan media outreach, remember there is more to it that you may be thinking. Don’t rely only on your experiences growing up vegetating on the couch. Also, remember you can make your media more effective when you think about how the media will work in educating people. If you think like a good teacher, you won’t be tempted to ramble and throw facts at people. You will be looking for comprehension among your “students”
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