Effective Cause Marketing, TEDx Ideas Worth Spreading
By PAAIA Editorial Staff
September 23, 2010 – At PAAIA we are interested in big ideas, so last Monday we sponsored a TEDxChange at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, a 90-minute simulcast of this year’s annual TED Conference titled “The Future We Make.” The webcast is available online.
The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, held annually in Long Beach and simulcast in Palm Springs, is centered on the belief that ideas can change attitudes, lives, and ultimately, the world. It is where the foremost thinkers and doers in the world come to exchange their latest visions, brainstorms and projects. The TED Talks are later made available online to give “everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices”. A TEDGlobal conference is held every summer in Oxford, UK, while TEDxChange events are locally organized and create independent TED-like events.
The idea worth speeding in Monday’s simulcast was that the solution to achieving goal No. 4 of the UN Millennium Development Goal, namely, reducing child mortality, lies in marketing.
At PAAIA we are interested to learn more about how to reach and engage our community, how to market a good cause. We therefore listened with great interest to Melinda Gates who pointed out that the key to Coca Cola’s successful penetration into the most remote villages in Africa is its use of live data, its strategies in mobilizing local populations, and creative and targeted marketing. Real time data is used to determine product sales and change strategies if goals are not being met. Local entrepreneurs mobilize and distribute products, creating jobs and providing access to areas that would otherwise be missed. It comes down to very specific and targeted marketing and branding that connects with its target audience (cp. the Coca Cola commercial included in the simulcast that aired across Africa during the World Cup) and creates a product’s desired perception, and thus its market demand.
Koz Khosravani, the organizer of TedxChange in Santa Monica, was among those who shared his ideas with the participants after the simulcast.
Koz spoke about marketing ideas in social media using targeted Power Circles. His message was to “deepen your level of relationships and commitment to a mutual cause with your targeted audience”. Create circles specifically based on what factors are significant to your cause–financial, spiritual, relationship building, philanthropy…. and apply it in all social media outlets including Facebook and Twitter. He advises to only send applicable targeted messages to each group so that each message is strong and takes into account the direct interest of the given recipient. It prevents diluting your voice and also saves your friends from getting bombarded with business-related messages, and protects your clients from having to look at your family vacation photos. Cause marketing can be applied to Millennium goals just as well, he said. Each person identifies a goal they want to take part in, creates a power circle, identifies goals, focused messages, and specific action plans to achieve these measurable goals, and go!
We enjoyed learning about new marketing ideas and their application to both the business and social spheres and hope you’ll take a moment to watch Monday’s archived simulcast.
Until the next TEDx!
