Do Marketers Ever Have Pure Intentions?

A few years back, I pushed Big Brothers Big Sisters to run a series of social ads on Facebook and Twitter centered around the kids going back to school…

Obviously, it was topical. The kids were indeed back to school, and kids are notorious for not being entirely mindful of their surroundings in the energy and tension surrounding their return to school and seeing all their friends. So, it’s all good, right?

Sort of.

Unfortunately once you’re in the marketing game, motivations are never completely pure. There’s always an angle, whether you want there to be or not. There’s always this thought of “how can I get us out there better?”, and “how can I get us into the conversation without looking like I’m trying to get us into the conversation?”. And when you consider that in marketing, any given ad or public anything is not likely to make you a “sale” (or entice a volunteer to sign up), you have to realize that it’s an ongoing process, where everything you get out there adds ever so slightly to the public’s comfort and trust in you.

So, in the case of BBBS, yes, absolutely these ads made sense. The agency is all about the kids, and getting #BackToSchool hashtagged posts out there let us naturally make an appearance in that conversation without it feeling like a crass attention grab.

But let’s not kid ourselves… when I conceived of these ads, it wasn’t just “how do we keep the kids safe?”… there was also the thought of “Is there an opportunity here?”.

Who knows. Maybe I’m saying the quiet part out loud. Maybe there are people out there who would be able to conceive and execute ads like this just because it was the right thing to do.

But I guess I’m not one of them. The ads were indeed the right thing to do… but they were also the smart thing to do from a marketing perspective. And I’m not just a graphic designer, after all these years.

I’m a marketer too.

Years ago I wrote about the need for nonprofits to be out there in the community more often than just asking for time or money. Whatever I said here probably still applies.