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Suzanne Carawan

By: Suzanne Carawan on June 16th, 2015

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The New Flavors of Association Membership Marketing

Association Industry Commentary

mailto:demo@example.com?Subject=HighRoad Solutions - interesting article

FOOD-A-master675

I live in DC and despite being a very powerful world capital with no end to diversity, I still have to fight the Political Correctness Good Girl Voices that tell me we can look something straight in the face and pretend we don't see it. In light of this week's NAACP Spokane story whereby the leader chose to be black, I have to ask: when are we comfortable enough to get real about diversity, race and being able to acknowledge reality? I think the interpretation and handling of diversity is of particular importance to associations as they need to quickly define (redefine?) the critical question:

What is Reality?

Is your organization being real about the state of your target growth populations? Are you looking at the impact of culture on future member's tastes and preferences? Are you understanding the level of diversity and how much impact the fusion of cultures has had on mainstream America? 

On July 8th of 2013, the New York Times was talking about the impact of diversity on the American palate and what is normal has shifted between generations. According to the head of consumer insights (do you have someone on your staff charged with this duty?) of Campbell's, ethnicity is changing the buying decisions of the Millennial generation, a generation in which more than 40% of them identify themselves as something other than white.

I predict that between Ferguson, the NAACP case and Bruce Jenner, we're going to have to start to really ask hard questions about our understanding of our current membership and how we are going to design a membership of the future. If people can choose their gender and color, certainly they expect to have the power to choose their membership and how they expect to be seen by your organization.

Perhaps, it is time that we have a talk about the Things We Dare Not Speak and get real on our level of listening to the Political Correctness Good Girl or Boy Voices that so plague us in the association industry. I know I struggle. I'm hard core Gen X and I still couldn't drop the F bomb at last week's Inbound Lunch Bunch because all I can picture in my mind's eye is a disapproving Emily Post who would be aghast should she hear a lady speak that way. It didn't even matter that in the same week, I heard this countless times during the keynote speeches of highly paid motivational speakers and authors. For Pete's Sake, (I "think" Emily would approve of this one saying although until I just wrote this down, it never occurred to me to look up the origin of Pete's Sake which out of curiosity I just did to quell my interest & now I feel like a blasphemous sinner). Seriously, I had a hard enough time turning off the Frank Sinatra that an ASAE employee picked out because he was told that this was appropriate for all audiences and instead, playing Kanye West.

This small, seemingly innocuous moment got me questioning all of our premises about membership. For one, sure...maybe Frank Sinatra does appeal to everyone, but here's the thing as a membership marketer--I don't want everyone. This idea of having mass volume of members is out of style. I don't want numbers, I want the right people in my membership. I don't want to email everyone with the same message, I want to get the right message to the right person at the right time. I don't want to treat everyone the same in 2015 because it's disingenous and shows I don't care which is a wholly different premise than treating everyone the same so that you're seen as fair.

Here's another way to think about it--why is ethnic food expected to grow by 20% until 2017? It's because of the very fact that ethnic food is not mac-n-cheese and not wanted by everyone. In fact, ethnic foods are the polar opposite--- they are specific,  spicy, you may hate it, you may crave it, but that's fine because the premise is that it will only appeal to certain niche groups. We aren't designing for the mass middle anymore. We should now be designing for the pockets of potential members that are Chipotle lovers or the faction that loves salted caramel and as an association, we better know which member belongs to which group and why.

Our premises of society are rapidly changing--we're in yet another go-round social evolution (not sure we've ever stopped even though a lot of people get stuck along the way).The question of who is black and who is white is only relevant to certain groups and is next to meaningless for others. This need for strict classification harkens back to a time when identification meant something and had a direct correlation to expectations or perceptions. However, hasn't this changed?  While I am not saying racism doesn't exist (oh it does, just watch FIFA's massive Fight Against Racism campaign--maybe next year we'll have the Fight Against Corruption campaign? DOH! Just sayin'), I am asking how are we to build a future membership when we really don't even understand the diversity that currently resides in our own population? In food speak, how can we attract and convert new members if we aren't offering the spicy dishes that the people that we want to be members are seeking? 

Where do we get the courage to practice diversity to focus in on differences as a way to attract instead of using diversity to make everyone feel the same? The question seems to me to be one of practicing equality through rewarding individuality and throwing away the Litmus test to make sure that nothing will ruffle anyone's feathers (one easy-to-understand example here is that if we practiced diversity in real terms, we could end the association classic of chicken-with-vegetable-melange-and-cheesecake luncheons for once and for all and have sushi instead).

Not buying this? Let's test it. Let's take Kanye West and survey association meeting planners and find out if Kanye West is on their playlists. What will we find and why? Kanye is one of the best selling artists of all time, but how many planners have the courage to play Kanye at their conference? It's amazing how few would do it and we're not talking that we're in 1987 and NWA is super scary and offensive to mainstream America. We're talking Kanye in 2015 and I STILL was looking over my shoulder waiting for someone to come tell me that we cannot play dis funky music because it may offend someone. Chipotle Chicken Soup from Campbell's may offend someone who is a die hard Chicken Noodle fan, but it doesn't seem to be stopping Campbell's from introducing the soup to serve the flavor changes of its composite buying audience. Take a lesson from Kanye and Campbell's....become the membership based on a fusion of flavors.

If we still aren't understanding the cultural revolution that has been taking place over the last 30 years in the US where diversity (whether Tupac or Sean White or Ellen Degeneres or Oprah or Tony Hawk)  is really what drives what is cool (did I catch you? stop thinking diversity=race, it's bigger than that), we need to get there. We need to look at what is now culturally acceptable and its origins. We need to understand that what was diverse 30 years ago is now so fused into pop culture that if we don't get it, our communications and programs won't get it and our future members won't get it. 

To illustrate the point, I happened upon a perfect example of understanding societal shifts last week at a very unlikely spot-- my son's school's talent show.  I snapped the picture below to ask the question of this: why do we accept the fact that a trio of 4th grade Catholic school girls chose to write their own rap about Juice Boxes and performed it while wearing skateboarding, flat bill hats, but we are spending our time making everything mac-n-cheese in our association communications so that we don't offend anyone and include everyone? Look at this picture --here's your future members and they're likely the daughters of Gen X mothers who were trained in diversity.

I come back to this question: what's the impact of diversity and where are we in our understanding and practice of it? Do we understand how each of our striads in our current membership thinks? Are we capitalizing on these strengths? Are we matching up programs and offers that mesh with the preferences of the members whether through food, music, education, learning environment or volunteer offerings? Are we understanding that the norms of one group of the population are not the same as the others (this group uses cilantro as a staple spice while another group uses coriander)? Are we understanding that as we move down, down, down in member age that we are going up, up, up in individualism? 

Forget the everyone gets a trophy, this is the era of everyone gets their own mic. The question for association is: how are you going to invite people to come to the mic to share their story and appreciate that the power of today's population is the freedom to enjoy, and revel in, diversity?

In the immortal words of Digital Underground, Doowutchyalike*.

rap

*This song was written in 1989. I hope you either know it or recognize that you were too old or young for it, but are open to hearing it now. As I like to remind event planners, rap/hip-hop is not new anymore. Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight came out in 1979 on LP. Like Frank Sinatra, these artists, this song is considered to be classic, but it's a new style of classic.