Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Red Nose Day

Mike Johnston of HJC New Media, friend and fundraiser for causes in Canada, reminds us that Friday the 16th is Red Nose Day, a glorious young tradition in the UK (and a few other enlightened countries). Red Nose Day is a day of nationwide consciousness raising for efforts to assist the disadvantaged in the UK […]

Learn More March 14, 2007

Nonprofits Using MySpace

With traffic on social networking site MySpace continuing to soar, many nonprofits are experimenting with creating their own “personalities” on the site. This is great, so long as … 1. You've “taken care of business” first. Don't divert resources to experimenting until you're pretty confident about your basics — e-mail messaging and solicitation with great […]

Learn More March 13, 2007

Know Thy Customer (Donor, Member, Activist)

If there's any principle more fundamental to marketing success, The Agitator sure can't think of it. Suggestions welcome! Knowing your customer means more than operating on gut instinct, wishful thinking or the perhaps dated presumptions of your nonprofit's founding fathers and mothers. It means … First, collecting pertinent data on individual customer characteristics and behavior, […]

Learn More March 12, 2007

Politics And The English Language

Marketing guru Guy Kawasaki is embarrassed for only having recently read George Orwell's 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. No apologies needed, Guy. You've done a service by pointing illiterates like The Agitator's editors to Orwell's timeless piece. We urge our readers to sit down this weekend with your morning cup of coffee or […]

Learn More March 10, 2007

Optimistic Bob

Yesterday we applauded the RED campaign, the cause marketing initiative spearheaded by Bono and Bobby Schriver. It's been taking some knocks lately — undeservedly, we argued — for under-delivering and for distracting folks from actually giving (versus consuming). Optimistic Bob, one of our readers, entered a pointed comment to our post, to which we want […]

Learn More March 9, 2007

Green Light For RED

Bloggers and marketers are a-twitter over the question of whether Bono's RED campaign is some kind of hustle. And beneath this specific controversy lies a more fundamental charge that most cause marketing is suspect, because it leverages that evil-of-all-evils –consumption — and puts the good guys in bed with villainous corporations. A number of our […]

Learn More March 8, 2007