Power & Opportunity

Nearly two years ago I wrote an article, Power and Responsibility, venting my frustration about the power in the marketing industry to influence minds and change behaviors and what seemed to me a lack of follow through on using this influence for the greater good. (To the level of potential held within such a significant amount of influence, anyway.) The thoughts I had around this power and responsibility led me to the idea for #MoreMovementwithMarketing. 

While I feel a level of frustration that pushes me to want to yell from the rooftops about how much more we should be doing with the influence of the marketing platform, yelling about unmet “shoulds” won’t be the way to ignite change in marketing practitioners.  At least, it won’t be as effective as yelling about what we could be doing, framed with an empowerment and solution mindset.

The better and more productive term in rallying participation is “opportunity”--not responsibility. So, this is about the The Power and Opportunity of our marketing industry. 

Early on in my discovery process for More Movement with Marketing, I was listening to a podcast that discussed solutions journalism. The guest was from the Solutions Journalism Network that trains and connects journalists to cover what's missing in today's news: how people are responding to problems. I felt there were more learnings to uncover here and reached out to discuss the learnings around solution journalism and what we could borrow when it comes to solutions marketing. 

My outreach led me to Karen McIntyre, a professor and journalism researcher studying and teaching solutions journalism. McIntyre discussed the effects of reframing news around solutions to problems, specifically, greater engagement among readers. People want and engage more deeply with content that focuses on solutions and elicits positive feelings. Solutions journalism doesn’t mean to turn a blind eye to the issue at hand, but rather to use the problem as context to talk about what has been tested to try and resolve the issue. 

“We have research showing ‘if it bleeds it leads’ isn’t right anymore. There’s a shift happening. People want to feel empowered and more hopeful,” said McIntyre. “It’s difficult for journalists who’ve been in the field a long time because we’re asking them to shift their mindset and think about what makes something newsworthy. They tend to think, ‘We’ve always done it this way and it works for us.’ But does it? …You’ve made money, but trust is so low.”

The solutions journalism approach to the story focuses on the response to the problem versus the problem itself. By choosing certain quotes and pieces of information, there’s a lean towards empowerment. 

McIntyre and I discussed both solutions journalism and solutions marketing–or constructive media and constructive advertising, as it is also commonly referred to. We can certainly apply the learnings and impact of solutions journalism to how solutions marketing can help move minds and change behaviors for the greater good (the ultimate goal of my dig into creating more movement with marketing.) But a bigger takeaway for me in the shorter term is how we frame the opportunity for the individuals in the marketing community before we brief them on how to use solutions marketing in their work to the mass public. 

There are many valiant efforts to unite the marketing industry and incite more action when it comes to social impact. But having been an individual those efforts were directing their communications to, it was apparent to me early on that making industry folks feel guilt or shame over what they are not doing won’t make them jump at the chance to be a part of change–which will require they push themselves beyond their comfort zone and overcome their fear of getting it wrong. Typically it’s our natural tendency as human beings to turn away from feelings of guilt or shame.  

Putting a solutions marketing lens on the goal of rallying the marketing community to work together in leveraging the significant amount of influence we have–this is all about seizing the opportunity to do more, even if you’re actively doing the work now. Let’s go bigger, not in silos, but instead work in a collective and all-powerful sort of way. 

While it’s great to see the many unique and individual efforts to create social change, our power as an industry will be fully realized when we unite to use the platform created by brand dollars collectively. 

This is the big opportunity for the individuals within the marketing industry–to unite forces and affect mindsets about social issues at scale. And I would be remiss not to point out that in the center of the More Movement with Marketing discussion is the start of an idea for how the forces of marketing might come together to that end–a possible solution. It wouldn’t solve the discord and polarization we have in the world, but it would certainly be one solution among many, and the most broadly activated one at that.