How Nonprofits Can Get Their Messages Heard in the Digital Jungle

This year, for the first time in history, the amount of spending on digital advertising will outpace the dollars poured into TV commercials.

That’s important for nonprofits to understand because they’ve not yet adjusted fully to changes in how people get information. All of us can reclaim Americans’ attention span — and get our messages out — by understanding what’s so different today.

Some of it is obvious: You probably just saw a woman walking down the street with a smartphone, or a colleague tapping around Facebook on an iPad during a meeting. People are reading and listening in ways that are more random and erratic than at any other time in recent memory, and they’re using every kind of medium to acquire information, news, and entertainment. What’s most important, though, is not how they get information but the fact that they are consuming it in larger quantities than ever before.

By the time you finish reading this article, a million people will have tweeted, 12 million YouTube videos will have been viewed, a million photos will have been posted on Instagram, and thousands of terabytes of data will have traveled across the globe.

The result is that the line between traditional content and advertising is blurred as we’re bombarded by content everywhere, from everyone, all the time.

At the same time, the role of nonprofits in providing information has changed. For decades, they had an upper hand over corporate advertising, with audiences captive to a handful of media outlets and attuned to the creator of content — in this case, an altruistic source. Americans would listen to a public-service ad sponsored by a nonprofit over an ad from a retailer.

Today, the situation is different.

Consumers are paying less attention to who created or paid for the information they are reading, viewing, or hearing, so nonprofits don’t command the attention they once did.

Trust in Charities

What’s more, even if consumers care about the source of information, they don’t necessarily see nonprofits as any different from the big businesses that bombard them with messages.

According to this year’s Edelman Trust barometer, trust in nonprofits plummeted to almost the same rank as that of corporate brands for the first time since the study has been conducted.

What Moves Young People

Nonprofits can start regaining their edge in gaining Americans’ trust and attention by asking the question Madison Avenue always asks: What moves young people, who have billions of dollars in spending power and the highest level of influence across all generations? For millennials, it’s all about connecting with their sense of social awareness.

Research shows that millennials are willing to spend more on brands that are connected to a cause. Dove, Axe, Secret, Airbnb and others famously tapped into this phenomenon with socially aware spots.

Simply put, Corporate America and its ad agencies are playing on the nonprofit field — building their brands and driving change through purpose-driven advertising.

All of that means that nonprofits need to play on the corporate playing field by creating buzz and exciting the audiences they’re trying to engage.

Recognize that being a nonprofit is nothing more than a tax status. When people watched the Love Has No Labels public-service announcement, they didn’t care that the Ad Council, itself a nonprofit, was the creator. But we and the nonprofits we worked with to create the campaign reaped the reward when our spot was viewed 164 million times, making it the second-most-viewed video on YouTube in 2015. And the messages were clearly getting across to people. For example, before the campaign started, 61 percent of people felt they could do things “to create a more inclusive and accepting environment for others”; now, 73 percent do.

Leave the audience feeling inspired, not depressed. Sad and syrupy doesn’t move audiences. Research conducted by P&G shows that sadness can be temporarily debilitating. It may get the consumer to care, but not to act. Inspiration does both.

Don’t tout the latest statistics about poverty or health care. People want stories, not statistics. And those stories need to reflect the real experiences of the audience, not stereotypes.

Speak beyond your core audience. There’s a difference between raising money from your most ardent supporters and changing the minds of people who aren’t. If you’re in the business of advocacy, changing behavior, or other work essential to nonprofits, it is vital to reach beyond your base.

Show the reality of people’s lives. Effective ads are inclusive. They show gay couples, interracial couples, people with disabilities and more.

Let magic happen. Sometimes nonprofits can connect with their audiences in the most convincing and unexpected way by taking a risk. Remember when everyone turned their Facebook photos red to support marriage equality or when we doused ourselves in ice water to promote awareness about ALS? That took spontaneity but also the willingness of nonprofit advocates to take risks and let their supporters do what they thought would work.

This is a great moment for nonprofits. With all these powerful new tools and a new generation of millennials seeking to do good, nonprofits can do even more than ever.

But it will mean being even more bold and inventive than ever before.

And it will mean adhering to this single golden rule of the digital jungle: If it’s entertaining, moving, or inspiring, they’ll click. If it’s not, they’ll move on.

Lisa Sherman is president of the Ad Council.