Do you think the EA tendency toward many smaller-to-midsize organizations plays a role in this? I’m not in the industry at all, but the “comms-focused” roles feel more fundamental in a sense than the “digital growth” roles. Stated differently, I can imagine an org having the former but not the latter, but find it hard to envision an org with only the latter. If an org only has a single FTE available for “marketing-related” work, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the job description for that role is often going to lean in the comms-focused direction.
I think it’s also more fundamental in the sense a number of EA orgs are inherently “comms-focused” because they’re lobbying for some sort of cause to some sort of decision maker (convince politicians to endorse challenge trials or ban datacentres and lead paint,, or maybe persuade fish farmers or maternal care workers in LEDCs to adopt a different approach). Or if they’re not directly lobbying they might be trying to communicate research to a relatively small group of people like computer scientists or people who want to do inter-species utility loss comparisons.
Also, with some notable exceptions I think a lot of EA is quite insular: orgs want to convey that they’re doing important work to OpenPhil funders, a pipeline of talent coming from EA groups, “aligned” organizations to collaborate with or the sort of small donor that’s already thinking about long shot solutions to x-risks or making donations to improve the welfare of unfashionable creatures. That’s a short list to a/b test, a hard group to target with paid media, and also an audience which has exacting expectations about how things are communicated, so the digital marketing to wider audience approach may not work so well. The down side is that competing for the same attention is going to usually be net less impactful than finding interest from the wider public...
I think this is a very reasonable framing, and I agree that org size and FTE constraints matter a lot here.
I also agree that digital growth isn’t the right fit for every EA org. But for certain types of work — fellowships, training programs, advocacy, recruitment-heavy pipelines — it seems quite plausible that digital channels could deliver more leverage in terms of participant volume, quality, and scalability than comms alone.
One place where I may disagree slightly is on which function is more “fundamental” in very small teams. In practice, digital growth tends to be more nuanced and multi-functional, whereas basic comms work (keeping the website updated, occasional social posts, newsletters, simple messaging) often doesn’t require a full-time role on its own. In many for-profit and nonprofit contexts, a single digital-focused marketer can cover a meaningful amount of baseline comms, but the reverse is less often true.
So if an org truly has only one marketing-related FTE, my intuition is that a generalist with strong digital and analytical skills — who can also handle light comms — may sometimes be a better starting point than a purely comms-focused hire. That won’t be true in all cases, but it seems underexplored given the types of scaling challenges many EA orgs face.
I would imagine you can count on 2 hands the number of EA orgs that even have 1 full time marketing role. Maybe I’m wrong though and its more like 4-5 hands :D.
Do you think the EA tendency toward many smaller-to-midsize organizations plays a role in this? I’m not in the industry at all, but the “comms-focused” roles feel more fundamental in a sense than the “digital growth” roles. Stated differently, I can imagine an org having the former but not the latter, but find it hard to envision an org with only the latter. If an org only has a single FTE available for “marketing-related” work, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the job description for that role is often going to lean in the comms-focused direction.
I think it’s also more fundamental in the sense a number of EA orgs are inherently “comms-focused” because they’re lobbying for some sort of cause to some sort of decision maker (convince politicians to endorse challenge trials or ban datacentres and lead paint,, or maybe persuade fish farmers or maternal care workers in LEDCs to adopt a different approach). Or if they’re not directly lobbying they might be trying to communicate research to a relatively small group of people like computer scientists or people who want to do inter-species utility loss comparisons.
Also, with some notable exceptions I think a lot of EA is quite insular: orgs want to convey that they’re doing important work to OpenPhil funders, a pipeline of talent coming from EA groups, “aligned” organizations to collaborate with or the sort of small donor that’s already thinking about long shot solutions to x-risks or making donations to improve the welfare of unfashionable creatures. That’s a short list to a/b test, a hard group to target with paid media, and also an audience which has exacting expectations about how things are communicated, so the digital marketing to wider audience approach may not work so well. The down side is that competing for the same attention is going to usually be net less impactful than finding interest from the wider public...
I think this is a very reasonable framing, and I agree that org size and FTE constraints matter a lot here.
I also agree that digital growth isn’t the right fit for every EA org. But for certain types of work — fellowships, training programs, advocacy, recruitment-heavy pipelines — it seems quite plausible that digital channels could deliver more leverage in terms of participant volume, quality, and scalability than comms alone.
One place where I may disagree slightly is on which function is more “fundamental” in very small teams. In practice, digital growth tends to be more nuanced and multi-functional, whereas basic comms work (keeping the website updated, occasional social posts, newsletters, simple messaging) often doesn’t require a full-time role on its own. In many for-profit and nonprofit contexts, a single digital-focused marketer can cover a meaningful amount of baseline comms, but the reverse is less often true.
So if an org truly has only one marketing-related FTE, my intuition is that a generalist with strong digital and analytical skills — who can also handle light comms — may sometimes be a better starting point than a purely comms-focused hire. That won’t be true in all cases, but it seems underexplored given the types of scaling challenges many EA orgs face.
I would imagine you can count on 2 hands the number of EA orgs that even have 1 full time marketing role. Maybe I’m wrong though and its more like 4-5 hands :D.