Selling rebellion: Does marketing skills matter?

(Continued from last week)

‘...the effects of assistance are more ambiguous than often acknowledged…’

(Continued from last week)

At stake, is more than a global popularity contest. For many challengers, outside aid is literally a matter of life or death. NGOs can raise awareness about little known conflicts, mobilize resources for beleaguered movements and pressure repressive governments. External involvement can deter state violence and force policy change.
It can bestow legitimacy on challengers who might otherwise have meager recognition. And it can strengthen challengers, not only materially, through infusions of money, equipment and knowledge, but also psychologically, by demonstrating that a movement is not alone, that the world cares and that an arduous conflict may not be fruitless. With so much at risk, challengers compete fiercely for transactional patrons.
In this global morality market, challengers must publicize their plights, portray their conflicts as righteous struggles and craft their messages to resonate abroad. Some believe that the causes that “made it” are simply the lucky winners of an international crap shoot. Although chance plays some part, much can be explained systematically.
First, winning NGO support is neither easy nor automatic, but instead competitive and uncertain. Scores of challengers strive for overseas recognition even within a single country or region. For distant audiences, however, the ferment is invisible.
Journalists and academics focus on insurgencies that shine internationally. They seldom place these groups in broader context - as rare stars in a universe of hapless aspirants. The efforts of the less fortunate are overlooked.
Or, as international resources flow to the few, unsuccessful competitors direct their energies elsewhere, join forces with the most flourishing, shift to the opposition, or die out. This analytic blind-spot, compounded by recent enthusiasm about the beneficent effects of globalization and the Internet, has made the growth of NGO assistance look deceptively simple.
Second, the development and retention of support are best conceived not as philanthropic gestures but as exchanges based on the relative power of the parties to the transaction. On the supply side of this market are a small number of influential NGOs with no reason to choose one desperate movement over another. On the demand side are myriad local groups for whom international linkages hold the prospect of new resources and greater clout in their domestic conflicts.
This disparity in need creates an unequal power relationship. As a result, movements must often alter key characteristics to meet the expectations of patrons. By contrast, in most cases NGOs can be circumspect in picking clients and need not reinvent themselves to do so.
Explaining their choices only as the result of “morality” or “principle” affords little analytic bite when this larger context is considered. Certainly altruism plays an important role in these decisions, but given their organizational imperatives, NGOs have strong incentives to devote themselves to the challenger whose profile most closely matches their own requirements - not necessarily to the neediest group.
Third, competition for NGO intervention occurs in a context of economic, political and organizational inequality that systematically advantages some challengers over others.
These disparities, which insurgents have limited capacity to change, make it easier for certain movements - those with more resources, superior knowledge and pre-existing international standing - to promote themselves abroad and pigeonhole themselves into acceptable categories of protest.
Fourth, despite these structural biases, the choices of insurgents - how they market themselves - matter. Most analysts take a top-down approach, focusing on NGOs and suggesting that translational networks form when intrepid activists in rich countries reach into the developing world to succour helpless “victims.”
In fact, however, local movements insistently court overseas backing, and their promotional strategies count. While they have numerous variants, these strategies share two broad aims, raising international awareness of the movement and enhancing its appeal to NGOs.
Finally, because of this market dynamic, the effects of assistance are more ambiguous than often acknowledged. For many scholars and journalists, overseas activism is an unmitigated blessing. Reflecting a penchant to idolize NGOs, analysts confuse the apparently altruistic intent of support with its effects.
But when the latent sources of aid are considered, one can more easily assess its costs. On one hand, local challengers must conform to the needs and agendas of distant audiences, potentially alienating a movement from its base.
On the other hand, the organizational imperatives driving NGOs mean that even the most devoted can seldom make a particular insurgent its top concern. The result can be problematic, even deadly. Challengers, enticed to attention-grabbing tactics or extreme stances, may find distant stalwarts absent or helpless at moments of gravest peril. For more info on this issue, Clifford Bob’s book “The Marketing of Rebellion (2005) is a food for thought.