Summary

A guerilla marketing campaign, using a variety of complementary techniques, to publicize Esperanto to a range of audiences.

Introduction

The Esperanto movement in the United States has foundered. It's hard to know just how many Esperantists there really are, but membership in ELNA has gradually declined from a peak of around twelve hundred at the end of the 1980s to 630 in 2004, and clearly has not kept pace with population growth in the country. Although ELNA has a substantial current bank balance, the organization has been losing money each year.

ELNA and the US Esperanto movement have several key assets (e.g. 1-800-ESPERANTO, a professional staff (although only 1 person, down from 2 due to budget cuts), NASK, Learning and Using, Pasporto al Tuta Mondo, a decent website), but there is no clear organizational push to make the public aware of Esperanto and our resources.

More significantly, for Esperantists there is no clear direction on what they could do to help advance the organization. There are some directed funds that people can contribute to, but no campaigns or projects (that I'm aware of) that people could join in order to make a difference.

This document proposes a campaign to publicize Esperanto: a guerilla campaign to market Esperanto to a wide range of audiences. My goal is to galvanize Esperantists around a common purpose -- to put the idea of Esperanto before the public again. Individually, our ability to make a difference is limited, but if we organize and use our effort strategically, I believe we could have a significant impact. This campaign could be conducted at any scale: at a school or university, in a city or town, or across a state or region. As the president of ESNE, I originally began thinking about this plan in that context, but the potential payoff would be greatest if a national campaign could be organized. So, I guess this is a proposal to ELNA and the national community of Esperanto speakers: Are you interested in trying to turn around the Esperanto movement in the United States?

The plan is still a rough draft -- if you're interested and excited, please contribute! This document is made available in a wiki -- feel free to edit it, to contribute ideas or content. If you're not sure how this works, follow this link to learn HowToUseWiki.

Overview

The goal of the project is to expose people to Esperanto and aim to have them accomplish one or more targeted goals: buy a text book, sign up for an on-line course, join an Esperanto organization, etc. The project will seek to create a "brand identity" for Esperanto using a team of volunteers who will employ a range of techniques to draw people into paying attention to advertising and visiting a website. The website will provide mechanisms for people to accomplish the goals outlined. The goals will be operationalized as a set of metrics that can used to gather data on effectiveness and help us refine the messages and the techniques.

First, it will be necessary to construct or coordinate with a professional website that conveys clear, consistent, and attractive messages about Esperanto: a logo and brand identity. We could develop different ways to approach the site that present different sides of Esperanto with angles for different audiences. For the logo, I propose we use a green star with an "E" in the middle (it doesn't have to be this logo, but imagine this for a moment to understand how the campaign would work). Some ideas for the brand identities are "Esperanto: The International Language that Works" or "Esperanto: It Makes a World of Difference" or "Esperanto: It's Not Just for Geeks and Weirdos" or "Esperanto: Even More Widely Spoken than Klingon". We should also develop banner graphics that show the logo that people can post on their websites that would link to the site.

We need to provide a way in for people who take an early interest, by setting up the website ahead of time and getting it linked in with phrases that people might search for ("green star," "e inside a star," "e in a green star," etc.). In fact, we ought to carefully plan a mark that can be described in text and make sure that our site can be found with the descriptions that real people come up with when they see our marks: That means testing the mark. It also means putting the site up early and linking to it early enough that google gets it indexed and perhaps also purchasing google and other search-engine ads.

With a site selected, and the mark or marks defined and tested, the next step is to drive people to the site. There are many ways this could be done. Here are a few:

  1. Recruit a national group of participants who would get green spray chalk and, in two phases, use stencils to mark the logo all over the country. At the same time, we should try to get the banner graphics linked up all over the internet in as many places as possible. In the first phase (for a week or two or three), we would use a stencil (and banner graphic) that just has a star, and in the second stage, a stencil with a star with an "E" in the middle. During the second phase, coordinated efforts would be made to put up flyers and run ads and articles in local papers that would link the logo to Esperanto and to the website.
  2. Develop amateur EsperantoPublicServiceAnnouncements--short videos--that build on the brand identity that can be distributed through the website and via email. They should use the logo prominantly and communicate the message clearly and succinctly. They need to be funny and memorable--things that people will want to share with others. (With digital video, these things are actually quite easy to do--you just need good ideas, a bit of time, and a team of creative people. The Bush in 30 Seconds advertisements are a potential model.) These videos could, potentially, be developed by a range of different groups and our site would simply provide links to them. More important, the videos and the pages that provide them need to link to our site.
  3. Develop a compelling but mysterious narrrative that works as a puzzle to get people involved and eventually leads to our site. The I love bees site was an example that intrigued a lot of people and that eventually turned out to be a marketing ploy for the game HALO. Such a site would give us a secondary way in to the main site, and some extra google juice (especially if other people started linking to it).
  4. Make a variety of small posters with matching slogans (both serious and silly) in English and Esperanto (e.g. "Lernu facilan utilan lingvon" = "Learn an easy useful language"; "Paco, Amo, Esperanto" = "Peace, Love, Esperanto"; "Inoj Sxategas Esperanton" = "Chicks dig Esperanto"; etc.) This was done in Austin and resulted in a newspaper article and a returned club-member, and some name recognition (for months after we'd meet people who knew about Esperanto from having seen the posters). (ELNA already has a set of 20 or so 8-1/2x11 posters, many eye-catching, produced by a volunteer. There are also posters at the Reta Informada Centro
  5. Any Esperantist with a website or blog should make prominent mention of Esperanto, even if their site is not in Esperanto.

#Offer inducements for completing the Postal Course (possibly to particular subgroups, like Latin teachers or students

(What ideas do you have? Add them here!)

Plan

Here is a rough outline of how the project might be undertaken.

  1. Prepare idea -- that's what this document does.
  2. Solicit feedback -- We are soliciting feedback among a small group of people, but we need to take it to a larger group and try to recruit an organizing committee that can critically review the structure and help craft the message and refine the strategy.
  3. Recruit volunteers -- The whole plan hinges on getting a large number of people (like, >1000) to participate: identifying audiences, creating videos, chalking sidewalks, putting up flyers, and creating a buzz.
  4. Develop concrete plan -- When it's known what the potential scope is of the action, we can develop concrete plans for what we might reasonably expect to accomplish.
  5. Create a schedule and time-line -- it will be critical to have events coordinated to make the most of effort. The goal is to use a variety of techniques to produce a synergy: people who've seen a couple of stars are more likely to notice a flyer, pay attention to an ad, and/or visit the website.
  6. Determine expenses -- Depending on the response and numbers of volunteers, we can develop several scenarios for what we might realistically expect to accomplish.
  7. Seek funding -- If we receive a sizable volunteer response, we may be able to leverage some funding from Esperanto organizations and or donors that will allow us to pursue several more expensive strategies that could offer significant returns (e.g. advertising in national newspapers, etc), but which probably wouldn't be worth pursuing without a substantial army of volunteers to conduct the marketing campaign.
  8. Move forward -- Actually bring this plan about.

Dale writes: I think it is very important to be accessible, but not pushy.

Steve replies: I don't think what is outlined here is very "pushy". It's just trying to get the word out to people who might be interested. I think of "pushy" being sending out SPAM, calling people on the phone, or knocking on doors. Putting up flyers and creating websites doesn't seem very pushy to me.

Dale writes: It is probably useful to counter the perception that Esperanto is a dream that died.

Steve asks: How do you translate into a message that we can get across to people? "Esperanto: The Dream Lives?"

Rob Read writes: Great work! This is a great idea.

I personally think one of the keys to guerilla marketing is to try to measure the effect of your marketing. This can be done either by picking a geographic region, or a picking a small cultural area (say programmers /IT people) and marketing to that group. For example, we could try to spend money and time in just New England, and see if that makes a measurable difference. Additionally, one can use a "Blitz and Relax" strategy. The idea is to make a localized effect in time: spend half your money in April, and then in May and June see how effective it was, and then in July and August plan what you will do in September. Then one can try lots of techniques, like purchasing google ads, purchasing print ads, the chalk/stencil idea, etc., and see which fall flat and which are successful.

I'm totally on board, Steve. Let's keep working on this!

This should, of course, be part of an overall business plan for the organization.

ESNE