IA4: The analogy of marketing and policy

On Friday, September twenty-eighth I attended the Advocacy training hosted by the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics from 10:00 a.m to 3:00 pm. You can find the information for this event at https://www.chatham.edu/pcwp/events/details.cfm?eventID=22744 Though this wasn’t a business-related extracurricular event, it relates to my career field as a policy studies major more deeply than most of the other events that were offered this semester. This event was very helpful to me, because it helped me determine what specific career I want to pursue in the political field; I realized that I would not enjoy being part of a non-profit advocacy group or activist because I feel that my political talents could be used elsewhere, such as in the law field. Regardless of how I felt about this opportunity, I’m just happy to have been offered this chance to learn how to be an effective advocate of all different types of political issues. Through Advocacy Training, I also realized how deeply intertwined the business and political fields are, as advocacy begins with marketing yourself and your ideas.

The event was hosted by Jhatayn, or Jay Travis, who has a background in advocacy. Jay obtained her undergraduate degree at Columbia College in Chicago and her master’s degree from the School of Social Service at the University of Chicago. She worked for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization and various other organizations, and then briefly ran for office in her district in the outskirts of Chicago. She now works as the Co-Director of the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. Through this array of advocacy experiences, she has learned how to effectively organize youth, rally for education reform and labor alliances, and fight for racial justice.

Utilizing the knowledge she has gained from these experiences in her lecture, Jay Travis broke down exactly what it means to propose an advocacy plan. There are five specific portions of this plan that will assist one in effectively advocating for something such as a social justice issue. An advocacy plan is broken down into these five distinct parts: the goal, strategies to help achieve this goal, next steps for the plan of action, and then who and what can help achieve this goal. During the session, we split into different groups to generate metaphorical advocacy plans for issues that we were passionate about. These topics included LGBQT rights, affordable housing, and equitable education. Ms. Travis gave us a personal example by explaining how she convinced Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, to widen school districts in the Chicago area to include more black children rather than only appealing to upper-middle class, suburban, white families. This exercise taught me exactly what steps needed to be completed before developing an advocacy plan that would subsequently convince political figures, such as how Jay Travis convinced the mayor of Chicago to listen and implement new policy.

Jay Travis’s background allowed her to effectively explain the primary aspects of the action of advocacy, which included the action of marketing our ideas to others; this is exactly how advocacy pertains to business, or, more specifically, the marketing aspect. Jay Travis’s presentation reminded me a lot of Dr. DeLong’s. “Exploring Business”, by Karen Collins, states that marketing is defined as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”.  Dr. Delong elaborated on what exactly this means for institutions and consumers. In the case of this lecture, the customer is the person or persons that one is advocating, such as mayors, Congressional representatives, and other primary political figures that have the potential to change policy to better please their constituents. Specifically, advocacy plans require marketing management, which was also defined by Dr. Delong as “The art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value” because being an advocate means focusing on a “target market”, or a specific leader that is key in the decision of whether to implement my new proposed policy. Business and politics are related in more ways than one, whether that be by considering the governmental policies that affect macroeconomics, or in the case of Advocacy training, the marketing aspect. This exercise helped me draw parallels between politics and business and helped me become more proficient in understanding both.

            The article I researched elaborated upon my comparison between politicians being the “buyer”, and the advocates being the “sellers” of policy changes. Specifically, politicians are the potential “consumers” of the “products” that I, as someone performing advocacy, am selling to them.  Allan Thygesen, the author of the article that I chose, discusses how consumers are beginning to purchase products in a de-linear fashion, meaning that “Today, consumer choice heavily influences reach and frequency. They’re choosing to engage with brands that are relevant, helpful, and personal” (Thygesen, 2018). In terms of the analogy, “consumers”, or influential politicians, are more willing to engage with ideas that clearly personally affect their constituents. For example, earlier this week I wrote a letter to a Congressperson in Michigan who denies that climate change has a real impact on Americans; I explained that climate change has a detrimental impact on my family, as my dad now suffers from Lymes disease after he was bitten by a tick. We never had ticks in our area before our climate became hotter in the summer-time and milder in the winter. This shows that the advocacy I am doing is connected to my personal experience with the issue I am fighting against. This, according to Thygesen, is the most effective way of “selling” one’s “product” to “consumers”, as “the brands that offer it are the brands that will win" (Thygesen, 2018). If more politicians and businessmen acknowledged this parallel, this would benefit all of the “consumers” of new ideas throughout the world; we should work together to capitalize upon the importance of using personally relevant background information to effectively and efficiently “sell” our “products”.

References

Karen Collins. (2017). Exploring Business. Boston, MA: FlatWorld

Thygesen, A. (2018, September). Understanding the new marketing funnel and user intent –

Think with Google. Retrieved December 6, 2018, from

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/marketing-funnel/