Eating Disorders in Adolescent Girls

Presentation Eating issue among youthful young ladies is a medical problem that has gotten regular in the United States in the course of the most recent decades. As per Golden et al (2003), this issue emerges when youths intentionally eat a measure of food that is beneath the standard levels dependent on the necessities of the body.Advertising We will compose a custom research paper test on Eating Disorders in Adolescent Girls explicitly for you for just $16.05 $11/page Learn More As Field et al. state, â€Å"although the pervasiveness of overweight and stoutness is expanding, the longing to be slight or to have all around characterized or conditioned muscles is still very widespread† (2003, p. 900). For a human body to work appropriately there is a particular measure of food consumption that ought to be seen regularly. This will help in the typical running of real organs. At the point when this sum isn't met, the body will be compelled to work with lesser measure of vitality. This prompts malnourishment among the individuals who are experiencing this complexity. The most widely recognized sign among individuals with this issue is a flimsy body. This condition may happen when an individual needs enough food to make them solid. Nonetheless, it is a stressing pattern that young ladies at their youthful consider being flimsy as an indication of magnificence. Consequently, they starve themselves for the sake of battling extreme fat. They purposely abstain from taking a few methods, and when they need to eat, and afterward their eating regimen is consistently lean, with bunches of water. The issue is infectious to such an extent that dominant part of the American pre-adult young ladies right now experience the ill effects of this wellbeing intricacy. These young people need to be taken note. Companion pressure and the press have persuaded them that the main path through which they can be seen is the point at which they have a flimsy body (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Thin has been considered as an indication of magnificence, and pre-adult young ladies are happy to go an additional mile with their eating regimen so as to accomplish this. The outcome has been huge lack of healthy sustenance that brings other wellbeing inconveniences. Conversation from the Interview In request to get more knowledge into the causes, impact, the commonness and answer for dietary problems among the juvenile young ladies in this nation, the specialist talked with Paul Marcus who is a therapist who works in private practice with youths, particularly young ladies with dietary problems. As per this therapist, dietary problem begins among the pre-adult matured between 12-14 years.Advertising Looking for examine paper on training? How about we check whether we can support you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More However, their condition raises when they reach between the ages of 15-20. It is at this phase these young ladies look for much consid eration and are exceptionally worried of their appearance. A portion of the hazard factors that would cause young ladies of this age to build up this issue incorporate useless relational peculiarities, being in a culture where being slim is profoundly esteemed, friend and media pressure on the excellence of being dainty. Young ladies of this age are consistently under tension and uneasiness to glance respectable so as to pick up acknowledgment among peers. They let their uneasiness control them. Insecure families where guardians are not in charge of the conduct of their young kids are in every case bound to have kids experiencing dietary problems than those with strength where guardians are in charge of the government assistance of their kids. Youngsters presented to maltreatment at home, either genuinely or mentally are additionally bound to build up this issue. This is on the grounds that they will consistently be searching for comfort outside their homes, and this must be accompl ished when they look satisfactory. As indicated by this analyst, it is conceivable to identify early indications of dietary problems before the negative effect is showed on the person in question. Probably the most widely recognized signs incorporate evasion of dinners either at school or at home, visiting the washroom following suppers, a great deal of time devoted to looking self on the mirror, fixation on nourishment, spewing without worthwhile motivation, frailty, and over-working out. The above are a portion of the indications that an individual is taking the thoughts of being slight truly. This clinician likewise expresses that dietary issues are constantly joined with other mental issue. Since this is a kind of nervousness issue, it is constantly went with other mental issue, for example, GAD, OCD, sorrow or even substance misuse. Contingent upon the degree of uneasiness and disappointment with the present body weight, an individual can build up a progression of other mental issue as she attempts to propel herself past cutoff points so as to diminish weight to levels she thinks about adequate among her companions. Marcus says that there are various impacts of dietary issue. One such impact is weight reduction. Patients experiencing dietary problem consistently get more fit at fabulous rates, particularly when they propel themselves extremely hard on the need to lose weight.Advertising We will compose a custom research paper test on Eating Disorders in Adolescent Girls explicitly for you for just $16.05 $11/page Learn More These are some clinical results that are identified with this weight reduction, for example, ulcers, contaminations in the throat, stomach and digestion tracts, heart entanglement because of absence of enough vitality, disposition issue among others. The family will likewise be influenced as such an individual will in general be a self observer, particularly when the weight reduction isn't coming at the foreseen rate. A few young ladie s are likewise defenseless against stomach contaminations and barrenness. Paul Marcus says that so as to treat this issue, it is imperative to begin by valuing this is a mental issue and must be treated from the mental viewpoint. One of the most well-known methods of rewarding this issue is through psychological social treatment. This will include causing them to value their body the manner in which they are and dispersing the possibility that lone slenderness is an indication of excellence. This treatment will likewise disperse the stickler idea that these youths consistently create. Another methodology will be family treatment. For this situation, the family will be associated with causing the casualty to recuperate from this condition. The family will be requested to show love and care to the person in question, and cause her to feel esteemed by the relatives regardless of her weight. The relatives will likewise screen the eating routine of the casualty near guarantee that she ta kes enough food consistently. Marcus says that there are various methods of deciding whether an individual has met the DSM IV standards for bulimia or anorexia nervosa. Unmitigated refusal to keep up body weight at or above insignificantly worthy load for age and stature is one such sign. Exceptional dread of any slight body gain and finding a sense of contentment with a thin body is another sign. Others are in steady refusal that their weight is underneath the negligibly acknowledged level, while others take part in unseemly compensatory measures at whatever point they feel that they had taken abundance dinners one after another. Fasting and inordinate exercise, abuse of purgatives and diuretics is another sign. Marcus concedes that rewarding dietary issue patients is a very testing. This is on the grounds that they are not handily persuaded that weight reduction can be hazardous to their wellbeing. Since this is a mental issue, if the patients neglect to disguise the significance of having an ordinary body weight, they can't acknowledge the treatment offered.Advertising Searching for explore paper on instruction? How about we check whether we can support you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Find out More They likewise need close family management. This clinician sums up by saying that youthful young ladies at adolescence who are worried about the developing societies in this general public ought to be watched near guarantee that they don't get this issue for the sake of searching for magnificence. Strong Literature The issue of dietary issue among the youthful young ladies in this nation has brought up a great deal of issues among the arrangement producers, guardians and different partners. As indicated by Killen et al (2006), dietary problems among the youthful young ladies has been on the ascent. At the point when they arrive at adolescence, young ladies understand that they should look lovely and adequate among their friends. At this stage, they don't need to battle searching for the data of what makes a woman excellent and respectable. This message is all over in the media, among the companions and the articles they read. They understand that the arrangement is to decrease their body weight. As indicated by Graham (2010), the issue begins when they understand that the weight reduction isn't coming at the ideal rate. This makes them propel themselves past their cutoff points. This researcher says that the message that young people get from their friends and from the media has monstrous impact on their conduct. For example, it isn't unexpected to discover a circumstance where the individuals who are considered as overweight being reproached by their companions. In such occasions, the person in question or an observer of these maltreatment will attempt to dodge such situation. To accomplish this, they attempt to control their dietary patterns so as to put on the weight that their companions would think about honorable. The media additionally assumes a huge job in affecting pre-adult young ladies to control their dietary patterns. As per Fritz (2008), media has effectively persuaded the immature young ladies that excellence must be accomplished when one is love ly. The models are ladies who are thin, and this causes little youngsters to appreciate being flimsy. The procedure of weight reduction consistently begins by staying away from a nourishments which are considered to contain exorbitant fat. This is a decent move towards smart dieting. Be that as it may, this deteriorates when these adolescents get weight of expanded weight reduction inside the briefest time conceivable. They bring down their food admission to the levels where the body gets malnourished. Is stressing that wh

Human Resource Management A Report

Question: Directing a basic investigation on close to home authority characteristics and qualities? Answer: Official Summary: This report targets directing a basic examination on close to home administration qualities and properties. It features on close to home administration characteristics I have, that should be polished, swot examination on close to home qualities, lastly gives an individual authority plan that underlines upon the abilities and capabilities that I have to secure. Mindfulness intends to know oneself completely, knowing self-qualities and shortcomings, convictions and inclinations. It gives a total thought regarding oneself and this would empower one to investigate individual characteristics with the most fitting initiative properties and guidelines. I have been in the post of a supervisor now since years, at first being a first line administrator in a huge neighborhood legitimate Social Care office for Children. As of late, I was a Service Manager for CSC in large rustic position. Inferable from this, I have very of understanding of driving just as overseeing groups of group pioneers or social specialists. Before setting out upon the Post graduate Diploma in authority and the board, initiative was never that a significant subject. Different speculations of authority and the executives are existent that depict various ideas of the theme. Because of the expanding multifaceted nature of the encompassing industry condition, the two ideas of authority and the executives has been utilized conversely. The absolute most favored administration abilities Presentation: This report targets directing a basic investigation on close to home initiative characteristics and qualities. It features on close to home administration characteristics I have, that should be rehearsed, swot examination on close to home qualities, lastly gives an individual initiative arrangement that accentuates upon the abilities and skills that I have to obtain. It is a typical wonder that a pioneer needs to have compelling aptitudes and skills so as to be fruitful as a pioneer. The report upgrades my own administration traits and furthermore signifies the regions where I need as a viable pioneer (Aas et al., 2008). Key Leadership Attributes Reflection: Initiative is the capacity to lead others in a way that the devotees would be satisfied to follow the pioneer. This capacity of driving others successfully relies upon various abilities. These aptitudes are searched out by pioneers in the wake of surveying and investigating individual abilities and skills of colleagues. The jobs of administration are available all over the place and not simply in workplaces. These abilities might be applied to any circumstance where one needs to receive the lead in each conceivable setting. Pioneer The exceptionally introductory advance to distinguish individual authority property of a legitimate pioneer is by methods for mindfulness. Mindfulness intends to know oneself completely, knowing self qualities and shortcomings, convictions and inclinations. It gives a total thought regarding oneself and this would empower one to look into individual characteristics with the most proper authority qualities and principles. Other than mindfulness, it is essential to assemble data about oneself from own family, companions, partners, and every one of those around. To empower my family, companions and partners to see me and reflect as needs be, I have arranged surveys for them to lead meet alongside bunch center and character tests. Administration Attributes: according to inquires about there are some authority characteristics that are generally liked and acknowledged in the current business condition. These characteristics are intended to empower a person to lead gathering of authoritative individuals in the best way towards the correct heading. The qualities are portrayed in the accompanying figure (Bardes, Shelley and Schmidt, 2002). Source: (Belasen and Frank, 2008) For basic examination of individual authority characteristics, it is significant that I feature upon individual attributes being the specific calling. I have been in the post of a supervisor now since years, at first being a first line director in a huge neighborhood definitive Social Care division for Children. As of late, I was a Service Manager for CSC in huge country authority. Attributable to this, I have very of understanding of driving just as overseeing groups of group pioneers or social laborers. Before leaving upon the Post graduate Diploma in administration and the executives, authority was never that a significant subject (Borodako, 2012). My own act of overseeing or driving gatherings has been founded on close to home understanding of being dealt with, own perception of different pioneers and supervisors, own impulses about what works and what not tied in with driving and overseeing. With the advancement of my own administration experience, I have been stressing more on the quality just as consistency of my initiative capacities. I have consistently been enthusiastic about understanding the authority ideas viably so I may enhance my own exhibitions, exhibitions of my groups, and lead to in general development and accomplishments. A pioneer is answerable for embracing the most suitable initiative methodologies relying upon the need of the circumstances (Boyce, Zaccaro and Wisecarver, 2010). As a group head, I am dependable to allot undertakings to singular individuals and dependent on their exhibition I have to either give reward them or punish them. It has been my insight that a pioneer may grant best vision to the adherents by persuading them what is basic and what isn't. It has been an encounter that initiative isn't really conceivable without positive followership (Chiu, 2010). Different hypotheses of initiative and the board are existent that depict various ideas of the theme. Because of the expanding multifaceted nature of the encompassing industry condition, the two ideas of administration and the board have been utilized reciprocally. Be that as it may, key contrasts exist in the midst of the two (Detrick, 2013). Mindfulness Leadership Success: The expertise of mindfulness is critical and generally important in setting to raising execution. As a pioneer I practice hesitance and acknowledging what I am acceptable at and putting forth attempts to push my own viability bar continually. It has been an individual encounter that authoritative supervisors have expanded degree of mindfulness and are powerful in their behaviors as well as exceeds expectations in particular fields (Dr.K.ALAGAR, 2012). I have acknowledged with time that when it concerns successful administration, it is imperative to raise individual initiative viability and comprehend individual possibilities by perceiving own qualities and shortcomings. This would empower me as a pioneer to fabricate limit and realize individual enhancements. Enthusiasm Compelling pioneers not just have energy to lead and complete work yet additionally share the enthusiasm with his colleagues or partners to rouse them to be progressively profitable. According to different sources, I have the enthusiasm to embrace any duty that I feel it is inside my capacities. The enthusiasm drives me to achieve work and furthermore spur different individuals to take on duties alloted to them. Correspondence As a pioneer I comprehend the need to discuss viably with every related partner, colleagues, customers and workers. I ensure that there is a consistent data stream to both low and high hierarchical levels (Frimpon, 2012). Believability To basically break down my own administration characteristics, I have to improve this quality since beforehand I embraced each and every duty. Truth be told, I dreaded assigning obligations since the believability factor needed. Be that as it may, basic examination mirror that the validity is a significant essential for a pioneer. Since this aptitude needed me somewhat, I have to construct that validity factor. Client Centric It isn't just critical to offer significance to the representatives and staffs, yet it is important to organize customers and clients. Despite the fact that I center around rehearsing viable authority aptitudes with the colleagues, I neglect to accomplish the drawn out goal of concentrating on customers. Beforehand I stressed uniquely on my colleagues and hierarchical advantages. Be that as it may, by and by I target centering long haul clients (Ganann et al., 2010). Drive It is increasingly significant for a pioneer to know all strategies of creating and keeping up followership and guide them the positive way to acknowledge achievements of objectives. At the point when I rehearsed authority, I attempted my best to adhere to my own qualities and urge my individuals to beat despite seemingly insurmountable opposition. A potential drive is significant for a pioneer to take upon expanded obligations to help association in moving advances despite seemingly insurmountable opposition (Haberfeld, 2006). Motivation A pioneer is answerable for persuading others to direct authoritative tasks effectively. Some significant viewpoints that impacted me all through are true administration, followership, and morals in authority. I have learnt it unmistakably that a pioneer who has all the characteristics can most likely achieve enormous changes inside the association that would be certain and helpful for all the related individuals (Hall, 2013). Individual Effectiveness It has been an individual encounter that solid and powerful administration shapes the foundation of any business. The idea makes decided vision, impetus to create singular qualities and bolster methodologies for moving the business firm forward. In any case, authority might be a subtle characteristic, and dynamic pioneers go about as the best test for firms in the current day Group Building Inspiring representatives to achieve more errand as opposed to rivaling one another, may bring about expanded efficiency just as confidence. Preferring an agreeable environment just as critical thinking in gathering may guarantee every departmental part to achieve assignments on time with no close to home clashes (Hazarika, 2009). As a pioneer, I ensure that I request contributions from colleagues about depar

Gary

Gary Gary, city (1990 pop. 116,646), Lake co., NW Ind., a port of entry on Lake Michigan; inc. 1909. Gary was founded by the U.S. Steel Corporation, which purchased the land in 1905 and landscaped it for a city. In 1908 the first blast furnace was lit to begin the vast lakefront steel complex that was to dominate U.S. steel production and become one of the world's greatest steel centers. Gary steelworkers were especially active in the nationwide steel strike of 1919, when federal troops occupied the city for several months. In the 1970s and 80s the city's steel industry declined dramatically, leading to large-scale plant closings and high unemployment. There is still some iron and steel processing, Manufactures also include tin, steel, and paper products; beverages; medical supplies; consumer and dairy goods; and apparel. Indiana Univ. Northwest is in Gary. The city has an airport and a civic center, and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is nearby (see National Parks and Monuments ( table)). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. Political Geography

How Long Do Supreme Court Justices Serve

The U.S. Constitution states that once confirmed by the Senate, a justice serves for life. He or she is not elected and does not need to run for office, although they may retire if they wish. This means that Supreme Court justices can serve through multiple presidential terms. That was intended to at least partly insulate the justices so they need not take politics into account when making Constitutional decisions that will affect the entire U.S. population for decades or even centuries. Fast Facts: How Long Do Supreme Court Justices Serve? After being seated on the Supreme Court bench, justices may serve for life or retire as they wish.They may be impeached for improper behavior, but only two have been impeached and only one of those was removed from office.The average length on the court is 16 years; 49 justices died in office, 56 retired. How Long Do They Serve? Since Justices are able to stay as long as they choose on the Supreme Court bench, there are no term limits. Of the 114 justices who have sat on the bench since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, 49 died in office; the last to do so was Antonin Scalia in 2016. Fifty-six retired, the latest being Anthony Kennedy in 2018. The average length of stay is about 16 years. Supreme Court Justices can be impeached and removed from the court if they do not maintain â€Å"good behavior.† Only two Supreme Court Justices have ever been impeached. John Pickering (served 1795–1804) was charged with mental instability and intoxication on the bench and was impeached and removed from office on March 12, 1804. Samuel Chase (1796–1811) was impeached on March 12, 1804—the same day Pickering was removed—for what the Congress considered seditious remarks and improper behavior in and out of court. Chase was acquitted and stayed in office until his death on June 19, 1811.   Current Supreme Court Figures As of 2019, the Supreme Court is made up of the following individuals; the date included is the day each took his or her seat. Chief Justice: John G. Roberts, Jr., September 29, 2005 Associate Justices: Clarence Thomas, October 23, 1991Ruth Bader Ginsburg, August 10, 1993Stephen G. Breyer, August 3, 1994Samuel A. Alito, Jr., January 31, 2006Sonia Sotomayor, August 8, 2009Elena Kagan, August 7, 2010Neil M. Gorsuch, April 10, 2017Brett M. Kavanaugh, Oct 6, 2018 Legal Make-Up of the Supreme Court According to SupremeCourt.gov, The Supreme Court consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and such number of Associate Justices as may be fixed by Congress. The number of Associate Justices is currently fixed at eight. Power to nominate the Justices is vested in the President of the United States, and appointments are made with the advice and consent of the Senate. Article III,  §1 of the Constitution further provides that [t]he Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office. The number of associate justices on the court over the years has varied from five to nine. The most current number, eight, was established in 1869. Fun Facts About Supreme Court Justices Supreme Court Justices have an extraordinarily important role to play in interpreting the U.S. Constitution. It has only been recently, however, that Justices have included women, non-Christians, or non-whites. Here are some fast, fun facts about Americas Supreme Court Justices over the years. Total number of Justices: 114Average length of tenure: 16 yearsLongest-serving Chief Justice: John Marshall (more than 34 years)Shortest serving Chief Justice: John Rutledge (just 5 months and 14 days under a temporary commission)Longest-serving Associate Justice: William O. Douglas (almost 37 years)Shortest serving Associate Justice: John Rutledge (1 year and 18 days)Youngest Chief Justice when appointed: John Jay (44 years old)Oldest Chief Justice when appointed: Harlan F. Stone (68 years old)Youngest Associate Justice when appointed: Joseph Story (32 years old)Oldest Associate Justice when appointed: Horace Lurton (65 years old)Oldest person to serve on the Supreme Court: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr (90 years old on retirement)Only person to serve as both Chief Justice and U.S. president: William Howard TaftFirst Jewish Supreme Court Justice: Louis D. Brandeis (served 1916–1939)First African American Supreme Court Justice: Thurgood Marshall (1967–1991)First Hispanic Su preme Court Justice: Sonia Sotomayor (2009–Present)First female Supreme Court Justice: Sandra Day OConnor (1981–2006)Most recent foreign-born Justice: Felix Frankfurter, born in Vienna, Austria (1939–1962) Sources Current Members. Supreme Court of the United States. SupremeCourt.govMcCloskey, Robert G., and Sanford Levinson. The American Supreme Court, Sixth Edition. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.More than 2 centuries of Supreme Court justices, in 18 numbers. Nation: Public Broadcasting System News Hour, July 9, 2018.  Ã‚  Samuel Chase Impeached. Federal Judicial Center.gov.  Schwartz, Bernard. A History of the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Warren, Charles. The Supreme Court in United States History, three volumes. 1923 (published by Cosimo Classics 2011).

Leadership Skills and Criminal Justice Essay - 858 Words

Leadership Skills for Criminal Justice Professionals Leadership involves the commitment, dedication, and risk taking attitude of the individual, which also includes other skills to accomplish the tasks. â€Å"In a criminal justice organization, leadership is essential to the success of the goals of the organization† (McKinney, 2008).Criminal justice professionals should develop and maintain leadership skills in their professional and personal lives because they are role models, and their decision-making is suppose to be trusted by the public. The field of criminal justice is very broad, which includes professions like law enforcement, information security, and forensic science; however, there are many career choices in that field that require†¦show more content†¦By applying analytics to forge an information-led strategy, criminal justice leaders can make decisions based on solid, robust data and allocate resources effectively to guide prevention, intervention and/or suppression tactics. Sometimes it is good to solicit opinions and obtain feedback from those that can be trusted or have had a similar situation to contend with. Finally, although most careers include some level of stress, some more than others, careers in the criminal justice field may be considered more stressful than any of the others. â€Å"In a career that deals with public safety, law enforcement, crime and punishment, and legal maneuvers, stress is inescapable† (Qualities of Good Criminal Justice,† 2011). A professional working in the field of criminal justice absolutely must be able to deal with the personal stress of the job with a competent state of mind at all times while performing their duties effectively and safely. Failure to properly cope with stress endangers criminal justice workers and can compromise public safety. It is important to stay in charge of emotions, but even more important to leave it at work and forget about it when you go home. The leadership skills mentioned above are only a few on a long list needed to be a strong leader, but being a professional in the field also means that one must possess a strong ethical sensibility. Why? 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Apparently, the rates of youth violence remains relatively high despite the attempts to enact legislations such as the three-strike law. Drugs and related offenses have also plagued many communities. To address these issues, the report provide various relevant leadership theories and styles tha t criminal justice leaders ought to followRead MoreTraining For A Leadership Position1523 Words   |  7 Pagesexperience on the job. Problem Background Information Assistant prosecutor Johnson and assistant prosecutor Norris are both high-ranking assistant prosecutors. They both have different views on the value of experience in relation to training for a leadership position. They are looking to secure the chief prosecutor s position in Macon County, South Carolina. â€Å"Assistant prosecutor Norris has been a member of the Macon County Prosecutor s Office for 30 years. 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Strategic Marketing Planning for Non Profit Organization Free Essays

string(403) " the answers to these questions together for a nonprofit like Population Services International, a \$350 million organization working to improve health in the developing world, and you get something that looks like this: PSI \(Who\? \) is a global nonprofit \(What\? that works to improve the health \(What need\? \) of the poor and vulnerable in 60 developing nations around the world \(For whom\? \)\." Georgetown University Center for Public Nonprofit Leadership Marketing Communications in Nonprofit Organizations David Williamson Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program  © 2009 Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership Georgetown University Georgetown Public Policy Institute Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 2 Marketing Communications in Nonprofit Organizations: It Matters More Than You Think David Williamson Marketing gets no respect in the nonprofit world. Program people tend to hold the most senior positions in nonprofits and accordingly have the most status. Fundraisers are often viewed as necessary evils, as are operations staff, including those who labor in the communications and marketing departments. We will write a custom essay sample on Strategic Marketing Planning for Non Profit Organization or any similar topic only for you Order Now Several factors account for the suspicion or disdain with which many nonprofit managers view the marketing function. Mostly, it’s a matter of ignorance. Usually trained in other disciplines, nonprofit leaders often fail to understand what marketing can and can’t do for their organizations. Consequently, they hold some strange assumptions (e. g. â€Å"Our good work will sell itself †), unrealistic expectations (e. g. , demanding to be in The New York Times once a week) and arbitrary funding theories (i. e. , when fundraising is down, cut the communications budget). Compounding the challenge, few nonprofit managers recognize their lack of expertise in these areas. The same people who would never contradict a financial expert or ignore a scientist don’t think twice about overruling marketing professionals on audiences, messages, tactics — the very essence of marketing strategy. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, primarily advocacy or social marketing enterprises where the core program involves communications, outreach and marketing. But in the main, the basic lack of respect accorded marketing comes as no surprise to anyone who tried to apply marketing to mission or build a nonprofit brand — we’re used to it. After all, why is this chapter near the end of this book? Forward-looking nonprofit leaders, however, will recognize what their counterparts in the for-profit sector understood long ago: marketing is essential. And although the marketing function masquerades under many names within nonprofit organizations — Communications, Advancement, External Affairs, Public Relations, or Brand Management — the primary objectives are pretty much the same: to define and then defend an organization’s position, and move it closer to success in its mission. Marketing answers the questions: How is our program distinctive? What do we want to be known for? Why is our work relevant? With the competition for philanthropic resources and public attention fierce, these are absolutely critical considerations for every nonprofit. While the benefits of investing in marketing may not be obvious to nonprofit leaders, the costs of failing to do so are becoming increasingly clear. With nonprofits coming under increasing public and regulatory scrutiny, organizations no longer can afford to relegate communications and marketing to second-class status. It’s a matter of survival. When the investigative reporters are circling your organization (think of the recent unpleasantness that befell the American Red Cross, United Way, and Smithsonian Institution, among others) you will wish that you had a robust, professional communications department to handle the incoming slings and arrows. An expensive outside public relations firm is a poor substitute for people who know your organization and command the trust of the staff. moral: Show marketing some respect. It is essential for mission success, but if you wait around until the need is obvious, it will already be too late. The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Douglas Meyer in preparing this manuscript. Note: The anecdotes herein are intended to illustrate larger themes, and not as critiques of individual organizations. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 3 The Elevator Test Through the years, marketers have invented ever-more sophisticated ways to develop organizational position statements. Lots of these methodologies work, and you can spend big money with consultants on finely crafted and focus-group-tested positioning statements. At the same time, for nonprofits, the simpler approach advocated by the marketing savant Harry Beckwith may achieve much the same result at considerably lower cost and effort. I think of Beckwith whenever I find myself confronted with a classic â€Å"elevator test† moment. You strike up a conversation in an elevator, on the subway, in the line at Starbucks and the question soon arises: What do you do? The challenge is how to answer that question in an interesting, compelling manner that invites further questions about your organization, but that does not bog down in jargon or too much detail. You don’t have much time — maybe two sentences at most. So what do you include? What do you leave out? What’s your answer to the elevator test? Lest you think this exercise trivial, recall that everyone on the staff of your nonprofit gets asked the â€Å"what do you do? † question, in various forms, every day. In that sense, everyone on staff is a marketer, albeit rarely trained as such. Do you know how your staff is responding? Do you have any confidence that everyone on the team — program staff, receptionists, board members — shares a common sense of the organization’s brand position? Are they communicating a consistent message? Many nonprofit organizations fail this test. Happily, Beckwith prescribes a very simple formula that nonprofits can adapt readily to their needs in developing an elevator test that can double as a position statement. (Note that the elevator test is not a mission statement, nor should it read like one, but instead tries to distill the essence of the organization into relevant, accessible language for the particular person with whom you are speaking. ) The Beckwith formula starts with six basic questions: ho? What’s your name? what? What kind of organization are you (scale and sector)? for whom? Whom do your programs serve? what need? What pressing social problem does your program address? what’s different? What is distinctive about your program? so what? Why should they care? String the answers to these questions together for a nonprofit like Population Services International, a $350 million organization working to improve hea lth in the developing world, and you get something that looks like this: PSI (Who? ) is a global nonprofit (What? that works to improve the health (What need? ) of the poor and vulnerable in 60 developing nations around the world (For whom? ). You read "Strategic Marketing Planning for Non Profit Organization" in category "Essay examples" Combating diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria that kill millions around the world (So what? ), PSI saves lives by using the power of the private sector to distribute and market health products to the neediest people. (What’s different? ) Three red flags about elevator tests. First, ruthlessly eliminate jargon. Every sector has a specialized language, but don’t use it in your elevator/positioning speech. Second, avoid laundry lists of activities. Nonprofits are wonderfully inclusive organizations, with a great sense of fairness and equity between their constituent parts, but this makes for disastrous marketing. The entire point of an elevator speech is to boil your enterprise into a message that is simple, consistent, and most of all distinctive, so make hard choices and focus on the things you do particularly well. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 4 Second, and perhaps most important, put some real thought into answering the question: So what? It’s the payoff piece of the speech, the call to action that makes the programmatic work of a nonprofit relevant. And to change policy and behavior, to raise money and build a strong institution, most organizations simply must find a way to make their mission relevant to a broader constituency. Figuring out a compelling â€Å"so what? † response is a good place to start. Third, try to make it â€Å"sticky. † Is what you have said memorable? In their book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath identify the common currency of memorable ideas, a good story. And, specifically, they note the importance of simple, true stories with concrete details, unexpected twists and emotion. Does your elevator speech tell a story in a way that helps the listener remember it? For the leaders of nonprofits, the elevator test also can serve as a shrewd diagnostic tool for determining differences within the management team. Have everyone sit down and simultaneously craft an elevator speech — give them no more than five minutes — and then have people share the results. You will learn a lot about the attitudes of your senior managers and how they are portraying the organization to the outside world. he audience; not coincidentally, that’s why lots of marketing pieces tend to start with the word â€Å"you. † Looked at another way, marketing is a â€Å"pull† strategy that meets the audience where it is, and then tries to steer the audience to the desired action or behavior through incentives or other inducements. Marketing, it has been said, appeals to the heart. Communications, on the other hand, typically appeals to the head. Representing the institutional perspective, sentences in communications materials usually start with the word â€Å"we† or else the organization’s name; ook at any nonprofit annual report for a case in point. Communications also tend to be declarative, laying out a statement of opinion, a detailed factual case, or an institutional position, and then try to connect those to the audience’s interests. These are classic push strategies in action, with the organization pushing out information (and misinformation! ) about its activities or agenda. Best-practices nonprofits combine the best aspects of both these approaches, and appeal to both the heart and the head. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, one of the most effective advocacy groups of modern times, is famous for the powerful emotional appeal of its advertising campaigns and legislative testimony, which prominently feature the victims of drunk drivers. But supplementing these classic marketing techniques, MADD also deploys equally classic communications strategies — position papers, voter’s guides, legislative briefing books, and on-line advocacy, for example. Together, this combination of disciplined marketing and focused, issue-oriented communications has made MADD a political force in every statehouse and on Capitol Hill. And it’s not just MADD. Effective organizations of all stripes are taking advantage of both sides of the coin to get the message out about their issue, cultivate donors, and impress policymakers. Take a look next time you go to the web site or get direct mail from the National Rifle Association, the American Heart Association, or CARE. You’ll see a blend of marketing and communications, things to pull you in and also to push out. It’s not by accident. moral: Marketing is the only job shared by everyone in the organization. An elevator speech makes sure your people have a compelling story, they stick to it and it sticks with their audience. Marketing Isn’t Communications, and Vice Versa Nonprofits tend to use the terms marketing and communications interchangeably — another indication of the overall lack of sophistication about these issues inside the sector. But there are substantive differences between the two, none more significant than their very different points of departure. Effective marketing generally starts from the point of the view of the audience, or customer, and seeks to anticipate and address their needs. It’s all about you, moral: Don’t just communicate. Market. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 5 Marketing and Communications for Fundraising Fundraising can be the fire alarm that awakens the leader of a nonprofit to the need for marketing and communications, though, chances are, the initial interest will be less focused on strategy, and more focused on stuff: glossy brochures, pretty pamphlets and verbose newsletters that they can use to â€Å"sell† the organization to major donors. Mike Coda, the best fundraising strategist I have ever known, was famously contemptuous of this type of marketing material. All that collateral is just a crutch for a poor fundraiser,† Mike would say. â€Å"It’s no substitute for developing relationships and listening to donors. † Of course, he was right — but only to a point. The marketing and communications functions can play an important role in helping execute a comprehensive fundraising plan, and th e truth is, the marketing/ communications shop can produce stuff to help raise money. But a word of caution here about a lot of the â€Å"stuff† that currently comes out. More than anything, pressures from development account for the proliferation of publications across the nonprofit sector. Our organizations are clogged with annual reports, magazines, newsletters, case statements, working papers and brochures targeted at planned givers, annual givers, alumni givers, givers of every sort. The arrival of the electronic age has not reduced, but instead added to the volume of potential fundraising collateral. Now prospective donors are besieged with slickly produced DVDs as well as blogs, virtual communities, interactive websites, and more. I have always been surprised how few organizations conduct honest assessments of the costs and benefits of producing all this fundraising collateral. It’s not just that it costs a lot to design, print and create it; the real issue for nonprofits is the investment of time. The true cost of a piece of fundraising collateral must reflect the amount of energy and agony that went into its development and often more painful, approval by management and the board. Everybody has a favorite story about absurd bureaucratic hurdles they have encountered to get something approved. One CEO, for example, used to require the signatures of 17 different managers to approve text for use in direct mail solicitations. Needless to say, the impact of the language was much attenuated by the time it went through so many editors, reducing the return on investment as well as diverting senior managers from their real jobs. Globally distributed organizations, like the World Wildlife Fund or Save the Children, face particularly tough challenges in getting their colleagues overseas to sign off on collateral materials or joint announcements. It is the job of the marketing and communications function to bring discipline and reason to this process. Smart marketing managers will resist the steady drumbeat from the fundraising staff to deliver new and different materials. Instead, they will put the ball back in the court of the fundraisers by asking some tough questions: Who is your audience and what do you know about them? Why do you believe this is the best way to reach that person? What is the shelf life of this piece? What else could you spend this money on? We will come back to these important questions later in this chapter. An honest recognition of the need for fundraising is required, but so, too, is a healthy skepticism about the demands for fundraising collateral. Certainly, it makes life easier for fundraisers if they have attractive, compelling materials that reinforce the institution’s key messages. But then remember the boxes and boxes of attractive, compelling fundraising materials from previous campaigns gathering dust in your organization’s basement. Once you decide to move forward with a piece of fundraising collateral, however, don’t try to save money by cutting corners. Good marketing materials can be expensive, and you should be prepared to pay to get the kind of products that will send the right message to Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 6 your donors. At the same time, you can often mitigate the budgetary impact by substituting quality for quantity. As so often is the case in nonprofits, the key is to focus on the few things that you can do that will have the greatest impact. moral: Fundraising is often a core component of marketing and communications, but not all fundraising collateral translates into more money raised. The success of this campaign can be measured first in lives saved. Drunk-driving deaths are down about 50 percent from all time highs. Perhaps even more enduring, the key concepts of this campaign have permeated the public lexicon. Designated drivers. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Drink responsibly. When the beer companies spread your message for free in their massive TV advertising campaigns, you know that you have succeeded. Lots of fine organizations run social marketing campaigns aimed at changing public behavior on a large scale: the American Legacy Fund and its anti-smoking efforts; the American Cancer Society, which emphasizes early screening in all its marketing initiatives; and the American Heart Association and diet. Choose to Save seeks to promote personal savings; the Presidential Fitness Challenge to promote personal fitness. The unifying element is the focus on changing behavior, on getting people to stop doing something they presumably like and start doing something else. Nonprofit marketing often aims at behavior change, and social marketing was made to do just this. Marketing and Communications for Mission Impact After a discussion of the way in which marketing and communications can help with fundraising, the opportunity often arises to bring up the potential for it to have a direct impact on mission. Remember the movie Arthur? Dudley Moore plays an affable drunk who spends his time getting in hilarious fixes, many involving driving his convertible while three sheets to the wind. The movie was one of the big hits of the early 1980s — coincidentally about the same time that two housewives in California were forming a new nonprofit called Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Fast forward a quarter century. Do you think that a movie like Arthur, with its tacit endorsement of drunk driving, could possibly be made today? I think not. The prevailing moral winds have swung hard against drinking and driving, making anathema what was once socially acceptable. And the reason for that is MADD. MADD is not only an exceptionally effective advocacy organization that seeks and often secures legislative victories. It also excels at social marketing — using the full grab bag of tricks and techniques from the marketer’s playbook to achieve changes in individual behaviors and social norms that also were directly in line with its mission of ending drunk driving. In the case of MADD, that means orchestrating a sustained, national marketing campaign designed to change the behavior of Americans when it comes to alcohol and automobiles. ase in point: the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which was founded in the early ‘90s to tackle the surging levels of teen pregnancies. A small organization — only $5 million — but with powerful friends, the National Campaign thought hard about best way to change the behavior of teenage girls, the target audience. Research showed that teenagers tended to romanticize parentho od, and did not understand the impact that caring for an infant would have on their lifestyle. But how to communicate this lesson to an elusive audience that is already deeply suspicious of adults? The National Campaign cleverly threaded this needle by reaching out to the producers of the afternoon TV shows targeted at teen girls. With a little persuading, the producers agreed to write into the scripts of these shows storylines that made it clear what a drag it was to have a baby: it ruined your figure, ruined your social life, cost a lot of money, and so forth. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 7 If the same messages had been delivered to the same audience but in the form of a public service announcement, the impact would have been marginal. But by merging the message with the content of these shows, the National Campaign managed to get the attention of these kids in a far more effective way. A lot of factors go into the sharp drop in teen pregnancies over the last decade, but certainly some of the credit needs to go to the National Campaign for a textbook case of social marketing in action. Social marketing can’t advance every mission, and is not for every organization. It can be expensive and requires significant expertise, both in-house and out. But it works, and must be part of your marketing and communications strategy if changing the world for your organization involves changing the behavior of people: health habits, purchasing choices, social norms, voting patterns. This is one of those inescapable, brutal facts about the nonprofit world, and thus bears repeating: most people have never heard of your organization, and they probably don’t care much about what you do. And this is even when the work being done is undeniably â€Å"good. This is a hard pill for many nonprofit people to swallow, because we all do care, passionately, about our causes and we want others to feel the same way we do. But you can’t let that passion blind you to the objective realities of trying to carve out a position for your nonprofit organization with your most important audiences amid the clutter of so many competing priorities and so much background no ise in multiple media. Strengthening that position — defending your organization’s reputation, the one irreplaceable asset of any nonprofit — is the essence of branding. The key is being disciplined in articulating the distinctive set of attributes that collectively define an organization’s position in the marketplace for funding, ideas, and influence. Komen for the Cure — formerly, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation — provides a great example of the power of nonprofit branding. It’s remarkable enough that this organization has grown in less than 25 years into the largest support group for breast cancer survivors, raising almost $1 billion for breast cancer programs. Even more impressive, however, Komen (and other initiatives, like Avon’s pioneering breast cancer walks) have helped bring this once-taboo disease into mainstream and make it a top public health priority — even though there are other diseases, less well-funded, that kill more people every year. In the process, Komen has turned pink ribbons into instantly recognized symbols of support for breast cancer victims and even managed to co-opt the word â€Å"cure. † No one asks any more, â€Å"Cure what? † In today’s context, pink plus â€Å"cure† has become shorthand for â€Å"cure breast cancer. Little wonder, then, that when Komen revised its name and logo in 2006, the word â€Å"cure† took center stage. And what an upgrade! Komen ditched its foundation moniker, which was always a bit confusing to donors and supporters because it did not speak to the organization’s programmatic efforts to support grassroots networks of survivors, pr omote early screening, and moral: Your mission should drive your marketing. If you are trying to change individual behaviors or social norms it’s time to invest in social marketing. Marketing and Communications to Build the Brand The best of the best are thinking not only of marketing for fundraising and mission impact, but also for brand building. Brands are powerful stuff. Apple, for instance, evokes immediate associations of hip, cool, innovative products with excellent design. Coke and Pepsi have spent decades (and billions in advertising) staking out their relative brand positions: real thing or next generation? Nike has even managed to transcend its name, evolving into a universally recognizable logo. If you work for Apple, Coke, or Nike, you don’t have to explain to anyone what your company does. Everyone knows, both in substance and style. But not so the typical nonprofit employee. Maybe you’re lucky and work someplace like the National Geographic Society, which has name recognition numbers to rival IBM and Starbucks, but the chances are that few people have ever heard of your organization or care particularly about your mission or approach. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 8 improve patient care. The words â€Å"breast cancer,† with all their negative baggage, also disappeared from the name. Instead, Komen has adroitly repositioned itself as the leading force focused on a finding a cure — a positive, future-oriented message that appeals to donors, the public, and breast cancer victims alike. Komen’s rebranding has been successful because its new brand positioning rings true with the organization’s core values, mission, and programs. This illustrates an important point about authenticity for any nonprofit trying to strengthen its brand. In the eyes of your stakeholders, it’s fine to change the various attributes of your brand — your name, logo, messages, and programmatic emphasis — as long as what you’re changing to passes the authenticity test. (Imagine Komen moving into an issue such as prostate cancer — they simply would not enjoy the same credibility and clout that they have earned in the breast cancer arena. The lack of authenticity also helps explain the failure of so many high-profile corporate rebranding efforts; call it Phillip Morris or the Altria Group, in the public mind both are merchants of death, and no new logo can change that. As marketing guru Seth Godin might say, Komen is an example of the tremendous power to be found in telling an authentic story in a low-trust world. So be careful about undermining the existing equity in your nonprofit brand. The National Audubon Society learned this lesson in the early 1990s, when the organization’s new leadership decided that Audubon needed to take a much more aggressive political posture. They ditched the revered whooping crane logo (â€Å"the bird image hurts us,† the CEO said at the time), fired the veteran editor of their signature magazine, and launched the kind of political activists campaigns usually associated with the Sierra Club. But that wasn’t what Audubon members wanted. They were birders. They liked the crane. They wanted the magazine full of handsome photographs of warblers, not partisan screeds on toxic waste. The defections were swift, and Audubon’s membership and fundraising dropped sharply. Finally the board had to act and the CEO was ousted in 1996, only three years after launching the revolution. The new CEO wisely returned to the focus on birds, but even so, Audubon has never recovered its peak membership of the late 1980s. Despite the importance of branding and reputation, nonprofits are notoriously poor brand managers. Building a brand can be difficult and very expensive, and the results are typically hard to measure or not immediately apparent. As a result, nonprofits rarely invest the necessary resources to secure top-flight marketing talent, to produce outstanding marketing materials, to engage the media, to implement a consistent and appropriate visual identity system, and to do all the other supporting activities that fall under the heading of â€Å"branding. † To be sure, branding is no longer a dirty word in nonprofit circles, as it was in the 1990s, but this type of advanced marketing is still the first thing that gets cut when the funding is tight and the last item in the budget to be restored. Such foolishness wouldn’t last long in the private sector. When sales are down, do Ford and General Motors reduce the advertising budget or slash the marketing department? Regrettably, about the only thing that compels nonprofit leaders to pay attention to branding is when something goes spectacularly wrong at a high-profile peer organization. And some of the marquee brands in the nonprofit world have taken a real battering in recent years: the American Red Cross, United Way, or the Smithsonian Institution, among others. Ask any of these nonprofits how much their brand is worth to them — and what kind of damage they have suffered and how it could have been even worse. Then you might think twice before taking a red pencil to the marketing budget. moral: Your brand defines your organization to the outside world. Take the initiative and define yourself, before one of your enemies tries to define you. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 9 Developing Successful Marketing and Communications Strategies With the desire for fundraising, mission impact and brand building understood, the key question becomes one of strategy, taking you from where you are to where you want to be. And strategy is fundamentally about making choices. This scares the hell out of the typical nonprofit employee. After all, making choices means that you might not choose me! As in Lake Woebegone, we in the nonprofit sector believe ourselves to be all above average, somehow special and immune from the laws of supply and demand that govern the rest of the world. The nonprofit culture — often conflict-averse, participatory, and given to consensus decision-making — further complicates the task of making real strategic choices. No wonder so many decisions inside nonprofit institutions end up as compromises. But making tough choices is not optional when it comes to developing communications or marketing strategy. The reason is simple. No matter who you are, it costs too much for nonprofits to compete in this realm. Even Coca-Cola has to make hard choices about whom it targets with its marketing dollars. For nonprofits, operating with only a fraction of the resources of corporations, discipline and focus become all the more important in developing effective communications strategies. Your chances of success depend both on well-conceived strategy and on the quality of your implementation plan. Brilliantly conceived marketing concepts have failed because of disconnects between planning and doing. A good marketing or communications strategy should flow in a tight logical sequence, starting with a very explicitly articulated objective or goal, all the way through the tactics and accountability. The more measurable the goal, the better — get the state legislature to fund this or that program, reduce teen smoking rates, raise attendance at the museum. You may not be able to avoid such amorphous goals as â€Å"raise awareness,† but you can ensure that your communications plan is driving toward a specific outcome. The real guts of a high-quality marketing and communications plan follow directly from the goal. As long as it’s aimed at a measurable result, the time-honored â€Å"audience, message, vehicle† formula has lost none of its relevance: audience: Which individuals or institutions do you need to reach and/or influence to achieve your programmatic objective? Can they be identified according to demographic or geographic, personality or lifestyle characteristics? Are they already aware of your issue and organization? message: What message will motivate each of your vehicle: What is the best means of delivering the arget audiences to take the required actions? After all, awareness matters not if nothing changes. message to the target audience? What combination of tools and vehicles work best? What individuals can serve as effective messengers? Not very complicated, right? And if it’s as simple as that, then how come marketing consultants continue to earn handsome fees fr om nonprofits? First of all, it’s not that simple. Crafting a communications plan for a nonprofit that will cut through the background noise requires skill and ingenuity. But compounding the problem, nonprofits infrequently take the time to do this right. Impatient executive directors tend to focus on tactics, obsessing on such things as their column in the organization’s newsletter or signing off on all direct mail copy. Audience research and message testing can be expensive, so often nonprofits will try shortcuts or simply close their eyes and do something even more dangerous: assume. And belaboring the whole process can be the immense self-absorption of so many nonprofits. Mission-driven organizations, with their singular focus on a cause such as human rights or the environment, can come across as cults of the self-righteous, demanding that supporters drink their proverbial purple Kool-Aid. Their communications and marketing materials will ask for buy-in to a full set of beliefs, rather than support for a single solution to an identifiable problem that matters to their audience. This can lead to big problems. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 10 Developing tightly integrated marketing and communications plans with a focus on a measurable goal, and a clearly identified target audience thus can serve as the perfect antidote for the congenital lack of discipline and self-referentialism of so many nonprofits. It will ensure that you spend what you need to spend — and not any more. It will ensure that whatever you do spend will be aimed toward a pre-determined result (and evaluated accordingly). moral: You can’t go far wrong in communications if you stick to the Holy Trinity: Audience. Message. Vehicle. In addition to the general public, a few other hardy perennials seem to pop up onto most nonprofit lists of priority audiences. There are â€Å"policymakers† — as if county, city, state, federal, and international institutions were all the same. This phrase lumps together elected officials, appointed officials, and legislative staff; the executive, judicial, and legislative branches; and often the media elites, academics, and other key influencers as well. Then there are â€Å"major donors† and â€Å"foundations. † These too are highly idiosyncratic audiences, requiring discrete messages and careful handling. Specificity matters when identifying and prioritizing audiences. The more general and broad the audience, the more difficult it is to tailor and deliver a powerful, compelling message that will resonate with that audience. Political campaigns see this dynamic all the time whenever a candidate has to reach out beyond his or her base. The red meat issues that so inspired the faithful don’t always translate well when packaged for a wider audience. The same logic applies to the nonprofit sector. The narrower the audience you choose, and the more audience appropriate your approach, the higher the probability that you can move that audience to action. Selecting and ranking your audiences is a bit like solving a puzzle. Start with your objective. Who do you need to make progress? In other words, what group of people (or institutions) will have the necessary clout to make a difference — either to block what you want or else to make it happen? The answers to these questions cannot be based on wishful thinking or guesswork; rather, it requires a clear-eyed and sometimes coldblooded analysis of the world of the possible. I learned about the importance of figuring out the right audience years ago, when I was involved in a campaign to protect the desert tortoise, whose listing as an endangered species threatened to shut down realestate development in Las Vegas. The key to the whole deal was getting the local Board of Supervisors to put up a bunch of money to acquire habitat for the tortoise way out in the desert. It didn’t take us long to focus like a laser on the target audience of our campaign — the nine members of the board of supervisors. About Audiences I still get splenetic when my nonprofit clients list the â€Å"general public† as one of their target audiences. I remind them that there is no such animal in today’s sophisticated marketing universe, no one — not Proctor Gamble, not General Motors, not Unilever — tries to sell to the â€Å"general public. And certainly no nonprofit can be in the business of trying to appeal to such an amorphous and diverse audience. Yet all too many nonprofits persist in the fantasy that they can reach and then mobilize a broad audience. If you are the AARP, to be sure, you can easily roust your membership of 35 million to action whenever there is a political attack on Social Security or Medicare. But even if they were to get all 35 million, that’s still barely a tenth of the country, and hardly representative of the â€Å"general public. An exceptionally savvy and politically astute institution, AARP instead makes careful, informed judgments about what political coalition they need to achieve their legislative goals, and then methodically reaches out to those audiences. That’s a far cry, and far more strategic, than trying to spread the word about your cause through every possible channel to every possible audience. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 11 But we really didn’t even bother with all nine. Three of them were on our side already, and three opposed. To get a majority, we needed to target the two undecided supervisors — an audience of exactly two. I am happy to report that both of these fine elected officials were deeply impressed by our poll of voters that showed strong public support for protecting the tortoises. They agreed to support the appropriation we were seeking. Today a healthy population of tortoises thrives at a wildlife refuge created for them in Searchlight, Nevada. The poll that broke the political logjam cost around $10,000. If we had been less careful in choosing our audience — if, say, we had targeted the voters of — I have no doubt that we would have spent a lot more money and accomplished less in terms of conservation. The alternative would have been expensive and timeconsuming grassroots campaign, with no guarantee of success. With inherently limited means, nonprofits, therefore, should be ruthless in narrowing their target audiences to the greatest degree possible. What’s the irreducible minimum, the smallest audience I can reach and still achieve my objective? It could be two people, as in the Las Vegas case, or it could be thousands. The numbers matter less than going through the exercise of drawing an explicit link between the audience and the desired outcome. At the very least, this keeps you from spending time and money trying to engage people who aren’t interested in what you do, and never will be. I’m all for being on the same page. That’s why highimpact nonprofits have a position statement and elevator speech, an organization-wide mission and unifying goals. But don’t confuse or conflate these framing elements of your organization’s positioning with the messages that you are trying to deliver to your target audiences. Certainly, there will be considerable overlap, and messages must be consistent with the overall brand. If you fall in the trap of starting with your message first, you will never really succeed at marketing or communicating about your organization. Instead, the needs of the audience dictate the message. Nonprofits often miss this point and believe that the message should be about them. But it most emphatically is not. More than just slogans, messages should be designed to motivate the target audience to go beyond awareness and take action — to vote one way or another, make a donation or sign a petition, to stop smoking or exercise more. What’s more, messages have to speak directly to the needs, desires, and aspirations of the audience. What’s in it for them? Why should they care? And how might your messages lessen the perceived costs or highlight the perceived benefits of taking action? Messages can evoke emotion (fear or hope, for example) or appeal to reason (using statistics or anecdotes) but in either case, the message needs to address a top-of-mind concern not for you, but for your target audience, and do so in a simple, compelling way. Obviously, the more you know about your audience, the better you can devise messages that will scratch their particular itch. Market research, consequently, plays a critical role in communications and marketing campaigns. Research helps you understand your audience’s attitudes and concerns, their priorities and where your issue stands relative to others for them. Meanwhile, research into language — testing specific words and phrases — can ensure that messages will resonate with the target audience. And market research also plays a role in figuring out how to deliver your message. What are the common characteristics of those in your target audience? How does your target audience get information? Who do they trust for accurate data? What do they read? Do they all watch the same TV shows? moral: There is no such thing as the general public. Find the audience that matters most to your mission, and focus on them like a laser beam. About Messages About 45 minutes into the first meeting on developing a new communications strategy, someone — usually an long-time employee from the program side of the organization — will express frustration with all the attention being pent on audiences. â€Å"Let’s just get our message straight and go from there,† this person will say. â€Å"We all need to be on the same page. † Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 12 Brevity is the second success factor in developing effective messages. The more clear and compelling the message, the greater the likelihood of moving your audience to act. In the desert tortoise case, for example, the message couldn’t have been clearer — your constituents overwhelmingly support this. In short, it is a votewinner. By contrast, once you branch out into a more complex message, especially one that requires context, it’s easy to lose the thread and hence the audience. The environmental community had this problem for years with the issue of global warming, which until very recently was a hard sell to policymakers because the story wasn’t being told well. Finally, let me reiterate that effective messages incorporate an explicit call to action. A message without an explicit â€Å"ask† may help build awareness of a particular issue or cause, but awareness by itself rarely results in positive social change. The Lance Armstrong Foundation discovered the importance of this lesson when to their astonishment the yellow rubber â€Å"LiveSTRONG† bracelets exploded in popularity by the tens of millions. Within months, the market was awash in different colored bracelets: white, pink, red and so forth. Armstrong’s cause — promoting cancer survivorship — was lost in this technicolor jumble, and not least because they were unprepared to channel the immense initial interest in their work into a simple ask. The â€Å"ask† also has to align with the problem or product. The famous â€Å"Got Milk? † campaign, for example, also got a ton of attention for its innovative approach — hip advertising with milk mustaches on celebrities — and the ask was obviously there, but it initially and famously failed in its goal of increasing milk sales. It turns out people loved the ads because they were fun and clever, not because they presented a compelling argument to go out and drink more of the same old boring milk. It took better alignment with the actual product — new bottles, different flavors — before milk sales were affected. Back in the nonprofit world, the Lance Armstrong Foundation is now aimed at turning the â€Å"LiveSTRONG† awareness (wear a yellow bracelet) into an ask for united political action (vote for cancer funding), and achieving far more tangible results, such as the recent passage of a $3 billion bond initiative for cancer research in Texas. When the message aligns with the interests of the audience, by contrast, possibilities abound. To rejuvenate membership and participation, in 2000 the Girl Scouts ditched their stodgy Brownie image and adopted a message hierarchy organized around the theme â€Å"where girls grow strong. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reached its teen audience by stressing how having a baby resulted in the loss of social status and the addition of many new responsibilities. But the gold standard for effective messaging in the nonprofit world revolves around the â€Å"Truth† campaign, an initiative designed by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to reduce teen smoking in Florida. Conventional anti-smoking messages aimed at teens asserted that smoking wasn’t cool and stressed the health risks, the smell, and the cost. They preached responsibility and just saying â€Å"no. † And as anyone with teenage children could tell you, those messages were doomed from the start. When you are immortal, like all 17 year olds, you don’t care about developing lung cancer at 65. You also deeply resent insults to your intelligence, so being lectured that smoking isn’t cool just doesn’t fly. Rebels smoke, and always have: Bogart, Bacall, Dean, Che. The â€Å"Truth† campaign started from a whole different place. The ads, funded with tobacco settlement money, were written and produced by teens. Instead of telling kids that smoking was bad for them or somehow uncool, the teenagers in the Truth ads openly acknowledged the right of their peers to make their own decisions about smoking. (Independence being a key motivator for teens. ) Instead, the ads zeroed in on the tobacco companies, and, in particular, charges about tobacco advertising intended to lure children and teenagers into smoking. In essence, therefore, the message in the â€Å"Truth† ads was all about manipulation: did you know that the adults at big Tobacco are trying o manipulate you into smoking? Again, parents will recognize immediately the huge leverage in this message: the only thing kids hate more than sanctimonious adults are manipulative adults. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 13 And â€Å"Truth† worked. Florida was one of the few states that actually experienced a drop in teenage smoking rates . Most telling, the tobacco industry absolutely loathed the Truth campaign and did everything in its power to stop it. When you have attracted the ire of the master marketers at Phillip Morris and RJR, you can be sure that you have honed a pretty effective message. moral: Figure out what motivates your audience. That’s the basis for your message, not what the board, management, and staff want. About Messengers and Vehicles When SeaWeb and other ocean advocacy organizations became concerned about the rapid decline of the swordfish and other species known as much for their popularity on our plates as their populations in the oceans, they decided to enlist top chefs, rather than movie stars, as their main messengers. Why? Their research showed that the public looked to chefs for advice on seafood. And Paul Prudhomme already had exemplified the way that a top chef, with a catch phrase and heavy seasoning, could take the relatively bland redfish, and create a dining sensation while unintentionally driving a species closer to the point of extinction. The hope was that those who set the nation’s menus would take a step in the opposite direction, and stop promoting a popular fish that was now in trouble. The organizations enlisted hundreds of leading chefs from across the nation in a campaign to â€Å"give swordfish a reak. † The media liked the messenger, picked up the message, and policymakers listened, taking action to protect swordfish back in the sea. The messenger alone is not enough, but the right messenger carrying the right message can do wonders to motivate an audience. Of course, that message also needs to reach the audience in a way they trust. For SeaWeb and the swordfish, t he focus was not only on the media outlets that reached the policymakers who controlled fishing regulations, but also on arranging one-on-one meetings directly with those policymakers. With the advent of the Internet, the number and variety of arrows in the marketing and communications quiver has increased exponentially. Once an audience is identified, there are now more paths than ever to their proverbial doorstep. While personal meetings, printed materials, earned media and advertising remain important in many cases, increasingly the centerpiece of an effective marketing strategy is no longer offline, but online. The best web sites have evolved from being simple online brochures to nodes on larger networks. Blogs offer an opportunity to send and receive more sophisticated and nuanced messages, especially to those who follow your issues with rapt attention. And email systems are becoming so cost effective that savvy organizations can now do the sort of differentiated marketing and information exchanges with large groups in a way that they once had to reserve only for use with VIPs. The catch, of course, is that for organizations to make the most of these new tools, they need to relinquish some control and allow the public to participate. The networked nature of the Internet is at the core of a small â€Å"d† democratic revolution in the creation of distribution of information. In keeping with the title of Jed Miller and Rob Stuart’s influential article, network-centric thinking certainly is a challenge to ego-centric organizations. If a nonprofit leader still wants to employ a 17-step approval process for every bit of information going out the door, that organization will simply not thrive in the Internet age. moral: Put the right messenger in the right vehicle and let it fly. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 14 Managing a Communications Crisis The recurring nightmare of every communications manager starts with a phone call. â€Å"I’m calling from 60 Minutes,† the nightmare begins. â€Å"I’d like to come over and ask you a few questions about your organization. † These words typically trigger a series of immediate reactions on the part of recipient: panic, a sinking feeling in the gut, the sweats. And with good reason. When you hear from investigative journalists, it’s generally not because they are interested in all the good work you do. To the contrary: their job is to expose what you aren’t doing well. To paraphrase a reporter who covers the nonprofit sector for a leading newspaper, â€Å"‘Foundation gives grant’ is not news. ‘Nonprofit helps people’ is not news. ‘Nonprofit misuses foundation money’ — that’s news. † This attitude infuriates the boards and staff of nonprofit organizations. It’s so unfair, they wail. Journalists don’t understand all the great work we do on behalf of our mission. Why don’t they go get a â€Å"bad guy†? Rather than indulge in self-pity and anti-media resentment after the fact, nonprofits would be wise to prepare themselves in advance for communications crises that may never come. Planning and forethought represent your best, perhaps only hope for mitigating the institutional damage that comes from a full-blown reputational crisis. When it hits the fan, you won’t have time to do anything but react, and by that time, you will have already lost. At the same time, how can you prepare for something that hasn’t happened yet or that you don’t know about? Nonprofit staff, just like their peers in the private sector and government, are loath to acknowledge error and in many cases do their best to bury mistakes far from the light of day. How can the poor communications director possibly know which of these little disasters is going to burrow out of the bureaucratic morass and land on the front page of The New York Times? Two kinds of stories in particular seem to agitate the media when it comes to nonprofits. The first has to do with the compensation and behavior of nonprofit managers. Much of the mainstream media has unfortunately bought into the idea that those working in the charitable sector deserve to be paid much less, and should act much better than their private-sector counterparts, and thus the spate of stories in the press about lavishly compensated nonprofit CEOs or a personal indiscretion that would go unnoticed in the for-profit world. Whether these criticisms are valid or not is irrelevant. The fact, the appearance of nonprofit â€Å"profiteering† or inappropriate behavior remains a huge red flag for the press. Hypocrisy is the second big trigger. If the media finds out, for example, that your anti-smoking coalition has been accepting money from tobacco companies, your reputation is basically toast. No explaining that decision away. The same holds true for children’s programs that actually benefit adults or when a high-profile televangelist is discovered with his pants down. The press holds nonprofits and others working in the charitable sector to a higher ethical standard, and when organizations violate that trust, the journalistic response is usually swift and merciless. So what can the nonprofit marketing professional do? Is the only choice to take the punches? Actually, that’s not such a bad strategy, depending on the severity of the media attack and the depths of your organizational culpability. If you don’t argue — if you just admit that you made mistakes and assure your stakeholders that the problem is being fixed, oftentimes the press will get bored and move on to a new story. It’s no fun picking a fight with someone who refuses to fight back. This kind of institutional jujitsu works best for dealing with cases of employee fraud or theft, accidents, or other isolated incidents. Higher-stakes assaults on your reputation — ones that suggest a pattern of inappropriate behavior — merit a more aggressive response. No one has thought more deeply about this than Lanny Davis, who helped Bill Clinton fend off media inquiries into White House Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 15 fundraising practices. Frustrated both by the lawyers inside the White House, who fought releasing any information to the public, and the press, who were convinced of a massive cover-up, Davis conceived a set of three simple rules for handling crisis communications: Tell it all. Tell it early. And tell it yourself. tell it all: Since Watergate, generations of media relations professionals have cleaved to the mantra that the cover-up is always worse than the original sin. The reason is simple: nothing keeps a story in the news more than having information dribble out slowly, with each new revelation allowing the press to rehash everything that has gone before. What’s worse, each new revelation only confirms the suspicions of the press that you aren’t being straight with them. So why do so many organizations violate this basic tenet of crisis communications? First, as noted earlier, no one likes to admit error. For nonprofits, which depend on voluntary contributions, there is also real fear that owning up to mistakes will damage their reputation and thus hurt their fundraising. Even more fundamental, though, it’s often very difficult to gather and get straight all the facts about a tricky situation in time to meet the deadlines of the press. This leads to incomplete or evasive answers that often have to be â€Å"corrected† later — with predictable results. Who can ever forget Richard Nixon’s press secretary saying â€Å"that information is no longer operative†? The only possible defense against accusations of a cover-up is to get to the bottom of the issue internally and then make a complete and frank accounting externally. Even the most embarrassing details are better told up front than leaking out later. Or as Davis says: tell it all. But the most important reason to tell it early is so that you can control — or attempt to control — how the issue gets framed. If something has gone terribly wrong inside your organization, you want to be the person announcing it to the press, rather than the other way around. It gives you a chance to play a little offense, not only to reveal the transgression but also to announce what you’re going to do about it. In such circumstances, your best hope of avoiding a media feeding frenzy is to acknowledge the full extent of the error (tell it all), take full responsibility for what happened (passing the buck infuriates the press), and lay out a series of action steps to prevent recurrences. tell it yourself: There’s no guarantee, of course, that telling it all and telling it early will suffice to call off the media. Some will always question whether you’ve taken strong enough action, or whether the responsible people have been appropriately disciplined. But the alternative — waiting for your dirty laundry to be aired in the press — is invariably worse. And make no mistake: your unsavory organizational secrets will eventually come to light. Bad news is too juicy and has too many avenues for escape. I learned this lesson the hard way when I was running communications for The Nature Conservancy. Disgruntled with the new directions of the Conservancy’s president, at least three different people from inside management were leaking documents to The Washington Post. This is every reporter’s dream: multiple sources with access to inside information — and a grudge. As a result, the Post spent months asking questions to which they already knew the answer, hoping to catch the organization in a contradiction. You can’t just worry about an errant employee, though. Even if you believe down to the depths of your soul that your organization is beyond reproach, both in its mission and its actions, there is, without doubt, someone out there who would like to see you stopped in your tracks. Identify those potential enemies in the same way you would identify your potential allies, and be prepared for when they come knocking. tell it early: In the public mind, stonewalling equals guilt (just as most people instantly interpret the classic â€Å"no comment† as an admission of error). The longer you wait to respond to charges, the more validity those charges assume. These factors alone provide a powerful incentive for nonprofits to get their side of the story out fast. moral: Don’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel. Instead, learn to take your medicine and follow the Davis Rules. Essays on Excellence Lessons from the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program Advocacy in the Public Interest 16 About the Author David Williamson is Managing Director of the consulting firm of Bernuth Williamson, serving nonprofit clients in the areas of strategy, marketing, and communications. He previously served for 13 years in senior management positions at The Nature Conservancy, the nation’s 10th largest nonprofit, including six years as Director of Communications (1997–2002) and terms as Vice President for Marketing and Director of Conservation Marketing. He is an adjunct professor of business administration at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and has lectured on nonprofit management at Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, among others. Williamson, a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, serves in leadership positions on three nonprofit boards in addition to his work with clients. David Williamson How to cite Strategic Marketing Planning for Non Profit Organization, Essay examples

Vale in the Brazilian Government

Analysis of the Non-Market Environment Political forces The leadership of the Brazilian government under President Luiz Inacio da Silva adopted an explicit policy that intervened on the strategic operations of business enterprises in the country. The government was putting immense pressure on Vale to increase its investments within the home country. The political leadership was in total opposition of the company’s international diversification strategy.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Vale in the Brazilian Government specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More With the global economic crisis’ effects biting hard, Vale had moved to safeguard its business performance by laying-off 1,200 Brazilian workers on top of slashing the investment budget. The government, however, was in opposition of such a move and looked at it as a failure on the part of the company to help Brazil tackle the global economic crisisâ€⠄¢ effects. Vale was also facing pressure from Para state governor to increase its investment in the region. Part of the demands included initiating a steel mill worth $3.2 billion. President da Silva wanted Vale to give priority to Brazilian firms, particularly after the firm indicated its plans of purchasing carrier vessels from a Chinese merchant. Economic forces The global economic crisis that began in 2008 had its effects increasingly hampering business operations at Vale. The crisis affected demand levels and the company encountered poor revenues. Vale, thus, decided to cut down on its overall operation cost by laying-off 1,200 workers from its labour force. With the rising cost of business, there was need for Vale to achieve economies of scale in its business operations, particularly on the delivery of products to its main market in Asia. Given Brazil’s geographic location, it was becoming less economical for the company to deliver goods to China compared to its main c ompetitors in Australia, which is comparably near Asia than Brazil. As such, Vale was forced to acquire large vessels that would help in the transportation of large volumes of its products. The pricing mechanism for Vale’s main commodity, iron ore, changed in the market from a practice of benchmark prices to spot market prices. This was influenced by the growing bargaining power of Chinese buyers of the product.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The benchmark price mechanism that was of advantage to the firm, owing to the strong bargaining position that it afforded the company, was abandoned for the spot market mechanism, which gave buyers more leeway. As such, Vale had to contend with diminishing margins as the buyers’ bargaining power in the Asian market increased. Social forces Vale was being considered as a heritage of the Brazilian people, culture, and tradi tion. Given Vale’s magnitude and success in business, most Brazilians felt attached to it. However, the strong attachment affected the company’s competitive position in business. Most people felt the company was doing little to improve on the quality of life of Brazilians by engaging with international companies and business. There was pressure on the company to give priority to Brazil even where practicality and feasibility of such actions would prove detrimental to the firm. Technological forces Technological changes offered a challenge to the operations and performance of Vale. With the fast advancement in the global technological front, demand for minerals that are rare, as well as complex alloys has been on the increase. Demand for such minerals as silver, nickel, and platinum has been on the rise. As such, Vale faces the challenge of keeping pace with the changing demand in order to remain viable in its business. Vale also needed to acquire technology that would enable its operations to be less costly and, thus, increase its competitive edge. Environmental forces The operations of Vale have been the subject of opposition from environmental watch groups, which cite adverse degradation of the environment. In the state of Espirito Santo, for instance, the governor provided land for purposes of enabling Vale to initiate a project on it. However, its proximity to Tubarao harbour was the subject of opposition from the Brazilian environmental agency. An attempt by the company, in partnership with other foreign firms, to develop steel mills in the Maranhao state failed after the governor rejected it because of the environmental repercussions.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Vale in the Brazilian Government specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Legal forces Vale has faced several legal cases owing to its business operations, particularly in Brazil. Irregularities in land deals that i nvolve the county governments has seen its planned projects delay, thus affecting business. The state government in Maranhao offered Vale land upon which the firm had intended to put up steel mills. There were legal ramifications, however, which delayed the initiative from taking place as it had been anticipated. An Integrated Global Strategy for Vale Vale can consider diversifying its business by increasing its investment in different business sectors in Brazil. The company can invest more in such domestic sectors as banking or transport, and spread its risk in different areas. This will help the company address the pressure from government for failing to invest more in Brazil. It will also enable the company to address the pressure from the political class of building still mines in virtually all the states in the country, which might not be viable in the first place. Once the political class gets contented with an increased domestic investment, Vale can comfortably invest in othe r foreign businesses with little interference from the government. The firm can also consider establishing subsidiaries in other foreign countries where it has interest, such as Mozambique, but maintain its original name rather than adopt a different one (Porter, 1990, p. 73). Vale should take the initiative of establishing its physical presence and operations in countries that contain mineral resources because mining business can only take place where there are mineral resources. Such a move would help the company address the risk of being stationed at only one location or country, such as Brazil. Expansion of business to other locations will increase Vale’s business scope and improve on its revenue. It would eventually result in increased profits, which the company can in turn use to invest more in the local economy and win back the confidence of the Brazilian people. Additionally, establishing subsidiary companies abroad with the same company name will make Brazilians feel proud about their heritage. Given the extent to which Vale is attached to the Brazilian people, exporting such a heritage would most likely receive approval from the people and endear them even further to the company. A consideration of influencing foreign related businesses to invest in Brazil and establish their presence there would be a positive move in enhancing Vale’s performance (Porter, 1990, p. 80). Apart from mining, Vale also deals with other industries that, together, help in value addition. Such industries include shipbuilding, technology firms, and other transport sector firms such as railway manufacturers.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Since Vale relies more on Chinese ship builders to service its need for vessels, the firm should influence the vessel builders to establish their operations in Brazil. A closer proximity will enable the shipbuilding merchants to have a clear understanding on some of the challenges that are faced by their client in their business operations, and would in turn increase customisation. On the other hand, such a move would create employment opportunities to local Brazilians and enable the government to get increased taxes. As such, the pressure on Vale particularly from the political class that it is doing little to add value to Brazilians will decrease. It would also allow Vale the opportunity to grasp the technological changes taking place, thus helping the firm to lower its cost of doing business. Whether Vale should buy Vessels for Transportation There is need for Vale to buy vessels for purposes of transporting its mined iron ores to China. Every business involves value addition, wh ich is particularly important for enhancing and consolidating a firm’s overall trade operations. In the case of Vale, transportation is one of its most important value-addition activities. This mainly draws from the fact that the iron ore consumers or the market is far placed from the minefields. For instance, Vale’s main market for its iron ore is in Asia, particularly in China, as well as in Europe. Iron ore is a bulk commodity that can only be transported in the most efficient way by use of water vessels. In essence, the only perfect way through which Vale can service the market satisfactorily is by using large vessels for transportation. Owning the vessels would enable the firm to manage its distribution channel in a convenient manner than if the same were owned by a different company. Pros Owning ships for transpiration purposes will increase Vale’s direct control over its business. There will be convenience in servicing the market because of the direct own ership of the vessels. There are several challenges that often affect businesses, including variation in demand and other external interferences, such as government intervention. When a firm such as Vale is directly in control of its transport mechanism, it will be easier for it to address such conveniences for purposes of achieving efficiency. Ships are expensive to acquire and maintain. It is, therefore, a big challenge for individuals or smaller firms to own large fleets of ship that would be capable of servicing a huge capacity like the one that Vale requires. Expecting to outsource such services from a third party would affect Vale’s business. Apart from requiring a large fleet, Vale’s type of business also requires that each of the vessels be bigger in size to be able to transport large quantities at once. This would in turn enable the company to achieve economies of scale. Very few companies can be in a position to raise enough capital to own a fleet of ships wi th these characteristics. However, Vale is a big company with adequate resources that can meet these demands comfortably. It would be appropriate for Vale to acquire the fleet of ships and maintain them for increasing value to its business because this is the company’s prime business. Vale is also expanding its production by including other minefields that are not necessarily in Brazil. For instance, the firm has a coal minefield in Mozambique, in Africa, and contemplates to add other international minefields. This means that the company will have numerous transport routes throughout the world for purposes of enhancing transportation of its commodities from the minefields to the market. Coordinating such a vast and complex distribution network may not be an easy task, particularly if the company is to rely on outsourced transportation. Thus, owning its vessels will enable the company to improve on the quality of its overall performance, as well as increase on its own efficien cy. Owning large fleets of ship will present an open opportunity for Vale to diversify its business. During low season periods or where demand for iron ore grows lesser, Vale can outsource its fleets to be used for transportation of other commodities. This will in turn provide the company with added revenues and help it maintain high profits. The diversification of business portfolio, thus, helps in spreading risk evenly and cushioning the company from the dangers of fluctuating business conditions in one area. Most of the small-scale consumers in China do not have organised transportation. Instead, they rely more on the supplier to cater for transportation needs. Thus, Vale has to acquire its own fleet of vessels to cater for the needs of such consumer groups. Owning vessels for Vale means the firm is also capable of achieving forward integration. This, in turn, potentially enhances its bargaining position, while it also lowers the buyers’ bargaining power. The enhanced barg aining position would eventually result in higher asking prices and translate to increased profit margins. Cons Sea vessels are expensive to acquire and maintain. This is a huge disadvantage for Vale, particularly given that the firm requires an expansive fleet of vessels to be able to service its distribution network effectively. Raising the required amount of money to sustain the purchase would require the company to seek for external financing. This option is expensive in the end because of the accrued interests. Owning a fleet of ships will interfere with the core business operation of the firm. In other words, it will result in divided management attention, thus affecting on the quality of performance. For instance, the fleet of ships will require regular servicing to maintain them in perfect order. Its operators, or the crew, will require special human resource management that is different from the workers who are based at the minefields in Brazil and other countries such as M ozambique. The logistical office will also need experts in the field to help in the scheduling and overall planning of the distribution. Other expensive acquisitions will also be needed to sustain the operations, such as large cranes at the seaport to enhance the loading and offloading of the commodity. Servicing such a complex logistical network will call for additional responsibility from virtually all the levels of the organisation. There are additional costs that come with owning large fleets of ship. Such additional costs will reduce the profit margins of Vale and end up limiting its profit margins. For instance, the insurance costs of such a magnitude of fleets will definitely be high. Vale will be forced to raise its prices for the final product in order to cater for the added costs. On the other hand, other producers that rely on outsourced transportation or those who sell directly to the buyers will benefit from the price advantage and, thus, increase the demand for their c ommodity. There is a possibility for the demand levels of iron ore minerals to grow lesser in the market. This may be because of other external forces that could be beyond the control of the firm. For instance, the global economic crisis reduced the market demand for virtually every commodity in the world. Mineral reserves get depleted following years of continued mining activities. Such scenarios would subject Vale to lost opportunities and ground the large fleet of ships. Sea transport faces numerous challenges, which may result in losses to the transport company. There is increased terrorism in the world that has in turn given birth to rising cases of piracy. Piracy carries numerous risks to the company as well as any other business relying on the sea for transport of raw material or finished products. Apart from the ransom figures demanded by such terror gangs being high, piracy may cause delayed delivery and result in losses to the firm. It may also affect trade relations betwe en Vale and the buying companies. The shipbuilding industry in Brazil is less developed and lacks the capacity to service high demand levels such as the one created by Vale. This would definitely force the firm to purchase its needs from foreign suppliers with better services. In essence, Vale will be forced to acquire its fleet of ships from foreign-based manufacturers. However, such a move will be met with opposition and resistance in Brazil. The political class has already raised its objection of Vale’s move to purchase vessels from foreign suppliers, terming it as ignoring the local ship industry. List of References Porter, M 1990 ‘The competitive advantage of nations,’ Harvard Business Review, vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 73-93 This essay on Vale in the Brazilian Government was written and submitted by user Angelo C. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.