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 with the varnish off. 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.