- Looking back on your time at NAACP,
what are you most proud of?
- The future of it? These, the new generation is future.
They're not just interested in hearing history and want to
make history.
And I'm excited about what that can mean for the future of
our organization.
- Hey I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections where we
hear from some of the most innovative leaders in marketing.
The NAACP was founded more than a hundred years ago.
And since then its mission has never changed. Advocating for
civil justice and social justice for black communities.
That vision remains the same.
What has changed is how it delivers on that vision.
Moving to a marketing playbook that
is more bold, brief, and blunt.
And joining me today to talk about it is NAACPs SVP of
marketing and communications, Trovon Williams.
I want to learn a little bit more about your upbringing,
who taught you what integrity looks like?
- Integrity looks like Esther Williams,
my mother. A single mother raising two children,
doing a fantastic job. I grew up in a house with my mom,
my grandmother, and my aunt and my sisters.
I had all women around me. So as we say, trust,
trust a black woman,
cause they got all the right answers over there.
- And what was the biggest learning that you have today from
your mother?
- One of the major things that my mother has always taught
me is just to be humble and to treat everybody the same.
I don't care if you are, you know,
janitor or the CEO of you're going to get the same respect
and treatment for me.
And I think that that's how the world should really work.
- I love that. That is so beautiful.
More people need to learn those lessons.
- Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
- I Don't know if you know this,
I grew up in Virginia and you went to college in Virginia.
- I Did.
- And so tell me about what it was like to go to Hampton
university.
- Northern Virginia is a very, very diverse area.
I went to a very, very diverse high school,
just going to a diverse high school.
Doesn't tell me enough about myself.
And so going to an HBCU,
experiencing the culture associated with
understanding who I was.
And really using that as a launching point for furthering my
culture. I learned all that in Hampton University.
I'm so proud that I had the opportunity to do so.
- So you also learned about the NAACP at Hampton University.
- The funny story is Harvey Library is the
Hampton University library. And yeah,
I was following the girl,
- It always starts with a girl.
I was following a girl from the class and she said she was
going to an NAACP interests meeting.
And I went there just out of curiosity.
And before I knew it,
there were students who are only
maybe a year or two older than I was,
who was talking about redistricting and voter registration
and all these different things that I had read about in
history books.
But now I'm seeing it play out in front of me.
And so from that quick 30, 45 minute conversation,
I'm listening to the interest meeting.
I signed up to be a part of the NAACP
and it was foundationally, one of the
most important things that I did while I was there.
First time I voted was in college through the NAACP.
It really helped foundationally build who I was as an
individual and understanding that it goes beyond just
getting the degree.
I can be important to our community by going out into our
community, and the NAACP taught me all that.
- When you started there, what was their marketing like?
- I came from a large technology background.
Most of my experience in marketing came from either
cyber security or technology, um, working with rocket
scientists and different things of that sort.
Very different pace. And so because of that,
I had to reset my expectations around what marketing looked
like,` at the, at the beginning,
but understanding that there was a longterm vision for where
we wanted to progress the organization,
we wanted to be faster,
And we wanted to use technology more effectively so that we
could not just have the arts aspect of marketing,
but the data analytics aspects that we could
couple those things together and be as impactful as
possible.
- And so how did you do that?
How did you transform this organization into using these
modern marketing tactics?
- Failing fast. We tried some stuff.
We got the data from it. We figured out what made sense,
what didn't make sense.
And then we were able to bring that information back to our
leadership appropriately.
heat mapping for email communications,
learning that we don't need to send emails that are stories,
messages.
- A lot of words.
- A lot of words, a lot of dialogue,
but maybe two or three really tight paragraphs gets the job
done and gets people to the call of action.
And then implementing things like, you know, geo
targeting for specific locations that we're interested in.
It's been such a growth for the organization holistically.
We're excited about where we're going.
- One of the things that interest me so much about you is
the value you place on narrative and storytelling.
Tell me why that's so important to you.
- I think if you could tell a great story,
your communities will become your ambassadors for that
story, right?
We do our job effectively as communicators.
We should be able to take our community on this,
this journey with us, it's their story.
And so they become the greatest evangelist for what it is
that the association is doing in respects. If we do it well,
if we meshes properly, if we position things appropriately,
when we have these milestone moments as a community,
they tell the story for us.
- So speaking of storytelling,
you've shifted your marketing playbook to reach new
supporters. Talk to me about what bold, blunt, brief, means.
- I think that in today's society,
we need to cut through a lot of frivolous words in some
respects and just get to the meat and potatoes.
Bold, blunt, brief, is our commitment
to cutting through the noise. let's get right to
what it is that we actually need our audience to do.
We have 2 million members across the country.
They're getting emails and communications constantly.
We want to get to the point of what it is that we want them
to do, or we want them to pay attention to, so that they
know that we're not wasting their time.
- You said that you see your job as getting our attention.
Tell me how you persuade people to pay attention,
and what do you do once you get it?
- More than anything else I think is important for us to
hone in on the emotions of our community.
If our community can feel the authenticity of what we're
saying to them, I've got their attention.
Whether that's signing a petition, volunteering,
donating all of these things are at their disposal and then
turning that emotion into actionable,
positive things for our community.
That's what we've been rewarded.
- How did the pandemic pave a way
towards this era of digital
advocacy?
- You know, that's a great question, Sarah.
The NAACP has over 2 million members across the country.
The most important thing that we can do is boots on the
ground. We can March, we can protest.
We can do things in our local community.
The pandemic made us have to think differently.
And so digital advocacy became one of the most powerful
things that we could do. Getting petitions signed,
getting donations, signed, having patched through calls,
calling local legislators around issues.
We could do that and put that into the Palm of your hand.
- Tell me about the, we are done dying campaign.
- We were very much in the, in the throws of these,
the start of the pandemic at the time,
facts and figures came out that African-American communities
were being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 for a
number of different reasons.
And so We Are Done Dying originally started out as a
campaign to talk about the disproportionate impacts on the
black community. Right on the heels of that, we saw a, some,
a lot of unfortunate events take place with regards to a
Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd,
And we couldn't allow it to just be one thing.
It was one of those bold, blunt, brief, components that you
were mentioning and saying, we're sick of this.
We're tired of our communities being targeted.
We're tired of these being framed as isolated incidents.
So we want to deal with this on a macro level.
So We Are Done Dying became our campaign
around sharing the facts and figures of
what's taking place within our community.
Not just from a pandemic standpoint,
but police reform, talking about wealth gaps,
talking about educational gaps.
This is our cry to our community saying not only are we not
going to stand for this anymore,
but there's actionable change that we can see take place
within our communities.
And I think we were successful in doing so.
- How does that make you feel that your marketing
makes such a big impact on society?
- I couldn't be happier. We are a bottom up organization.
Our members dictate what's going to happen within the
association. So what they say the agenda is,
is what the agenda is.
When we see them utilizing our messaging or pushing out
something that we've done,
I feel that much more honored about what we're doing because
it means we didn't miss it.
- The NAACP posted a tweet during the January sixth coup,
which earns something like a million likes,
walk me through that moment.
- We basically created a virtual war room cause everyone was
home, and we were making things happen in real time.
And one of the most important things for us from a
communication standpoint was our ability to take advantage
of the aspect of I'm going to let my community know I hear
them, and I'm going to use my platform to speak
to what it is that they're feeling.
Our new community knew that at that moment,
there wasn't a tremendous amount that anybody could do,
but they need to know somebody was there with them.
- And you spoke?
- And we spoke. we had one tweet.
- One little tweet? I think it was a huge tweet!
- It was a huge tweet.
- One of the biggest tweets ever.
- It was one of the biggest tweets ever.
We had over 1 million likes of the tweet itself.
And it was really just a tweet in regards to stating that we
thought taking a knee was bad.
A small gesture brought the nation to its knees in a moment,
right?
- Yeah.
- And now we're sitting here watching individuals
terrorizing our nation's Capitol.
It's an emotional experience for a lot of people,
but we wanted to make sure that the frustration that
our audience felt was received
and they rewarded us with the engagement itself.
- How do you find the courage to be bold,
to be blunt, to be brief?
- I've lost enough battles being quiet.
If something's going to go awry,
it's going to go awry with my voice being attached to it.
The association is, is very strong in that respect,
in that we're going to do the right things because it's the
right thing to do. And you don't win every battle,
but we're going to win the long, the long battle.
The long victory is, is,
is making sure that our communities are improved,
protect and change.
I think it's important for us to have a why not mentality
when it comes to these things.
Why wouldn't you do the right thing when it's an opportunity
we're showing up for those who are being marginalized as
much as possible and using our platform effectively in that
respect.
- How proud is your mother, of you?
- Almost too proud.
She wants to know what,
whatever I'm doing whenever I'm doing something,
because she wants to tell everybody. I'm thrilled that I can
make my family so proud and that the long conversations,
the hard work that she mustered over the period of time,
where she was working and trying to keep us on the right
track and putting two kids through college.
I'm rewarding her now. You know, she,
she made a good investment. She's sowed good seeds.
- She did a good job.
- It's bearing fruit miles. So thank you, mom.
I appreciate you.
- Thanks for tuning in.
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