Heather Fletcher, the senior content editor with Target Marketing, reports on using advocacy and trending news events to indirectly draw attention to your brand.  From this profile, Pepsi failed, yet other advocacy strategies can help spark conversation and draw attention to important issues.

“Pepsi ‘Missed the Mark’ in Protest Ad,” (Target Marketing, 4-6-17) includes several passages from how ScanMyPhotos.com carefully chooses its battles and advocates on important issues. [The most important part is the advocacy campaign must be about the message and not as a promotional tool, explains Mitch Goldstone],

Leaders at smaller businesses may have to have stiffer spines.

“Mitch Goldstone, co-founder of ScanMyPhotos.com, an e-commerce company that digitizes family photos, has always taken strong political stances, unafraid of how it could affect his 26-year-old business based in Irvine, Calif.,” The New York Times writes. “He even appeared on CNN in 2015, after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy, to explain why he was opposed to him. These actions resulted in hundreds of angry phone calls for a few days, he said.”

Goldstone tells Target Marketing that he experienced backlash after the Times article, but his public brand statements continue to be anti-Trump.

“A big update,” Goldstone tells Target Marketing on Wednesday. “Onto another related advocacy effort. ScanMyPhotos.com is rushing to disrupt President Trump’s administration’s very public efforts to dismantle decades of scientific climate change data. We have already digitized more than 50,000 photos for several governmental agencies; yet sadly, due to a cloud of concern over any public engagement, many are requesting we provide full confidence that we handle this while being sensitive to and protecting their privacy.”