How Altering an Ad Policy Alters a Brand Positioning
There’s a lot to admire about Change.org.
Since its 2007 launch it has served as a “social action” platform to empower and enable everyday people (over 20 million members in 196 countries) to bring attention to and rally support for their causes. TIME magazine named its founder and CEO Ben Rattray as one of this year’s 100 most influential people. And it actually does well with its do-good mission: This year’s revenues reportedly are running at the $16 million mark.
The Change.org brand has become tightly linked – synonymous even – with progressive causes and social activism. Its success stories reinforce its positioning: The woman who gathered 307,000 petition signatures, causing Bank of America to back down from its proposed $5 debit card fee. The 2.2 million signatures resulting in George Zimmerman’s prosecution for the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. A South African victim’s petition against that country’s “corrective rape” practices intended to “cure” lesbianism, leading to a government task force to stop the practice.
That positioning has also been reinforced in its business practices: Its advertising policy has been values-based, and Change.org only accepted advertising from progressive organizations that shared its values.
The business (a for-profit, despite the connotations of the “.org”) has successfully established what its brand stands for and has consistently lived up to it. The payoff has been a growing community built around the brand promise by supporters who have a strong sense of ownership in Change.org and how it delivers.
But it’s only now getting a small taste of the backlash that can occur when you tinker with your brand positioning in a way that goes counter to expectations.
Change.org very quietly changed its advertising policy several weeks ago. According to leaked internal documents making their way to Huffington Post, the new policy now has the organization accept advertising “based on the content of the ad, not the group doing the advertising.”
That opens the door, according to the FAQ cited in the article, to advertising against abortion, for guns and for union-busting. As the answer put it: “We are open to organizations that represent all points of view, including those with which we personally (and strongly) disagree.”
The move has its basis in the company’s decision earlier this year to partner with the anti-labor education reformer Michelle Rhee’s Students First. (Change.org’s advertising model charges groups to sponsor and match petitions to users whose interests align with the cause.) Pressure from its community base, including a strong labor faction, led to Rhee’s group and another being dropped, although both still use the site for non-sponsored petitions.
Right now, the reaction to Change.org’s change in ad policy has been muted. Mainstream media hasn’t paid much attention. Its Facebook page has a flurry of comments, largely negative.
It will be interesting to monitor how Change.org proceeds in the future in accepting advertisers whose presence may well pose a disconnect with how its community perceives its brand. The litmus test, the company reportedly said, will be whetherGoogle – whose open platform it seeks to emulate – would take on the same progressive-repellent advertisers.
That’s all well and good, except for this. Google is at its core a search engine. Its brand positioning centers on how efficiently and creatively it helps people find stuff (and helps stuff be found) on the Web. It and Change.org, an enabler of social change, aren’t really in the same ballpark. Google may not be the best role model it could have chosen.
It will probably take a more egregious departure from its roots than Michelle Rhee to cause Change.org substantial harm. Here’s hoping the company keeps in mind, however, that for all the power of a strong brand, its mishandling can cause substantial damage. Look no further than the Susan B. Komen Foundation for a case in point.
This post originally appeared on the Forbes CMO Network on Scott Davis’s blog, The Shift. To read related thinking from Scott on Forbes, follow his blog here.