What could advocacy organisations learn from VC firms’ approach to marketing?
Wellcome LEAP Fund is what first piqued my interest in VC firms. Although LEAP is not a VC it was inspired by some of the same principles: taking on early-stage, high-risk ideas, funding at scale, and making fast and agile decisions across a portfolio of programmes.
It got me thinking whether there were any VC marketing tactics I could apply to Wellcome’s advocacy work. How do successful VCs approach marketing and PR? And could the “who” and “what” (i.e. audiences and content) of VC marketing also inform some insights into the “how” (tactics)?
Audience segmentation
VC firms have two main audiences: their investors and the entrepreneurs they’re pitching to. For an advocacy organisation like Wellcome, I’d think of the entrepreneurs as the people we want to be influenced by our advocacy work - people who actively work on one of our health challenges or in an organisation with a complementary mission e.g. BCorps, government/ multilateral departments or public sector bodies.
The investor audience is a bit more tricky but I think it’s the people we’re responsible/accountable to, e.g. our Board of Governors, our Director, the Charity Commission, and ultimately society at large. My boss Mark Henderson wrote a great piece exploring the social value of philanthropic foundations. But it could also be the researchers we fund because whilst they’re not putting financial capital in to Wellcome, they are putting in knowledge capital which I would argue is part of what gives Wellcome its credibility and status.
What we are promoting/marketing/advocating
There seem to be two strands to VC marketing:
selling to investors their edge as a VC – their network, ability to scale companies and work in partnership with the entrepreneur
marketing to the VC fund investors – selling the returns track record and competitive edge, i.e. their ability to generate strong returns going forwards.
I think this is similar to the groundwork advocacy organisations put in to demonstrate or prove their credentials for advocacy: why should people listen to us and care about our opinion on things?
We both have an interest in strengthening our brand and profile to achieve our objectives; for advocacy organisations this might be tied to our charitable track record of successful/ impactful projects (parallel to VCs’ returns track record).
So what about tactics?
One firm in particular is notable for both its success and visibility, attributed at least in part to its approach to PR and marketing: Andreessen Horowitz (a name not unfamiliar if you recognise the words ‘Why software is eating the world’). So what does AH do differently?
Facilitating the meetings and networks that entrepreneurs want
This article on Medium argues that it’s ‘capability’ that makes AH different: they’re facilitating the meetings and networks that entrepreneurs want, on top of creating content talking about their work. I think advocacy organisations do a great job of the latter but struggle (not unreasonably) with the former. It is, after all, a huge investment in time, people and expertise beyond the scope of many advocacy organisations. But interested to discover any lower-key or more cost effective ways of making this happen.
Old vs new power (and getting everyone invested in using a CRM)
This (quite long) article also talks about the “thought-leadership” content produced by AH, but goes on to focus on what power in Silicon Valley looks like. The author draws on this paper by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms contrasting power models. Whereas old power is like a “currency”, new power is a “current”. And AH has firmly set its stall in the new power camp, constantly looking to expand its network and seeing everyone as a potential contributor. I especially liked the description of AH as “a networked platform for innovation” - that feels like something for advocacy organisations like Wellcome to aspire to.
I also thought the praise for AH’s CRM system was interesting - they don’t tend to be much loved pieces of organisational software (despite their immense utility). But is that because they’re (often) a bit clunky or because people don’t like sharing their networks? Is AH better able to incentivise its partners to pool their network nodes because the individual reward for doing so is that much more tangible ($) than it is for advocacy?
Telling the broader story, not just the individual successes
I LOVED this Wired article about Margit Wennmachers – the ‘spin master’ of Andreessen Horowitz. There was so much I wanted to pull out and quote because it felt relevant to the advocacy sector. In particular, I liked AH’s emphasis on finding someone “to step in and tie the disparate stories in the basket of startups into a cohesive narrative”. Unlike other charities or advocacy organisations with a single focus (e.g. cancer or poverty), Wellcome has historically been involved across a wide range of areas - but the launch of the new Wellcome strategy has tightened our focus and I’m interested to see how our narrative evolves.
Like the other two articles, this one also praises the content output of AH but I thought this quote from Marc Andreessen was especially interesting:
“The running joke of the firm is that we’re a media company that monetizes through venture capital”.
That’s a pretty interesting viewpoint for advocacy organisations to consider. Would Wellcome ever think of itself as a media company that happens to fund scientific research? Or Oxfam a media company that tackles poverty?
I’ll finish with my favourite quote from the Wired article:
“In Wennmachers’ view, communications rests on a single choice: One plays offense or defense. Defense, of course, is table stakes. It must be done. But, often, the best way to defend oneself in the world of ideas is to shape those ideas, to author them. To play offense.”
I look forward to applying that philosophy.
