"Where are we publicising today evening??", my friend asked me swiping the sweat off his forehead. It was 2 30 PM on a bright sunny sunday and we were standing in Artesia ( the Indian street in Orange county,California) to distribute fliers for the forthcoming Awareness walk event for CRY( Child rights and You).We had over 1000 such fliers to distribute and we were only 3 in number to handle those.Our publicty campaign had to intensify as the event date was nearing. Hence we had decided to cover 2 locations each weekend to accelerate the public reach and awareness.That evening, we were targeting the University of California campus at Los Angeles.There was this Desi musical event which would normally attract a huge Indian crowd and hence a good opportunity for publicity.
Flyer distributors like us are considered as one of the nuisances in public gatherings like this.We are next to autograph hunters, in surrounding people and hunt them down until we stuff our fliers.Three of us took positions at three different entranc
es and chased our targets. Now we had to clearly segment our targets based on the probabilty of our fliers being directed to dustbins (yea..people do that..) or handbags. Over 60% of the crowd that turns out to such social events are from upscale strata .The stakes were high as any potential donor will donate BIG! Our process of distributing the flier to a potential donor starts atleast 10 seconds before the actual flyer distribution takes place. We start observing the family members to identify the 'approachable' ! Once Identifying the 'approaceable', we pitch our flyer,Event, CRY organization and urge to donate. we typically end with this punch line "please joins us with friends and family" while thrusting the flyer in the hands....All this happens in the time gap of encountering the 'approachable' and the act of giving the flyer, which would be under 10 seconds.
We encountered people with different attitudes towards the flyer and the CRY event itself , from flamboyant men and pompous women who jus take the flyers and throw it in the dustbin right in front of us,from people who did not believe in such fundraising organizations (they were at least courteous enough to not take the flyer,considering the wastage it will result in), from courteous people who collected the flyer and acknowledged our presence without questions ,to those blessed souls who actually showed interest in knowing more about the event and the organization.Such blessed souls more than often end up in volunteering for CRY or pull more donors for CRY ( Chain marketing type!) It took us 20 to 25 mins to exhaust the bunch of fliers to distribute.
Distributing fliers has taught me some important lessons in life,
People are as different as they can possibly be. We got to see some characters which I never believed to have existed (like the one throwing the flyer in dustbin,after a couple of sentences of ridicule on CRY). You gotta come out and try meeting all types of people coz life is too short to actually meet all of them.
Never take success to your head as you grow,coz one day it will instill arrogance in you which you will never realize. Success is momentary and life is a journey.One should enjoy the success and move on in search of the next one wihtout letting your success in past affecting you (negatively atleast) on your pursuit of next success.In short, have a level head on your shoulders.
This excercise has given me enormous amounts of training in patience as at times, behaviour of these arrogant bunch of people can drive you crazy. If you can handle them successfully,you can handle anyone and anything on earth!
You are what you think. Honestly, almost all who came to that 'cultural gathering' have shelled out more than a couple of hundred bucks to spend a 3 hour evening in Bollywood music,which only means that almost all of them are more than capable of donating a small amount.However, you really have to have that mind to donate ( Although there are still a small percentage of people who do not donate for some genuine reasons).
The success rate in flyer distribution is extremely low. Your success rate will be 1 or 2% which means you might invoke interest in 1 or 2 folks out of every 100 persons you meet and distribute the flyer.However, if that 1 or 2% who show interest are genuine, both interms of donating as well as volunteering, you can feel the sense of achievement, after all that was what we were looking for.
I retuned back after a long day, recalling the various characters I had met all through the day and reflecting on my thoughts and impressions on them….certainly, many more lessons to be learnt….Am still working on it :)
4 comments:
No comments on your post. But the question you popped made me to recollect my experiences.
I have been into many phases of life more than anyone (I know everybody feels the same, except that only some accept!)
Where each phase characterizing my attitude. From introvert to intelligent, from nerd to being an a**hole, from idiot to more idiotness (whatever) and all other possible flattering or disparaging nouns can be used describe me at some point of my life.
During this intermittently volatile life I(& many) have come across several puzzling questions, pondering the greatest minds on earth.
One such question is
"Why we are the way we are??"
I have heard people saying "to answer worlds some of the most baffling questions such as this, one has to detach from our materialistic world".
As suggested, I tried yoga, meditation, pranayam, dhayanam bla bla bla ( I guess all are same at core. Like, different windows developed on same kernel) to detach. Which didn't work out as expected.
Then I decided to start and develop my own theory(way) to figure out the answers.
So, I tried.. I worked hard... I tried again and worked hard again.. this cycle happened again & again. Results were same as Thomas Edison's preliminary experiments.
But one day{fortunately its today the same day Michael{King of pop{Sorry. I have used nested brackets to test my last grammar experiment{One has to have structural programming language knowledge to remove braces sequentially}}} passed away}, figured out way to find solution.
I am going now to work on the answer, I may not come back. But the result will be ready by the time this user "Rumination Unplugged"(Btw who is this guy??) posts another one.
Nice post :)
I've always been afraid of taking up such jobs because of having to face such people :(
I can tell one thing from being on the other side. I've always empathized with those people standing out in the sun for a cause or to earn a few bucks trying to hand out pamphlets for some shop. so, I usually get the pamphlets and take care to atleast not throw it out in front of them.
But somehow, I've not been comfortable giving out donations to people on the road. Their cause may be really genuine. But how do I know that. All I have is a pamphlet. I've had people carrying a folder with photos of animals and say they're from 'greenpeace'. Whenever I meet such people, I always try to get the websites or the phone numbers, so that I can donate directly. But then looking from the fier distributor's view, such a person is not dependable. He may take the phone number, but might forget to donate once he leaves the place. Complex world...
@ Vijay
Absolutely.World would have been far better if it was simple!. I too do not believe getting the donations on the spot.Even if a donor comes up with that proposition,we educate them that there are better channels to do so. The whole idea of flier distribution in our case was only to invoke awareness,interest, encourage retrospection (which hopefully will convert to donation)!
And yea.Whoever accepts the flier graciously, are probable donors,so we have loads of respect for those :)
Thanks for bringing the donor's viewpoint. In such random scenarios, we always run the risk of encountering people for whom the subject might be too sensitive and at times we may end up hurting them...But yea..you lose to gain something :)
@ Sandeep
Dude!..Wheres your blog?!!!...Post ur write up mannn....interesting reading thou!
N@veen,
How can you forget the Amitabh Concert is Los Angeles. That was really an eye opener.
It is always difficult to get something out of people and when it is comes to money, it becomes really really difficult. We should cahnge the way we think. When i say WE.. it means all!
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