Social media and Joseph Kony

The past couple of days, awareness of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army has went viral with a movie made by Invisible Children, an organization focused on stopping Joseph Kony.

Photo by SPangborn

Vimeo stats of the Kony 2012 movie

Although there has been controversy about the whole campaign, the use of social media has been fascinating to watch. In just a few days, views of the centerpiece movie on Kony jumped from 8 views to 58,000 to 2.7 million to 8.2 million views on March 7, 2012.

It is no surprise that social media enabled this strategy to gain so much traction in just a few short days. Smart use of the tools, like empowering readers to participate in speaking to "culturemakers" and policymakers to ask them to do something about Kony via Twitter, helps spread this campaign like wildfire.

What can my and other organizations learn from this?

Canadian Member of Parliament, Tony Clement was influenced

Without an organization embracing social media in the first place, the opportunity to speak into a social media phenomenon is lost. An example like this shows quite clearly that culture is already using social media tools and it will be that much harder if we don't use it.  (An aside thought: What if hundreds of our leaders and volunteers were able to speak into this by offering a different viewpoint by adding the hashtag #stopkony or #kony2012 to their tweets?)  Getting on the bandwagon right now is too late. We must be social media ready.

Clarity of content/cause is key. The Invisible Children's site and content really made this campaign succeed. I was impressed by the professional presentation and the clear message when spending a brief few minutes on the site. I have not watched the movie, but it has been shared to me via Facebook and Twitter over 10+ times with recommendations to watch it.

Is your organization ready to speak into something like Kony2012 or create a cause that can spread like it?  If not, how can you get to the point so that your organization can?  Would love to hear your thoughts.
   

Google, Failure and Platforms

Photo from Sixth Lie

After reading an article on Google's inability to be accessible, I started to muse how Google will survive the failures of Wave and now Buzz.

It has been said that failing forward makes way for success down the road, but that means that you need to learn from your failures.  But Google doesn't seem to be doing that with 2 big flops and from the rant, I wonder if the message wasn't getting through to Google.  Perhaps Yegge was what Google needed to right the ship.

In the long run, I think Google will hold its own and succeed, but in the short-term will navigate these failures and move on.  They are too big to consider the latest strings of failures to be fatal.

What I appreciated about Yegge's rant was that it made me and a colleague think through what is our online platform to share Jesus Christ.   Do we have a platform that we use and "eat our own dogfood" as well?  Are we making it accessible so that so called "third-parties" can use it to help share Christ themselves?

It may seem odd to some that we need to think this way, but I think we need to look how we can create a platform to share Jesus to as many people as possible and I do think that means looking at an online platform that can multiply the task of bringing the Good News of Jesus.

My Two Cents on Why the iPad is Game Changer

I remember a while back when Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo fanboys were duking it out on message boards on what system was the best. As the systems evolved into more powerful iterations, the target audience for the systems changed. Nintendo started to target a different type of video game player - the casual gamer and Microsoft and Sony stayed with the "hardcore" gamers who have grown up from their 80s 8-bit systems to be adults who demanded more involved and graphic games.

The result? The Wii system sold over 70 million consoles with the Xbox 360 at 42 million and PS3 at 38 million (figures approximate).

I believe what Wii is to the console video game market is what iPad is to the mobile computing market now. You hear people complain that the iPad can't do this or do that, but I don't think Apple is targeting the person who wants an all-in-one computer. Apple is targeting the "casual" computer user.

Case in point - my friend has a MacBook Pro and recently bought an iPad. When we visited her over the summer, I did not even see the MBP, just the iPad. All her needs were met including reading blogs, checking Facebook and playing games.

When I had the iPad for a few weeks, I found myself picking up the iPad to pass the time instead of powering up my laptop. I believe this is what Steve Jobs was aiming for - a computer for casual computer use - not to replace the working computer.

And that is why I think it is a game changer and make Apple millions of dollars.

What are the implications of this for your organization?

Questions for my team to wrestle with:

• Will students access our sites using the iPad more than traditional laptops and desktops?
• Is the iPad mobile enough for students to carry it everywhere they go? Should it be included as a device to consider in a mobile strategy?

Photo credit: ahhyeah and geehail2

Burger King Cologne and thinking big

This is a series of posts on the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Max Lenderman's session.

There have been a lot of companies that have thought big to reach a wider audience. For instance, Burger King went out of the box by releasing Fire Meets Desire Burger King cologne. Not only did the cologne sell out, the marketing reached a lot more people than just regular Burger King customers.

They also partnered with Microsoft to create $3.99 XBOX games that they sold at regular BK restaurants. They sold out all that were made and kids and adults played games featuring the goofy looking King mascot at home.

Burger King went big to invest in their brand and generated acceptance into people's consciousness (i.e. I used to hate the King, but after watching the cologne add and being exposed to the quirky mascot more, I'm not so much hating anymore). What are you doing to think big?

What my team needs to do:

This is a more difficult issue to apply for non-profits as expanding the core audience is tricky when the organization doesn't want to confuse what message they are sending. However, big thinking can tap into the emotional side of people to identify a need (this idea comes from Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath of which I will blog more extensively on soon) and draw them in.

1. Partner with a humanitarian partner, to appeal to the emotional side of people who agree that the oppressed need to be defended and to bring justice to those who are exploiting the poor. Launch a campaign that will couple the message of Jesus with human freedom.
2. Re-think how we promote our brand. Currently, we barely creep above the threshold of awareness with our audience. What can we do that keeps up there on par with more prominent organizations that reach our same audience?
   

photo courtesy of zieak on flickr

It's Not About How Many But Who

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session.

"We are in that war of making sure we get to the right people." Mitch Joel

Often times when we advertise a certain type of event, whether that be on campus, in church or in the public forum, we aim to get as many eyeballs to read what we are promoting. We then sink money into making sure it is of great quality and that it is drawing those eyeballs to the promotion.

But we fail to realize that the most important thing that underlies our success in the first place is getting our message or product to the right people. It is because the right people will do the work to reach the masses in the long run. As a result, there are times the mass marketing strategies overlook the right people and thus fail to connect with them.

I am on teams that this concept applies to like my church.  What we need to think about are:

1. Decide whether we have one message (to promote to non-Christians) or two messages (one for non-Christians and one for Christians).
   
2. Review our strategies to see if they are reaching the right people. Did we plan these events with the right people in mind or were they just good ideas that we think can reach the right people?
   
3. Identify the mass marketing that we do, axe them and divert resources to reach the right people.

Question to think about - Is there a place for mass marketing in today's world?

What do you do when you watch TV?

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session:

40% of people sleep (Joel) - and this isn't due to lack of sleep. It is because the way we interact with media has changed so drastically that watching TV is actually boring.

With all the apps and tools on the internet and mobile devices, we are apt to create and use to doing it. Whether it is commenting, writing blogs and reviews, producing videos, inventing new applications, we are always creating and when we come across a medium that we don't have creative control over, we shut our minds off from it.

How are you promoting your product or message? Is it involving your target audience to respond by creating? Are you allowing them to enter into the creative realm around your product or message?

What my team needs to do:

1. Identify strategies, sites and applications in which we restrict our target audiences' ability to create and be involved in our message
2. Revamp strategies, sites and applications so that we allow avenues of creativity around our message while we promote our message
   
3. Are we allowing multiple avenues of creativity to access our message? Is it just via the computer or are we connecting people via mobile devices, specifically iPhones/iPads, Androids, Blackberry, e-Readers?

Ctrl-Alt-Del

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session:

Joel shared that when Cortes founded Mexico, he burned the ships to signify to his crew that there was no going back. In the same way, marketing has changed so drastically that you have to burn your ships and move forward. There is no turning back to the Old World of marketing.

If you had to Ctrl - Alt -Del your company or organization and create a whole new one, what would you do differently? The reality of today's market (i.e. iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Androids, high-speed internet) is so vastly different than yesteryear that if we don't change, we will be left behind.

Consider the facts:

• More grandparents are on Facebook than high school students (ReadWriteWeb - July 7, 2009)
• 81% of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (Nielson Online - Dec 2008)
• 20% of searches every month are new searches that never have been searched before (Google)
• Half of Youtube's audience is over 34 (MarketingVox) - not just teeny boppers watching music videos
• Vooks, iPads, Kindles and MS Courier will be game changers
  

What do we need to Ctrl - Alt - Del to connect our message to a vastly connected world?