The Clean and Green Club

I used to be really scornful of “visibility advertising”: campaigns that had only a branding purpose, didn’t try to sell anything and in many cases didn’t even try to pass on a message. For most of my career, I thought this kind of marketing was only the province of corporate giants with unlimited budgets: companies like Coke, Nike, and McDonalds.

But ten years ago, I had an experience that caused me to change my mind. We were in the middle of a deep, multichannel campaign to block a particularly nasty housing development going all the way to the ridgeline of our local mountain (right next to a state park on the next mountain over, whose gorgeous view would be ruined). In addition to the press releases, the media campaign, the lobbying, the massive turnout at public hearings, and all the other tactics we were using, we did lawn signs and bumper stickers.They just said “Save the Mountain” (the name of our group) and gave our website. Of course, this was not only branding the organization, but also the idea that the mountain could actually be saved; our action mission was right there in the organization’s name.

One day, some of our canvassers were working a local farmers market when who should stroll by but the developer and his wife. And she turned to our people and said, “aaargh, you people are EVERYWHERE!”

That was when I knew we would actually win, and that our visibility marketing had a lot to do with our future victory. This was during the 2000 election season, and it was quite a thrill to drive around town and see our lawn signs sharing lawns with signs for Gore, Nader, *and* Bush–and our bumper stickers not just on hippie or environmenalist Volvos and Priuses but on SUVs and pickup trucks.

And this visibility marketing (including the consistent large turnout at hearings, the canvassing, and of course, the pure visibility components of lawn signs and bumper stickers) proved its worth when it brought us an unexpected victory: a wealthy philanthropist stepped forward, said she’d been very impressed by our group, and wrote the state a check to buy the land and add it to the adjacent state park.

In fact, when I think about it, most successful movements for social change, no matter where on the political spectrum, use major visibility campaigns to build awareness and support, and eventually turn the tide. Would we have the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts without Earth Day? Could Islamic militants have overthrown the Shaw and taken control in Iran in 1979? Would blacks have been able to overturn segregation in the US and in South Africa without massive public demonstrations?

Okay, so it works in social change. Can it also work in business? Remember—the first A in the marketers’ classic AIDA formula (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is Attention: getting noticed.

We’ll continue this series next month and look at how businesses can use visibility strategies without spending a king’s ransom on paid advertising.