See What’s Out There

Our senior writer, Susan Balaban worked for Foote, Cone & Belding/Chicago before coming to work for See3. During her tenure at FCB/Chicago she rose to Vice President/Creative Director, working on nearly every brand and client in the agency. She is most proud of her accomplishments for two of FCB’s pro-bono accounts, Earth Share and The United Way. Both received double-digit donation increases and local and international awards. Her work for Earth Share also garnered the Ad Council’s highest donated television media dollars, and was chosen as one of five print campaigns to run in the New York Times each year.

So it has been with great pleasure that we here at See3 have been able to help out Earth Share and the Ad Council extend their reach online around Earth Day. Over the past few days many green blogs that had never heard of Earth Share wrote about the campaign and their video Promise.

You can learn more about the Ad Council’s environmental work here.

Last year, I wrote a long blog post about what nonprofits could learn from the Chabad Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish sect. It’s a nice read if you have the time.

I saw this morning a video about what one Lubavitch man has done to turn around a public school in New York. This is a story of passion and dedication and of not judging people by how they look. It is also a story of hope for an American melting pot — a salad really — where people who come from different backgrounds can find common ground in helping our children succeed.

I received the link to this video in an email, that was sent to many people, forwarded many times. It is a classic viral video story. The fact that it started on TV is irrelevant. You and the organizations you care about can tell stories. If those stories are compelling, they will also get sent in an email and attract attention to your work and your programs.

Here’s the story from the Today Show:

The newspaper business is in trouble. Their trouble is connected to the media fragmentation that I so frequently talk about and the rise of the web as a source for news. It is also connected to having sites like Craig’s List take away classified revenue, which has traditionally been a key pillar to newspaper profitability.

Sam Zell thinks the newspaper business will survive. I am not so sure.

If you are watching The Wire you can see the parallel impact of budget cuts to the police force and budget cuts in the newsroom. In my hometown newspaper, The Baltimore Sun, budget cuts mean that serious news coverage declines, foreign bureaus close and a paper that was once a well-respected part of a thinking man’s daily diet is now just a mere shadow of itself.

David Carr in the New York Times suggests that The Wire is placing too much of the blame for the failures in the newsroom on the management staff that has to make them. He suggests that the show should spend more time looking at the structural issues that are the root cause of the problem.

All of this matters because there is no way for us as a society to address the problems that ail us, if we don’t know what those problems are. If you are a nonprofit working to help low-income Americans or to rebuild the levees in New Orleans or to assist developing countries, you then should care deeply whether and how people get their news.

Today on Techcrunch, Michael Arrington blogs from Davos about a suggestion that government step in to save the whole newspaper industry. The title of his post is “If Real Journalism Fails as a Business, Should Government Step In.” He wrote this because he heard Columbia University President Lee Bollinger mention the idea in a session at the World Economic Forum.

An interesting discussion is on venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog today. His post is called Rethinking the Local Paper and he writes about a vision where the local paper is actually an amalgam of “hyperlocal” postings from the moms and dads writing about their neighborhoods. He sees a business model where I assume the big international stuff is covered by the professionals but it’s supplemented by lots of detailed and organized posting from the neighborhood. So the pothole and the PTA meeting are covered by the people it most impacts. This is a level of journalism that local papers could never do and the technology now makes it possible to do it. He points us to two websites working on different aspects of this issue. One is called Outside.In and the other is called Everyblock. Everyblock was actually funded by our very forward thinking friends at the Knight Foundation.

Outside.in takes more blog posts and that kind of info. Everyblock grabs police reports (eek! I don’t want to know!) and things like city permit information — who is building where, etc. Here’s my office neighborhood on Outside.In and on Everyblock.

We will stay tuned to see how all of this plays out. As a nonprofit you need to be thinking not only about describing what it is you do and why it matters, but also in giving people the necessary background they would have once received from their local newspaper.

Good ideas make a good blog, but so does good writing.

Check out this post from the new blog Snarfd. I love the language.

Can you use the terms “freaktard” and “douche-nozzle” in your organizational blog posts? Maybe not, (though I found a way to get them in here But you can write with emotion and purpose and not over produce everything that you post. It’s about authenticity, even if douche-nozzle is a made-up word.

The last session at the Convio Summit in Austin was well attended, and a fun way to finish the event on Friday. Called “Web 2.0 – New Outreach and Fundraising Techniques,” the topic of this workshop is something every nonprofit marketing manager and online communications professional wants to talk about. The presenters were Carie Lewis of the Humane Society, and Tim Fullerton of Oxfam America, who both gave great insight on what’s happening in the trenches – actual day-to-day examples of how nonprofits can work online communities to gain new supporters, coming directly from the people writing the blog posts, friending people on MySpace, and testing new strategies.

Carie opened with an intro to social media. She says social networks are “not just a bunch of lonely teenage boys.” 84% of people comment, 82% message others, and 39% create content. She notes that people really rely on social networks for influence on decision-making. To me, this confirms as viable the strategy of finding those community leaders who will carry your torch for you, and then messaging them with content to distribute to their friends. She acknowledged it can be very time consuming, and reiterated a suggestion See3 often makes to our clients: get interns and volunteers!

Both HSUS and Oxfam’s primary efforts are on what Carie calls “the big four”: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. I agree based on sheer traffic volume, the first 3 are no-brainers for any nonprofit to start. However, neither Carie nor Tim discussed social bookmarking or social news strategies in any depth, and Digg, Stumble Upon, and del.icio.us certainly have enough traffic to warrant a deep approach.

On MySpace: Both Oxfam and HSUS prove what we already know from Greenpeace and others – MySpace is a great place to get new advocates. How did they get so many friends? One at a time. When she started the MySpace page, Carie literally requested friends one by one. Tim started by seeing who was already talking about Oxfam. They recommend spending an hour per day building your network. Oxfam now has a very nice custom page. They both use the MySpace blog, which reminds us again to speak to the community where they are, don’t try and drag them over to your main blog. HSUS is now getting 200 friend requests/day. Of the people that friend them, 29% found their page via search, and 13% came from their website. If you are a small organization, you won’t get that traffic. But 36% discovered them through a friend’s profile. This shows the viral potential of raising awareness in the social networks. Tim says MySpace is not good for fundraising, although we have seen some examples of orgs running successful fundraising campaigns, such as Dollars for Darfur.

On Facebook: I think everyone agrees it’s very early. So far, the only real strategy to analyze besides creating groups is the Causes application. Tim says it’s great to see thousands of people join the Oxfam cause, but he does not know who those people are and has no way to follow up with them. Carie says HSUS has raised $20k through the Causes app, though I’m not finding that in my search of Causes. Regardless, very few orgs (though some) have raised real cash via the Causes app. Developing custom Facebook apps may be the way to go, as already discussed on this blog.

On YouTube: everyone loves video. Oxfam ran a campaign against Starbucks with a video being crucial to the resulting success. HSUS ran a video contest during the outcry over the Michael Vick story that received 22 submissions, over 43,000 views of the contest intro video (featuring Hulk Hogan), and garnered 2,000 new list members. They ran their contest on YouTube, but See3 has a private label, fully customizable video contest hosting, management, and marketing solution.

On blogging and blogger outreach: They both moderate every single comment on the blog (they recommend not to allow auto-posting), and someone responds personally to each comment. They also suggest: make it personal, using your real voice; don’t reprint press releases or other web stories; be concise (advice I am not following here ). There was a question from the audience on blogger outreach, from someone who got no traffic from buying an ad on a relevant blog, and got no love from the blogger either. Carie and Tim say customize and personalize each message to bloggers, warm them up, and sell your story. Carie suggests offering exclusivity on a news story in return for promotion, and reminds us to always ask them to link back to your blog. Shana Glickfield of Issue Dynamics Inc., a blogger and consultant on blogger relations, added that your first contact with a blogger should not be an ask. You should touch base with them prior to your campaign, send them swag and information of interest on an ongoing basis.

On Second Life: Tim and Carie both say stay away. I say wait for the MacArthur Foundation’s year-long exploration of the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds, and for significantly increased daily activity on Second Life, and in the meantime focus on video and other live action social media opportunities.

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 went to a session on Friday at Yearly Kos about the impact of video through the 2008 election. I had meant to “live blog” the session, meaning, I was typing while sitting in it and could have published this, but live blogging doesn’t give you the chance to make sure things make sense for your readers and I was not breaking any news, so I waited until now to finish this.

The moderator of the panel was from the New Politics Institute, a progressive think tank that is tracking changes in politics from the progressive perspective.

The panel at this session included:

Dan Manatt from Politics TV

Julie Bergman Sender, who did a very funny parody George Bush ad staring Will Ferrell in 2004.

John Amato in LA patching through by cell phone.

Marcy Wheeler a blogger with FireDogLake who has moved to video blogging.

John Amato from Crooks and Liars who we are told was way ahead of his time with web video. The Vlog Father.

At the start of the session he showed the famous Johnson daisy ad.

This was really revolutionary when it ran. It is very powerful. I wonder about the “we must love each other” part. Not sure what he meant by that really.

Another point mentioned at the start of the session was that we have come along way from that ad, where everyone who saw it saw it on TV. Google’s revenue is approaching the total ad revenue from all network television.

We then saw the famous Macaca video. At one point someone asked what the real impact is of all this online video. The answer - we know a US Senate seat was lost because of it. If you haven’t seen that video, I pasted it below. The context is that an Indian-American is basically being called racial names from George Allen, who actually thought he would become the President of the United States.

Macaca video.

The campaigns are getting into the act of using web video. At the session we saw screen shots from Obama’s web video announcement, for example.

We are also seeing the parody. The best known one is probably Obama Girl.

Basically, there is a wave of video innovation going on now and it is changing politics.

There are categories of videos here. Viral Hollywood. Campaign video blogs. Event clips.

Not as much Flash animation these days. Will there be more? [I don’t think so.]

We also have TV clips that go viral.

And now we are starting to see web features — 5 to 10 minutes.

YouTube CNN Debates, for all the criticism will mark the coming of age of new media.

So here we are today. Lets go to the panel to talk about what’s next for web video.

John Amato on the phone:

“The power of video is truly amazing. With Crooks and Liars I was just getting into the blog world and when I actually saw Bill O’Reilly using right wing propaganda to frame every issue I realized the power of video through television was unique and I needed to get it online. Reading transcripts wasn’t enough. If you see them, see the spin, that would go viral and people needed to see this… ”

The most important things we will see with web video will come from individuals. People will watch the Obama Girl. It will be people at home with their video camera and an idea who can now take action on their ideas. The real power comes from us.

Julie Bergman Sender

Campaign for America’s Future wanted to kick off month long campaign around issue of obstructionist Republican Congress. She then showed us a video she said they did in one day. Staring Jason Alexander. Here it is:

[Love to hear what you think of it. Thought it had some good lines, but seemed too insider to me to have an impact on the masses.]

She also said… and these might not be exact quotes…

“In 2004 when I approached America Coming Together to do the Will Ferrell thing they looked at me like I was a Martian. It had three very clear policy points in it. The key is finding a popular culture conversation to tease out policy points.”

“I think we are in a transformational moment. As Wesley Clark said this morning, who are we? And how are we going to reinvent ourselves and return to the image of ourselves as Americans that we are not living up to.”

“[Speaking of the folks working on new media and web] there are a bunch of new thoroughbreds approaching the gate the if the old guard [of consultants] doesn’t get out of the way they will be trampled. There is a place for straightforward political messaging, biographical narrative treatments, etc. but there is also the person like Wesley Clark who talks about war… he is former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and he is on our side. It’s about authenticity.
There is still a stranglehold from old guard. We have to throw them over. This new crew, the bloggers, the individuals, the spirit of Yearly Kos that is everywhere… I think this is the new way to look at this paradigm, it is not a vertical command center of messaging, it is horizontal and people can take leadership and then blend it all together and the ones that know this will be the ones that succeed.”

Marcy Wheeler

FireDoglake… they covered the Libby Trial and they matched and surpassed the the old media in that. “I wrote these long posts that had readership of 2,000 people or maybe 10,000 people is max readership. Too long, too detailed and too inside baseball to change the narrative or really take on AP or Washington Post. Then I would write shorter, punchier posts for outlets with higher traffic.”

The live blog from the Libby trial was getting up to 200,000 people a day. There is no way we are going to beat the speakers on Fox… so we thought we need video. After 8 hours of live blogging did 5-10 minutes of video. A lot of people got to us for the first time through video.
People who couldn’t read the live stuff — but they would start with the video then scan the live blog. It gave me an appreciation for telling the story quickly.”

“If I would do this again there should be a video component all along.”

Dan Mannat

Shows this video…

What’s going to happen in the next year? His predictions:
1. VideoRoots — tracking, archival work, the folks doing Crooks and Liars on a local level. Basically the netroots phenomenon that we see so influential moves to video.
2. Self funding videos… contribute money so we can get this on the air. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was substantially on the web before it went to TV.
3. The Convention — how will they incorporate video? With inspiration of YouTube debate it will be interesting to see what happens with the convention.
4. Video Ad Watch - deconstructing attack ads with video. As soon as an ad goes up you will see video responses. Matter of hours before there will be video responses.
5. No candidate has done what Al Gore showed us.. the policy video. Integration of multimedia to explain policy — make it substantive - -we will see that in the next year.
6. Smear videos — honeymoon during primary, but for general gloves will be off.

Questions he has:

Will there be a YouTube general election debate? Will Commission on Presidential Debates incorporate it?

November Surprise videos.. last time we had Bin Laden…

In 2004 some effort to combat voter fraud with video. In 2008 we will see real time reporting of how long lines are on every precinct in the country. You can auto-post cell phone video to YouTube today.

The session ended with everyone agreeing that video is having and will continue to have a big impact and that the organizations that are able to teach video literacy will be the ones able to have a big impact. (Andrew Rasiej, who was in the audience called it “videacy” or something like that.)

Overall, an interesting couple hours.

I am here at the Yearly Kos Convention which is being held in Chicago, home of See3 Communications. For the uninitiated, Yearly Kos is a gathering of what’s called the Netroots - liberal/left bloggers who have changed the face of American politics. Kos comes from the website DailyKos, which is the top rated left/liberal blog and one of the most trafficked blogs online. Last year, the bloggers and community around the website DailyKos decided to meet in person. And because all the bloggers were coming, so came the politicians and the organizations wanting to get this community writing about these issues.

Right now I am in a session called Video for Change. Of course this is what we do here at See3. The people on the panel are all talking about hour-long or feature length documentaries. Interesting, but honestly not something that is really in the grasp of most organizations or individuals. Two of the panelists are from Robert Greenwald’s shop, Brave New Films. They do hard-hitting documentaries designed to make change - against Fox News or Wal-Mart.

I spoke at a conference with Robert Greenwald — the Make Your Documentary Matter conference from American University’s Center for Social Media. And one thing he said was that he does not believe you can make a film to be great — as in Oscar great — and make a film designed to make change. According to Greenwald, these things require different sets of choices that are not compatible.

In the session right now, Adam Chapnick from DocWorkers.com is speaking about talking to the organizations that are interested in the issue before you make the film — rather than simply making the film you want to make and then seeking an organization that can help you distribute it. In contrast, our focus at See3 is on empowering the organizations to make the films that advance their mission themselves.

Jim Gilliam is speaking now about the Wal-Mart film they did. He is saying that the research was a mix of what they got themselves and what the organizations — such as the unions — had done over time. They are talking about how the film was distributed in more than 7,000 screenings - school groups, unions, home screenings, church groups, etc.

Tracy Fleischman from Brave New Theaters is talking now about online marketing of the films. First, set up a website. She is saying that the site should be as much of a resource as possible, so people interested in the issue can use the site for research. Made short ads, had people vote on the title of the film, had people voting on different covers for the film — lots of ways to get people involved.

Adam is saying that you need to have people feel ownership — send us your videos or photos, vote on something, the more time people sign something or click the more likely they are to go the next step. He is also saying what we know from all internet marketing — create landing pages that are specific for specific types of groups and audiences.

Tracy now talking about how Brave New Films is focusing on short-form video and not the feature length pieces as they did in the past. For example, they have a site called FoxAttacks.com which is using short pieces to advocate for specific issues — for example trying to get the Nevada Democratic Party to not have a debate on Fox News.

More to come later.

I had a conversation recently with a community activist about politics and the web. This person told me that the behind-the-scenes phone calls and pressures, public meetings and traditional press were still how they did their work — and quite successfully. My thought was, “Sure, it works and it will keep working, but you ignore the web at your own peril.”

Two things that made me think about the web and politics today. I saw Al Gore on the Daily Show. (He was excellent — relaxed, funny, knowledgeable, compelling.) One thing he mentioned was how the web was beginning to become a check on the lame political coverage of the mainstream media. Traditional media might ignore an issue, but the web is all over it. And this pressure from the bloggers acts as a feedback loop to the press, a loop that we never had before. Gore suggested that if the net was as powerful six years ago as it was today, that maybe we wouldn’t have had so many yes votes for the Iraq war because the press would have been pressured to tell the American people more directly that Iraq was not responsible for 9-11 (which 70% of Americans believed and 50% still believe.)

The other item that got me thinking politics today was the most recent column from David Pogue. He stumbled upon a website called MAPLight.org. What they do is connect money given to politicians directly to the votes those politicians make. So for example, you can look up a bill, see which groups supported it and which groups opposed it, then see which of those groups gave money to which politicians and then connect the dots to how those politicians voted. This is all public information, but the web is making it much easier to connect the dots.

Pogue writes:

Now, not all bills exhibit the same money-to-outcome relationships. And it’s not news that our lawmakers’ campaigns accept money from special interests. What this site does, however, is to expose, often embarrassingly, how that money buys votes.

I probably sound absurdly naive here. But truth is, I can’t quite figure out why these contributions are even legal. Let the various factions explain their points till they’re blue in the face, sure — but to cut checks for millions of dollars?

And I think that as more of this information becomes easy to track, more people are going to demand reform and explanations from their representatives. You can watch MAPLight’s video tour here.

The Nonprofit Times listed this very blog by this very writer as the first link in a list of “5 Technology Links to Check Right Now.” I am telling you this because you are already here reading this and I don’t want you to think you have wasted your time.

It is, of course, nice to get some recognition for one’s work. For those of you who are blogging, one key is longevity. I recently passed my one-year blogging anniversary. I remember when I started in March last year and I thought I was really late to the game. It was Guy Kawasaki’s keynote at the NTC that for some reason got me started. He’s an inspiration. If you don’t know Guy, he gives good keynote.

As I look at many interesting blogs I realize that it’s never too late to start. It also has taken this whole year for me to build something of an audience. MyBlogLog has been helpful with traffic, as has my speaking engagements, participation in the Nonprofit Blog Exchange, comments to other blogs, and mentions of us in the press.