Today's Ypulse Guest Post comes from Alexander Steed, who Ypulse readers may recall from his series of posts submitted from the road as he made his pro-social-powered trip cross-country. Now, back at home, Alex continues to consider and promote the best ways to reach out to his fellow concerned Gen Y-ers. Below he weighs in on peer-associative branding on Facebook for nonprofits. If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a Ypulse Guest Post, feel free to email me.

Peer Associative Branding Or 'What If I Said All Your Friends Were Doing It"

"My Head is spinning with so much that is new or needs to be taken apart and put back together again … Amazing, isn't it?" -Beth Kanter in the comments section of her blog post, "ROI: What are the best "I" words for nonprofits to think about social media and ROI?

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine; he's in charge of development at a state-wide AIDS awareness/action organization. He had just directed a fundraising campaign for the organization on Facebook, and I asked him how it went. It went well, he explained, but the fundraising application takes 5% of every donation, and he thought he'd have been better off receiving checks from some of the donors since he lost "so much" in processing.

True – the organization gave up 5% in processing fees, but what did it gain in peer-associative branding, I asked. That is, I'm a Facebook user and I see on my newsfeed that five of my friends gave to said organization. I've never heard of it before, or I'm not too familiar with it, but I see that three of my friends, peers I have positive associations with, gave to the organization as well. My friends, via their donations, have, in addition to giving money, attached a sliver of their personal brand to the organization. It is that, not anything that the organization (or initiative) projects on its own surface, that I am attracted to when I first learn of it.

Or, I am attracted to the organization because I want to have a connection with and/or impress the three aforementioned donors. When I read more about the organization, my reception is influenced by the positive residue of my desire for said influencers, thus I give it more attention than I would otherwise.

This is, of course, the essence of social branding.

And fortunately for organizations, this association is more often a positive or neutral one than it is negative. Very typically one of these scenarios occur:

A cluster of friends I really enjoy have become supporters – financial or passive (joining a group or becoming a fan) – of an organization, thus I receive the organization with an open mind and am more likely to look into it in a more meaningful way, be receptive to donating to or volunteering with the organization, or a combination of both.

A cluster of friends I don't necessarily enjoy more than I do anyone else (but do enjoy enough to be Facebook friends with) become "fans." While this doesn't evoke the same positive peer-associative response, at least I see the organization's name, establishing for the entity a predisposition of familiarity in my brain, which will be handy the next time I encounter it in a more-meaningful way.

More often than not, public peer-associative branding by way of Facebook transactions are either positive or benign pieces of exposure. But it's exposure, people!

In a very rare scenario, "Helen" supports something, and I start to ask questions. We all know a "Helen" – I met mine at day camp in the 10th grade, she friended me on Facebook, (likely by way of that pesky damn "FriendFinder") and in all of our forced Facebook chats she casually drops I am going to hell because I moved in with my girlfriend before we got married (or conversely, she over-zealously evokes Marx every time politics come up). Perhaps Helen adopts some cause on Facebook and then I, for some time, associate that cause as one characterized by Helen's zealotry. But even Helen-danger is a) pretty unlikely and b) far less potent and permanent. Drawing a passive association between a lesser-liked Facebook friend leaves a far less permanent an imprint than the one left by the opening my mind to positively receiving a product or organization.

When I was little, my desire to want something that the cool kids had far outmatched the intensity with which I did not want something less cool kids had. In part, many people are initially receptive to involvement with X organization for the same reason I wanted a Trapperkeeper in elementary school: We want to be like the cool kids. This isn't to say that this is the fundamental reason for our prolonged involvement; it is to give credence to, and leverage, the birthplace of our desire for association and involvement.

And remember how the fundraiser suggests he would have been better off receiving some checks in favor of paying processing fees? Imagine this in the context of the Trapperkeeper. If all of the cool kids kept their cool toys to themselves, no one else would have wanted a stake in them.

In the digital age, the monopolization of cool no longer belongs exclusively to established brands with lots of money, as the small organization is offered the same knowledge and mechanisms necessary for victory in the on-going battle for public perception that large ones are. While the latter still monopolizes on people-power for larger-scale implementation, they do not necessarily have an edge on leveraging said-power smartly.

In situations like these, Beth's aforementioned sentiment – that her head is consistently spinning as she interprets and reinterprets all of this change – rings so true.

My head's a 'spinnin.'

Note from Alex: I should be clear that I am not necessarily in favor or against a percentage of donations going to donation-processing. I would, as a fundraiser, prefer to opt for the free option. In this case, I am merely suggesting examining the other benefits coming out of the process, and suggesting a conversation be held with regard to what, if any, the fee should be.

* Photo courtesy of [xinita] failed trigonometr

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Categorized under: Youth Marketing

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