In 2020 I interned in political affairs at The Borgen Project, the nonprofit that mobilizes public support for US leadership on global poverty.
Advocacy work is distribution work without a budget. Nobody buys anything; you’re moving attention and pressure, calls to congressional offices, local op-eds, constituent meetings. You learn that mobilization beats persuasion: the win isn’t changing a mind, it’s activating the people who already agree but would never act unprompted. You learn that a specific ask (“call this office, say this sentence”) outperforms a passionate case every time.
Swap “constituents” for “students” and that’s a campus activation: find the aligned people, lower the friction to one specific action, verify it happened. I was 17 and thought I was taking a detour from marketing. It was the most marketing thing I ever did.