Can charities escape the marketing paradigm trap?

The marketing paradigm represents one of the most toxic paradigms that keep us trapped in our lower values, creating the psychological conditions for positive change almost impossible. So why is it that we have seen a significant shift towards the marketing paradigm by charities over the last decade, and what can we do about this?

Director of Ministory, Kieran O’Brien, explores some big questions around the significant trend by charities, social movements and organisations as they shift ever-increasingly towards fully embracing the marketing paradigm. What are the profound implications of this shift?

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Kieran O'Brien

Director of Ministory, Kieran has over 20 years of working in the charity sector on a wide range of creative projects and campaigns. He is a thought leader who advocates for a radical rethink about how we engage and motivate audiences for positive change. His central belief is that what holds us back is the wholesale adoption of marketing logic within cause-driven organisations. Instead, he argues, we need to think less like marketers, and more like storytellers. This is not just about telling stories, which we already do, but rather understand how to work with both narratives (explicit information) and metanarratives (implicit information), and how this deeper approach to audience engagement can lead to deeper change. Experienced storyteller, speaker, trainer and consultant with a range of clients, Kieran is the creative driving force in bringing stories into life through videos, animations and printed materials.
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New motivational theory

Standard motivational models tend to conflate the different stages of intrinsic motivation (self-regulation) into a single category or to view intrinsic motivation only in terms of utility (i.e. improved outputs). 

The result is that our current motivational models are no longer fit for purpose in terms of working with higher values, or how to create long-term behavioural change. 

Creating a new and expanded model, utilising insights from neuro-psychology, offers some profound insights on how to create meaningful change on the issues we care about.