Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Chatter vs. Courage: A Rare View of Integrity in Political Fundraising

This morning millions of emails will be waiting in the inboxes of already-annoyed Americans. Two main broods are responsible: Democrats and Republicans. Also, this morning folks in the southeastern part of the US can steel themselves for the tens of billions of noisy cicadas—a double emergence of two different broods—are beginning to pop out of […]

Learn More May 6, 2024

Sham or Lighting Money on Fire?

This is another tilting at windmills post on matching gift offers. Feel free to tune out, everyone else seems to. Cutting to the chase, the 2x, 3x, 10x…match is either a sham or you like lighting money on fire. It’s one or the other. How so? If you can get the same results from a […]

Learn More May 3, 2024

Altruism: The Vanilla Ice Cream of Moral Messaging

People give because they want to help others, feeling a sense of moral obligation or compassion to do so. Said differently, donating is an act of altruism or so the thinking goes. Altruism is like vanilla ice cream: classic, dependable… and utterly plain. And the kicker? If you measure a variety of potential influences on […]

Learn More May 1, 2024

Being Defined As A Donor and More Weak Tea

I’m a dog person and a coffee lover. But being a coffee lover isn’t one of the most important ways I define myself, being a dog person is much more so. This simplistic example illustrates the difference between identity presence, whether one has a certain identity, and identity importance, how central the identity is to […]

Learn More April 29, 2024

You Can’t See the Label From Inside the Bottle

The grizzled veteran harrumphs rise to an eardrum shattering level whenever the trite, “you aren’t the audience” line is trotted out, typically in defense of some direct mkt tactic that 9 out of 10 experts (and dentists) will tell you “works”. But is the expert any more the audience than the non-expert offering critique? This […]

Learn More April 26, 2024

When a Hashtag Isn’t Enough: The Hard Truth About Protests

In an era where hashtags trend faster than wildfire it seems logical to assume the sheer scale of digital engagement would translate into tangible political change. Yet, research spearheaded by Amory Gethin and Vincent Pons suggests otherwise. They examined US protests between 2017 to 2022 and their impact on Twitter buzz, Google search volumes, opinion […]

Learn More April 24, 2024