Is the target audience for your campaign “everyone”? More is better, right? In the first of two installments, Faunalytics co-founder and non-profit marketing specialist Anthony Bellotti discusses why that isn’t an effective approach.

In over twelve years of consulting for animal protection clients, Faunalytics has worked with dozens of different issues, scores of different campaigns, and hundreds of different messages.

We’ve analyzed anti-fur ads, shaped anti-vivisection campaigns, and helped craft messages on everything from factory farming to spay/neuter efforts.

But if I’ve learned only one thing in all this time about effective animal advocacy, it is this:

When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.

It’s the hallmark of good message development, targeting, and coalition building, and it forms the cornerstone of effective animal advocacy. In this blog post, we’ll refer to this strategic approach using the acronym “WYEEYEN.”

TARGETING TO WIN

In her must-read book, Animal Impact, Faunalytics advisor Caryn Ginsberg summarizes the case for targeting:

“Imagine you’re a storeowner with one hundred dresses, ladies size 12. The women who’ve signed up for your mailing list have indicated if they’re looking for small, medium, large, or extra large sizes. Would you send a direct mail campaign about the dress to all of them? If you did, you’d probably waste a lot of money promoting to women unlikely to buy… The best approach is a targeted approach.” (Caryn Ginsberg, Animal Impact, pg.74)

Make no mistake about it: animal advocacy is also about selling. You are in the sales business whether you like it or not. And while we aren’t selling women’s dresses, widgets, or other products, we are selling an idea – namely, that our treatment of nonhuman animals must change.

I often ask animal advocates who they want to persuade when asked for advice on their respective campaigns. More often than not, the answer is “everyone.”

While it stands to reason that any animal protection effort should want to persuade the greatest number of possible people as quickly as possible, this is not the same as targeting everyone you possibly can.

If you don’t believe me, just look at how smart campaigns are run in the political world. While it would be nice to win 100% share of the vote in an election, smart campaign managers understand this is not how you target to win elections. On the contrary, winning candidates refine a message that only targets just enough to win – that is, at least 50% of the electorate plus one vote.

Now let’s consider an example from the animal protection marketing world. When Compassion Over Killing (COK) launched its pro-vegetarian, “Side of Truth” MTV ad campaign, it could have integrated any one of a number of disparate messages to reach its target audience, younger consumers. It could have adopted a healthy eating or environmental message. Instead COK concentrated its resources around a focused message of compassion to break through the clutter and reach its target audience. And the metrics speak for themselves: 25 million views nationwide at less than a penny per view (Caryn Ginsberg, Animal Impact, pg.77).

Of course, this does not mean that an ethically-based message is the answer to all animal advocacy campaigns. But remember, in this case, COK developed a campaign aimed at teens and young adults – not an ambiguous target of “everyone” in the meat-eating universe.

LESS IS MORE

Too many advocates also fail to incorporate “WYEEYEN” early in the message development process. In trying to please as many people as they possibly can, these well-meaning advocates end up diluting their message to the point that it becomes watered-down and meaningless. As a result they end up appealing to no one, and the bad guys win again.

When reading a textbook, you’re not supposed to highlight everything on the page. What’s really important? What do you really want to emphasize? What idea is so mission-critical that it must penetrate in order for your campaign to cross the finish line?

Remember: A good message is not a laundry list of everything you believe about an issue! Restraint and focus are essential for strong message development. It’s about choices and priorities. It’s about saying no, making cuts – even when it hurts. Apple CEO Tim Cook summarizes the WYEEYEN approach in these words:

“We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to… participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.” (Tim Cook, The Cook Doctrine at Apple)

Bottom line: When you start with a premise that you need to appeal to everyone, your campaign’s positioning strategy is on thin ice. So forget about reaching all the people. Your goal is to develop a campaign that appeals to a coalition of the right people.

In the next installment, we’ll explore the process of building – and breaking – coalitions from the same strategic approach: “When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.”