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Advocacy
Tips
Sample Documents
Supporting Resources
Tip #1 Polishing up your traditional FFA Week article/insert
FFA week is one of the key times programs try to get in the local newspaper. Is your traditional piece kind of dull? Do you need to shine it up so it'll be more impactful?
Think about causes that you're personally passionate about. Did you get hooked because someone told you how many people were involved? Probably not. Humans are emotional and we can and should connect with our current and potential supporters on an emotional level.
An effective way to do this is to single out just one student that has an awesome story. Yes, this is contrary to our usual approach of listing the awards that we got at national convention or telling how many pounds of food we collected. But it's much more powerful to talk about Joe Thompson who walked into the ag room as a freshmen as sort of a loner and then after he (fill-in-the-blank) Joe opened up and felt comfortable. Now Joe is a senior in high school planning to go to UWRF, which he says he never even dreamed of when he was a freshman. Or another idea is that perhaps there was someone in the community who was really impacted by your program. Maybe the organizer of the food pantry was awed by the students and could really provide a touching story, or maybe one of the SAE mentors could talk about how impressed they were with the student(s) they worked with.
If you need examples of how to write stories that invoke emotion, take a look at the stories about Sheri (Nelson) Sutton or Christine (Lepple) Lindner in your new Wisconsin FFA annual report.
The basic message here: emotion, emotion, emotion.
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Tip #2 Maintain connections to past students
Maintaining connections to past students can be a huge asset if your program finds itself on the school budget chopping block. It's one thing for decision-makers to hear from current students, community members, and local businesses, but your past students are another very powerful tool to have, especially if those students have moved away from the community at some point and if they've experienced successful, happy lives. The message sent to the decision-makers is that even people removed from your community and program can point back to that being a key piece in their current position, and they're willing to take the time to fight for it even though it doesn't affect them now.
Pam Jahnke, Farm Babe Broadcaster, recently stated that she would go back and fight for her alma mater's ag program in a heartbeat...if she knows about it. I'm willing to be that a lot of people would do that, but they're not part of their hometown grapevine anymore so they never get the news.
To activate this important group, you need to be able to communicate with them quickly via email, mail or phone. When these situations arise, time is not a luxury. If you don't have a list of past students and their contact information already compiled, you'll miss out on their influence.
Does anyone have a nice list of past students that they've compiled? Has anyone used past students in this way? Has anyone worked to compile a list? If so, how did you do it?
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Tip #3 Developing Sticky Messages
Messaging is a key element of successful marketing, advocacy and public relations.
People today are constantly bombarded with messages from organizations, companies, political groups, peers and more through the radio, tv, magazine, newspapers, facebook, email, etc. Only a small percent of the messages actually stick. However, there are ways to increase the stickiness of our messages.
1. Consistency Connects - Nothing’s as important as consistent, regular messaging. True success in marketing comes in building your case with consistent communication across various channels. Think of Capital One's messaging, which is woven throughout everything they do both verbally and visually - save more, earn rewards, lower fees, strong company. What are our consistent messages...?
2. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition - Don't worry about being redundant in your messaging! You may feel like you've said it a million times in a million ways in a million venues, but if it's still news to some, and it's important to our organization, it's worth repeating! Remember, only a small percent of messages actually stick, and those that do don't stick for long. Can you name McDonald's newest product (answer below)? Think of the millions of dollars that they commit to all of their messaging, and yet they have have a huge challenge to get their new products to really stick in our minds. That's the challenge our messages face as well.
3. Sell the sizzle, not the steak - This is an old sales saying - when we go out to eat, it's not for the food itself. Yes, we may be hungry, but really we have a lot of choices to satisfy our hunger. We choose a restaurant because it gives us the kind of experience we want and solves our hunger problem. Taste, smell, ambiance, location, service - all these things speak to our emotions through our senses. We need to think about our audiences' emotions and form messages that appeal to them in that way. Here's an example geared toward our student audience:
Before message: Sign up for agriculture classes because we'll prepare you for a rewarding career in the diverse industries of agriculture, food, and natural resources.
After message: Sign up for agriculture classes to discuss the truths and myths of today's food, farming and environment hot topics.
4. Think Conversation, Not Megaphone - Audiences are more responsive when the marketing tone is conversational. People need more stories they can connect to and fewer statistics.
So what are our consistent messages that we're trying to share? Here's some thoughts, but this really is something that we need to set as a whole group and all agree upon so that we can be consistent and repeat these messages.
- Student academic achievement
- Well-rounded students
- Strengthens communities
- Most important industry economically, culturally, and for our well-being
(Answer to McDonald's newest product - Chipotle BBQ Bacon Angus)
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