Wednesday 23 March 2011

Final ECF2011 reflections and Presentations

ECF is coming to a close shortly with few more presentations.
It was a good forum as ever...
Loads of good energy and good discussions.

It is interesting to note how the change in the profile of participants has changed the discussion a bit...
Before the forum was full of digital comms people working with Campaigns teams sharing their experience and ongoing issues we had to deal with (mostly about feeling misunderstood :).

Now, the forum is a mix of campaigners who want to know more about digital, digital comms people who also do marketing comms people who started working recently in digital, agencies... Consequentially we moved on from very geeky very digital discussions and moans towards professional discussions sprinkled with a little bit of fear - fear of social media, fear of negative campaigning, fear for our privacy... I suppose it's good that we are feeling more confident and can focus on addressing the issues people are concerned about.
I do miss the geekiness and naivety of the early days of ecf though.. Don't get me wrong, change is good and we moved a long way. I am just allowing myself a bit of nostalgia... I think @hackofalltrades (Liam) the author of dismantling professionalism presentation will understand me here.

So two presentations I managed to write-up...

Change.org

Theory of a campaign - chop up a big issue into a number of small ones and win them one by one. Great idea - it does make sense..
Example: Issues around prejudice against gay and lesbian people in South Africa - too big. Needed chopping up into smaller specific issues, more tangible, achievable.

Websites

Brilliant presentation on how we use websites as a library rather than for funelling people to do what we want them to do. Too much focus on the home page while actually Google is our homepage..

It is kind of true but what people type into google is the brand name anyway which will land people on the home page. So it is still important.. But I agree, homepage needs to be more focussed. Some websites still have the structure which nicely shows the structure of the organisation rather than what we want people to do.

the next big thing

Facebook 0 - east africa - free internet but you can access FB. Issues with net neutrality - because some stuff is free some isn't.

beluga - messaging service for a group of people- bought up by FB

Lots of new internet domains

Facebook places winning over fousquare

micropayment apps - PayPal, FB credits, Itunes - when you can donate a small amount

Blue calypso - getting payed to advertise to your friends yourself - backlash - spotting astroturfing, churnalism. com - shows difference btw journalism and PR - a lot of articles are re-worked press release

klout.com -influencers on Twitter

honestly.com - mixing your online and offline influence

backlash next big thing - more investment in getting info from social media

Browsers become a social web -
Passport to use the web which has all your info on it - and that means that websites interact with you based on what's on your pasport. Web standard - Fb wants to offer an ID for you - web standard - something that will allow all this data to be put together.
Servers hold encrypted data and personalisation happens locally.

Enables push notifications - like on iphone

Social search - content so personalised that people's views will not be challenged.

There is a value in curating content for people - an this could be the space charities occupy? Not sure - is this what we are there for?

Video storytelling in campaigning

How can we better use video in story-telling?

What length video works for orgs?
Defining what you want the video to achieve

How do you promote your video?
Best practices using comedy
People include themselves into a video and pay to show up in the TV ad
in-house video teams or making a video cheaply
subtitling
video-hosting service
seeding videos in blogs or into websites
interactive videos - personalised

Storytelling - how do we actually tell the story using video

everygadget.com - showing people new inventions and showing people how to use it.
videoviolunteers.org - People reporting human rights abues

youtube video volunteers - people make videos on a topic when you ask them cos they are keen
episodes - done on Twitter with photos by Save the Children

charitywater.org

Guides for volunteers telling stories - raisingvoices

Hardest bit of the video is editing bit

Advice to people was to stop video after 1 min because people won;t watch more.

Amnesty's Invisibles - 4 x 10 min films - 500k views

Need to think why you are making a video - who is the audience?

Audio slideshows - can be more engaging than a video.

vimeo pro channel - you can see where people drop off - as well on youtube

Example of Comic relief slums package as an innovative, different way of telling a story that people can identify with.
rather than telling the story in the usual way charities do them.

Dismantling 'professionalism' to enable people-powered change

@hackofalltrades

Organisational use of social media is like introducing an agenda and a minute-taker into a pub situation.
Social media is the 'smoke break' of organisational campaigns and comms
Orgs are finding it hard to accept this.

While we are doing comm and campaigning professionally, that is not the case for people we are targeting/working with.

Social media is not professional space -
issues with professionalism is that there is a pressure to always be right. It's garder to have open/frank dialogues
There is an inclination to centralise everything
forgetting how to write as we speak - using short-hand making what we talk about more
leads to time-consuming process
makes it harder to get things done

www.concretesolutions.org.uk
Presentation to come.....

Digital campaigning in the South

How do we use the online campaigning that already exists in the SOuth.
How can we support local organisations..

1) We can serve one of two roles10 draw the world's attention to what's happening locally
2) Take the local campaigns and push them further

But int. charity can help when there is a threat to local activists.

Relationship building and fundraising

Tom Latchford, Raising IT- works with charities of all sizes helping them use web and social media..

three things:

1) taking collective action, tapping into existing communities

Leveraging people's close connections. The growth of Facebook was successful because they tapped into existing (university) networks.
St Paul's hostel/soup kitchens - asked for help to get people signing up to help them, volunteer.
They've put together a website before Christmas - asking people to take collection boxes into their churches - they collected 4,000 tins of soups. 400 signed up to be volunteers. Then next week collected 40,000 tins of soup.

MacMillan - same model of tapping into communities. There was none, so they set out to develop a community. But if the target is 1,000 in order to raise a million.
People signed up and immediatly were asked to be a team captain - so they saw this challenge as a challenge ot for themselves but for their network as well.

Introducing justgiving pages. They have just launched teams which taps into this potential.


2) segmentation

Seeing how well other sectors are using it - for example TESCO -
Using an example of online gambling - it went really big because technology gives them a lot if information about the people around the table.

By knowing people you can get them to do what you want.

Obama campaign is a good example - it was top-down coordination but it empowered people to spread it to their networks.

Pyramid:

raw data
customer insight
value levers (comms channels)
effect on segmented groups

[hm, not sure what this is - I think it's over-complicated the idea/process of segmentation]
CRM looking at individuals as well as their networks so that the networks can be take on a journey

Also mobile apps for fundraisers - so people can give by mobile - going through the roof
Raising IT have a CRM which seems to do similar stuff as justgiving (worth checking out if they are better than JG or Aartez)

3) taking people in a journey from taking action to become social advocates using social media - creating

Introduced he Seth Godin funnel:
“A new set of online tools makes this approach not just a possibility, but also an imperative for any organization hoping to grow. Give your fan club a megaphone and get out of the way.”

Looked at Twitter followers for the dyslexia charity and analysed their reach. And based on that targeted people with big reach and getting them to recruit more people..

Looking at Groupon model and see how charities can use it.
Used this for WWF - end result is face to face fundriaising... UNICEF uses the same tool.

Would be interesting how this model would work with campaigning??

Tuesday 22 March 2011

From strategy to practice in the last 12 months

My presentation from ECF2011

Takes some time to load...

With thanks to Bryan Miller of Strategy refresh who has come up with this brilliant planning model for digital and who I worked with to develop and implement this digital framework for Save the Children. And he's can definitely find a lolcat for every occasion.

Clicktivism vs Activism - another discussion

For those of us who were not here yesterday for the clicktivism vs activism debate, we are taking it away for another spin..
The man conclusion of last nights debate is that online and offline activism can not work one without the other. Also

/more notes coming from @shrinkydinky http://ecflive.fairsay.com/22/19-clicktivism//

Building lists - powerful fundraising tool.
Don't we do the same with campaigns? We are inventing campaigns to engage people - is this ethical? There is a responsibility of what we do. Focus on numbers is damaging the quality of campaigns. Where you are letting numbers come into the way of the issue.

If you build the list in order to use it for engagement once we need them.
We shouldn't idealise what we had before.

Clay Shirky challeneged charity's idea of engagement in the network for good webinar:

Your users are not like you. activists are active, hence the name.
And if everybody outside of your organization cared as much about your subject as you do inside your
organization, your organization would be a thousand times larger than it actually is.

It’s not a matter of turning everyone into an activist, but rather a matter of saying, “We’re going to reach
people where they are. We’re going to reach people at the level that they care about this.”

If I go to Wikipedia, I don’t have to care about Wikipedia as a whole, I can edit one article. I can edit an article on the US highway system and never care that there are articles on both the Crimean War and Britney Spears. It doesn’t matter to me.
The smallest job I can do on Wikipedia is a tiny edit. I can fix a comma splice. I can change a typo.
And so, Wikipedia is able to integrate the work of literally millions of people because those people don’t
have to be activists, they don’t have to be passionate. In fact, they can be, just a little bit annoyed that
there’s a comma splice on a page they happen to care about, fix that comma splice, never be seen from
again, and still have added some value to the system.


If people see that they are part of a big group - it will help building a momentum around the issue.
Where are we actually powerful - in the polling booth really.
Difference in corporate campaigning and political campaigning. Corporations are bothered about how many people have seen your message and they will care about their potential and current customers.

We need to invest more in building up people to become more and more engaged

Erick Lee in the session yesterday - we are all on the same side. What about the right using these same techniques? british Gas buit a website for schools saying tat they are one of the greenest companies in the UK.

Another year another e-campaigning forum Plus Greenpeace presentation on mobile

Yes, it's that time of the year and here I am again sitting in the lecture hall of the St Anne's college in Oxford.
Many familiar faces here - a but surprised to hear that majority have come to ECF for the first time! That means a lot of new, fresh discussions and challenges - I am really looking forward to all that.

The first presentation is by Greenpeace International. When you think innovation – look at Greenpeace. When are they going to stop being so cool? It's so annoying (this is pure jealousy speaking obviously).

So Jusi Kivipuro leads on mobile innovation in Greenpeace International and he will tell us how GP is using it in their campaigns.

Mobiles now outnumber PC worldwide by 5 to 1. However they are used in different ways than we do:)

Some stats I have that confirm this but are also encouraging in terms ...
“By 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.”*Gartner ‘Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2010 and Beyond: A New Balance’. Jan 2010

“For the first time, there will be over 1 billion mobile devices accessing internet by year-end , gaining quickly on the 1.3 billion PCs accessing the internet – as the former is growing at 2.5 times the rate of the latter”
Frank Gens Senior. VP & Chief Analyst, IDC. Speaking in 2010

Mobile is a bridge btw the real world and the internet. People get in touch when it suits them.
This bridge is Augmented reality – it doesn’t have to be this literally – it could be an SMS service which gives you info based on your location (I know of an example I think in Finland where you can get the appropriate bus schedule based on your location)

Case study - China

Looking at comm and campaigning.
Will look at fundraising in the future.
Wanted to run a number of pilot campaigns

Held three different campaigns to reach the new tipping point in mobile campaigning
300k subscriber to comms from Greenpeace - recruited over 18 months.
10 different mobile channels tested and created KPIs for engagement. [WOW]

Campaign - banned pesticides are used in the production by millions of farmers in China. Tried to improve regulation by getting supermarkets to change their sourcing policies and consumers buying habits.

Service for women who do all the shopping - which helps them in shopping and recommend produce for their favourite dishes.
Apps, mobile site, MMS, MMS
SMS - is the unifying platform that everyone can use while Apps are more exclusive - different operating systems, smartphones. But people who are using them are the heavy consumers. So they might be most active/most influential, although not the highest in numbers.
MMS - ads in MMS magazines. In China people read a lot over mobile. When you click on the ad you find the subscription service for GP info.
SMS push campaign - bought the list of people and asked them if they want to receive info about safe food.

Subscriptions followed by a serious of messages with info about sfae food and produce. Then they would have a link to a mobile website. Plus offline events and radip
Also paper ads promoting iphone apps. Had iphone ads as well as s60 - difficult to find developers for the former.
Took time to think about different channels they can use.

Marketing web to mobile - so people can sign up and get GP mobile guide to use it when they need it - so not trying to move them from web to mobile... Show how important it is to think the journeys through. Cos on the face of it, you wouldn't push people from online where you already g=have people one step away form a conversion....

Mobile was cost-effective for Greenpeace.
They could send messages that people wanted to receive. And they didn't kill and trees!

Audience questions

Good comment from the audience - in order to do mobile correctly, charities need to sort out their mobile websites first. Totally agree with that - so often we need to do the shiny stuff rather than sort out the basics, while basics bring better results...

Another question - Greenpeace focussed on reaching out to middle classes. They didn't try to reach farmers as they were not their primary audience.

Interactive service where people could reply to SMS' from GP? They did contemplate Ask Greenpeace type of service... Google developed a service where a farmer can ask a question and Google generates answers from the search and then they get pushed to human being if answers can not be found...

This sounds like that project in Nigeria 'Learning about living' for children is schools to ask questions about reproductive health. They could do it via web, phone and mobile. Mobile performed best - 10,000 text in the first month, hardly any questions through the web form, and there were pre-set answers that would be played back to the user... (stats from 2008)