advergirl

Commercials that entertain

These days, it's all about content, right? Not just pitching people on good old attributes and benefits, but engaging them. Getting them to spend some time with you. Getting them to talk about you.

Yeah, you've heard it before, all about the death of the :30 second spot, the rise of relationships, the era in which peers - and, as it turns out, dogs - rule.

But, how the heck do you make that all happen when your deliverable is, in fact, a :30 second spot? A couple of my favorite examples below. Ones that not only entertain, but also take on the core challenge of branding: showing who you're for and what you're about.

Pedigree "dogs rule": Connecting with dog owners over the simple joy of fetch. (TV version/Internet version):

Esurance "lucky today": Making connections over music. Does it get more "friendly" than that? (TV version/Internet version):

Commercials that are opening minds

Remember when this blog used to be about advertising? Like all the time?

Today, a break from all the social media preaching for a quick look at two of the best commercial campaigns of the new year: Kaplan and Carnival.

First, let's acknowledge: These are tough products to introduce to new audiences. We all have pretty firm (and final) opinions on online degrees and cruises. They're either for people like us - or a weird choice "other people" make.

In these two decidedly-emotional campaigns, Kaplan and Carnival get us to reconsider what we think we know. They connect with us in ways that inspire camaraderie and delight.

"The basic difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions." ::Donald Calne

Carnival did it with JOY. A sense of absolute playful fun - shown in moments you wish you were a part of:

Kaplan did it with that uniquely-collegiate sensation of DISCOVERY. A sense of reaching new conclusions, staking new ground, discovering new ways to think about old problems - shown in moments of heady philosophy: 

Rethinking Web strategy for nonprofits: The New Best Practices (3/3)

Build for the behavior your want. The way a website works has a powerful effect on how people interact with it. Beyond usability, it’s creating a place so compelling that it elicits curiosity and seemingly-inevitable action.

Consider two best practice examples:

Fundaising / External Behavior

WeCanBuildAnOrphanage.com is an old-fashioned barnraising. Three people rallying thousands to build a home for AIDS orphans. The site is aimed at grassroots fundraising – at raising money a brick, diaper, a bottle at a time:

But this is the compelling part of the build:

Don’t just write a check, drag and drop the contribution you want to make. Literally buy the bricks that will build the walls that protect the kids.

Community Building / Internal Behavior

My home agency actually worked on this one. The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio – a foundation investing in social change for women and girls - not only built a new Website, they built new expectations for how they’d interact with their community.

The entire site is built on the blog-engine Wordpress, giving them access to lots of free plugins and widgets (search, photo hosting, email updates) and a built-in content management and reporting system.

Smart use of resources to be sure. But, more than that, it’s creating a new behavior among the staff – knighting them all as bloggers who update the site consistently, sharing their work and time with their community. And, making it easy – or even obvious – to integrate with social tools, promoting events through email, sure, but also on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

7 things about me

Here it is. Advergirl does a meme.

This one was hard to resist. Ad Broad, the self-proclaimed oldest working writer in advertising, made me do it: she was asked to reveal 7 things about herself and challenge 7 people – including me, it turns out - to do the same.

After 5 years of typing and talking, there’s not much you don’t know (well, not much you don’t know that I’m willing to tell you), but here’s a shot at seven new things:

1. The Reverend Jimmy Baker’s ex-cell mate – Roger Nelson - taught me how to skydive. He was something of a lightning rod for legend and innuendo before he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for drug smuggling. But, he came out a reformed man. Preaching Jesus and skydiving at a Skydive Chicago, a dropzone he ran with his kids (his first DZ, incidentally, was called Skydive Sandwich – a name that I find delightful).


2. I was co-chair of the College Republicans, a collector of Nixon memorabilia and such a big fan of William F. Buckley, Jr. that the only password I’d use for years was WFBJR. Now, of course, I am a socialist.


3. My first cat was an outdoor beast named Mama Cat. She would come from anywhere in the neighborhood when I whistled Duke Ellington (It don’t mean a thing) for her.


4. I have a trunk of saved love letters. From as far back as summer camp. Silly and earnest notes from back when people used pen and paper. (So, watch out ex-es, I’ve got dirt.)


5. Most of the time that I’m in my house, I’m wearing jammies. I claim this is a strategy to protect my clothes from the shedding cadre of pets I share the place with, but, really, I just like jammies.


6. My first job was at a family restaurant called Christies. I waitressed at the coffee counter near the short-order grill (for $20/night) and smelled so awful (from the grease and smoke) at the end of the day that my mother made me change my clothes in the garage. I once stepped in the soup (sitting in a big vat in the walk-in fridge) and we served it anyway. Ew.


7. Somehow I got halfway through college without ever learning how to cook. So, I turned to TV for the answers. Starting with scrambled eggs, I learned everything I know about cooking from a year of watching FoodTV. Now, I make the best enchiladas and mac and cheese you’ll ever eat. (Incidentally, I also never learned how to apply eyeliner or use a lawnmower. The former I picked up by trial and ERROR; the latter – eh, I mulched my yard).

OK, now it's my turn to tag people, asking them to share 7 things about themselves. Many of my usual suspects have already answered, but here are other bloggers I'd love to know better:

Kyle Lacy
Erin Joan
Carrie Krebbecks
Shannin Brooks
Dirk Singer
Daniel Pink
David Taylor

Rethinking Web strategy for nonprofits: The New Best Practices (2/3)

#2 Be of the community, not at the community. We hear all the time that expectations for digital communication are different than for traditional communication. People want to get information, sure, but also have impact. They want to be part of creating content, conversation and change. More importantly, they don't want that input to stop at the online experience.

But, how do you create that relationship? Giving the audience both access and power. And, preserving your own vision (built on both experience and practical considerations).

The Brooklyn Museum created a great case study last year with its crowd-curated exhibition:

The exhibition - Click! - began with an open call. Artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography that reflected the theme "Changing Faces of Brooklyn." (Note: the electronic format significantly reduced the staff-time needed to put the work online)

Then, over 3,000 people voted on the work in an online forum. As part of the evaluation, each visitor was asked to answer a series of questions about her knowledge of art and perceived expertise. A total of 400,000 votes were cast by that core group of 3,000 patrons. (Note: among the relatively small audience, the commitment and connection were deep.)

The final exhibition was installed according to the rankings from the online process. Visitors were able to see not only the art but how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art.

The result: A truly community-curated exhibit that engaged people online and virtually ensured their offline participation.

The Brooklyn Museum has continued to invest in digital community development. Their entire collection is online. Not only for browsing, but for active community tagging. And, the Museum's Facebook application makes it easy for users to take their favorite works of art onto their profiles.

A local spin
Junctionview Studios is home to a diverse collection of artists. Painters, writers, sculptors, stilt walkers (no, really). They target their event schedule at creating opportunities for new artists and building a community around independent art.

One event is the Spark show. A completely crowdsourced show any exhibition space or gallery could borrow from.

The entire community is invited to bring in their latest work, pick up a hammer and hang it up. They can display throughout the studios. And, that evening there's a show. Complete with music, cocktails and plenty of buzz.

Does social media really connect us?

I won’t mislead you. I’m about to write about an issue you’ve heard about all week. One that many bloggers have already weighed in on. But, one, too, that continues to interest many of us. So, I’ll start like this:

It’s Sunday afternoon. What better time for a little preaching? Friends, choir, let’s talk about the power of social media.

For my readers who are not addicted to the happy little crack-stream of Twitter, I offer this brief preface:

Last week, David Armano, author of Logic + Emotion, called his network to action. His friend Daniela had found herself in a very difficult situation. She had left an abusive marriage and found herself – and three children– with nowhere to go.

David and wife Belinda were moved to help. They took Daniela into their home and set about raising money for her new life. With the humblest of words, David asked his social network to help, calling on us to raise $5,000 to help her start over. And, we answered. Over 500 of us. Raising not only $5,000, but $16,000 in a matter of hours.

(For more, read Business Week's summary)

Since this huge outpouring of support, bloggers have been doing our thing – commenting, deconstructing and critiquing the effort. Some say David made good use of his social capital, others say he should have stopped at $5000 or given the overage to an organization fighting abuse on a larger scale. At least one blogger said this disproportionate benefit to one person is unfair – that our money is better spent on attacking the root causes of social problems. An interesting point. But, one that I would counter.

Not long ago, my friend David Griner started a presentation on social media with the provocative question “how did things get so detached?” Meaning that with all this typing and surfing have we become disconnected?

I think the opposite is true. If anything, all the typing has reconnected us. It was the nuclear family of the 70s, the cul de sacs of the 80s and the ladder climbing of the 90s that divided us. Each in our own enclave. Living separate lives. Sure in our judgments. Able to cast a cold view onto a world of “others.” We exchanged phone calls, Christmas cards, invitations to carefully-planned parties.

Social media gave us an entirely different look into one-anothers lives. The New York Times calls this new vantage ambient intimacy:

…he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they’d scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, …

For all the banality of the life we live together online, it actually makes us more real to each other. Gives depth to us as people. Creates empathy and connection. It kicks us off of our perches and demands that we see each other as we are. What David did, what we all did with him, is perhaps a sign of that change.

Most of us believe that we owe something to the world around us. We help one another by throwing the occasional $100 check in the greater-good kitty, attending a well-catered fundraiser or letting the United Way take a few bucks out our paychecks.

Rarely do we look into the eyes of someone whose basic needs are unmet and say – how can I help?

In short, we abdicate our right and our responsibility to personally change lives. We believe it’s not ours to do. Rather, the work of people who answer a greater calling. The sort of thing that can only be done with pooled resources.

But, of course, we can do more. More small things. More micro interactions.

And, maybe, just maybe, social media will make this behavior more prevalent. Not for the big gestures – like David’s barnraising for Daniela – but in the changed mindset. The one that makes us more real to one another. More deserving of compassion and consideration and a chance. A mindset that recognizes that writing a check matters in the changing the world, but so does taking action to change one person’s life.

A new social safety net born of social media? You never know.

Rethinking Web strategy for nonprofits: The New Best Practices (1/3)

#1 Think of small gift donors as impulse buyers. It needs to be as easy for them to give $10 to you as it is for them to pick up a candy bar at the checkout aisle. Katherine Lumb made this great remark on Twitter a while back: "Usability 2.0 is not so much 'I can't figure this out' as it is 'I don't have time for this sh*t'."

When you're asking for a $5 - $25 donation, you're not competing with other charitable giving. Instead, you're up against daily consumer spending. It's a quick choice. Not unlike ordering a pizza instead of cooking dinner or picking up a magazine at the grocery.

The mental barrier to giving is very low. But the expectation for an easy process is extremely high.

This American Life (my very favorite show) routinely asks listeners to give $5 or $10 to cover the streaming costs of its free podcasts. Keep it free. Keep it from burdening our home station. Reasonable request, right? I've gone to the Web site to give three times, but have never actually gone through with it. Why? Because I'm confronted with this - a form designed for pledge week:


It's long. Requires a credit card. And doesn't appear to offer to save my information to make it easy for me next time.

Compare that it Kiva.org. Hipsters' favorite little international loan collective. They ask for ~$25. A little higher, but still in the impulse give category. After I fill in my amount, it can be this simple:

Can I choose to give by credit card? Yeah. Or, I can just login with Paypal and it knows all my address and personal information + let's me give with one click.

It's fast, easy and relevant to the way I want to give.

How can This American Life take this impulse give approach into their own fundraising efforts? Four suggestions:

• Make PayPal a payment option on the site.
• Make recurring payments easy - either automatic or text / email to confirm
• Offer text to give (The host asks for a $5 gift during the program. Asking people to text a short code to a number to automatically have a $5 charge added to their phone bill is about as easy as it gets)
• Partner with iTunes or other fulfillment sources to let listeners name their own price for the podcast (letting them give while they're directly getting the value)