Executive summary
This report examines the branding activities undertaken by charity organizations in Australia for increasing their status and position in the economy. The extent to which the charity organizations are engaged in advertising and communicating to the stakeholders is also discussed in this report. Based on the literature, the report examines the degree of brand activities undertaken and their importance in charity organizations. The three important charity organizations in Australia that are taken for the preparation of this report are Charities Aid Foundation Australia (CAF), CARE Australia, and Australian Cancer Research Foundation.
The issues and the personality branding activities undertaken by these organizations are also discussed in the literature part. The advertisements comply with the rules and regulations of Charity Act and they are licensed and are treated as the registered body under the government sector. The key personality characteristics of these three organizations are identified by using the brand personality theory, specifically the Big 5 model. The utilization of personality in the charity works in Australia is also discussed in this report.
Introduction
The non-profit sector is considered as the third sector in Australia. “There are as many as 700,000 nonprofit organisations in Australia.” (The National Roundtable of Nonprofit Organizations 2006).
“The current Australian human services charity profile is as a socially moral, not-for-profit business which generates a surplus; a community organization advocating on behalf of disadvantaged people and communities.” (Morris 2009, p.1).
Branding can be defined as “the creation and development of a specific identity for a company, product, commodity, group and person.” (Levine 2003, p.3).
There are many celebrities who are used for branding variety of products across the globe. A set of human attributes that are associated with a particular brand are termed as brand personality. The brand reflects the behaviour of the personality. It is very easy to adopt personality branding for commercial products, but the process of branding is considered difficult when it comes to personality branding for charity organizations.
Among total charity organizations in Australia, the organizations taken for the study are CARE Australia, Charities Aid Foundation Australia (CAF Australia) and Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF). “CARE Australia is an Australian charity and international humanitarian aid organization fighting global poverty, with a special focus on empowering women and girls to bring lasting change to their communities.” (CARE Australia 2009).
It is a division of an international confederation expanding its services to more than 70 countries across the globe. CAF Australia is an element of CAF international network and delivers a variety of financial services to the charities. They “distribute over £1m to charities on each working day of the year.” (Our cause and vision n.d.).
The ACRF is one of the leading non-profit organisations in Australia which is engaged in helping the people who are searching for cancer treatment by creating a support from the world class research centres in Australia.
Making an individual to donate to a charity organization is not an easy task. It requires effective advertising strategy and branding strategy. Through this way, it is easy to attract the attention of the donors from various places. All these aspects are discussed in the literature part of this report.
Review of Literature
The review of literature part describes about the issues related to the branding and personality branding in the charities and it also explains the meaning and the importance of personality branding in this sector.
Branding and Brand personality
“Today, the able management of brands has come to be considered the art and cornerstone of Marketing.” (Ritchie, Swami & Weinberg 1998, p.26).
The brands are used to gain a strategic benefit for the organization whether it is profit or non-profit organization.
“Charities have amongst the strongest brands of any organisation, commercial, public or voluntary.” (Saxton 2008, p.2).
According to Delgado-Ballester and Munuera-Aleman (2005) creating a strong brand is considered as the main goal for every organization because it represents the identity for the organization and provides several benefits. “Some charity organisations are turning to charity brand status, not only in terms of a name and logo but more importantly in terms of communicating value and meaning to their stakeholders.” (Hankinson 2009).
Basically, a brand is described in three different groups of characteristics such as personal attributes, functional characteristics and finally the characterisational aspects. Characterisational aspect is considered as the brand personality (Plummer, 2000). The brand personality is an important aspect for the consumers when it comes to product suitability (Plummer, 2001). The identification of brand through personality branding will help to build up long term relation between the brand and the customer.
The brand personality is considered as an element of the brand image (Plummer, 2000). Aaker (1996) defines brand personality as “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand, which makes it unique, compare to other brands.” (Hansen & Christensen 2003, p.25). He says that the personality of the brand is very much similar to the human who has been chosen for it. It possesses all characteristics that are associated with the human such as the age, gender and personality traits. He also says that the brand personality will be consistent, long-term and will be associated with the changes in the personality. It has two characteristics, such as product related characteristics and non-product related characteristics. The examples for product related characteristics are category of products and prices. The non-product related characteristics are celebrities, sponsors, symbols etc. (Aaker, 2002). The brand personality must match the desires of the target customers and they should feel that the particular personality is closely related to the brand.
It has been found out that the rate of fund that was flowing into charity organizations from the donors has reduced tremendously. It was also found that some charities are focusing to brand the status. In order to increase their status, they not only concentrate on the name and logo of the firm but also on communicating and maintaining harmonious relationship with its stakeholders. The stakeholders are the donators in charity organizations.
Issues related to branding and brand personality in charities
Aaker (1997) identifies five dimensions that rare related to the brand personality. They are sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. Brand personality is associated with a self-expressive aspect that makes the product create a need in the minds of the target consumers (Keller, 1993). The dimensions in the brand personality affect the people in different ways. The dimensions such as sincerity, excitement and competence influence the internal feelings of the consumers and the other dimensions such as sophistication and ruggedness try to fulfil the wish of the customers what they like but it is not real. (Aaker, 1997)
The three important issues that are outlined by the charitable organizations in Australia are increase in demand for the services rendered by the charitable organizations, issues related with the staffing activities, and restrictions in funding process. The level of donations by the individual givers is falling globally which shows a negative impact on the charitable organizations in Australia (Balabanis, Stables et al. 1997, Mathur, 1996, Groom, 1995). Among these organizations only a few are known for personal donating (Harvey 1990).
The increase in demand for services is considered as the first issue faced by the Australian charities. The reason for the emergence of this challenge is that many welfare groups reduced the level of services that was delivered to the pre-determined number of people (Australian Associated Press 2001). The charities that deal the issues related to health and disability are likely to create a greater increase in demand (Mazzarol and Adam 1996).
The second is the issue related to staffing activities. There is a common misconception that all the works that are contributed to the non-profit organizations are done with a high degree of personal sacrifice (Gibelman, 2000). Recent authors argue that even though the non-profit organizations are unique when compared with that of the other two sectors, still these organizations lack professionalism in their business (Herman and Renz 1999; Tonkiss and Passey 1999). The reason for this challenge is the perception about non-profit organizations that they are unproductive, unaccountable and are poorly paid.
The third challenge faced by the Australian charities is the constraints in funding process. The increasing number of charity organizations in the Australian market is considered to be the main reason for this challenge (Sargeant 1999).
Importance of branding and brand personality in charities
The contribution of marketing towards charity has been identified and many authors have mentioned the utilisation of it (Bendapudi et al,1996;Kotler and Andreason, 1987; Lovelock and Weinberg, 1984; Varadarajan and Menon 1988). Charity donors are attracted towards the brands that are encompassed of personalities possessing values that are congruent to their own values and aspirations (de Chernatony et al.2004).
This variation in the congruence between the personality and the self image of the individual creates impact on the behaviour on the consumers (Grubb and Hupp 1968; Sirgy 1982). This concept has shown an increase in the level of loyalty towards an organization (Adler and Adler 1987). This also increases the brand loyalty and a positive word of mouth communication (Peter and olson 1993). This communication will be useful in stimulating the support of donors for non-profit organizations.
Aaker focused on the traits that are capable to distinguish one charity form the other. The traits that are shared by all organizations within the particular sector should be identified. The two traits, benevolence and progression are considered as charitable in nature. Benevolence includes attributes such as caring, compassionate, ethical, fair, helpful, sincere, trusty and honest. Progression includes attributes such as involvement, engagement, responsiveness, translating and pioneering. Whatever may be the attributes, the main focus by the customer into the charitable organizations is the degree and quality of services provided by them. The charity advertisements used by various charities are discussed in the next part of the report.
Review and analysis of the advertisements in selected three charity organizations
“Charities should carefully select images for their advertisements that show negative emotions such as sadness.” (Burt & Strongman n.d., p.579).
There are certain assurances by the charity advertising; they should not show any personal interest by the staff or any board members in relation to the financial factors; they are also liable to protect the data about the contributors for privacy reasons; they should not publish of the information without their knowledge or permission; the funds procured through the advertisement should be used for the prospects of the charity institution only.
Charities aid foundation (CAF)
The charities aid foundation has the tag line of the commitment to effective charity, the analysis of the internal and the external factors is useful in providing adequate information and awareness created by the organization.
“Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), an international not-for-profit organisation providing the knowledge, infrastructure, back-office administration and ongoing management.” (Charities aid foundation 2005).
The CAF gives importance to the colour theory of advertising, they give importance to the colour possessing maximum intensity; red colour is the colour which creates a good impact on the viewer and tendency to relook the advertisement. The organization conducts different events like training, award function, different forums and workshops etc to have publicity among the people. The workshop conducted by them is a very good method of promotion of charity through public relations; in the workshops they mainly give the idea of tax efficiency and exemption from payment of taxes under the section of the income tax. Free news letter is the offer by the CAF; they provide the news letter to the companies, individuals and the donors of charity.
They can subscribe online depending on the interest shown in the organization. In the advertisement they emphasise on one time payment where the donors are at the liberty that the funds given by them are only one time by sending the payroll and the copy to the trust where the ultimate action will be taken by them.
The main aim which they put forward is to create greater values for charities which is the advertisement source where the values are always considerable.
CARE Australia
Their advertisement mainly follows the conveying of the portrait of the needy and the victims to the donors or people, which creates a picture in the minds of the people which they are able to recollect than the writings or the logos. The pictures of the disabled, needy and the hungry are the strange pictures viewed; so they create an unforgettable impact in the minds of the people. They have the punch lines of defending dignity and fighting poverty which is the good advertisement caption which make people to think on how the things can be achieved.
Their advertisement gives numerical figures where they get to know the exact idea of the revenue spent for living, the birth and the mortality rate and the number of women who die during the child birth.
They adopt the method of advertising or the promotion of the product by conveying the exact idea on the agonies faced by the inhabitants in the organizations.
Australian Cancer Research Foundation
The ACRF uses the sticky advertising which is the digital media agency which include the analyzing of the situation and uses its own methods by the application of the ‘zag theory’ which denotes the difference between the each and the other people and the perception. “In some cases a few small changes is all that is necessary, while other aspects of their site will benefit from a more focused strategy.” (Cancer research gets sticky n.d.).
The cancer research foundation has the main aim of promoting awareness creation in the people and checking once in two months for the prevention of cancer. It emphasises on the score board advertising for spotting the events, as the health promotion medium. They have different groups which act as the supporters for them in raising funds; these fund raisers also act as the promoters of the product. ACRF concentrates less on the media advertisements as it concentrates much on social networking for advertising, the conducting of campaigns. The other functions are the main source of publicizing the advertisement.
Key personality characters of the brand
Brand personality is defined formally as “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand.” (Aaker 1997, p.347).
Brand personality is considered with reputed products in the market; they are useful in the brand identification and in the value and the profit generation in the market.
Brand personality depends on different kinds of branding procedures, the techniques and the characteristics that are to be adopted. They are the passion for the brand which involves a feeling of better opportunity for success, the treatment of the product is much vital. Vision and focus are the important traits of the brand which deals with the vision for the future and the clear focus on the product and its promotion techniques and to make the product a success. The positive belief should be treated well because, as the product is charity the possibility of misconceptions is high and the chances of negative results are much in general. If a firm decision should be positive, the treating of those numbers should be viewed in order to have a better access.
Taking of risk should be the main characteristic. The big 5 model of branding includes the neuroticism which may include emotion, urgent reviews, extraversion like the sociable and the people oriented and the affectionate manner, the openness which include the original and exploring agreeableness that causes the agreeable results and conscientiousness.
As far as charity is concerned, the big 5 model of the behavioural theory is more important. It may give emphasis on neuroticism where the urgency of the need takes place and it always becomes the urgency to meet the requirements. The extraversion of the model includes the social ability of the people. It is the network of mingling with others as charity is considered interdependent and charity plays a vital role and it is useful for the success of the firm. The openness of the firm depends on the firm’s ability to be original; it may consist of different kinds of creation and the ability of the firm to be original and the different levels of creativity that are done by the firm.
As far as charitable institutions are concerned, different approach towards them should be considered, where the origin of them contribute much to the firm. The consciousness of the firm consists of accuracy and the time limit in the functioning and the purpose in the organization and how they are useful in the organization. Each of the behavioural aspects should be useful to the firm where they decide the success of the firm.
Utilization of personality in charity sector
The identification of personality is useful for proper functioning of the firm. Different kinds of functioning of the firm play a vital role and they are useful in the proper functioning and the success of the firm. When different kinds of behaviour are treated they consist of proper functioning and the better understanding.
The advertisements are mainly to attract the companies, the individuals and the groups, the main aim is to promote charity and to make them the good donors. The fund raisers work hard in the upliftment of the firm. The different kinds of celebrities, as the promoters, increase the revenue and profitability of the firm. This may also use the attention given by the individuals to the charitable trust; the ideas of the promotion make them think of being part of the charity and also the idea of donating. As far as the cancer foundation is concerned, there are separate groups for fund raising and the women participate actively in the fund raising process.
Brand personality presentation by imagining our self as marketing manager
As a marketing manager, I will promote brand personality based on the traits suggested by Aaker. The traits related terms are benevolence and progression. I think these two words have the capacity to attract new customers and this creates a degree of closeness towards the product especially when it comes to the non-profit sector. I will promote charity by putting the charity name and logo on the shop’s front wall and posters. The details regarding the charity will also be shown in the carrier bags, leaflets and in the sacks that are used in households. The telephone number, ethos and slogans will be displayed in the advertisements that are given through television.
Annual performance of the charity will be depicted in the annual magazine of the charity that is issued in the last month of every year. The advertisements will be given more in television and internet. Through these medias people can view the facilities provided by various organizations and also helps to attract the donors that they are giving for a firm which is concentrating on the welfare of the those who are in need of it.
Conclusions
Making an individual to donate to a charity organization is not an easy task. It requires effective advertising strategy and branding strategy. Through this way, it is easy to attract the attention of the donors from various places. The name of the brand should attract the donors and the name must be capable to create a sense of attachment towards the charity. As per Aaker it is better to use the names that are related to certain terms such as benevolence and progression. The personality branding is not only focused on attracting people but to encourage the other category of people to donate to charity organizations.
References
Aaker, JL. 1997. Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, vol.xxxiv, pp.347-356, JStor: Trusted Archives for Scholarship.
Burt, CDB & Strongman, K n.d., Use of images in charity advertising: improving donations and compliance rates, International Journal of Organisational Behaviour, hvol.8, no.8, pp. 571-580. Web.
Cancer research gets sticky n.d., Australian Cancer Research Foundation. Web.
CARE Australia 2009. CARE. Web.
Charities aid foundation 2005. CAF Australia: Committed to Effective Giving. Web.
Hankinson, P 2009, Brand orientation in the charity sector: a framework for discussion and research, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector marketing, vol.6, no.3, pp.231-242. Wiley Inter Science. Web.
Hansen, F & Christensen, LB 2003. Branding and advertising, Copenhagen Business School Press DK.
Levine, M 2003. A branded world: adventures in public relations and the creation of superbrands, John Wiley and Sons.
Morris, L 2009. The economics of charity-who cares?, University of Notre Dame Australia. Web.
Our cause and vision: our impact n.d., CAF: Charities Aid Foundation. Web.
Ritchie, RJB, Swami, S & Weinberg, CB 1998, A brand new world for nonprofits, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector marketing, vol.4, no.1, pp. 26-42. Web.
Saxton, J 2008. A strong charity brand comes from strong beliefs and values, NFP Synergy: Helping Non-profits Thrive. Web.
The National Roundtable of Nonprofit Organizations 2006. The nonprofit sector in Australia: a fact sheet, Accord. Web.