A very public mea culpa to win back readers
12:20, 6 May 2009
.. Posted in Communication, Outreach and General Mngmt.. Link
The London Evening Standard (in the United Kingdom) commissioned market research a while back and discovered that Londoners considered the paper to be too negative, not celebratory enough and guilty of failing to cater for the capital's needs. Londoners felt a great city with great facilities was being persistently run down by the paper.
The new editor's response to the findings? To deal with them head on. He took the view that the only possible way to win back readers who have deserted, and attract new ones, was to be honest and openly admit to previous failings. So he launched a daring of publicity campaign: buses and tubes are carrying a series of messages throughout the week that begin with the word "sorry." The first says "Sorry for losing touch". Subsequent slogans say sorry for being negative, for taking you for granted, for being complacent and for being predictable.
Through this brutally honest campaign, the paper's new editor hopes not so much to distance his paper from its recent past as to shut the door on it. According to a senior Standard executive in this article: "With these ads we're telling readers, 'OK, we hear what you're saying. Now we're aware of that ourselves and want to put it right.' We want to embrace readers and engage with London."
Would the board of directors or corporate donors of a floundering nonprofit ever allow an organization to engage in such a daring outreach campaign? Probably not. I'm fascinated by the campaign, but I would suggest it only if the nonprofit had a concrete plan to both address its problems quickly and to undertake an entirely different, immediate outreach campaign to show how it's addressing these problems.
On a related note: How to Handle Online Criticism.
