Marketing in Unlikely Places (Lauren Mesley - Blog Post #4)

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Marketing strategies have been on my mind a lot lately. At work, my union is currently in the process of negotiating our union contract with my employer. It is not going well. My employer has proposed an offer that is less than what we had in our previous contract and is refusing to negotiate further. Our union delegates are seeing very little participation from the members when it comes to calls for testimonials and attendance at the negotiation meetings and they are, understandably, blaming this abysmal contract on the lack of membership participation. 

I do see where the delegates are coming from, but I also see that they have failed to successfully market the union and contract negotiations. To their credit, they are doing better than they did before; they set up a Whatsapp group chat for all the members! That chat never existed before, and it definitely helped with communication. However, it wasn’t enough. Where I believe my delegates went wrong, was expecting the members to come to them, when they really needed to bring to union to the members. 

We are living in a world of constant information overload. Consumers have gotten very good at tuning out the noise so that they can live their lives. This is bad news for trying to motivate people to do things like show up for in-person negotiation meetings because despite the delegates' best efforts, the Whatsapp messages and emails just became part of the noise. In an information overload world, you have to be memorable, or you’ll get tuned out. 

I think the delegates would have had a much more successful participation rate if they talked to the members one on one in person. That’s memorable. We barely know our delegates and barely have any knowledge of the union, and this was an opportunity for them to single us out and pull the testimonials out of us. People are busy! Half of my department is going to school in addition to working full time, and other people have kids or loved ones to look after—we don’t have time to read all the union emails or keep up with the Whatsapp. You have to make things as easy and accessible as possible when you’re asking something of people, and then still go the extra step to personally check up on them. When it really comes down to it, I think the contract negotiation could have gone much better if the delegates just had a better marketing strategy.
 

Comments

  1. Zoe ManaloSeptember 28, 2025 at 6:45 PM

    This really highlights something that gets overlooked, organizing is as much about communication and marketing as it is about policy. You're right that information overload makes it easy for members to tune out. Dropping a message, email or notification might feel like enough, but it can quickly become background noise. Your point about personal connection is important. When people feel seen and spoken to directly they're more likely to step up. It's about building relationships and trust. Marketing isn't always about campaigns, it's about persistency and meeting people where they're at.

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