Alex’s blog about strategy, campaigning, growth, politics and climate (among other things).
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Union growth strategy & the vital role of retention
Member retention is just as important — if not more so — than recruitment for union growth. The success of any union depends on its ability to continually increase its membership. Union leaders, therefore, often concentrate their efforts on new member recruitment. However, while this is a critical aspect of union growth, it is not… Read more
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Union strategy, digital and the “battles to be won”
This article aims to address some of the strategic “battles to be won” for unions — the major digital challenges unions need to overcome so we can build power and win for working people, especially in the rapidly transforming work, economic and cultural landscape. There is not a lot of clarity about the role of… Read more
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Why every union benefits from “brand” Australian Unions
Imagine a pervasive effect that creates a systematic bias in how people perceive your union, based not on evidence or careful evaluation but on a “global affect” or feeling. This is the halo effect, an old and widely studied psychological phenomenon: The halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand, or… Read more
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Lessons for union recruitment: brand choice research
Research by the GfK Roper Group into what reasons were important when deciding to buy a brand may be of some use for unions thinking about recruitment. Read more about why branding is important for unions. The research (which is from 1992) looked at the reasons that people bought brands, and according to the report,… Read more
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What I’m reading (Feb 2023)
Stories and links that are of interest or relevance to union leaders, strategists, campaigners and organisers. Unions, workers and the economy Growth and union operations Artificial intelligence/ large language models/ ChatGPT AI and the future of work Campaigning and digital Read more
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One simple thing to supercharge your union’s comms
Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away Attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The secret to strong messaging for unions is to just say one thing. Just one. Unfortunately, in our over-communicated modern societies, you don’t get to say five… Read more
