See What’s Out There

The Alliance For Climate Protection is Al Gore’s new non-profit that is designed to push his agenda of getting the US off of fossil fuels for power generation in 10 years. It’s ambitious and it will take a huge amount of political will to move this ball forward. Even if we can’t really meet the 10 year goal, it sets a bar to move toward.

The Alliance for Climate Protection are the folks behind the We Campaign, which you can see at We Can Solve It.org. They are spending huge amounts of money on traditional TV advertising. Some of it is very clever, such as having opposites — like Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting together and saying, “we don’t agree on anything, but this.” The idea is that there is a consensus, left and right, to work to solve the climate crisis. [The creative is being done by the Martin Agency, which are the same folks behind the very clever Geico ads.]

I saw this ad today from the Alliance, and it makes me wonder. Will this do any good? Even if I get it, I like it, is there a way for me to act? Does it seem too big for me, an individual, to feel empowered to make change? Their goal can only be reached by getting leaders — Congress and the President — to make changes. Will this ad campaign, without any explicit call to action, have any impact on who these leaders are or make the politicians feel any pressure to pass difficult laws? What would it really take to mobilize people? Do you think this is the best strategy? This brings up much larger issues of what online advocacy really means. (We’ll save that for another post.)

Link [YouTube] via [EarthFirst]

The Republican strategy is to make the Barack Obama out to be un-American. Foreign. Strange. Exotic. And they have tried to paint Michelle Obama as angry, and use that to feed into fears about African-Americans.

The Internet can be a game changer in this election. While the Net can be used to smear and spread lies, it can also be used to undermine smear strategies. The reason is that if you missed Michelle Obama speak last night you can watch it on YouTube. Or on the Obama campaign website or RIGHT HERE! Portability of online video means people can get unfiltered messages directly in the places they frequent. So while you might have heard Michelle Obama is a hate-filled angry Black woman, you will actually see her speak and then, poof, those ideas will be out the window.

You can deploy this same tactic for your organization. Make those unfiltered views of your work on the ground available and see people begin to connect in ways that weren’t possible before. There is a gap between what you do on the ground every day and what donors can see. Use online video to close the gap.

After watching this speech, I think the Republicans will need to come up with a different strategy to get Michelle. Angry? Not at all. A smart, beautiful, loving mom? Totally.

Tonight is the start of the Democratic Convention and you should pay attention to the films they will show. There will be a film about Michelle Obama and I think a tribute film to Ted Kennedy. Then later in the week we will see a Barack Obama bio film. Remember how successful Clinton’s Man from Hope was?

Pay attention to how the stories are told. Keep in mind that nothing in the Obama films are done by chance. The music, the quotes, the clothes, the backgrounds, are all designed to elicit a certain emotional response from the audience. Then think about how you can use some of these advanced techniques in your own work.

The New York Times has a little video called The Art of the Bio Film.

David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist, is a master at storytelling and the use of video. My guess is that the Obama film is going to be very very well done.

You would think that with the $50-$100 million being raised by the presidential political campaigns each month — not to mention state and local campaigns — that this would be hurting nonprofits. Maybe not.

A new study from Merkle looks at who is giving to campaigns versus who is giving to charity.

But while political fundraising levels reach new heights with each presidential election, charitable giving also continues to grow, meaning that both fundraising groups have a wider base from which to find donors, says the study by Merkle, a provider of data-driven marketing solutions.

The study examined similarities and differences between donors who give to presidential campaigns and those who give to nonprofit organizations. It also reviewed historical direct-mail performance data from large national nonprofits in various sectors, including health, environment, military, political, domestic relief and international aid.

And it compared that data with political-contribution data obtained from the Federal Election Commission.

Data from before, during and after an active election cycle were analyzed.

The study concluded donors to political campaigns are typically younger, more likely to be male, have higher incomes and tend to be located in the Northeast.

Nonprofit donors are typically older, more likely to be female, and are located across the U.S.

Link [Philanthropy Journal] via [Joe Baker -twitter]

Last week we asked our peeps on Twitter, “What’s your favorite nonprofit video?” Check out some of the responses below:

Also, check out this video for Operation Smile featured on @johnhaydon’s recent blog post The Six Sees of Nonprofit Video:

Here in our office, we have a tie for the staff’s favorite nonprofit video produced by See3. The first was created to bring attention to the Foreign Assistance Act for Global Development Matters.

The second was made for Amnesty International to raise awareness about extraordinary rendition.

Special thanks to everyone who responded! This week’s question: What’s the most effective strategy you’ve used to build an email list? (For example: in-person events, a petition, social networking, a video campaign…)

The amazing thing about this video is that the statement McCain made — not remembering how many houses he owns! — was yesterday. And here’s the ad. Sleep, for now, is out of the question.

Have you noticed a mysterious decline in the amount of views your videos appear to be getting on YouTube? Turns out, YouTube made a change to their view count policy without telling anyone!

The Incident
We found out about this change at See3 because we made three spectacular videos for the Sierra Club and the first one had more than 65,000 views and the second one had 1000! - at least according to the public view count on the site. We knew that this video had at least 40,000 views. Something strange was happening.

The Investigation
How did we know there were more views? The first place we looked was the YouTube feature Insight which shows a day by day graph of video views. In adding that up for the video below, we got well over 40,000 for a video that only showed about 1000 in the “views”.

VS.

The second way we knew was website stats. If we knew that 80,000 people came to a page, and on that page is a video (one that plays automatically) we could safely assume that more than 1000 people saw the video.

Why is this a problem?
This poses a problem because getting a large number of views in a short period of time puts videos into more visible categories for the YouTube community — most viewed, for example. A video that gets 40,000 views in 24 hours might well make it into a most viewed category which gives it the potential to be viewed by another 40,000 or 400,000 people.

The Solution
It took YouTube weeks to respond and explain, but finally we got this message:

View counts are important to the community and are a reflection of the interests and intents of video viewers. Autoplaybacks are not counted toward the visible “views” numbers displayed on the YouTube site because autoplaybacks are not viewer initiated. The vast majority of videos are not substantially affected by this.

What is auto-playback?
When you embed a video, you can choose to set it to auto-play — so when someone lands on the page the video plays. These plays used to count normally but suddenly, YouTube changed how it worked. This might have been in response to people placing videos on high traffic pages just to run up view counts.

Our recommendations
Autoplay is no longer a good option on YouTube. As See3 CEO Michael Hoffman explains, “I would say that I cannot see a circumstance now where See3 would recommend using autoplay. Once YouTube has taken away the incentive to use Autoplay, it only works against you.”

On the one hand, we know the Sierra Club videos got the views we basically expected them to get. More importantly, we reached campaign goals for sign-ups and house party attendees, etc. As Michael says in his talks, views aren’t usually the organizational goal - it doesn’t get you more money or more supporters - it is specific viewers that you are interested in and the actions you want them to take. On the other hand, our primary internal audiences use those view counts as a kind of short-hand for success of the campaign, so we weren’t very happy about it. But now we all know!

Our client, the Ad Council, has an opening in their New York office. The Ad Council has done some of the most innovative and interesting public service campaigns in history. This is a chance to be a part of a terrific team working to extend the Ad Council’s creative work online through the use of social media. It’s a great opportunity.

Manager of Social Media – The Advertising Council

The Manager, Social Media will be responsible for the creation and implementation of integrated PR programs for the Ad Council and its 50+ national public service advertising campaigns. In addition to general PR experience, the ideal candidate will possess proven expertise in online PR tactics. Specific experience should include working on blog relations, online editorial placement, podcasts, Twitter, FriendFeed, and social networking sites. The candidate should possess a strong understanding of the online space and also have the ability to gauge how current trends are developing.

REQUIRED

Excellent communications skills; oral, written and presentation
Ability to create and implement online/new media strategies on behalf of social issues
A proven track record in providing strategic online and new media counsel and direction to clients and internal teams
Concentration areas include consumer websites, blogs, podcasts, online community destinations, etc.
Proven track record delivering impactful online media coverage

Credentials and Experience:

2-3 years of PR, Social Media or advertising agency, client, or other relevant communications experience

CONTACT US:

Please submit a resume and cover letter (with salary requirements) to careers@adcouncil.org. In the subject line of the email, please put “Manager of Social Media”.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.
We will contact only qualified candidates.

Even if your nonprofit is already involved in the world of social media, these 3 tips from David J. Neff of the American Cancer Society (which recently released the video platform sharinghope.tv) are helpful for expanding your online strategy:

1) Experiment - You should personally explore social networks before you make a profile for your nonprofit. That way you will understand the most effective way to publicize your organization and make meaningful connections on sites likes Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

2) Buy a Video Camera - You should be making lots of video and some can be done in-house, easily and cheaply. While these videos will never replace professionally produced material, they can supplement your online content and be an effective way to engage people on social networks. You can buy a point-and-shoot camera like the Flip video for under $200. For a higher quality consumer camera, we recommend the Canon HV30.

3) Research - Don’t just look at what fellow organizations are doing, pay attention to what big corporations and creative agencies are turning out. You may not have the same budget but social media helps to level the playing field. For example, Michael highlighted Office Max’s One Penny Campaign in a previous post. Take a look and you’ll notice how little money or production quality you need when the idea is compelling.

If you are not donor prospecting online you need to start. This is an emerging area of internet fundraising. Sending email to people who are not already on your list is spam, so you have to be more creative with online prospecting.

This is becoming more urgent for you because DIRECT MAIL PROSPECTING WILL DIE! Yes, it will die. For a long time you will send mail to your donors and for a long time you will have donors who write checks and send them back in the mail. But prospecting — getting
new supporters via mail by purchasing mailing lists of likely donors — this will die.

One reason is that eventually we will have a Do Not Mail list like we have a Do Not Call list. And everyone will put their name on it. While junk mail isn’t quite as annoying as spam, the environmental concerns with massive amounts of wasted paper are leading people to pay attention. Forest Ethics launched DoNotMail.org as a way to promote this idea. They have a growing number of signers and coalition members and I think eventually this effort will succeed.

We are working on creative ways to solve this. We have launched a Member-Get-A-Member and a Donor-Get-A-Donor product that uses your existing list to identify new supporters. We are using social networking sites, YouTube and video-centric microsites to bring in new people. All of this is very very new, but if you rely on new donors via direct mail, you would be wise to be thinking and working on expanding your online programs now.