When Perception Isn’t Reality

Do you think your agency’s has a branding problem? I don’t want to be a pessimist but, if you’re like many social service agencies, you’ve got at least two branding issues you need to be chipping away at.

The obvious one involves how the public perceives your agency. The more formidable challenge arises from how the public perceives the people you serve.

True, this is not normally framed as a branding issue. But think about it: The outdated, incomplete, sometimes wildly inaccurate images people carry around in their heads of the mentally ill, foster children, and inner-city residents, are akin to the exaggerated fears and stereotypes that can decimate a consumer brand. (Has anyone eaten at Jack in the Box lately?)

While it may seem superficial to treat such serious matters as branding problems, we’ve all acknowledged that perception is, in some respects, reality. Rebranding isn’t the whole solution. But it can be a catalyst.

First, consider the need to increase the quantity and quality of available foster parents. That was the challenge confronting the Foster Care and Adoption Resource Center of Wisconsin in early 2006.

It acts as a service bureau for the state’s 72 counties, providing a variety of support services including advertising. What many of its clients need more than anything is a greater number of caring, responsible, patient adults to take in displaced children. Thus, the issue becomes: how to permanently increase the agencies’ advertising hit ratios.

The problem, of course, is that most people would sooner gobble a steady diet of undercooked fast-food burgers than run the risk of taking in “The Child from Hell” they envision in their thoughts about foster care. If ever there were a prime candidate for rebranding, foster parenting certainly qualifies.

Having a hard time relating the concept of branding to an activity like foster parenting? In the marketing world, they call it lifestyle branding. From mobile home living and drinking wine from a box to joining a motorcycle club, a growing number of activities that once raised eyebrows are being repositioned in much more positive lights through concerted marketing efforts. So why not apply the same strategy to foster parenting?

The Foster Care and Adoption Resource Center of Wisconsin and I began our odyssey where all good rebranding begins: by gaining a deep understanding of the target market. In this case, we conducted an online survey of the foster care coordinators in all 72 counties to identify the common characteristics of effective long-term foster parents—in other words, people who are good for the children they care for and enjoy the experience enough to stick with it.

We used their insights to develop a profile of the type of person we were targeting. We then asked a representative group of coordinators to each select the foster parent from their county who best fit the profile. This yielded a group of 10 “perfect-fit” foster parents.

With the help of the county coordinators, we formulated a hypothesis as to what ideal foster parents would say were their primary reasons for being a foster parent. We developed a list of 20 motivations such as “Enjoy the companionship,” “Believe we have an ongoing duty to share our blessings,” and “It’s very satisfying to help birth families reunite.”

We conducted deep-dive conversations with the 10 chosen individuals over the phone. These included a forced-choice ranking exercise that identified three top reasons for continuing as a foster parent. These reasons were: “Feeling we are making a difference in the lives of these kids adds meaning to our own lives,” “Very satisfying to serve as a stabilizing bridge to a permanent placement,” and “Feel called by God to serve in this way.”

Most of the time during each 60-minute interview was spent probing the thought process behind these driving motivations. We asked: Why is that so important to you? What are some examples? How did that make a difference? As we dove deeper together, interviewees often were able to articulate thoughts and feelings they hadn’t fully processed before.

The rich insights that surfaced allowed us to develop a rebranding strategy. It included the following elements, among others:

Brand Essence (i.e., when you boil it all down, the soul of the brand). Personal impact.

Brand Identity (i.e., the set of associations you seek to create and maintain). Foster parenting is for people who:

1. feel called to care for vulnerable children and teens (There’s a seed of desire for this that already exists within them, that sprouts with the right cultivation and conditions.);
2. believe it’s possible to make a lasting difference in someone’s life, even in a brief relationship. (They view “making a difference” as the key to a life well lived. They value the experience of connecting with another human being on a deep level.); and
3. have the pluck to give it a try. (What others would consider a risky proposition, they see as an adventure that adds zest and meaning to their lives.)

Value Proposition. The value of being a foster parent consists almost entirely of emotional benefits, including:

1. the personal growth that comes from connecting with other human beings;
2. the profound satisfaction that comes from seeing you have changed someone’s life for the better;
3. the undercurrent of excitement that flows from following a calling to help unknown children and families; and
4. for those who are religious, the peace of mind that comes from knowing you are heeding God’s call to care for those in need.

Recommended Brand Position (i.e. the part of the brand identity and value proposition to be actively communicated). Foster parents are people who believe it’s possible to make a lasting difference in someone’s life, even in a brief relationship—and have the pluck to give it a try.

That “give it a try” message is an important component of the marketing strategy. In speaking with our perfect-fit foster parents, it was clear that one big inhibitor for many people who have expressed a desire to emulate them is the fear of taking on a commitment that they would feel terribly guilty walking away from, if it didn’t suit them or if circumstances changed.

Our recommendation was to position the commitment as akin to signing on for a stint in the Peace Corps. We proposed that if people know their “tour of duty” runs for, let’s say, two years—with the opportunity to re-up—they would have a far different mindset when considering becoming a foster parent.

Given the amount of time it takes to train a foster parent and the high level of turnover that already exists, foster care coordinators were understandably leery of this idea. But it didn’t take long for most to realize that people who are suited to the job will likely hit their stride within the first two years, while those who struggle might hang in longer and overcome their initial negativity.

My favorite recommendation is the recruitment campaign’s tag line, which combines an oblique “tour of duty” reference with the primary motivations we want to tap: “Live deeper, love wider, leave bigger.”

County foster care coordinators embraced the branding recommendations and the resulting campaign, which sparked a 400 percent increase in website traffic and a roughly 50 percent increase in telephone inquiries, according to Marilyn Boeldt, director of development for Adoption Resources of Wisconsin, an Alliance for Children and Families member agency that established the resource center under a contract with the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services.

“Beyond the excellent results, we were also really pleased with the process,” Boeldt adds. “I was concerned about getting consensus among 72 counties around anything, but the county coordinators felt they had a genuine opportunity to provide input on the front end, which gave them a greater sense of ownership on the back end.”

If you would like a copy of the branding research and recommendations, send me an e-mail. Colleen Ellingsen, Adoption Resources of Wisconsin’s founder and executive director, has graciously agreed to make this work available to other Alliance members.

Anne Curley is president of Curley Communication, which specializes in brand clarification and related strategic planning. Before establishing her consulting practice in 2000, she headed worldwide communication for SC Johnson. Earlier in her career, she served as the business editor of the Milwaukee Journal. Over the past 20 years, she has served on a dozen nonprofit and corporate boards of directors. She can be reached by e-mail.

View the archive of Brand Strategies columns or the archive for all columnists.

Article PDF: 

Alliance_Magazine_fall07_Brand.pdf