News

Don't strive for brand loyalty, ex-BOND leader advises

Finance | Tania Mason | 28 Oct 2008

Charities that seek to engage their supporters in ‘movements' without demanding alignment to their own brands, will prosper most in the future, former BOND leader Richard Bennett predicts.

"In an era of rising global citizenship, those organisations best able to suppress the urge for profile and growth are the most likely to achieve it," Bennett, who chaired the co-ordination group for the Make Poverty History campaign, said.

His views appeared in the latest version of the NCVO's Voluntary Sector Strategic Analysis (pictured), an annual report that highlights forces and trends that charities should consider when planning for the future.

Harness activist energy

Bennett's comments appear at the end of a section entitled Changing participation, which looks at how citizens engage in campaigning for social change. It suggests that as individual citizen action is increasing, charities could try to harness this enthusiasm, and examines how technology can make communication and networking much easier.

But it also identifies risks such as the propensity of governments and global corporations to try to control or monitor the public spaces available for campaigning, such as social networking websites, emails or text messages. And it warns that the "increasing number of opportunities for people to participate may have a negative impact on the loyalty of supporters".

Declining brand loyalty

In his article, headlined The rise of the global citizen, Bennett identifies two trends - a growing overall sense of global responsibility amongst the public, and declining brand loyalty to individual organisations.

"UK culture is moving with the issues of international and environmental organisations, but (slowly) away from the individual organisations that promote them," he wrote.

He went on to say that the drive for profile and growth will be tougher from now on, and only the "biggest and smartest" will succeed.

More visionary organisations will realise this and will invest their time in building collaborative campaigns, with a variety of other civil society groups, "that enable expression of global citizenship without demanding alignment to well-known brands".

Global and local ‘complementary'

Domestic charities need not feel threatened by the rise of global citizenship, because global awareness is complementary to a more local sense of community, Bennett said. But they do face a challenge in relating domestic or local concerns to the wider global context if injustice and climate change.

Bennett spent ten years as general secretary of BOND (British NGOs for Development). He is now a freelance consultant.

Tweet

Who's Who: Tania Mason