See What’s Out There

Continuing with the theme of seeing is believing… Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush stood in New Orleans and said that we were about to witness “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.”

Well… about that. For everything that this administration will be remembered for, and we don’t have to go down the list, the response to Hurricane Katrina will surely be near the top of the list.

There is a movement to mobilize people in support of more aggressive federal action to help the people of New Orleans who are still struggling. So a bunch of groups get together and want to get people engaged. OK, quiz time. What’s the best way to do that? Yes, video.

Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films made a 4-minute piece I have pasted below. They put it on YouTube, embedded into this landing page, and then sent emails to all their lists, all at the same time. The idea is to get enough YouTube views to push the video into the Most Viewed, which will put it in front of hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise wouldn’t see it.

Can you imagine that debris hasn’t even been cleared, two years after the hurricane? Can you imagine 80-year-olds needing to sleep in gutted homes because FEMA is starting to charge them to stay in the trailers? It is hard to imagine. But when you see it, you know it’s real.

Please check out the campaign landing page for a nice look at current best practices in microsites like this one. It has the petition right on the home page, a URL that’s easy to remember and fits the content, the video as the center of attention right next to the form, only a few links on the page, clear and concise content, a push to get bloggers like me to host the video to get more views, and a coordinated strategy with multiple organizations.

Seeing is believing… but what if it’s not. We’ve known about “Photoshopping” for a long time — you can manipulate photos. But this manipulation is going to become much more accessible. Have a look at what some Israeli academics have cooked up:

Thanks to TechCrunch for the link.

Mining is in the news a lot recently because of the terrible tragedy in Utah where six miners are presumed dead in a mine collapse and at least three more have been killed trying to rescue them. Another kind of mining made today’s news. It’s called mountaintop removal and it is the most common mining in West Virginia and Appalachia generally. It is just what the name implies. They remove the top of a mountain to expose the coal vein. In addition to destroying the trees and vegetation there is another big problem with this technique — where does the mountain top end up? The answer is in the valley, where the streams and rivers run. With an entire mountaintop in the river the river stops, or gets diverted. It is a big mess.

The news today is that the people in the Bush administration that regulate this industry — who happen to have been industry lobbyists before they joined the administration, surprise surprise — just announced new “rules” that basically interpret a law saying you can’t mine near the streams and rivers to mean that you can dump all your waste in streams and rivers. Obvious isn’t it. (And they say China is being Orwellian with language as they prepare for the Olympics.) You can read about it more in today’s New York Times.

But this is all very abstract and if you were an organization trying to mobilize people against this practice, the most powerful weapon is video. Show people what “mountaintop removal” really is and they will be shocked and surprised that we are allowing corporate profits to decimate whole areas of the country. The folks at I Love Mountains.Org have done just that. Their video was a runner up in the See3 - NTEN video contest this year. Their video is too long, and there are other production quality issues with it, but they don’t really matter. Just look and see what it means to SHOW people something versus just telling them about it. How are you showing your issue?

A client of ours, One Economy Corporation, has some terrific job openings in Washington D.C. and in Chicago and elsewhere.

I just watched a nice presentation from Alec Ross from One Economy who makes a strong case that giving low income people access to technology is simply a requirement for allowing people to participate in the greater economy. You can watch it on Google Video. One example he used: McDonald’s announced that they will begin only taking job applications online. So imagine that, even hamburger flipping is now tied to the digital economy. Another example he used: College applications. If you are a high-school senior and you want to go to college you upload everything electronically - no more big envelopes and hand-written essays. Go to a low-income community in the Spring and try to get on a computer in the library - it is full of high-school seniors with no access at home. One more example… there is lots of data that says a 30-something white guy like him is most likely to use the web for entertainment and pornography while low-income people are more likely to use internet access for asset building activities and education.

Jerusalem Rocks! I used to live there and I love it, so I think so. But I am referring to a concert called Jerusalem Rocks being put on by some of my buddies. It will feature the Black Eyed Peas, Arrested Development and The Commitments. These are pretty big names to get to come to Jerusalem, even more so at the same time. So make your reservations now for the show on September 9. From their site:

Jerusalem Rocks! will bring together musicians from all over the world in support of peace and unity. Jerusalem has hundreds of thousands of students and youth, numerous universities and a total population of 725,000. The city, its population and industry strive to show the world that Jerusalem is dedicated to peace and, more, is a growing center of today’s culture and business. However, Jerusalem has not hosted a mega international musical event in many years. Jerusalem Rocks! speaks to all these issues. It is not only a gift to Jerusalem; it is a statement to the world.

You can see more at Jerusalem Rocks’ site.

When we made this recent piece for NARAL: Pro-Choice America, we needed debate footage that we could mash-up and play with. Should we have to pay a private corporation to re-use the footage of our national candidates speaking? If you were to want to grab video of President Bush speaking in order to criticize it, you would have to pay the station that ran the original story. Does that make sense?

The issue of what is Fair Use and how this specifically relates to our political life is an important one. Pressure from the right places can make a difference in the push for more openness. Responding to a complaint from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Federal Trade Commission told NBC that their copyright notices were deceiving the public about the public’s right to use materials under the Fair Use doctrine.

The move drew immediate praise from CCIA President and CEO Ed Black, who said NBC’s decision “further opens the doors of the political process.

“The Internet, the great equalizer of our time, empowers people from every walk of life to make better decisions with more information,” he said in a statement. “Indeed, the political process depends on this very principle.”

Black pointed out that fair use guidelines allow others to use portions of the debates for commentary and review, but do not require the footage to be release entirely without restrictions, as the networks have agreed to do.

“Nevertheless, because the public’s fair use rights have limits, ABC and NBC are to be praised for providing the public with unrestricted use of this content, thereby ensuring that the democratic discourse will not be impeded,” he said.

Read more at Information Week.

You can also check out the CCIA’s website Defend Fair Use.

As many of you know, I think the best show on TV and probably the best show ever is HBO’s The Wire. It’s great because it’s real. Last season it had a chilling look at what is happening to urban education in the face of gangs and drugs through the eyes of four middle school students. Watch it and you will never think of the problems of public school the same way.

My father told me last week that there was some traffic jam in Baltimore because they were filming the final episode. I am very sad to see it go. John from Cincinnati seems banal in comparison.

In today’s New York Times is a story about some of the real people behind the characters in The Wire. The show was created by David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter on the crime beat. He wrote a book, “The Corner” with a former Baltimore cop named Ed Burns that was turned into an HBO miniseries. Before that, he wrote a book called “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.” You might remember that it became a TV show called Homicide: Life on the Streets which was produced by the great producer/director Barry Levinson as well as Simon.

The story in the Times today talk about the person who was the inspiration for the character Omar Little. Omar is a guy who robs drug dealers. He lives on the edge in a world of violence and drugs. And somehow, he’s not a bad guy. You want him to live and to eventually find the life of peace and love and intellectual stimulation where he would seem most comfortable. The real Omar (actually, one of the people that make up the composite that is Omar) is Donnie Andrews who, after serving a long prison sentence for murder, has become one of a team of former addicts and criminals working to get kids off the streets. This is very powerful stuff.

Organizations that work with students and disasters and under served populations and almost everything else have these powerful stories of hardship and of success. They should see the power in them and dig them out and write about them and capture these people on video and in pictures and in their own words. It is these stories that make connections for people to the problems that are otherwise totally abstract. If I want to make a difference I want to make a difference for a person, not an issue. This is, of course, what we do at See3 and I sometimes feel like a broken record talking about it. But it works and it’s surprising how much the nonprofit sector still needs to hear it.

Who knew? The famous Red Cross — that symbol of of safety and rescue — is actually owned by the American company Johnson & Johnson. Before the American Red Cross was officially chartered more than 100 years ago, Johnson & Johnson was selling products using the symbol and had it registered as their corporate trademark. They have been totally fine with it being used by the American Red Cross, until now.

Seeing the headlines, “Johnson & Johnson Sues Red Cross Over Symbol” it is easy to say look at the big bad corporation going after the poor nonprofit. I am not sure that’s the case here.

The Red Cross has made a move in recent years that threaten the business interests of Johnson & Johnson by licensing the symbol to companies that make consumer medical products. The result is that you can go into your local Walgreens or CVS and see a Red Cross endorsed product competing with a similar product from Johnson & Johnson. I don’t know all of the story but it seems the company has tried to work this out without court, but the Red Cross kept moving ahead.

The Red Cross is a huge bureaucratic organization that has had its share of staff turnover and scandal in recent years. I remember them advertising to give blood after 9-11 and I was thinking… blood for who? Their move into licensing reminds me of AARP, an organization with a massive for-profit subsidiary. AARP trades off its access to the nations seniors to make a mint, in partnership with some of corporate America’s biggest companies. Mission driven or profit driven?

I can only imagine that within Johnson & Johnson there was a lot of debate about this move. Would the benefits of a suit outweigh the negative publicity? My guess is that the Red Cross had to be pretty non-responsive for J&J to go this far.

The Red Cross is an example of an organization that needs to get back to their authentic story. The story is not about misleading ads or about consumer product sales or about local chapters run amok. The authentic story is about helping people. It’s about dedicated volunteers and lives shattered and put back together. If they focused as much on getting back to this story as in creating a consumer products division, the donations will flow like never before.

On Friday I went to a social networking panel at Yearly Kos and this is the last thing I have to write up from the conference. The title of the session was “Politics 2.0 - How social networks and new media are changing politics.” On the panel we had Amy Rubin, Stephanie Taylor, Beka Economopoulos and Ruby Sinreich. I didn’t stay for the entire thing, but what I caught was good.

First up was Ruby Sinreich. Her subject was, what makes for effective social networks. Here are some notes:

1. Strong Social Ties
a. personal relationships
b. trust
c. awareness - you have to know the network exists

2. Common Story - we have to be on the same page (eg. Sorry Everybody)

3. Communication grid so people can talk to each other

eg. drinkingliberally.com which is online and offline
one-to-many. You have to have the ability to communicate.

4. Shared Resources
a. data information - eg. wikipedia
b. skills and expertise
c. money
d. space

5. Clarity of Purpose
a. do you feel like a member?
b. knowing what the network is for

After her talk she showed different types of network diagrams. According to Ruby, the mesh network is the best because it is not dependent on a single point — if one person leaves it stays together.

Amy Rubin, the Deputy Director of New Media from the John Edwards campaign then talked about their social network strategy as it related to promoting a webcast after the last debate.

My take-aways from her talk:

1. You can reach out to lots of online communities, but you need a single site that brings all the information together.

2. Meet people where they are, don’t make MySpace people come to Facebook or try to create groups that cross network platforms. Yes, it is more work, but you have to meet people where they live online.

3. Focus on influencers. Not everyone is equal, let the people who influence their friends move your message.

4. The list will grow naturally as you give people what they want where they want it. Don’t make them leave their comfort zone to do something you want them to do. List growth comes when people are interested.

5. Care2, working with them was great to seed the actions.

6. Created private leadership groups within each social network - give the people working the most something special.

The highlight of the session was Beka Economopoulos from Greenpeace. Yes, her name alone would make it a highlight.

She is an online organizer for Greenpeace. Her history is with off-line organizing and so her job is to see how we can leverage social networks and integrate web 2.0 platforms to leverage off-line results. In other words… can you use the web to get people to show up and do things in the real world.

She organizes days of action so people can participate to do bake sales or congressional visits. Greenpeace has 65,000 friends in MySpace. Getting friends is not a communications strategy — MySpace isn’t a web page it’s a network. She had a nice analogy for this. “A friend on a social network is like putting on a bumper sticker.” It’s a sign of affiliation but that’s it.

At Greenpeace, they have a team of interns who work to respond to people it pays off. Their email list is growing and they consider those friends to be an extension of their email list because they send their newsletters and alerts to them as well. So the 65,000 new eyeballs and ears are great, but they are paying close attention to how to convert those people to activists.

She then showed us an amazing case study of action against Kimberly Clark, the big paper company. Kimberly Clark makes Kleenex and they heard that Kleenex was going to be shooting a commercial in Times Square. The commercial was to have real people sit on a couch and tell the camera about their “Kleenex moment.” This makes for great TV because it is an authentic voice. Beka called this the “fetishization of the reality TV genre.” And it set them up for a fall.

Greenpeace inserted themselves into the the story. They are focused on what she called “narrative driven campaigning and culturally focused organizing.” Which is to say, paying attention to what the symbols in the culture are that are resonating and how you can insert yourself into the story and point those symbols in new a direction and with new meaning. So Beka and her merry band brought their own crew and hidden mics and inserted themselves into this commercial shoot. The goal was to educate people about the fact that Kleenex is made from virgin forests and uses no recycled content.

What’s terrific here is not only how well this worked, but how they used the product of it to create a story and training video. The idea with this video is to empower more people to take their own actions and to get people thinking that they too can become an activists. Have a look:

One thing you will notice is that it’s long for web video. She said that friends thought it was too long but it holds together to tell a story — more training video than PSA. All the people in the action are new people. The guy who did the sound bites had never done anything before, now they are all hooked. Beka then promoted this to blogs, focusing on online progressive news and environmental blogs, then promoted it to ad agency and brand people.

Her conclusion was that there is a flattening of politics with over-saturation of media and so organizations should focus their energy and resources when and where you have good content. Amen Sister!

She also said, to my great delight, that there is no such thing as virability. You have to work the communities to get critical mass. She said that on MySpace they are getting very high conversion rates and that people who were individually messaged on a bake sale had a 15% conversion rate to off-line participation and that their average is 10% conversation. That’s huge.

I am looking forward to seeing what they do next.

I am not at all optimistic about the long-term prospects of Microsoft as a company. And that is for a different post. But in terms of digital advertising, some of their folks get it. I have been writing a long time about how advertising is changing, how you the fundraiser or the marketer must adopt the new paradigm that entertains, shows instead of tells, and meets people in their communities with content that interests them — and allows them to contribute to the conversation. Here’s a cute video representation of the problem consumers have with traditional advertisers.