Posted on: May 28th, 2010 by Reuben Turner

A few years ago the wife and I went to Morocco on our hols. An abiding memory is that whenever we fell into conversation with anyone, it would appear, after five, ten, or twenty minutes, that what they really wanted was not to get to know us, but for us to visit their cousins’s jewellery stall, their uncle’s pottery workshop, or to book a tour with them to visit ‘Jimi Hendrix Magic Castle’. In other words, it wasn’t a conversation at all, it was just a long sales pitch.

During the entire fortnight I can only recall one conversation that didn’t end up this way, which was with a wizened fisherman at a café in the resort of Essouira.

Me: So what do you do on the fishing boat?

Him: I’m the cook.

Me; Really, what do you cook?

Him: Fish.

Anyway, that isn’t really the point. The point is that there are many, many conversations taking place on LinkedIn forums and other social spaces right now which will inevitably end in an invitation to someone’s equivalent of a pottery workshop. And once you’ve engaged in a couple of these conversations, you start being put off speaking to anyone at all.

This has ramifications for social conversations and particularly for engagement strategies. Today people are wary of engaging in conversations with charities because they think they’re going to be asked to give sooner or later. (Ask yourself why charities receive so many unattributed cash gifts – people would rather share their cash than their name & address). Creating more superficial engagement strategies that head straight to a DD ask isn’t going to help (remember ‘I’m In’?).

That’s one reason why RSPB’s Letter to the Future works so well – signing the letter is a genuine objective, not an artificial conversation-opener. By combining brand stretch, membership marketing and advocacy objectives they’ve opened a multifaceted conversation (it can go in different directions for different people), and one that’s worth having for its own sake.

Not one that starts with a pottery workshop in mind.

Sign the Letter to the Future now (it’s really worth doing)