Word of the year: Insruptive

I just came back from a 3 day retreat with my organization during which we heard, spoke, said, contemplated a ton of information all around the importance and power of the Nonprofit sector. During two of the key note speeches (one by Patty Stoneseifer from the Gates foundation and one from Geoff Canada of Harlem Childrens Zone) I thought of the power of something I dubbed "Insruptive Ideas". Insruptive means something that inspires by being disruptive. Now plenty of things are disruptive (and frankly, I fear that people may believe that I'm fixated with disruptive ideas) but disruption is not enough. Disruption by itself can lead you into all sorts of useless places. For example:



















These ads are all over the NYC area. They're done by the city (at a total cost of $277K mind you) and ran for about 3 months. Are these ads disruptive? Hell yeah they are. They're fucking disgusting. Are they inspiring? Hell no they aren't. They're just disgusting. I'm not inspired to do shit but look away. This ad misses the mark. Marketing science tells us that the efficacy of 'shocking' ads follows an inverted 'U' shape, meaning that they are effective up until a point, after which their efficacy drops like human fat out of a soda bottle.

How about this instead?

Is it disruptive? yeah, is it inspiring. Ehh, kind of, but this is the best truth ad I could find online. Most of the truth ads are actually really good and inspire people to act. The truth campaign is a thousands times better than the crap that the NYC is putting out, and what's more. They're actually getting results.

"Studies have shown that the Truth campaign is successful in encouraging anti-tobacco attitudes and beliefs among 12-17 year olds (Farrelly et al., 2002). In addition to creating negative attitudes and beliefs, the Truth campaign is associated with “lower receptivity to pro-tobacco advertising and less progression along a continuum of smoking intentions and behavior” (Hershey et al., 2005, p. 22). This means that those who watched the Truth ads were less likely to start smoking or increase their smoking habits. In fact, these ad campaigns have been quite successful, even compared to anti-smoking campaigns in the classroom. Meta-analytic research shows very little long-term benefit to many school-based programs (Wiehe, Garrison, Christakis, Ebel, & Rivara, 2005); large-scale survey research, on the other hand, shows that the Truth campaign has a significant desired long-term effect on adolescent smoking attitudes and behaviors (e.g., increase negative attitudes toward smoking and decrease smoking behaviors) (Farrelly, Davis, Haviland, Messeri, & Healton, 2005; Farrelly et al., 2002)."

These ads disrupt the views and inspire actions. That's an Insruptive ad. Is it a fine line? Yeah. Is it hard to do? Yeah. Is that reason not to try? No. We have to try. Every dollar we spend on shitty ads or misplaced marketing or poor communications is a dollar entrusted to us to make the world better that we have pissed away. WE HAVE TO TRY HARDER. Failing is not an option. We have to do more than just disrupt, we have to inspire. We have to be insruptive.

Maybe next time I'll explain how to make inspruptive communications. . . maybe.