Problems and Solutions

Marketers work in a highly competitive field, so they are always on the lookout for insights that help them improve their effectiveness.  This week , Business to Business marketing expert Ray Schulz has blogged about recent Topos’ research and how it uncovers important insights for anyone who is working to communicate to their audiences about problems and solutions. 

He starts out:

Want a crash course in how notto position a story? Read the new research from the Child Advocacy 360 Foundation. It shows that bad news turns people off and that good news inspires them.

To put it more precisely, Americans are daunted by horror stories about disadvantaged children. But they’re motivated by coverage of who’s doing what that works, says Hershel Sarbin, the founder of the Child Advocacy 360 Foundation. And this may be true in many arenas—even business.

The research, the first to offer insights into the effect of media coverage on attitudes about children’s issues, is based on online interviews with 2,006 registered voters nationwide, focus group sessions with voters in three states and TalkBack Testing, in which participants were tested on their ability to repeat the core of a message and pass it on to others.

 Schultz then lays out some of the details of the research to show how it applies not just to children’s advocacy, but to any group that is trying to build public support and enthusiasm for change.