Recruiting Presentation - Monday 21 May 18 2000hrs Eastern

Started by NIN, May 21, 2018, 01:09:12 AM

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NIN

QuoteRecruiting Officers and Directors of Recruiting & Retention,

When a member comes to your unit interested in membership, what do you hand them? Is it a comprehensive packet describing the membership process, or a URL scribbled on a napkin? Do they have a clear understanding of the expectations of membership, the process to become a member, and the road ahead, or is it more important to get their name scribbled on the dotted line?

Join us on Monday, May 21st at 8pm Eastern Time for a presentation about how to improve the materials you put in prospective members' hands.

You can view and participate in this live webinar on You Tube Live at this link:
http://bit.ly/May18Presentation

(Note: You may see a  different time for this presentation at this link, as YouTube Live is helpful and adjusts the time automatically based on your local time zone. Don't be alarmed!)

If you are unfamiliar with YouTube Live, it is essentially a live broadcast of a You Tube video session using screen sharing, video and audio. You do not need a Google account to participate or view this presentation. Questions can be submitted via the Live Chat function in YouTube Live, or via Twitter using the hashtag #CAPRecruiting.

Please share this email with your fellow members and commanders via email and other social media.

If you can't attend the presentation live, the entire presentation is being recorded and will be available immediately afterward at the link above for viewing at your convenience. And remember, all of the previous webinars are available for viewing here: http://bit.ly/NERVideos   

Thanks very much for your time and what you do for Civil Air Patrol.

Lt Col Darin Ninness, CAP
National Recruiting & Retention Manager
U.S. Air Force Auxiliary
www.gocivilairpatrol.com
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

etodd

As someone who has been in advertising and marketing for over 45 years, it does surprise me that a national org like CAP has so few marketing materials "ready to go" for Squadrons to use. At this point local Squadrons should have a large variety of options from National "in the can" and always at the ready. Local folks shouldn't have to develop things on their own at the local level. Which can often wind up being 'cheesy'.  It would be great if Hdqs could at some point set aside enough funds to get a large Ad Agency involved to develop a full campaign worthy of CAP.
"Don't try to explain it, just bow your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on ..."

etodd

OK. That off my chest, and since it may be a few years before we see that dream ... yes, I do look forward to the seeing the webinar to see what others are doing. :)
"Don't try to explain it, just bow your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on ..."

Fubar

Quote from: etodd on May 21, 2018, 02:16:34 AMIt would be great if Hdqs could at some point set aside enough funds to get a large Ad Agency involved to develop a full campaign worthy of CAP.

The last time we did that, we ended up with goofy email signature that broke everyone's email and caused a huge SUI mess.

etodd

Quote from: Fubar on May 21, 2018, 05:13:40 AM
Quote from: etodd on May 21, 2018, 02:16:34 AMIt would be great if Hdqs could at some point set aside enough funds to get a large Ad Agency involved to develop a full campaign worthy of CAP.

The last time we did that, we ended up with goofy email signature that broke everyone's email and caused a huge SUI mess.

LOL ... Well I was thinking more along the lines of some Wall Street quality video spots that could run on local TV as well as social media, along with high class brochures and handouts.  A lots of folks in CAP have produced some really nice work, but its not consistent across the board and not up to the level of production values to really showcase our organization.

Air Force:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj9-fmxbUg
"Don't try to explain it, just bow your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on ..."

dwb

No one watches TV anymore. If we were to run a national advertising campaign, it'd be through YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Gotta meet the youth where they are, not where us old farts think they were 20 years ago.

NIN

Quote from: etodd on May 21, 2018, 01:37:47 PM
LOL ... Well I was thinking more along the lines of some Wall Street quality video spots that could run on local TV as well as social media, along with high class brochures and handouts.  A lots of folks in CAP have produced some really nice work, but its not consistent across the board and not up to the level of production values to really showcase our organization.

Air Force:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj9-fmxbUg

You do realize that the USAF's advertising budget request for FY 2019 is $93,447,000, right?  Something like 37x the entire National non-appropriated fund budget for CAP.

Production value costs money.



Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

arajca

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

National needs to be doing awareness level information. "This is Civil Air Patrol" type stuff. When you spend 20-25 secs of your 30 sec initial contact explaining what CAP is, you've lost the battle. You don't get time to get to the local level of information where you'd be able to make the deal. If folks come up and are saying "Hey, I've heard of this Civil Air Patrol thing and I know you're into it, can you tell me more about it?", you're already half way done with the recruiting.


NIN

Quote from: arajca on May 21, 2018, 01:53:24 PM
I've said it before and I'll say it again.

National needs to be doing awareness level information. "This is Civil Air Patrol" type stuff. When you spend 20-25 secs of your 30 sec initial contact explaining what CAP is, you've lost the battle. You don't get time to get to the local level of information where you'd be able to make the deal. If folks come up and are saying "Hey, I've heard of this Civil Air Patrol thing and I know you're into it, can you tell me more about it?", you're already half way done with the recruiting.

I'm reminded of that old joke essay question from a University test:

"13. Describe the universe. Give three examples."

Even 'high-level' awareness is difficult, but there's no doubt we need more.  Lots more.

I recently was at a meeting concerning some program changes and brought up the "sales funnel" concept of "AIDA".

That begat this:



Most of what we can be doing Nationally is the Awareness (or "Attention" depending on your preferred acronym) part.  After that, it drives down to the local level in the ability of units the convert a prospect's Interest into a Decision and Action. 

If you're putting your best foot forward, the D & A part is easier. I suspect we're losing a lot more people further down in the process than we care to admit, however.
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

etodd

Quote from: NIN on May 21, 2018, 01:52:30 PM


You do realize that the USAF's advertising budget request for FY 2019 is $93,447,000, right?  Something like 37x the entire National non-appropriated fund budget for CAP.

Production value costs money.

Sure. That much not needed.  We could have a series of videos and brochures produced at a national quality for less than what a new C-172 cost. It would be money well spent.
"Don't try to explain it, just bow your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on ..."

NIN

Quote from: etodd on May 21, 2018, 03:49:56 PM
Sure. That much not needed.  We could have a series of videos and brochures produced at a national quality for less than what a new C-172 cost. It would be money well spent.

OK, I submit to you that yes, pretty good stuff could be created for that much (or even probably less).

But realize: you're talking about an amount of money that is nearly 15% of the current non-appropriated funds budget.  Thats a pretty hefty ask.

Where, pray tell, does that money come from? Out of the money presently allocated from the non-appropriated funds, what might you suggest we NOT spend money on to then spend money on this?
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

MacGruff

National awareness is something that is sorely lacking, and while I am not advocating spending all of the $93 Mil on it (snicker), we do need to do something. Here are two anecdotes from just this past week:

1.   At our last weekly squadron meeting, a new prospective cadet and his mom came to visit us. When chatting with them about how they learned about us, it turned out that the boy was adopted recently into the family, and his social worker happened to be aware of us and suggested to the mom that CAP might help him out with some discipline and focus issues, so they came. The mom is a schoolteacher and no one in her district could tell her anything about us - that school district is a 10 minute drive from where we meet

2.   Just yesterday, I was seated next to a uniformed Captain (Commercial) on a cross-country flight. We chatted about this or that and I mentioned that i sometime sit in the right seat of a Cessna. He thought I was a pilot, so I corrected him and mentioned CAP. His answer was an immediate "What's that?" As the conversation proceeded, I learned that this Captain was trained as a fighter pilot in the Air Force, and moved to commercial jets about 20 years ago. He's qualified on 757s and 767s and flies his own Cessna for fun. He had no idea (that past tense was changed to present tense over the course of the flight!) who we are, what we do, and where we are. By the way, I found out later that his Cessna is parked in an airfield that hosts a CAP squadron....

Hmmm...



arajca

Quote from: NIN on May 21, 2018, 05:36:57 PM
Quote from: etodd on May 21, 2018, 03:49:56 PM
Sure. That much not needed.  We could have a series of videos and brochures produced at a national quality for less than what a new C-172 cost. It would be money well spent.

OK, I submit to you that yes, pretty good stuff could be created for that much (or even probably less).

But realize: you're talking about an amount of money that is nearly 15% of the current non-appropriated funds budget.  Thats a pretty hefty ask.

Where, pray tell, does that money come from? Out of the money presently allocated from the non-appropriated funds, what might you suggest we NOT spend money on to then spend money on this?
Does National budget anything for recruiting? What do you spend it on?

Eclipse

NHQ, along with a lot of other people these days, thinks TwitSpace is marketing.  It's not.
In most cases you're just preaching to the choir, current members and former members who
already know about CAP, one way or another.  They don't call it an echo chamber
for nothing.

CAP needs (and has for 20 years) a coherent and sustained national mainstream
media campaign, that is supported with Wing and local recruiting initiatives, along with a lot of cleaning house.

The problem with being the "best kept secret of the USAF" is that it's also an advantage in that it allows you
to fly under the radar, while bumps and warts can go largely unnoticed.

A real sustained campaign would also bring plenty of potentially unwanted attention as CAP
moved more forward into the light. Further, spending a lot of money on "awareness", if units aren't
prepared, or worse, interested in the effort it takes to grow (probably quickly), could actually make
things worse in the long run.

This is a decades-old problem that takes a decade to fix, and no one has even nailed up the white board yet.



"That Others May Zoom"

etodd

I missed the webinar while it was live, but just watched it now. Great job Nin. You covered lots of ground with good info. I downloaded the sample kit and will say I'm impressed. I haven't seen any other Squadron take it to this level. I'll be stealing a few ideas. :)
"Don't try to explain it, just bow your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on ..."

NIN

Quote from: arajca on May 21, 2018, 10:06:35 PM
Does National budget anything for recruiting? What do you spend it on?

There is a budget for "exhibits" which the recruiting materials that are sent to units comes out of. This is used for things like the EAA booth, AFA, other displays, etc.
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

NIN

Quote from: etodd on May 22, 2018, 03:35:46 AM
I missed the webinar while it was live, but just watched it now. Great job Nin. You covered lots of ground with good info. I downloaded the sample kit and will say I'm impressed. I haven't seen any other Squadron take it to this level. I'll be stealing a few ideas. :)

Thats the whole idea, Ed.  Steal away.

I have laid bare most of what we do at my unit in terms of recruiting (open houses, cohort recruiting, our packets, our presentations, etc) over the years for others to crib from and I'm happy to do so without credit or anything.  My "credit" for the use of those materials comes in the success of the organizations that use them. 

True story: I had someone send me a presentation once to include in the Field Submitted Materials Repository. "This is our presentation that we use. Its very successful!" Something about it looked familiar, and I looked in the document properties and sure enough there was my name.  It was a presentation that I'd made available online probably 12 or 15 years ago and it had been modified a lot over the years. Of course the officer who sent it hadn't even been in CAP that long, but there was the underlying structure, still trucking along... :)

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

FW

Something must be going well as we are approaching the 60,000 membership count again.... ;D

NIN

Quote from: FW on May 22, 2018, 03:45:39 PM
Something must be going well as we are approaching the 60,000 membership count again.... ;D

59647. :)
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

Eclipse

It's nice to see the number(s) inching up, but unvetted they don't mean much other then
more checks.

There does seem to have been a surge, especially with cadets, in my AOR during the last CY,
and especially the last couple quarters - we had a LOT of really new cadets at encampment this year.

What happened to the effort to normalize the memberships by putting people in proper categories
and removing inactive members from manpower reports?


"That Others May Zoom"