Now that Christmas is over I’ve been thinking about the Salvation Army. That’s right, now that Christmas is over. In these parts, the Salvation Army is chiefly ( exclusively?) identified with its red kettle campaign, but that’s such a small part of its history and mission. Face it, the “brand” of the Salvation Army in central Arkansas is a mess.
Part of it is that, unlike Goodwill, and unlike Salvation Armies elsewhere, there are no secondhand stores here reminding motorists of its presence, says Kathy Barbeire, marketing point person for the Army’s Central Arkansas Area Command.
Part of it is semantic. The Army’s mission is unerring charity for the less fortunate - often the extremely less fortunate, the penniless homeless - but the army is a well-outfitted expeditionary force. Army also calls to mind the color green, martial culture and war, but the closest thing to a visible army in the current context are the Christmas bell ringers in Santa caps.
At a Salvation Army advisory board meeting a while back, a consultant with the Grizzard marketing group out of Atlanta offered a tidy meeting room of about two dozen officers and volunteer chiefs with the Army a presentation introducing a fresh new image campaign: Be a Shield.
“Baby boomers all the way down to millennials, they really have no idea what the Salvation Army does,” said consultant Kevin Bryant, Grizzard’s man on the Salvation Army account. “They see a uniform, they hear a ringing bell, but they just don’t know what you do.”
Intrinsically, I like Be a Shield. It’s as trim and intuitive as “Diamonds are forever,” but it enlists. The implied “you” is a dynamic touch for a charity slogan. Also, the red shield really is iconic; oh, not to rival the Red Cross, maybe, but better known than Blue Shield, and no doubt better liked.
“When you guys came up with this concept - Be a Shield / I Am a Shield - I mean, that was a call to action,” says Barbeire, though to date, the only concerted action has been to use the tag in email blasts and to hawk T-shirts with the road warrior design.
“If we choose to adopt that as our call to action,” she says, “then it’s our responsibility to engage our supporters and community partners in being a shield, and helping articulate, ‘What does it mean to be a shield?’ It means finding a way to meet the needs of our neighbors in need, people in our communities who are suffering, whether that’s raising money to support a homeless shelter, feeding a meal to the homeless who are staying there, providing Christmas gifts to needy children, taking hot meals to individuals who are victims of ice storms or tornadoes that happen all the time in our area.”
During his multimedia presentation, Bryant flashed on the screen a moving truck he photographed with his smartphone not long ago. The sides of the trailer give us the classic shield growing ever closer with the help of a visual effect from the ’60s, and a cartoon Salvation Army officer answering a call on a candlestick telephone.
A candlestick telephone? We haven’t used those since the Depression, man!
OLD GUARD, YOUNG TURKS
That’s a third way the “brand” is suffering here in Arkansas, suffering from age.
These new I Am a Shield images, youthful though they may be, are edgy - the one apparently aimed to appeal to the leather-clad outlaw-biker, the other, and I’m guessing here, the pasty-skinned thirty-something fanboy who hasn’t taken down his Xena: Warrior Princess poster?
The first one includes the words “Blood and fire,” a reference to the blood Jesus Christ shed for Christians and the day of Pentecost, but will that be the popular association? “Fire? Blood? New Testament coordinates for everlasting salvation!”
In another slide Bryant shared, by way of further evincing the kind of brand refresh Grizzard has in mind, the words “Salvation Army” were rendered in spray paint on the side of a wall by a street artist. He meant it as positive, youthful messaging, but you know what it looked like? It looked like graffiti.
The problem with campaigns that target the youngest generation is that they so often alienate the oldest generation, and the Army has the most “penetration” among the oldest generation, the World War II and Korean War generation. They remember the “Doughnut Lassies” handing out pastries and coffee as well as stationery and stamps for letters home and other comforts just behind the frontlines, back when the Army was there with the army, its charity yoked to the good fight.
As a result, this is the most charitable demographic, but it’s dying. “Thing is, with the new generations, unless they’ve been directly [affected by the Army], they question, ‘Why do they wear those uniforms? Are they with the government?’ People don’t understand how many thousands and thousands of people they feed and clothe and shelter,” Bryant says.
In 2012:
85,854 meals to the homeless
16,604 nights of shelter (about 46 people a night)
14,941 counseling and case management sessions
14,294 Christmas gifts to about 3,500 children
2,722 food pantry orders
The I Am a Shield graphics are a relatively small part of the hoped-for campaign. The much bigger order is to enlist younger volunteers and supporters and roll their support into a greater social media presence for the Central Arkansas Command (a Facebook post last month looking for support for the new “I Am a Shield” T-shirts garnered not a single Like; one in December of a photo of Girl Scout Troop 6499 from Episcopal Collegiate School doing some Angel Tree shopping got one comment and a few Likes, fewer than the number of girls pictured).
With that in mind, part of the campaign is imagining manufactured service experiences. So, not just a single donation at a red kettle, but a commitment to a Saturday afternoon cleanup, or serving a meal - a thing that has a narrative arc and can be reported on and photographed and, ultimately, shared online.
“The average social network is about 200 people,” Bryant says. “Once they have the experience, they tell people, ‘Today I got to help the Salvation Army do this .…’ People love photography, love to share the experience pictorially. [When they do that], they’re also sharing the values of a great organization. ‘Compassionate, trustworthy, uplifting and brave’ are the values they’ll share.”
I’ll be interested to see how Be a Shield develops here in central Arkansas. It has promise.
If any group has the history, the mission and the institutional wherewithal to pull off a big reboot in 2014, it’s the Army.
If you have interesting news to share about area nonprofits or events, email me at bampezzan@arkansasonline.com, or call (501) 378-3574.
High Profile, Pages 35 on 02/23/2014