Since fundraising has not been going well, I decided to take a completely different approach than what I had been doing before. There are a lot of programs here that require funding so my challenge has been how to put this issue on the map. I’ve racked my brain and have turned to the southern way to get people to become invested and pay attention: branding and aggressive urban marketing techniques. This means taking the logic of consumer culture (which I actually loathe; one of the reasons I enjoy being in the north is relief from advertising) and applying it to a fundraising campaign. No wait, our exciting guerrilla fundraising campaign! Complete with easy to remember name, objectives, and catchy tagline: campaign site (And please don’t laugh at the logo. I did it in such a hurry!)

It’s just so southern. People do not really do branding here. There are no ads save those on television (radio is CBC and locally broadcast), and that is pretty much the extent of exposure to branding. It’s like postmodernism has completely ignored this town and it’s all WYSIWYG. Which means that instead of having a population that is well trained in ignoring extraneous information, where every product, cause or statement needs to outwit and outdo a thousand others, I am looking at a situation where there is zero competition for attention and very little feel for connecting a product or service with an abstracted narrative or image. I feel a little guilty framing this cause in such blatantly commercialized “language” but at the same time, I think I’ll probably be the only person who sees it this way because the values of consumer culture are more or less absent here. Does this make my job easy or will the branding be too “southern” to connect with locals? Certainly, I’m finding that showing up in person to discuss proposals, and getting people to trust you to speak at meetings and such is primary. We’ll have to see.

Next week, when the students return to school, I am hoping to implement a marketing strategy quite common in the city, the likes of which this town has never seen. I want everyone to be talking about it! Will update you all on how it works or doesn’t work.