How To Become A Street-Smart Brand

Brands that engage in street marketing or fundraising should tread carefully. More often than not, passers-by find the interaction annoying. Consider these five ways to create attraction.

Face-to-face fundraising may be of benefit to charities from an income perspective, but the approach from a brand-building one is questionable. There are lessons for all brands in how to avoid tactics that annoy and deter longer-term engagement.

“Don’t you want to help children in need?” This was her final attempt at getting me to stop and hear more about her cause. But it immediately had the opposite effect, turning yet another encounter with NGO street fundraisers (often known as “chuggers” or “facers”) from something mildly interruptive into an annoyance.

And while this may just seem as another passer-by responding negatively to a request, it is also—in the grander scheme of things—a negative mechanism that encourages people to reject the brand.

I realise I may sound cold and harsh for not being moved by this appeal for my time and contribution, but the irony is I have a diploma from the very same NGO this particular chugger represented—given in gratitude for our team’s effort in supporting them through our services such as securing free media placement.

On a professional level, I implore all brands, both NGO and non-NGO brands, that apply street marketing tactics, to tread carefully. Not doing so can have a devastating effect on your brand.

A Growing Irritation

According to surveys, people in the streets find chuggers “really annoying,” “too eager,” and “intrusive.” As a result, any who may otherwise donate choose not to.

A 2015 survey in Denmark found that a full four out of four Danes dislike chuggers and some 70% actively avoid them. However, putting on headphones and frantically staring at your smartphone when chuggers are in sight is often not enough of a deterrent, with tactics to interrupt you commonplace.

When confronted with this behaviour, Robert Hinnerskov, general secretary of the Danish trade association of the fundraising organisations ISOBRO, stated: “Everybody is texting and using headphones, and I think it signals that ‘I am doing something, but you are welcome to shortly interrupt me.’”

On the streets, meanwhile, chuggers themselves pay the price for this lenient view, as passers-by react more and more irrationally towards them.

Stories abound about a rise in aggression towards street fundraisers. What started as negative comments have developed into abusive gestures and physical abuse. Last year, 20-year-old street fundraiser Lucca Hagen told her story to the media about being attacked more than six times in less than a year. This is inexcusable and erratic behaviour, and serves up some real urgency for brands that engage in street marketing or fundraising.

Five Ways To Become A Street-Smart Brand

Engaging with a brand on the street should be a positive experience for passers-by. Exactly how you approach this will depend on your offer and target, but there are several creative and strategic considerations you can employ to head in the right direction.

Many of these are, in fact, design considerations. Engagement—of any sort—needs a framework and guidelines for the interaction and the experience that make for a positive encounter.

• Consider your timing. Encountering people at the busiest time of their commute may not be the best time to try and stop them in their tracks.
• Consider the space. If you look around you, you may think your position is great, but are you in fact in everybody’s way? Preventing people’s access to places makes you an annoyance even before any contact is made.
• Consider the context. This includes the scenarios in which you meet people. Weather is a temporary aspect of context, and an example of something you can use to your benefit, such as providing shelter from the rain to passers-by.
• Consider how to attract people. All marketers need to be able to do this regardless of media or customer touch point, so why not present the street team with the same challenge: What can you do to make people come to you?
• Consider people’s personal space. Cutting into people’s conversations is not only rude, it will consciously or subconsciously be considered an invasion of privacy.

The key to modern marketing effectiveness is being smart about how to create attraction rather than being a disturbance. In this case, avoid negative branding and build positive branding by doing something more clever than those typically irritating chugger tactics.