21st Century Marketing Blog

(The following is in response to a survey MENSA e-mailed me, asking why I haven’t joined. I promise I don’t write a blog post like this for every survey I get. As a preface, I qualify for MENSA because of a standardized test I studied my butt off for and not because of an innately high IQ).

The only unifying factor between MENSA members is a score in the top 2 percent on an IQ or other qualifying test, so you can guess what stigma comes with MENSA membership: elitism, social awkwardness, etc. From a marketing standpoint, MENSA poses a unique challenge: how to brand the organization in a way that cultivates respect instead of ridicule and contempt.

I’m not making the whole “ridicule and contempt” thing up. Just Google whether to put MENSA on a résumé and you’ll see what I mean. Fiery people come out of the woodwork. Maybe the only reason I don’t feel the same as the detractors is that my high school calculus teacher was a Mensan. I have a great deal of respect for the man and his genius. He was a great ambassador for the org, from my perspective.

More than anything, MENSA has a problem with messaging. A few examples:

1. The first letter you get after qualifying reads:

“CONGRATULATIONS! … It is with great pleasure that we extend you an offer of membership in the society. Your membership card will be forwarded within ten days of the receipt of your dues payment…”

2. Follow-up e-mail #1 from Admissions Manager:

“I noticed that you qualified but hadn’t joined. If you call and pay your dues ($59) with a credit card, your membership packet will print tonight and mail tomorrow.”

3. Follow-up e-mail #2 from Membership Director:

“In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Mensa in North America, I’ve been reviewing lists of members who’ve qualified but haven’t yet joined. I noticed your name on the list, and while you may not have made the decision to become a member before this, I hope that you’ll accept my personal invitation to join at this time.  You can join online…”

Do you notice a trend? Their focus on membership and dues is front and center in every message. Any mention of purpose or value in their proposition is subverted by the focus on money or membership for qualification’s sake. They certainly may not have intended this, but you can’t argue with what’s written. This approach may have been acceptable a decade ago when networking was less organized and less fluid than it is today, but I don’t feel like MENSA poses much competition to today’s free business/interest networking groups facilitated by social media.

They need to start viewing it as a competition or risk being marginalized in the networking space. Smart people have jobs, are busier than ever, and have plenty of people, events, etc. jostling for their time. MENSA needs to do more and BE more than it currently is. What is it exactly? Check out this very interesting Q & A with Pam Donahoo, executive director of MENSA. A few selections:

How do you keep younger members involved, and interested?
Our Gen-X SIG [Special Interest Group for members in their mid-30s to mid-40s] wanted to plan the convention. These younger folks are planning it for the first time, but I’ve gotten great attendance. There’s really a young spin on things.

With members like yours, do you use a lot of technology at your meetings?
If we’re behind the curve, that’s where it is. It’s mainly because our price-points are low. There’s not as much technology used mainly because of the cost of it. We certainly have our own community. We have fan pages on Facebook. We have a Twitter account. Like everyone else, we’re realizing there are lots of opportunities that are there. We considered using handheld technology for a media event: an ask-the-geniuses session. But it was too expensive.

Does Mensa have a broader message or mission?
To the general public, we’re saying, it’s OK to be smart. Today you see movies that depict the smart person as the protagonist instead of the antagonist, the hero instead of the nerd that gets beaten up. We promote intelligence as a valuable asset.

Wow! Since when did a “young spin” mean mid-30′s? And when was basic technology cost-prohibitive? That’s so sad to me.

MENSA really needs to re-brand, re-position, and re-invent itself if it hopes to have a credible, growing, vibrant organization that does more than rest on its own laurels.

I don’t want to be pegged as a sideline critic here. I’d greatly desire to see MENSA succeed. But I want the group’s collective genius to be leveraged for more than just board game development (also just the impression I get). I want to join MENSA when it makes more sense than the other free groups competing for my time that appear to offer more value.

Here are 5 of my many ideas on what they should do:

1. Inclusivity through partnerships. Right now, MENSA feels too exclusive. They should be trying to get as many qualifying people in as possible. They should be partnering with test-administering organizations like GMAT, LSAT, etc. to automatically notify people when their scores qualify them for admission.

2. Open and social web presence. The American MENSA website puts some of the most interesting content like “Meet A Member” or “Member Primer” that could be critical to the “member conversion funnel” behind a members-only login! Why? (The website could also do with a makeover) In social media, while they’ve gotten better with Facebook recently, their Twitter account has been used twice this year. Missed opportunities for engagement.

3. Message and purpose refinement. I mentioned this at the beginning. They need to know what they represent and what they’re trying to achieve before they know what the membership benefits are, and before they can communicate those externally. If they focus on qualification being a core reason for membership, then they’re playing right into the elitist label they’d hopefully like to avoid. I envision MENSA potentially being more like LaunchUp, where the collective knowledge of the crowd is leveraged to benefit a cause, solve a problem, enrich a community, etc.

4. Technology integration. The smartest people aren’t going to MENSA. They’re flocking to TED and Fora.tv communities, rallying around very basic technology that allows them to learn together, collaborate, and make change in the world. Without technology as a facilitator, MENSA, or any other group for that matter, will always be two steps behind the curve. Using basic technology for presentations/discussion at meetings isn’t costly. Ask anyone.

5. Local empowerment & promotion. I’m getting e-mails from the national people that run MENSA, not the local “rubber-meets-the-road” leadership that would really be responsible for providing the bulk of the group’s value. Talking to the person who is technically the local chapter leader here, he confided, “I’m still not sure why I joined, but it wasn’t for the socializing.” Leaders need to get excited about what they’re leading, right? In this case, it’s hard to get excited when (1) the leader doesn’t have any training, guidance on running a meeting, direction on the contents of the meetings or best practices and (2) the leader doesn’t have a list of members/potential members in the area that could be contacted to get the chapter off the ground. That’s the case, from what I understand.

So to conclude what will be my longest blog post to date: get it in gear, MENSA! Be something amazing, then give me a call.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about billboards — one billboard campaign in particular. Here’s how it went down:

First, Reagan Advertising used a survey company to ask 300 people two questions:

(1) Who is the lieutenant governor of Utah?
(2) What was the first word spoken on the moon?

(5% and 1% respectively answered the question right)

Then they put around a dozen billboards (just like the one shown) saying “Houston: First Word Spoken On The Moon” and left them up for a month in some high traffic locations around the Salt Lake Valley, after which they sampled another 300 people using the same two questions. At that point, 6% of the respondents answered the first question correctly and 37% of the respondents were able to answer the question about “Houston” as depicted in the billboards.

So what?

Was the test:
(a) Brilliant?
(b) Rubbish?
(c) Inconclusive?
(d) Completely self-promotional?
(e) Manipulative?

I’m honestly leaning multiple ways on this one, which is why it’s so fascinating to me. It definitely has me thinking about billboard advertising.

What do you think? Does it prove anything about billboard effectiveness or is it just junk statistics?

(photo credit: Nicholas Draney)