It is a shame that today so many people are talking about marketing and so few are talking about movement building. In a previous article on what a movement isn’t, I argued that

Marketing is a core part of movement building, but movement building is a much broader undertaking than a marketing campaign… Whereas a typical marketing campaign sends messages out, a movement will develop your audience into the message bearers.

This distinction points to the heart of true movement building.

Traditional Marketing: you speak, they listen

Interuptions are the foundation of traditional marketing.  You’re watching your favorite TV show, the suspense is building, enter commercial stage left.  You are reading your magazine, flip the page to learn more, enter advertisement stage right.  Pop-ups.  Banner ads.  Billboards.  All are attempts to interrupt whatever your audience had been doing so that they can listen to you.

The trouble is that your audience has learned how to handle interruptions.  They channel surf, they TiVo, or they use a pop-up blocker.  Worst of all, they have learned to filter.  They have become so adept at tuning out advertisement interruptions that surveys find up to 90% of all advertising is neither seen nor remembered by most people.  Mental filters have been conditioned for an advertising barrage and effectively deflect most ads from reaching your audience’s conscious mind.

Equally worrisome, the New York Times reports that 54% of people avoid buying products that have overwhelmed them with advertising.  Even if you succeed in breaking through your audience’s filters, you may only have worsened your standing.

Movement Building: they speak, everyone listens

Though Movement Building uses some traditional marketing, its primary focus is to impart a remarkable idea and then inspire audience members share that idea among themselves.  Unlike traditional advertising, movement building is an interactive dialogue which rapidly gains momentum.  While your organization may have begun the dialogue, a powerful movement will soon place the audience in the driver’s seat as they spread the idea for you.

Many of today’s leading marketers express this central idea in other ways.  The Tenaya Group, a company specializing in brand development, urges its readers: Don’t build a brand; Build a movement. They explain,

When you build a brand, your goal is to create a movement, a self-sustaining chain reaction that expresses the customer through the brand. It’s this energy from below that drives the brand forward. The immediate physical brand is just the first step, a catalyst for more powerful reactions to come.  Movement rules. In brands, the winner is not the wrapper. The winner is the flag.

Marketing guru Seth Godin explains this same concept in another way.

If the New Marketing can be characterized by just one idea, it’s this: Ideas that spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered at an individual.  Social change, education, new-product launches, religious movements…it doesn’t matter, the story is the same.  Movements are at the heart of change and growth.  A movement — an idea that spreads with passion through a community and leads to change — is far more powerful than any advertisements ever could be.

Whether you call it Smart Branding, New Marketing, or Movement Building, the lesson remains the same: movements rule.  Today, success requires a much broader undertaking than a marketing campaign.  Whereas a typical marketing campaign would sent out a message, success requires you to develop your audience into message bearers.  In other words, you need to build a movement.