Like so many good business ideas, Clubbability came about almost by accident. It started as an improvised solution to a particular problem.

As marketers and strategists, Gareth and I have spent most of our careers working with brands that sell products – where sales figures give you continual feedback on which products are working and which aren’t, and where data can give you a pretty clear idea of who your customers are and what they want. 

But over the years we’ve both become more and more involved with other types of organisation: sometimes as paid consultants, sometimes working pro bono, and sometimes in positions of responsibility or as plain members.

I’m the Chair of a registered charity and membership organisation in the arts sector. I’m also the Chair of a busy tennis club, and have founded a regional charitable fund supporting tennis activities for disadvantaged and disabled people. I’ve done pro bono consulting work for a private primary school and a secondary state school. Likewise, Gareth works with all sorts of organisations, from his local kung fu club to St Paul’s Cathedral.

Like commercial enterprises, these organisations have marketing challenges. They compete in a marketplace, they need to reach and grow their audiences, see a return on investment, and deliver for their investors and stakeholders. 

But whereas, say, online stores can use merchandising figures to shine a light on key questions in these areas, other kinds of organisation are often shooting in the dark, relying on anecdote and guesswork. For example, member organisations frequently offer a bundle of very varied benefits for a single regular payment – but with no individual ‘sales figures’ to go on, they have no certainty about which ones are truly valued by existing members or attract new ones.

The Clubbability concept is all about turning the lights on, by analysing focus group-style feedback at survey-style scale. We discovered the method while doing a small project for Gareth’s kung fu club, playing around with AI to analyse a club survey. We then developed it at a larger scale for a regional tennis organisation, with amazingly clear and useful results. We realised that we could train AI to give us something that’s never been available before: a quantitative approach to qualitative data. 

In short, Clubbability enables us to provide marketing and strategic services to membership and non-for-profit organisations with the same level of confidence that we have when working for commercial clients. 

That’s a game-changer for the organisations we enjoy working with in our personal lives. And, if you feel your organisation is shooting in the dark when it comes to marketing, messaging and strategy,  it can be a game-changer for you too. 

We’d love to hear about your challenges – get in touch here.