A handful of darts

Photo by Andy Thrasher

In a nonprofit world steeped in planning and strategy and perfectionism, it’s no surprise that often communications campaigns are idealized as a single perfect dart, painstakingly designed for proper aerodynamics and targeted with rich data and expertise. The idea is that when this perfect dart hits its mark, it will reverberate throughout the world. Minds will change, politics will shift, funding will pour in. The problem with this approach is that there is no SuperDart, and if anything approaching it did exist, you would be much more likely to find it by accident. That is why instead of one dart, I’d rather throw a handful of darts any day.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen organizations pour huge amounts of time, energy, and “iterative process” into a single earned media pitch, email, video, or social media post for a campaign, only to see it completely negated by someone’s vacation or a shift in the algorithm–or maybe it just doesn’t land the way they hoped. Sometimes things inexplicably don’t work. And when that happens, it’s either too late or your team is too exhausted to pivot and try something different.

Every communications professional has buckets of examples of when an afterthought tweet or email or handheld video went viral and became the centerpiece of a campaign. So it’s important to build in the possibility of a happy accident.

This is not an argument to do things half-assed or scattershot. There is always a place for good planning and strategy. And you’re a professional with tons of experience and good instincts. You’re creative and you can make educated assumptions about what might work best. Even if you think one specific strategy has the best chance of success, you have what it takes to hedge that bet with some other ideas.

Fight the temptation to put it all into one fantasy SuperDart. Throw a handful of darts toward the target, then reassess, and maybe throw another handful.