Cynical values

This blog dates from a personal grump with the idea that winning campaigns is something achievable by lots of clicks, and that old forms of activism, should go the way of the Dodo. However it’s turned into a bit of a quest, complete with mythic overtones, to figure out what is possible online and offline to change the world. As an aside, many of the characters I’ve met so far, have been bright shining folk from the new world, and as a precursor to every conversation I warm them that I am a cynical old Brit. A really cynical old Brit, with goffic tendancies.

Here’s a fashionable theory of campaigning, which inspires that cynicism, value based segmentation.

Maslow has been dead for 40 years or more, and yet his hierarchy of needs still has huge credence in psychological circles. It’s one of many theories of motivation, and names I recall include McClelland and Herzberg, and Maslow to seems intellectual simplistic. It seems to deny the ability of people in dire situations – who should be motivated by physiological needs to do great and ‘higher’ things, clearly motivated by self-actualisation.

Campaigning, beyond the world of elite level lobbying and report writing, online or offline depends on mobilising people to do something, involving your audience in the debate, and understanding that audience. To that end perhaps there is space to characterise the motivation of such folk, but I am uncertain that one can do so as neatly as the marketers suggest, into a world of settles, prospectors and pioneers – and I see no realistic prospect of collecting the data to make such a crass assumption. If you wish to understand your audience go talk to them, if you want to shape your communications to be appropriate, go ask them how.

In any case beyond the intellectual inconsistences as to how to split our communications 80/20 between prospectors and pioneers, are we really ready to write off the 60% of the population who are settlers – if such is people’s bias, and the theory holds true.

More so, the constraints of campaigning in an organisation where decisions, and the veto, rest with the policy people, the report writers and the elite level lobbyists, it’s hard enough to get one appropriate campaign ask out of the door, in a language people can understand, let alone different asks and different languages for different motivational segments.

So while the work of Chris Rose, and others on the band wagon, remain intellectually interesting, one has to assume they mainly appeal to the prospector organisations, i.e. those fascinated by new shiny, trendy ideas. My hope is that we stay true to the vision of a pioneering organisation trusting in our sense of what’s right and wrong, remaining self assured, and having the courage to talk truth beyond such academia.