Humanitarian Marketing's Dangerous Race to the Bottom

categories: Branding and Marketing, Dissent

Published June 06, 2009 @ 11:05AM PT

The world's worst humanitarian crisis? (photo credit: New York Times)

Somalia is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to a warning issued by Oxfam this week. The statement prompted a Time article "Somalia's Crisis: Not Piracy, but Its People's Plight" that is now making it's way around Twitter. The designation of "worst," while good for flashy magazine headlines and NGO press releases, is part of a dangerous race to the bottom in the marketing of global humanitarian plight that has inadvertently sapped political relevance.

The first time I went to Uganda was in August 2005, a little less than a year after then head of UN humanitarian affairs Jan Egelend called it the "biggest neglected humanitarian crisis" in the world. As one of my earliest up close interactions with the global humanitarian system, it was fascinating and strange to see how international nongovernmental organizations wielded that designation like a trophy or talisman. As I researched international aid in northern Uganda's internal displacement camps, versions of Egelend's quote came up more often than just about any other statistic or sound byte.

This is understandable and deeply human. Superlatives exist in language to help us differentiate magnitude, excellence and severity. And in a world in which so many global challenges vie for media attention and donor dollars, it is understandable that the aid community grabs onto external forces that validates the atrocity of the particular injustice they seek to address and that can lead new allies and stakeholders in their direction.

But I have come to believe that this clinging to designations of superlative horror is the one of the most corrosive and dangerous forces in marketing and media around humanitarian crises. I believe that by propagating these sort of statements, aid agencies have accidentally become complicit in inspiring apathy in the broader public.

Superlatives like "worst," and "most neglected" put the emphasis of our attention not on the horror of injustice, but on the singularity of a particular instance of injustice. While this may prove a temporarily galvanizing force, what it leads to is a shortness of attention and a race of resources to the next new worst crisis. Aid worker after aid worker in Uganda in 2005 talked about having been stationed in one location, getting half way through a project, and then having resources immediately vacate as some new crisis (the big disruptive force then was the Tsunami) grabs more attention.

Now it's a fair question to ask how much of this problem is the endless cable news media cycle vs. the aid agencies themselves. It's also at least reasonable (if I think wrong) to ponder whether humanitarian aid policy should be driven by trying to ease the worst of the worst situations. But I still believe that the quickness with which we the social change community latch on to superlatives is a fundamental problem. It is, to be ironic, perhaps the "greatest" branding and marketing challenge we face.

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Comments (7)

Is it safe to assume that you're not a fan of the Wednesday Awards for the Worst Place in the Word over at Humanitarian Relief?

MBK

Posted by Michael Bear on 06/06/2009 @ 03:47PM PT
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Ummm, that should read Wednesday Award for the Worst Place in the World. Minor food poisoning in Liberia is apparently messing with my ability to type

Posted by Michael Bear on 06/06/2009 @ 03:48PM PT
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Well said, Nathaniel. All of our immediate communications are shaping a larger story, whether we realize it or not.

You might be interested in this blog post:http://impactmax.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/nonprofit-storytelling-beware-of-impact-stories-that-dont-link-to-public-policy/

Posted by Alanna Shaikh on 06/06/2009 @ 07:04PM PT
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I agree with the argument but am not sure what the prescription might be.

This is a classic situation where individual incentives undermine collective well-being; if I'm the head of marketing at a humanitarian NGO and looking to maximize attention/resources for my cause, the rational individual choice is still to use superlative language even if I agree with your argument since I have no control over how others will act.

Even if I refrain from using this language and get some others to do the same, there will always be an incentive for someone to shirk and use hyperbolic language to generate disproportionate attention at everyone else's expense.

In short, the rational response for aid organizations is to continue their current practices.

Also, despite agreeing with the general nature of this post, I still like Michael's "Worst Place in the World" awards. Technically they're really outside the scope of the argument since it's an independent, objective assessment aimed at accuracy rather than self-interested advocacy. (Which I imagine Nathaniel would agree with.)

Posted by Ben Rattray on 06/06/2009 @ 09:21PM PT
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Thanks for all the comments everyone!

Ben I think you bring up some compelling points. A couple thoughts though.

I think that you're absolutely right to point out that this is a case where individual incentives undermine collective well-being. But I think that there's another variable there which is time scale.

In this case, there is individual short-term incentive; strike while the iron is hot for my cause. This doesn't build sustainable funding bases, in fact the core of my argument is that it does the opposite. It makes audiences less receptive to every superlative they hear thereafter. And it's probably the worst for the crisis/issue/organization seizing that manttle now. As soon as you become the worst more than once, you quickly achieve the ultimate death brand of humanitarian relief: hopeless.

So I would say there is a short-term rational imperative to continue using superlatives, but it's actually quite bad for an organization in the long run.

Now all that said, one thing we haven't talked about is how an aid organizations institutional imperative to survive impacts the conversation.

And in terms of Michael's posts, I completely agree. The Worst Place in the World is a rhetorical way of helping the reader know that it's a general news update about some messed up shit. I do think that in general there's a problem with the way we present humanitarian issues and you could make an argument that any portrayal set in these terms is net negative, but that's a much bigger argument than just Michael's posts and thinks he (/you, if you're reading Michael) does a really good job trying to be forthright and mediated in his approach to coverage.

Posted by Nathaniel Whittemore on 06/07/2009 @ 09:24AM PT
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Ben and Nathaniel - much appreciated. As you can see, I'm certainly not to proud to fish for compliments.

One point to add - I think many aid agencies do have somewhat stable funding bases; granted, some more than others, but groups like Oxfam and MSF raise tremendous amounts of unrestricted money from small donors year in and year out.

Posted by Michael Bear on 06/10/2009 @ 05:01PM PT
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I totally agree Nathaniel! I have long held that fear-based messages and negative superlatives are not sustainable strategies for marketing anything. Just look at what happened to George W and his fear-mongering...it worked initially, but after everyone got "used to" hearing those rants about evil and terrorism, ad nauseum, people figured out it wasn't real and he lost his credibility. Fear motivates in the short term, but in the long term it just drives you further back down into a hole.

Posted by Tea Silvestre on 06/08/2009 @ 05:20AM PT
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Author

Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.