NONPROFIT BRANDING: Betrayed By My Hero – Burke’s Tale Of Childhood Angst

Planning on using imprinted branding products in your marketing and fundraising programs? This simple childhood occurrence asserts the most important thing you need to keep in mind. (My wife, Janice, thinks the story is funny. She doesn’t realize how ticked off I still am – 63 years later!)

In March of 1947 my companions and I inhabited a world composed of inescapable realities like parents, bedtime, lawn mowing and fights over lima beans – a world enriched by loads of fantasy and highlighted by cowboy movies each Saturday. (A double-feature, plus cartoons, was 12¢. A bag of popcorn, with real butter, was another 3¢.) Within that happy world I encountered a disaster which brought me to my psychic knees. It is a lesson for today’s constituent-dependent nonprofits.

By common agreement the cornerstone of our little world was Gene Autry.  (Apologies to readers of later generations. Autry was a movie cowboy/singer.) At the time he was on the verge of being eclipsed by Roy Rogers. That new movie cowboy was an upstart. Worse – he had assumed the overheated title “King of the Cowboys.”

We scoffed at the regal overtones of Roy Roger’s royal self-investiture. To measure our disdain you need to understand the mindset of American boys during and right after World War II. Even little kids knew America was created by righteous colonists who had thwarted an evil king and his invading army. More persuasive, for our entire lives we had existed at the edge of adult conversation with a single focus – tragedy in foreign lands, tragedy that somehow affected the family down the street – or even our own family. We were raised as rabid nationalists in a red, white and blue sea of wartime fear and subsequent post-war euphoria.

Roy Rogers called himself “King.” To us that meant royalty.  Royalty meant Europe, and Europe meant a horrible war that made our mothers cry and our fathers get all stiff-faced. We were American kids. Our fathers and uncles had just finished kicking Hitler’s ass. We knew Gene Autry could do the same to the imposter – the alleged King of the Cowboys.

One day in 1947 the world turned upside down. Affinity was challenged. Affinity lost the fight.  I renounced my commitment to Good Old Gene and crossed over to the growing Roy Rogers constituency.

I could not help myself. My new Gene Autry cap pistol (birthday gift that March) was my greatest possession. It was better and more realistic than the toy guns owned by any of my friends.  Its white plastic handles, the fringed holster and even the box it came in all carried Gene Autry’s official signature. The box also had a color photo of Autry and Champion, the Wonder Horse.

To me – and to others in our little world – that cap gun symbolized the affinity Gene and I had developed for each other. Possessing it made me Top Dog in our little gang.

Then I dropped the pistol. The barrel broke off. Without the barrel my Gene Autry pistol was useless.

My pal Gary looked at the broken toy and labeled it a “crap gun.”

Now the owner of a crap gun, I first began to cry and second – I began an uncontrolled  slide down the social hierarchy.  My faith in Gene Autry evaporated. My hero had let me down. I owned a crap gun.

And therein lies a critical lesson for constituent-dependent nonprofits. Because pride of association had turned to disappointment, I had lost faith in the Autry brand. What could be more natural?

This story is not just the recollection of a minor event that occurred to a little kid 63 years ago. It is an insight into how affinity relationships can work. Like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, your organization built a constituency of its own. That’s your market and the source of your financial support. To encourage affinity, and to provide constituents with badges of their affinity, nearly all nonprofits put their logo on promotional products and distribute those products to supporters.

Do this properly and you enhance the brand.

Do it carelessly and the product can work against you. The barrel might fall off.  That’s when you betray the brand.

It’s really a simple premise: because constituent affinity is often so fragile, you can’t afford to associate your brand with products that might disappoint their owners!

BOTTOM LINE: Be mindful – quality issues are the source of a unique vulnerability for nonprofits. There is a lot involved here. In future posts we will help you understand this issue and teach you to guard against the risk. Having supplied 16,000 nonprofit marketing and fundraising campaigns, we have a lot to say on this subject. We’ll try to make it fun to read and worth sharing with your colleagues.

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The Nonprofit Branding Blog is a service of VisABILITY. Look for product info on our website. Raise questions or make suggestions to John (jburke@visability.com) or call Janice or John at 303-823-0327. Keep up to date three ways: befriend our Facebook page | follow our Twitter feed | sign up for periodic product announcements