Good Marketing Brief

Inflight Briefing: 006

Written by William Henry | Nov 10, 2022 3:05:21 PM

Delivered weekly, the Inflight Briefing is designed as a blueprint for the builder and inspiration for the curious. It's for the purposeful (that's you!) doing marketing for good. 

006: "Every person is a person"

What do Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, and Paul Farmer, co-founder of nonprofit Partners in Health (PIH), have in common? They both believed strongly in the beauty and value of every human on our planet.

Gorbachev was quoted saying, “There is nothing more precious in the world than human lives.” And at the heart of Paul Farmer’s humanitarian work in Haiti was a creole phrase, “tout moun se moun,” which roughly translates to “every person is a person.”

This simple and powerful idea is being applied in purposeful marketing, where organizations no longer cater to businesses or consumers, but rather to human beings. It’s also why the most successful organizations succeed in large part by building an engaged and devoted community

What’s the marketing plan for nurturing your community in 2023? We hope you’re trying new things or already gaining insights from some experiments. We also hope you’re doubling down on the things your community already loves about you because we think next year is going to be your best year ever!

Snackable snippets 

Ten lessons from Paul Farmer’s life

For those of us who want to leave a positive impact on the world, Paul Farmer basically wrote the textbook by the life he lived. His accompaniment model healed patients by connecting healthcare workers with patients, but he also believed strongly that many of the world’s issues stem from a failure of imagination. By expanding the things we see as possible, our problems may not be as large as they appear today.

Throw out B2B and B2C because B2P is here to stay

In the past, organizations defined themselves by whether they served businesses or consumers directly. But in the last few years, leaders are realizing that individual people are the decision makers and that the most effective marketing involves understanding those individual’s needs instead of thinking of them as some vague group like a business or a consumer.

How to build a community from the ground up

A community is the driving force behind a movement. If you want your organization to scale and make a larger impact, you’ll need to harness the power of communities. One thing to keep in mind: you can’t launch a community because those people are already out there. The most important thing you can do is start doing the hard work of sharing value with those people.

What are marketing leaders doing to build their communities?

We’ve spoken with some of the top nonprofit marketers out there — Brady Josephson at Charity: Water and Taylor Hebble at Hope for Haiti — and we’ve unpacked some of the strategies they’ve used to expand and nurture their communities to create greater impact.
 

In the news


Liquid Death, a company that sells canned water, is now valued at $700 million. Over 300 of their devoted customer base have even gone so far as to tattoo the logo on their bodies.
 
Taylor Swift recently made history by holding all ten spots on the Billboard top ten at the same time. Drake nearly did this in 2021. So how did Taylor do it? Community! She’s just as masterful a marketer as she is a musician.
 
This may be old hat for fundraisers, but research shows that giving can have a positive impact on life expectancy. It really is more “blessed to give than to receive.” You may just get a couple years of your life back in the exchange.

Something for your inspiration folder

 

 

The Palmetto State Teachers Association secured 13 memberships through a single email, and now they’re doubling down with ads. By targeting the right audience — lapsed members — they were able to pick up some quick wins!

Incredible graphic, right? Well, there’s more where it came from. Tom McCarthy’s post on Instagram has some first-class insights to match those pitch-perfect visuals.