---
name: organic-first-campaign
description: Design grassroots-first campaigns for organizations facing spending disadvantages against well-funded competitors. Use when planning a launch campaign, growth strategy, or marketing with limited budget vs established competitors.
metadata:
  author: bencium
---

# Organic-First Campaign

Framework for designing grassroots-first campaigns for organizations facing resource disadvantages.

## Core Thesis

"Paid media scales attention. Organic narrative and grassroots networks scale trust."

Treat paid media as an amplifier of proven organic winners — not a standalone channel. This framework is for when your competitor outspends you.

## Six-Stage Workflow

All stages must be completed in order.

### Stage 1: Intake

Three modes based on user input detail:
- **Mode A (Full Brief)**: Skip interview; confirm understanding in one sentence; proceed
- **Mode B (Interview Mode)**: Ask 8-field questions in batches of ≤4
- **Mode C (Default/Terse)**: Ask only missing critical fields (outcome, audience, sector, budget) in one batch; default others with transparent assumption table

**Never invent specifics not provided.** Use bracketed placeholders like `[incumbent]` for competitors not named.

### Stage 2: Ideation

Before channel analysis, produce 5+ distinct campaign concepts, each with:
- Name and one-line thesis
- Primary channel tier
- Authenticity hook (real-world detail that resists faking)
- Minimum viable version testable in two weeks

### Stage 3: Asymmetry Classification

Classify spend ratio:
- **Mild**: 1:2–1:5
- **Severe**: 1:5–1:50
- **Categorical**: 1:50+

Evaluate six preconditions from the Hungarian case study (score 0–6):
1. Credible insider/founder story
2. Accumulated grievance or unmet demand
3. Consolidated challenger field
4. Felt pain (not abstract)
5. Threshold-rewarding market/system
6. Incumbent overplaying saturation

**Thresholds:**
- 5–6: proceed full strength
- 3–4: proceed but build missing preconditions during campaign
- 0–2: preconditions ARE the actual campaign — redirect there first

### Stage 3a: Message-Market Fit Gate

Three yes/no validation questions (absent evidence = "no"):

1. Have ≥10 target audience members taken the desired action without prompting?
2. Can you name specific pain phrased in the audience's own words?
3. Would ≥3 of 5 target people commit today at your intended ask level?

**Scoring:**
- 3/3: proceed to Stage 4
- 2/3: insert 1–2 week validation cycle first
- 0–1/3: **refuse to produce full campaign plan** — route to discovery work

"Distribution amplifies signal; it cannot manufacture it."

### Stage 4: Channel Stack + Allocation

**Function before cost.** Select primary function matching the bottleneck:
- Demand capture (existing intent, cannot find you)
- Paid amplification (organic works but limited reach)
- Trust compounding (find and click, but no conversion/return)

**Allocation by asymmetry:**
- Mild: 70% organic / 30% paid
- Severe: 80% organic / 20% paid
- Categorical: organic only (Tiers 1–2); refuse broad cold-paid

Critical rule: "Do not bid on your own brand-name keywords without a lift test."

### Stage 5: Campaign Execution Framework

Five mandatory sections:

1. **Competitor saturation map**: what each competitor floods; the absence that becomes your signal
2. **Three alternative shapes**: community-first, earned-media-first, search-capture-first
3. **First-30-days action list**: week-by-week with effort estimates; cuts named explicitly if capacity exceeded
4. **Ad copy + boost rules** (if paid applies): 24–48h organic traction gate before boosting; never boost without proven organic signal
5. **Lift-test plan**: one concrete experiment with hypothesis, control/test definition, and decision threshold

Plus: anti-vanity dashboard listing metrics to track vs. explicitly ignore.

## Anti-Fabrication Rules

**Never invent:**
- Competitor names or specifics not in the user's brief
- Podcast or newsletter names
- Budget numbers not provided
- Platform-specific data without user source

**Always:**
- Use `[incumbent]`, `[competitor]`, `[platform]` as placeholders
- Flag research as required week-1 action rather than inventing specifics

## When to Refuse

Refuse to produce the full campaign plan when:
- MMF Gate scores 0–1/3 (route to discovery)
- Categorical spend asymmetry + user wants broad cold-paid creative
- No genuine founder/insider voice for campaigns requiring authenticity
- Stated weekly capacity makes the plan impossible to execute