In the business world it is taken for granted. No self-respecting company would bring a new product to market or launch a new service without an advertising campaign, marketing activity and PR. Government ministries, municipalities and nonprofits, on the other hand, are often reluctant to budget for marketing and PR, for fear of public criticism or because they don't know how effective it is or what tools are available today.
Social entrepreneur Dan Pallotta, whose organization raised $582 million in nine years through three-day charity walks for breast cancer and multi-day bike rides for AIDS research, talks about the gap between how marketing is seen in business and how it is seen in the public and nonprofit sectors. The public takes it for granted that companies promote themselves through marketing, advertising and PR, while government offices and nonprofits that do the same are seen as frivolous with their budgets, "wasting" money on the trimmings instead of the essentials of helping people. Pallotta sees this as outright discrimination.
He explains that to raise the hundreds of millions he set out to raise, he needed the participation of hundreds of thousands of people. So he advertised his activities and events in the most prestigious newspapers, despite the high cost, and promoted events through press coverage and preview events. The return on that PR effort shows that, just like businesses, nonprofits need marketing, advertising and PR budgets as essential tools for growing their budget, their activity and their impact on the community and the world.
PR, the public sector and nonprofits: why now?
It's fair to say that government offices and nonprofits managed for years without PR and marketing. (Advertising is a slightly different story: in Israel's public sector at least, the Government Advertising Agency was established in the 1980s, marking the beginning of recognition that advertising matters for public initiatives too.)
Even so, the public and nonprofit sectors' need for marketing and PR has grown in recent years because of a few major changes. The first is the demand for public transparency and freedom of information. Where many aspects of how institutions operate could once stay hidden from public scrutiny, today there is a growing demand for public involvement in their inner workings. Public institutions, municipalities and nonprofits therefore need ongoing, direct communication with the wider public about all of their activities, conduct and decisions, communicated in a way the public can relate to.
The second change concerns fundraising. Where nonprofits and institutions once relied on a small number of major donors, today various crowdfunding models offer a completely different way of raising money, and to succeed, organizations must tell their story clearly and compellingly to hundreds of thousands of potential donors.
MaxiMedia: PR as a growth engine
MaxiMedia is a PR and marketing consultancy offering advanced methods, together with consulting and the development of a broad communications strategy across all platforms and social networks. We are fully involved at every stage of the process to create news value, from planning the initiative through to its promotion and media exposure, based on a deep understanding of what the media needs.
Our team includes not only creative content people who know how to craft and communicate a message, but also a research department. At the outset, it carries out a broad international review and research for our clients and, after analyzing the data, presents a report of recommended creative moves and activities needed to define the product or service precisely. Our clients' success rate rises the earlier they bring us into the process.
Our all-round approach and ongoing relationships with the media give us the ability to secure the widest exposure for any organizational initiative, along with many creative opportunities. Amid the noise of today's media, we are great believers in a considered, quiet and carefully planned strategy, which in our experience suits public institutions and nonprofits particularly well.