Three ways to win the ears (and trust) of next-gen supporters.
As a kid in the 1970s, a disc jockey seemed like the coolest job in the world. My hometown station’s DJs became the older cooler crowd I could feel a part of. Social psychologist Robert Zajonc’s Mere Exposure Effect explains our preference for the familiar and our tendency to grow fonder of people, things and songs after repeated exposure to them. Carrying my transistor radio everywhere, I would have made quite the case for Zajonc.
But things were different then. Our version of the internet was 26 volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia. Three network news anchors were held in high esteem across the country and the same commercials seemed to run for a decade. Thanks to a blend of frequency and familiarity, we trusted corporations, brands and even some politicians.
Millennials and Gen Z have the opposite perspective. They’ve grown up amidst events like the financial crisis of 2008 and the Second Gulf War, witnessed corporate scandals like Enron’s and watched warnings of climate change go unheeded. These younger generations share the mental model that institutions serve their self-interest, not the public’s. Instead of being sources of expertise, institutions are now seen as targets for scrutiny.
Meanwhile, there are no gatekeepers for this cohort. You don’t need a DJ to help form your tastes when you’ve got personal messages from pop stars on Instagram
Why are these distinctions of critical importance for cause leaders? Because even if your organization isn’t directly serving younger generations, it will soon need them to be its donors, volunteers, or advocates. And their innate distrust of institutions includes philanthropic ones. This means you need to think differently about your message AND your messenger. So here are a few examples of trusted messenger strategies to help jump-start your own.
Don’t try to be the trusted messenger, target them.
I recently had a conversation with John MacPhee, CEO of The Jed Foundation (JED), a national nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide among teens and young adults. JED has launched mental wellness programs reaching more than 6.5 million students. Their public education campaign is called “Seize the Awkward,” and it encourages high school and college students to have conversations with friends who might be struggling with mental health. Turning friends into messengers is a more effective approach than a traditional appeal for an individual to get help.
Mirror your audience and relate to their struggles.
When tasked with advocating for more affordable child care, our approach was to dramatize the absurdity of working without it. Depicting scenarios no one would expect a working parent (or those around them) to endure, we used humor to build consensus that the lack of affordable care was unsustainable for parents in any line of work. Our analogous messengers not only garnered solidarity, they helped increase the number of affordable providers in underserved areas by 13 percent.
Hand the beneficiary a megaphone.
Mark Horvath is the founder of Invisible People, a nonprofit fighting homelessness through storytelling. Mark has interviewed hundreds of people facing homelessness, changing public perception through true stories that challenge stereotypes and affect policy change. Listening to the people he’s trying to help rather than talking about them is a better way to engage skeptics and build trust.
Older expected approaches to communications may be as familiar and comfortable as the AM Gold I grew up on, but there’s no nostalgia associated with them. The pace of change is accelerating, and as cause leaders, it’s imperative that we keep up. It’s time to make some new memories.
Thanks for tuning in,
Kevin
