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Jan 10, 04:37 pm: Is open source becoming another word for "You do it for me"?

In Open Source Advertising…Open Source Eductiona…what’s next?, Hill & Knowlton blogger Lisa Meltz writes about open source advertising:

In my mind, this is about offering your brand to the world and asking consumers to make it better. For example, Doritos launched a contest in September asking us to submit our ideas for a new commercial – the winning commercial will air during the Superbowl. Empower consumers to get behind the brand and sell it – then get more consumers to argue over the best demonstration of the brand and vote on their favorites.

Now, if I was the marketing manager for Frito Lay/Doritos, I’d take it one step further. I’d then “open source” that commercial. I’d provide the entire secret sauce to the users and get them to improve it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes the future of advertising actually. The agency & client stays in charge of the strategy but the world competes to execute the creative…or vice versa for that matter.

How does this not just become “Can you all do this for me?” Sort of the advertising equivalent of reality TV shows?

Frankly, I don’t think it’s about connecting the consumers to advertising (well, sometimes it is — MoveOn provides an example where the message is the point). I think it’s about using the whole vat of scalable community and connection tools — web 2.0, social media, whatever you’d like to call it — to the kinds of things that people have always been doing.

So, folks share recipes, they print cookbooks and sell them for community groups, right? What if Doritos put their resources behind those efforts? Created a directory of community recipe books that were being sold for a good cause and included a section of dip recipes that went with Doritos or recipes that used Doritos? What if the best of those landed on the back of product bags? Rather than ask the community to shine the spot light on them, why don’t they shine the spotlight on the community?

And why aren’t you doing that?

tagged: marketing, communications, doritos

Dec 4, 05:41 pm: Make it easy and then make it easier

I’m about to pick on an organization I love. I spent my youth in 4-H and that pledge has shaped who I am today.

And that’s why I want them to make it easier for me to share their good work and efforts.

First off, let’s not call it the 4-H Brand Network okay? And let’s make the stories that you are telling available to more people — I get that some of this is private but if it’s all private, why have an open Internet site at all? Why not put a big password on the front page?

And don’t ask me to promote your brand. That’s not what I want to do. I want to promote your stories. I know where the withers are on a dog, courtesy of 4-H. One of the hardest things I ever did in my life — admit that there was a math error and that someone else earned the blue ribbon for the dog obedience trial — was in a 4-H show ring. Give me those stories to promote.

Make it easy for me to be as enthusiastic as I am about a club that I give credit for shaping me into the adult I am. Some of the best parts of the adult that I am.

And if you want me to share a graphic, I’m happy like a fox to do it. But for god’s sake, give me the code (you do in other places). Make sure I’m linking to the right place. Don’t make me download and upload and work out where exactly I should be pointing folks.

Please.

(Update: 4HUSA.org seems to do a better job of all of that. So why is the “brand network” even there?)

tagged: socialmedia, marketing, npmarketing, ease, 4-h, outreach, promotions

Sep 26, 04:17 am: Unlikely bedfellows create change

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this: Change happens because people that don’t normally work together, or even like each other, act in concert (1, 2, and 3) and I’ve said that the business community needs the civic sector (1).

Want more evidence? If you got the paper edition of the NY Times this Sunday, or last, you may have noticed the full page ad from Target with a Red Cross logo on it. They’ve partnered to help increase awareness, and preparation, around disaster relief (1, 2). According to an article in DMNews, this is more than just bottom-line:

Cause-related marketing partnerships continue to rise, as shown by the American Red Cross and Target stores at the “Together We Prepare” session at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s annual Bridge Conference in Washington, DC.

Already in 2006 $1.36 billion has been spent by corporate sponsorships on nonprofit organizations, a 20 percent increase from 2005.

“It is not about meeting the bottom line anymore for corporations,” said Shelly EspiEspinosanager of community relations for Target, Minneapolis. “You need to be doing well and doing good.”

The organizations each cited quality, mission-related strategies, brand reputations and reaching a new market as key criteria in making the partnership.

Doing well by doing good. Corporations who want to be more than a check. Brand and an ability to open new markets.

So, does this mean that those of us in the civic sector have to be better at describing our brand, sharing it, and understanding the market to which we provide access? What does it mean when many of us, almost by definition, serve people who cannot afford services — or, presumably emergency kits — in the customary marketplace? Is this what’s really meant about civic organizations becoming “more business-like”?

Or do we have to understand how we are more than just a cause for marketing vehicles?

Surprise. I think it’s the second. You want people to use your emergency kit? Ask ‘em to help you build it. They can put the photos and how-to on flickr. They can make and share videos. I’m just saying. We don’t represent a demographic or a place for corporate employees to volunteer. We represent half of the conversation.

tagged: marketing, causemarketing, target, redcross, partnerships, change

Aug 26, 04:14 am: No kidding: Change happens in business

Wal-Mart Partners With Gay and Lesbian Group:

‘Wal-Mart is going about this in a very pragmatic way,’ said Justin Nelson, president of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, an independent organization with 24,000 members. ‘They have been viewed with some degree of skepticism by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community, and it’s important for them in terms of gaining market share to change that.’

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman declined to comment on the trio of moves and would only confirm the company’s partnership with the NGLCC.

The initiative comes as Wal-Mart aims to broaden its appeal and woo both upscale and urban markets, but this is not the first time Wal-Mart has attempted to appease critics in the gay and lesbian community. In 2003—after years of lobbying by activist groups—Wal-Mart extended its workplace nondiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation.

Ford and the environment. Wal-Mart and GLBT community. C’mon. Where is it we think change happens?

(thanks BB)

tagged: change, walmart, glbt

Aug 23, 02:38 pm: A little PR for the nonprofit sector as a whole

Maybe we need a little PR for the nonprofit sector as a whole. I worry that people see us as a bunch of earnest do-gooders that are always after their extra change.

Which, you know, is fine and all but, if your really trying to engage a community, it might not bring a sense of fun and fullfillment. Is true? Does the image of the sector need to change? Maybe we should try a new name? Nonprofit organizations. Nongovernmental organizations. Describing us by what we aren’t. Now there’s a moving strategy.

Why don’t we start by describing us as what we are?

• trying to change the world
• social benefit organizations
• communities of working for change
• committed
• mission-driven
• issue-driven

What else are we?

tagged: nonprofit, pr, sector, change, whatarewe

Jun 15, 05:17 am: Opportunity to get more companies to be GLBT friendly?

Just in time for Pride, SimplyHired has launched a GLBT friendly job-search. The rainbow graphic makes things a little, er, hard to read but, still, it’s a great idea.

I’m just thinking: what would happen if those non-GLBT companies suddenly started getting a lot of cover letters that advocated they explicitly change their hiring or discrimination practices? Not that I’m advocating that or anything. But that would be a pretty interesting campaign eh? Make the various hiring managers and HR departments feel the love. So to speak.

(via www.techcrunch.com)

tagged: glbt, jobs, companies, discrimination, policy, change

Jun 15, 04:58 am:

At TechCrunch, Michael Arrignton writes, in MySpace, The 27.4 Billion Pound Gorilla:

MySpace has 75 million users (see somewhat dated comparison stats here million daily unique logins, is growing by a massive 240,000 newusers per day, and is generating nearly 30 billion monthly page views(that’s 10,593 page views per second). The number of pageviews generated by each unique visitor is stunning – clearly theseusers are very, very passionate about the site, and it’s unclear ifthey do much else on the web besides hang out on MySpace.

MySpace hasn’t overtaken Yahoo yet in terms of page views (see UBS Comscore Analysis PDF here they are a solid second and are ahead of giants like MSN-Microsoft,Time Warner (including AOL), eBay, Google and Facebook.

MySpace also has the sixth largest market share among search engines, even though they aren’t, actually, a search engine.

Uh, 75M users? That’s more than the population of France. It’s more than the population of California and Texas, combined. And the search engine bit?

People trust people like them. That’s Edelman again. And they are looking for those trusted sources on places like MySpace.

Does that mean that nonprofits need to create a profile? Not necessarily. It does mean that they need to think about how to make their messages consumable, shareable and changeable by the people who are inhabiting MySpace. That’s hard work. But is it really harder than figuring out how to get a reporter from the New York Times to write a story about your organization? Is it harder than getting a bunch of people to show up on your state capitol steps? Probably not. Different? Yes. New? Sure. But harder? No.

tagged: trust, myspace, outreach, communications

Jun 7, 04:59 am: I am an Edelman junkie

Really. It’s like I jumped on the bandwagon and I’m not jumping off.

Take this quote, for example:

In a world of consumer generated content, infinite media choices, lack of trust in traditional institutions, and desire for peer-to-peer learning, we are well suited to be the communications discipline of choice.

His “we” is “PR professionals, sure. But that quote, it applies to the nonprofit sector as well. Actually, I’d agree (courtesy of Edelman’s own trust barometer), it’s even more fitting for the nonprofits/ngo sector — they are increasingly the trusted institutions.

Edelman goes on to talk about the issues confronting PR professionals as they take this challenge?

What are the issues that keep social benefit organizations from taking a leadership role regarding communications?

tagged: edelman, pr, communications, leadership, npcommunications

Feb 13, 04:57 am: Learning from the Advertising Business

Is it even still called the advertising business? Somehow, I think it’s both Darren Stephens and Dagwood Bumstead’s job.  And Felicity Huffman’s character in Desperate Housewives.

But none of that is point that I’m trying to get at.

I’m not sure of the point I’m trying to get at. But I know there are few money quotes in Timothy L. O’Brien’s NYT article, Madison Avenue’s 30-Second Spot Remover.

The article is about Robert M. Greenberg, the man behind R/GA. The big one is early on.  It’s a long quote, but, worth it:

"I think technology is going to wreak havoc on the agency business," Mr. Greenberg predicts of an industry that plans to give him its most prestigious award, a Clio for lifetime achievement, in May. "Because of advances in technology and communication, we’re surrounded by information we see and hear. Overload is a huge issue.

"I think things are going to get infinitely more complex," he adds, "and the challenge is about taking things that are infinitely complex and making them simpler and more understandable."

Consumers are so swamped by pitches that many simply tune them out. And the more affluent among them exercise enough control over how, where and what they shop for that, with the flick of their fingers, they can bypass unwanted advertising. Mr. Greenberg, the chairman and chief executive of R/GA, wants to engage them in digital conversations that are so entertaining, involving and valuable that they won’t want to ignore them.

Many in the communications industry are aware that consumers are turning their backs. "The old approach of marketing saturation has created a clutter environment that people are now resisting, in an era when people feel they have less time in their lives for all the things they want to do," said J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Inc., a marketing research firm. "People are willing to give up sleep at night to get time back into their lives and the question I ask advertisers is, ‘Do you think people are willing to give up sleep to look at your ads?’ And the answer is no."

MR. GREENBERG’S response is that in order to cut through the clutter, advertising needs to be shaken up, and shaken up immediately. All of the corporations, agencies and marketing professionals who jointly hone and fire off a fusillade of messages across the commercial landscape each day, he says, need to overhaul both their organizational structures and how they relate to consumers — particularly the 20-something buyers called "millennials."

"It’s not about linear communication, and the millennials understand that; it’s about symbols and icons and you click here and you click there and you control it," he says. "Corporations have to create products that people want and customers are going to help them make that decision — and that means quality, imagination and transparency."

Right.  And that’s just like what?  It’s like nonprofits.  Look, when we’re trying to get our issues across, get people spend their valuable time on them, this is who we’re competing against.  And we aren’t going to do that because we’ve sent a really great direct mail postcard to the 3K people on our finely honed list.  We’re going to do that becuase people are going to feel a part of our mission and so reach out.

The question then:  how do we use the tools available to us to make this happen?

technorati tags: nyt, r/ga, advertising, media, outreach, nptech, net2

Feb 11, 06:27 am: Let the community find each other

In Let your donors know they’re part of a community, the Donor Power blog points to:

A study posted on the Association of Fundraising Professionals website shows how donors are influenced by what other donors do: Knowledge of others’ giving can increase contributions. 

How about lettting them connect with each other so that they can connect, even more, to you and the issues your organization is working on?  As Seth Godin writes in Flipping the Funnel, give ‘em a megaphone and turn your friends into fundraisers. And then go a step past that and give them tools to put you out of work.  Let them take on and drive pieces of your work.  Look at Green Media Toolshed.  Or the Katrina Peoplefinder Project.

What happens when you think your donors are your most powerful staff members and you give them tools to get the job done? 

technorati tags: advocate, community, nonprofit, supporters