Beyond coverage and exposure, partnership itself can be a metric if the stated objective is to connect to a community that’s leading progress. The journey will yield interactions, discussions, policy, personal sharing, community engagements, hand-raising and more—all of which can be quantified beyond media impressions relative to spend. Ask yourself and your teams, with an open mind: What elements of the creation and co-creation process are themselves proof of investment in a community?
Goals can mean connection
While the journey speaks to meaningful interactions along the path to your destination, connection references who you’re with along the way. The Trevor Project, with all of its major brand partners, is a prime example. Connection and community can be a goal, too, and that means a lot to an LGBTQ+ community that still lacks united movements around vital concerns.
Every youth reached, every counselor trained, every story told is a strategic exercise in creating scale and formalizing audience. And relative to many efforts measured by how many people you paid to reach, the impact is measured in how many people step up to help this brand. We use the term “connection” in broad terms in creating our work, but can we envision goals in terms of how we formalize shared passions—connections that endure?
Goals can mean education
As one example, from a past SXSW session I was honored to be part of, sex in advertising has traditionally been a series of heterosexual stereotypes—and as LGBTQ+ people and sex culture are included in marketing, we realized it needed to look less like tropes and more like education. So, a larger question: What are impressions without education? What is brand exposure without learning and the changed behaviors that demonstrate learning?
Grindr has delivered work with local and digital communities to improve mpox education for the health of the larger community, taking steps to ensure key information about mpox reached LGBTQ+ people. A brand that’s all about local networks and discussion took steps to change those discussions and leverage those networks, creating knowledge amid disinformation. If your brand used its information and networks to educate rather than publicize, what would be the impact? What new objectives become possible?