Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Education of Borepatch

Sometimes, if you don't pay close attention, you make bad assumptions. This has been commonplace down through the ages, and has given us some of the great film lines:
Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
I had thought that the NRA was, as I've read somewhere, "the world's oldest civil rights organization." It seems I was misinformed.

Marketing folks can tell you that branding is a funny creature. It's all in the head; intangible, it's about what people think when they hear or see the brand name. Good marketing people are fierce when protecting their brand. Johnson and Johnson is the classic example, taught in Business School. The 1982 Tylenol Scare ended up strengthening the Johnson and Johnson brand when the company moved aggressively to protect its customers by removing all Tylenol product from the market - destroying roughly $100 M worth of inventory.

Three decades later, Johnson and Johnson is one of the most trusted brands in the country. Their rapid, aggressive actions strengthened their brand, reinforcing customers existing trust. They reinforced what people already thought.

But what happens when customers have an inaccurate impression of a brand? I think that's what happened to me with the NRA. I simply had the wrong mental model of the organization - not entirely wrong, of course, but enough to get some marketing vertigo over the recent flap over their convention being held in a location that bans firearms.

This cannot be true, I thought. The NRA is all about Gun Rights. Or is it?

And so I went and looked at their web site. Marketing organizations jealously guard control over the web site, because it's one of the main avenues for their branding. I assume that the NRA is no different than anyone else, and an examination of their site reveals the following:
  • An obituary in the center of the page (the most important real estate on the site).
  • 22 Navigation links on the left hand side, broken down as following (with % of the total): Fundraising and Membership (40%), Links to other NRA web sites (18%), Education (13%), Hunting (9%), Info about the Annual meeting (4%), their blog (4%), Support the Troops (4%)
  • They have interactive graphics or buttons for: get the NRA iPhone app, Join, and Shop
  • They have a couple of News Feeds on the right hand side of the page
Remember, this is what the NRA tells us about them, and why we should care. Actually, they don't tell me why I should care, which is one of my pet marketing peeves - their web site is all about them, not about why I should care. But I digress.

Marketing folks hate it when people start questioning existing perceptions, because it opens up all sorts of questions which can lead the prospect far from where you want them to be. And so it was with me - I was positively shocked to see that the work "right" appears precisely twice on their main page: a link to the Civil Rights Defense Fund (send us money!) and a link to Hunter's Rights.

That's it. And this is on the the NRA's most valuable Internet presence.

I'm not a hunter (although I'd like to go sometime), so hunter's rights is at best tangential. I'm already questioning what the NRA will do for me, so I'm not about to send them any money, at least until I'm more in my comfort zone. So that leaves me with precisely bupkis in perceived value, based on the NRA's own web site.

Dang - I was misinformed.

So holding their annual convention in a venue that requires their members to be disarmed does not in fact seem to violate the NRA's own branding and principles. It's not Marketing FAIL at all. It's a mismatch between my expectations and reality. Fair enough, and full apologies to the NRA for me saying their marketing team are a bunch of buffoons. I was wrong.

But I'm mystified as to why I should renew my membership. After reading their web site, I honestly don't see what is compelling about them. Now that I'm asking questions, some thing I''d like to know include what percent of their budget do they devote to firearms rights?, and what percent of their budget goes to fundraising?

Marketing people know that once the prospect starts asking questions like this, they're much more difficult to bring back. I'm not sure just how I picked up the notion that the NRA is a gun rights organization, but if they're not just what are they? And why should I care?

8 comments:

Rev. Paul said...

I'm pretty well convinced that you (and I) shouldn't care at all. I will not renew my membership this time 'round. I understand GOA & JPFO are good organizations, with 2nd Amendment rights more along the lines of "core principles" - I'll be checking them closely.

Alan said...

I may be wrong, but I think the NRA itself does very little gun rights work. They leave that to the NRA-ILA which is a different organization.

The NRA is mostly about fundraising, but I heard a rumor that they also do some training and sponsor a rifle match or two.

Shy Wolf said...

The only reason I'm an NRA member is it's required for my gun club membership, and has since 1932. If there was any other place to shoot that had even half the facilities and no NRA requirment, I'd go there.
Shy III

Paladin said...

I lend my support more to the TSRA (Texas State Rifle Association) than the NRA, because I've seen that the TSRA is much more in tune to what I see as "fighting" to protect and regain my 2nd amendment rights.

I also support the NRA, though, for somewhat different reasons. The NRA is probably the best known "Gun Rights" group in the US. For those individuals that are Anti-gun, and even for those who are simply ambivalent on the matter, the size of the NRA's membership sends a strong message about just how many people care enough about the RKBA to support it with their wallets.

If the NRA membership starts to visibly trail off, I think it might embolden the left to start up with the fishy stuff again...

Hey, the dogcatcher used ambivalent in a sentence :)

SiGraybeard said...

FWIW, I'm more or less with Paladin. I'm in the NRA for more or less the same reasons: I need to be in the NRA for my club, and because they are the biggest and most famous "Gun Rights" organization.

The NRA sometimes seems to be more interested in playing the game than winning the game. I don't know where it comes from, but they seem to like being in the halls of power. Their attitude puts the NRA in the unique position of being despised by their enemies and disliked by their friends.

Because I can, I freely give to both the GOA and the JPFO. Just got a solicitation from the JPFO yesterday. Think I'm going to double or triple last years' contribution.

KurtP said...

Yep Gun club,,,specifically the insurance thing.

otherwise I'd give my money to something that actually helps the gun cause.

bradley13 said...

"The NRA sometimes seems to be more interested in playing the game than winning the game."

That is "Pournelle's Iron Law" at work. If they were to win the game, they wouldn't be needed. No organization wants to work itself out of a job, therefore...

strandediniowa said...

I attended meetings in Iowa where the NRA promoted the idea that they were going to fight for the right to carry a firearm... by requiring one to get a permit. (Sigh)

We were headed in the direction that Arizona gained this year. Would we have made it? Maybe, maybe not. But now we have a law that requires NRA certified (or similar) training to obtain and to renew a permit. A new requirement.

Thanks NRA.

And thanks to Borepatch for his diligence regarding the NRA website.