I started Good Impressions, which helps effective nonprofits and foundations scale using paid ads and SEO.
JSWinchell
Karma: 433
I think it’s counterproductive to criticize organizations that are beginning to do more marketing/outreach. This type of criticism reinforces EA norms that it’s good to build something, but not good to promote or talk about it. Those norms are a contributing factor to EA being so behind on this type of work.
We should be celebrating organizations that are making an effort on this and encouraging others to do more.
AMF
It can be really hard to internalize this but I thought it might be worth a quick reminder that your value as a person has nothing to do with how much impact you have. You are clearly an incredible person trying hard to live a good life and you deserve all the happiness in the world for it!
I’d be curious to see this as well
Great, thanks so much!
[Question] Are GiveWell’s malaria charity recommendations up to date?
Just a quick thank you to the FTX team for working so hard at such a difficult task!
Hi there—I wanted to offer to be another person for you to talk to if you’ve already spoken to all the other nice people that have left comments. I’m no expert, but I will listen! (You can message me on here)
It may be easier than normal to get into McKinsey/BCG/Bain right now
100% agree!
$4 per graduated EA fellow is absolutely incredible!
If anyone knows someone at CEA who would be interested in hearing about this please reach out.
For me, the takeaway is that the actual cost of generating interest in EA (Brian’s $4 cost per graduated EA fellow from below) is significantly below our little group’s estimates of what an engaged EA is worth ($3K -$30K as noted above).
I think everyone would agree an engaged EA is worth more than $4.
If someone is reading this who would know how to scale FB ads for EA university fellowships that seems like an extremely high impact thing to do.
I have domain expertise in digital marketing and would love to help EA organizations. I’m not qualified to weigh in on the questions of messaging or how far-reaching the campaign should be, but once those things are figured out I can tell you the best way to use YouTube and Google Search to accomplish your goals.
Agreed—I am guessing it would be incredibly cost-effective. I’m hoping to test this with a few student groups this upcoming fall, we’ll see if it works.
Possibly the 1 minute video would be better than the 6 second. The good news is it’s easily testable :)
Unfortunately the $40K/month program has been deprecated, but thanks for sharing!
Thanks Brian! I’d love to hear what your cost per signup was, feel free to send me a direct message if you prefer :)
Thanks so much for your thoughts Robert!
“What would you think of the concern that these types of ads would be a “low fidelity” way of spreading EA that could risk misinforming people about EA? I think from my experience community building, it’s really useful to be able to describe and discuss EA ideas in detail, and that there are risks to giving someone an incorrect view of EA. These risks include someone being critical of what they believe EA is, and spreading this critique, as well as discouraging them from getting involved when they may have done so at a later time. The risk is probably lower if someone clicks on a short ad that takes them to say effectivealtruism.com where the various ideas are carefully explained and introduced. But someone who only saw the ads and didn’t click could end up with an incorrect view of EA.”
-> Great points! A couple thoughts.In most cases I imagine the ads would be promoting a single org/group/book/event vs EA as a movement/philosophy. I think this makes it much easier to be high fidelity. (e.g. promoting deworming initiatives doesn’t require a thorough overview of the ins and outs of EA. )
Many ads don’t have to get into detail at all in order to be successful. E.g. a 6 second video of a student saying “I started a student group to help students do good, check it out!” isn’t actually saying anything about EA that could be right or wrong. As another example, if you see an image that says “Founders Pledge” on a website frequented by founders, the ad itself isn’t saying anything about the org that would be right or wrong except for the fact that Founders Pledge exists ad spends money on advertising.
“I would be interested to see discussion about what would and wouldn’t make a good online ad for EA e.g. how to intrigue people without being inaccurate or over-sensationalizing parts of EA. ”
-> I agree! I’m excited to start testing
“I know lots of university EA groups make use of Facebook advertising and some have found this useful to promote events. I don’t know whether Google/Youtube ads allow targeting at the level of students of a specific university?”
-> Yep! We could only target 18-24 year-olds within Xkm of the university. Part of the reason I expect this would be beneficial above and beyond the FB ads is (1) it would be video + sound vs just an image which I think is standard for FB and (2) it would be incredibly cheap (you could reach ~1,000 students for $10). I would be very interested in helping interested university groups with this.
Opinion: Digital marketing is under-utilized in EA
Thanks so much for your question Cienna!
The honest answer is that we are not approaching this project anticipating that it will end in a negotiation with VISA. My assumption (could very well be flawed as this is our first social media campaign) was that VISA would either change the fee or not, without negotiating externally. You may very well be right though so thank you for offering these tips, it’s greatly appreciated!
The aim in targeting one processor was to maximize the pressure on a single company vs spreading ourselves thin across multiple.
Thanks again!
I totally understand the thinking here and agree it makes sense when you look at it at the individual level. But if you zoom out, the upshot of a community so focused on nitpicks like this is that people leading EA orgs are nervous to say anything about their orgs or work. This leads to research being under distributed, fellowships and courses being under subscribed, ideas largely staying within the community, etc.
EA orgs aren’t going to get better at this work without making some attempts, and right now the incentives are so stacked against trying (because of the nitpick culture) that it’s systematically neglected. I think BlueDot deserves a lot of credit for being willing to try new things.