Marketing Myopia

Recently someone sent me a newsletter in which the subject of “Marketing Myopia” was raised. It struck a cord with me. Our new DG said at a recent meeting “We don’t talk about ourselves enough”. This means the same thing to me as “Marketing Myopia”. We do good things. We raise money and spend it helping our communities and others less fortunate, yet do not tell the world about it enough. We comment on falling membership but do not tend to “sell” our organization locally or to the right areas. We seem to focus on the businessman types striving to fill “classifications” from established people “of the right type” while neglecting to educate those who will one day become those businessmen and community leaders. My club has embarked on a busy public relations exercise this year to do just that. Talk about ourselves and tell people what we do. We have an excellent PR person who builds Rotary into his own community history research, which gets regular newspaper coverage. “Rotary Honours Long Term Residents” type of stuff. We also donated trophies to those sports clubs interested and hardly a week goes by without a photo of a Rotarian giving a trophy to someone appearing in the paper. Shortly we will be providing a Rotary Column in which we will briefly outline things like the Rotary Foundation, ROMAC, RYLA and other programs as well as publicising our fund raising events. These will be timed to coincide with out own efforts in these areas. We are including our primary and high schools in our efforts to “start em young” and make sure Rotary has some impact on their young lives, be it by trophies and bursaries, healthy breakfast days, sponsorship of special courses and whatever else we can afford to raise the image of community service in young minds. We are a small community and do not have a Rotaract club despite a good try. Maybe our current efforts may make that a reality in the future. Perhaps rather than concentrate solely on the person who has “made it” in the business community we should include the person who has potential to make it and develop them. The more Rotary is “seen” the better. Being “seen” supporting and developing the young is a great way for long-term membership growth. If you can recruit a suitable young person into Rotary do it and encourage them. So get yourself a "young" go getter PR person who can take pictures and get yourselves in the paper. Include the schools in the articles and be “seen” as a young and vibrant part of your community. Wear your Rotary Shirts, wear your pin at all times, put the wheel on your business card and get out there and lead your communities. Old and stodgy is out. Young and effective is IN.

(By the way, I am approaching 60, am overweight (a little), what hair I have is grey but I will never admit to being old – I’m too busy having fun with the younger people!). And no, I won’t turn my iPod off!