Big aid brands: the Global South isn’t a billboard. Poverty is not your PR. Struggle isn’t your stage. Crisis isn’t your campaign. And this aid logo 'arms race' is neocolonialism. Because it’s colonial when branded gifts or rations are meant to remind the receiver whose money it is. It’s ‘a carnival of names and flags and logos’ on aid supplies, says Jan Egeland at Norwegian Refugee Council. “It is increasingly distastful, the excessive #branding by donors, UN agencies and us in INGOs… from school bags to tents, shelter, latrines, and health posts,” he says. “Children in need should not have to advertise their donors.” In a competitive #funding landscape, these agencies and NGOs use branding to meet donor visibility demands and taxpayer accountability — even mandating logos in contracts. But there are real-world implications to this overboard branding: ?? It undermines host countries and governments, says the Center for Global Development. ?? It can cause delays in aid, when agencies have to wait for branded materials. ?? Children feel embarrassed and disgraced to carry bags that label them as in need, says @humanitariango. ?? It dilutes the focus on aid effectiveness, with energy invested in donor glorification vs. assessing impact. ?? It reinforces the stereotype of aid receivers as passive, not agents of change. To be sure, this overly-branded aid system is white saviorism. It also steals awareness from locally-led nonprofits doing the real work on the ground. Like those implementing organizations that aid agencies use (and sometimes abuse). These grassroots and growth-stage #nonprofits need all the brand recognition they can get. They’re often in a starvation cycle — trying to keep their organization ?????? community healthy. Plus, these implementing orgs are most often delivering innovative programs. Not just shipping bags full of maize. So brand away, smaller nonprofits. And yes, there are times when NGO branding is critical for identification. Like an emergency Red Cross truck. But if you’re only a major donor, supplying goods: slapping your logo on those goods is gross. That’s like a high-net-worth stamping every donation dollar with their name. Or like a #foundation etching their #brand into every meal served at a community kitchen. What should big aid and INGOs do instead? ???? Brand your building, vehicles, or team uniforms — not the supplies or gifts. ???? Communicate stories to donors back home — not just pictures of logos. ???? Never let branding interfere with what’s right/best/fastest for implementation. ???? Invite communities to co-design the branding on items they will use or wear. I’m open to other ideas here. Because aid isn’t a branding battleground. So stop the aid-vertising. And favor dignity over donor decals. Lives over logos. ?????? ________________________________ 1. Follow Kevin L. Brown to maximize your funding 2. Click the ?? to get notified 3. Like, comment, or repost ????
?? YOUR TURN: What should agencies and INGOs do? And what's the appropriate balance of #branding in aid?
?? READ MORE: ?????? ????’?? ???????? ???? ???????? ?????? ?????? ???????? ‘???????? ????????’ in The New Humanitarian? “People who use aid ‘should have the basic human rights of being themselves and not the poster-children of far-away organisations’”
?? UPDATE: This post went viral. Then vanished. After 200k views & 3,600 engagements, it’s clear: 1?? The Global South aid-vertising issue is real 2?? There are more problems & ideas I didn’t include 3?? Many people at aid agencies & INGOs saw the post 4?? The rebuttals from detractors were quite weak 5?? LinkedIn (or big aid defenders) shut it down Read more below. View the best comments. And see the (odd) data in my viral post, post mortem. ???? https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/viral-post-mortem-aid-logo-arms-race-kevin-l-brown
"Because aid isn’t a branding battleground" that is where we get it wrong. Because AID IS PRIMARILY A BRANDING BATTLEGROUND. I do not know where the development sector got this idea that these governments are philanthropic and happy to help some poor people in some far away country. Aid primarily serves three purposes. 1. It is a form of power to the giving country that it is capable of feeding and supporting another society better than the government in place. This is intended to undermine the power and legitimacy of that government and allows for a greater and bigger bargaining poweron extraction,military bases and ideological leanings knowing that they are more "trusted" and are seen to be more "useful". 2. Aid serves as a form of constant "we own you" relationship where each power wants to show the other that it is more present in a society That is why they have rules on logos. 3. AID serves as a form of idelogical brainwashing of a society. If a society grows up being made to constantly see that europe is richer than your own country, you are going to follow their ideology. You are going to follow their education. You are going to follow their culture. And that is what capitalism is all about-creating a uniform market.
I will love to talk with you about this As with my experience seeing UN logo's on a bucket, on a name it ... Also logo's from others, but UN is champion, but seeing hardly any positive sustainable change This is has nothing to do with aid, suporting the vulnerable, the victims. It is a pr to the donors and global norths Actually I am writing my experience and knowledge now down in a book (related to living/working in Libya) Love to talk, as research show the communication is not connect to the aim, the victims or vulnerable, but is related to donors As they have to give money. They have to recognize the message when this is to far from their field, money is not been given therefor many vulnerable do not get any aid Aid is giving by the need of the donor, not the receiver
Little bit shrill Kevin. It’s very difficult to maintain public support for funding aid programmes in ‘The West’. I agree that slapping flags and logos appears distasteful: but it’s worth considering that a good part of the target audience for this branding is domestic. It’s very difficult to sell aid programmes to a sceptical public. Try making the case - in vague and conceptual terms - for long term technical assistance to the (archetypal) Daily Mail reader in the U.K. Branded mosquito nets, blankets, or field hospitals help sell aid to the taxpayers that pay for it. Bags of maize are real and feed desperate people who are hungry. That’s a concept that taxpayers can understand. STAMPING a flag on a bag of maize isn’t always gross, neo-colonial or saviourist: sometimes it’s a bit more nuanced and pragmatic than that. SLAMMING big donors and their aid programmes as gross, neo-colonial and saviourist seems blunt and counterproductive when aid budgets are under extreme pressure.
If you are arguing for a completely different system for distributing aid, I agree. This is needed. However, if the food or services are paid for with US tax payer dollars, it should say so. It’s people to people care and support. It should denote care not saviorism. I agree with your argument about it contributing to “influence” politics. The influence should say the money and food can be trusted. It should reflect our values. And those are good values. What the winning solution is is to start building the brands of local private sectors. Building branding and marketing companies writ large to promote the local good. To promote locals supporting locals. Branding isn’t the issue. Where the cameras are pointed and whose controlling the messsging is. There are few donor projects focused on building up branding, packaging, marketing, advertising, digital promotions, and other like industries. We need those.
I do not really agree with your post. It is important that beneficiaries and their communities around them know exactly where the aid comes from, especially in the new era of misinformation. Private philanthropy is an important part of humanitarian aid, and if having a company logo on some hygiene or food kits is what they want and allows you as an NGO to deliver important support, I do not see a big issue. Let us assume that we forbid logos from private donors, can you imagine how many funds will be lost? (because, yes, private companies do that also for marketing, just like you write posts to attract views, and there is nothing wrong about it). Having said that, I appreciate such posts, which are not based on short slogans but on experience and reflection. I wish the internet had more of such healthy debates.
I worked on a project with a big INGO I won’t name. I was working with one school over the course of six months to prototype and test solutions and I suggested that we provide a fence and solar printer, both of which were things they expressed were needed, to thank the school. Our grant management team suggested “visibility” instead, i.e. a sign post for the school branded with the NGOs branding. I sent them a picture of the SIX NGO branded signs that were already outside of the school. We never got them that fence. One of the final straws for me.
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1 年?? READ MORE: ?????? ???????? ?????????????? ???????????????? ?????????????????????? ?????? ???? ?????????????? ???????????? at Center for Global Development “Because the evidence is mixed on whether branding actually benefits donor agencies and governments, but evidence shows that aid branding can have corrosive systemic effects on the relationship between recipient governments and their people, development aid branding should be restricted to a narrow set of interventions, including humanitarian responses to natural disasters (tsunamis, hurricanes, and disease outbreaks) and governance surveys and reports.”