Digital Influence Mapping Project

Community Journalism: Two Innovative Efforts

At the WeMedia08 Conference, I had the chance to hear about two different yet very complimentary initiaves to jumpstart community journalism in the face of traditional journalism "shrinkage."

Representative Journalism

The first came from Leonard Witt, Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication Department of Communication Kennesaw State University (third largest university in Georgia!). I shared a cab over to the University of Miami this morning with him and heard about a great program they are piloting (small grant) in Minnesota. It is all about creating journalists for hire by communities - any kind of community or affinity group. He calls it representative journalism. It might be a local, region-defined community who feels that there should be more coverage of education issues. It might be a group who share an interest in the fate of manatees (his example) and feel it deserves the coverage of a journalist. Would a 100 people in a community pay $100 a year for the efforts and output of said journalist? How much different is that then parents coming together to fund programs at their local public school? 

The James L. Knight Foundation
The second came from Alberto Ibarguen, President, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with anew $3m grant to Ashoka, an organization dedicated to activating and supporting social entrepeneurship. Bill Drayton started Ashoka 25 years ago on the belief that social change can happen via single entrepeneurs.

Alberto Ibarguen saw an opportunity to engage a community organization (vs. a journalism organization) to help define a new form of journalism to help communities get and distribute information that is "hyperlocal" in the sense of hyper-relevant.

I am not sure this is their conscious intent, but it seems that the Knight Foundation is smartly using their philanthropic strength to explore possibilities for how the local news business (i.e. newspaper) can be razed and rebuilt. Think about what is happening in the music business. The old music business model is being rebuilt from the ground up on thousands of MySpace pages and millions of iTunes downloads. The new model won't support the existing infrastucture. Same-same with newspapers. That "business" (actually a collection of businesses - news, marketplace, local information) can't support the established infrastructure (leading to painful, serial, drawn out downsizings of newsrooms et al).

Mr. Ibarguen did outright say that he is seeking to fulfill on the role newspapers played in the 60's and 70's in terms of social bonding. While I absolutely believe in his conviction, it is clear that the Knight Foundation is practicing outside innovation to apply to their businesses. One more way smart people brought together by WeMedia are re-inventing "media."

Idea Bar #8: Nonprofit Widgets in the age of OpenSocial

With this week's announcement from Google of OpenSocial - essentially creating a uber-platform to eclipse all platforms (i.e. Facebook) - and the news that MySpace has joined, widgets suddenly became a lot more relevant. The promise behind the Open Social move, whose API became available late last week, is that advertisers can now create widgets that hold some, hopefully, useful or delightful code, that can be embedded in user profiles across a range of social networks including MySpace, Bebo, Linkedin and more. More than that, we may achieve that wonderful goal of a single social network profile, "one ring to bind them."

Non-profits must jump on the widget wagon now!

If you go to widgetbox, one of the clearinghouse directories of widgets for different social networks, you will find approximately 29 nonprofit widgets available for your download and installation pleasure. They are a pretty varied and obscure bunch from the Dancing Dolphin to the Wild Apricot. Where is the Peace Corps? Amnesty International? Oxfam? Oceana?

So far, folks are using the widget to pull RSS headlines into a special box. (You can check out my Auctions for Change widget on my MySpace page)

I want to feature the 1-2 organizations that I support on my blog(s) and social netwrk profiles. I want to promote their mission and solicit other supporters ($$$). I need a widget that offers something more than headlines. It should offer something engaging like a dynamic statistic of the number of people going without meals in different parts of the world right now. Here's my RockYou countdown widget reminding me that I am off to Taos in t-minus "x" days and counting. How hard would it be to make that a "stat-widget" driven by real research numbers that tell me how many folks are starving, how much of the ocean is polluted, or the average human carbon footprint?

Then I need a micropayment button that allows visitors to give $1 to $1000 (or whatever) right there in the widget. How many people will click and give based upon widget exposure alone? No idea. But chances are, if it's on my blog, it's a cause I support and I will blog about it. Let me be your champion.

Non-profits need to engage their brand ambassadors now. We need nonprofitwidget.org to emerge not as just another clearinghouse (like widgetbox) but as a toolbox for promotion and measurement for nonprofits who would use this type of resource.

Here's how nonprofitwidget.org can work:

• All nonprofits can publish their widgets in this directory which features all of the requisite download and embed protocols to relieve the necessity of too much technical knowledge.
• A directory of developers with rating systems would help nonprofits connect with folks to build the widgets.
• A promotion toolbox will give the nonprofit staff a set of procedures and tools to help promote their widgets
• A voluntary "membership" link will allow all of the folks who are using the widget to remain connected.
• Each widget "page" would feature and aggregate set of links to the blogs who feature that widget thus sending some link love back to those who publish the widget. 

Unlike advertisers who will wrestle with how to measure the use of widgets in terms they are used to (online advertising - see this WaPo article from Saturday), nonprofits have everything to gain by activating their greatest asset - their supporters and fans. 

As reported in the NTEN, Network for Good has released a new whitepaper on technology and fundraising. In general, the report includes their experience with widgets and here are some key points:

"When Wired Fundraisers Talk, People Listen: The messenger matters even more than the message.

Not Every Wired Fundraiser Is a Champion: The successful Wired Fundraiser has a relatively rare combination of true passion and a means to lend a sense of urgency to their cause.

Technology Makes a Difference: Widgets and social networks make existing personal fundraisers more effective.

Smart Charities Embrace the Wired Fundraiser: And they find their own, “inner” Wired Fundraiser. "

 

"Ideal Corporate Citizenship" - Is It Possible?

Monday is Blog Action Day. That means a bunch of us (14K) signed up to blog about the environment. I did it because I care about the environment. But I really did it to explore what this type of mass action might lead to? Will readers notice? Will we get any earned media?

For myself, I believe there should be a model of a thing called "Ideal Corporate Citizenship". (I already own the url). We do a fair amount of work with clients developing or communicating about their corporate social responsibility programs (CSR). Many clients pursue this in earnest. Some are just looking for a 'social good' credential to help sales. I believe this latter group will utlimately reveal themselves to customers and it will hurt their brands (and sales).

Ideal Corporate Citizenship is a recipe that every company should fulfill on to walk-the-walk of being a good citizen. It is not a nice-to-have but a must-have credential that earns your company the right of citizenship in a global collective of individual people.

The "Ideal" part is simply a beacon - something to aim for and not ever attain. The job of being a citizen is never done.

There would be a different recipe for different companies and locales. In general though, the ideal would include the following main programs:

• Environment: from carbon to waste reduction; their are so many wasy to have a positive impact
• Volunteerism: employee and customer volunteer programs - this is the best way to have authentic skin in the game
• Brand Commitment: this is a program specifically relevant to your business and brand. For Starbucks, it may be coffee farmers
• Education: all companies should help
• Healthcare: all companies should help
• Ethics and Governance
• Diversity
• Employee Relations
• Customers' Rights
• Supplier Relations

We need business to contribute to making our society better. Customers will show preference for those brands that step up and have a meaningful postion. It's time for us to define an ideal and then work towards it everyday.

Idea Bar#8:Health Literacy

There's a lot going on in healthcare for the consumer. This past week, I attended and spoke at Consumer HealthWorld in Chicago. Innovation is happening everywhere in healthcare.

• Plodding along behind the scenes are many efforts - some of them contentious - to create a common and accessible platform for our health records.
• Consumer-driven healthcare continues to gain momentum with more and more ways to place me and you in charge of our healthcare management decisions.
• Social media impacts the broad industry on so many levels from offering patients peer-reviews of doctors and hospitals to condition-specific communities to grow and serve their common interests.

And business innovation. Two of the most interesting people I met were Janice Jackson, who heads up the Healthcare Innovations Center at AstraZeneca and Margaret Moore who runs Wellcoaches. Both represent a focus on business innovation. She is exploring different business innovations that could change how healthcare is delivered and how revenue is made. Janice participated in a panel that spent a fair amount of time debating the pros and cons of retail health clinics (e.g.  "Minute Cinics").

Margaret runs Wellcoaches which is a type of association for physical trainers and wellness coaches. She is part of an increasing focus on wellness and prevention versus treatment.

The Idea Already:

Health Literacy Programs for Consumers

With all this great change happening and new information and decision opportunities for the consumer - should I pay $40 co-pay with my doctor for a routine exam or stop in the minute clinic in Target - there is a terrific opportunity to provide health literacy programs to help all consumers get smarter about the healthcare options available to them.

Pharmaceutical Leadership Opportunity

This new health literacy program is the perfect initiative for a brand-conscious, consumer-committed pharmaceutical company. Each of the pharmas struggle between ambitions to make their corporate brand meaningful to consumers and their need to build product brands and sales. I am clearly talking about the former but firmly believe that any additional trust pharmaceutical giants can build with patients and physicians will utlimately (and quickly) strengthen their bottom line.

Right now, healthcare literacy is provided by that giant firehose of information called the Internet. Either you are getting expert information on heart disease from WebMD or hearing from a peer about their Lasik surgery on RevolutionHealth. You may belong to a patient community through Inspire (formerly ClinicaHealth) and may even get some "stay healthy' coaching through your HMO online. You are perfectly aware that there are agendas or at least POVs in collision out there: does your HMO just want to keep your benefits down? do the pharmas want to sell more pills at any cost? is your doctor struggling to achieve maximum throughput of patients just to maintain an entrenched business model?

We need an initiative akin to the media literacy efforts of the 60's and 70's that sorts out all of these new options and unpacks their meaning, bias and significance for people. Remember Paper Tiger Television - that was a grassroots organization that helped consumers understand the bias of media to better "read" what was delivered to them. The cable television industry created an initiative that continues today with Cable in the Classroom.

We need a health literacy initiative. In the age of consumer driven healthcare, we need to do better than just give people more control via new choices, we need to give them information that leads to decision-making tools and strategies. We need to help consumers understand and make these new choices.

The U.S. Government has an initiative afoot under HHS's Health Resources and Services Administration. They will have an event at the end of October which is apprently Health Literacy Month. NIH has it's own effort, as well. We should not leave this up to the government. A smart pharma could make this their signature CSR (corporate social responsibility) effort. It is an issue they could authentically get behind and rally their employees to be involved with. (The best CSR programs involve and inspire employees)

What would be the components of the program?

1. OurHealthLiteracy.com: Yes, I know that "literacy" is a mouthful for most consumers, but this is all about getting smart to be even more empowered and that is what literacy leads to. We are all illiterate in this byzantine, chaotic new world of healthcare change. There's power in knowing that fact and wanting to dig out.
2. Start with simple, DIY-style articles from different experts on the fundamental issues and choices out there. This would be a great way to solicit content froma variety of academic, commercial and consumer-created sources and build an overall "linkyness" to the site.
3. Build a mobile-accessible Health Answers FAQ - an ever growing database that reaches into a community for new answers much like Yahoo Answers. Each "answer-er" would need to identify their bias and enough about themselves that the person seeking their answer could judge the bias of the answer (all information has a bias)
4. Health: How it Works Video series: Video episodes that explain the fundamentals including the pros and cons. Imagine an episode on retail health clinics: what are they good for, what to watch out for, when to consider using them. Each video could allow for user comments to add to or debate some of the conclusions.
5. Syndicate content via widgets: create the Health Answers widget and give it away to everyone to embed in their sites and blogs.
6. Events during Health Literacy Month (October) that pull consumers, consumer advocates and helathcare professionals together to frame up additional curriculum for conusmers - what do we need to know now. these can feature blogging summits leading up to the event and live blogging/vlogging at the event to carry the proceedings farther while walking-the-walk of openness and participation.

Can a pharma really pull this off with credibility? They need a partner. But they can own it with that partner. Look at what WalMart is doing with their green efforts by linking up with key environmental organizations. Who would have thought?

This is the time. Consumers need this. Consumer driven healthcare needs this. I doubt HMO's ability to provide this but I do think the right pharma could.

We'll see.

The image? It is a concept-piece by Kristina Lee that "enables users to track their health through nutrition and fitness." A wild and woolly idea for the future that depends on health literacy today. See more about the phone here >.

Crowdsourcing: Getting Good Ideas for Goodness

I am having my class at Johns Hopkins read Wikinomics. Some like it, many are underwhelmed. It may be the repetitive nature of the book and I hope and pray it's not a "ho-hum' reaction to co-creation and crowdsourcing.

Asking people to contribute good ideas that can help society is a great way to engage people in something with relevance. Not everyone can host a crowdsourcing contest that awards a cash prize or other support to making that idea come true. This is a great idea for corporate CSR programs. Currently American Express is winding down it's heavily advertised Member's Project which awarded $2m to the Children's Safe Drinking Water project yesterday (apparently from a P&G employee). They got some heat on the blogs but they generated some solid coverage as well. (disclosure: American Express is a long-time client of Ogilvy's but I don't currently work on that business).

Now, the Dutch Postcode Lottery and Picnic have teamed up to create the Picnic Green Challenge which awards 500K Euro to the winning idea to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and then helps bring that idea to market. Here's their challenge:

"Your idea:

• Should have the potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an amount you can roughly estimate;
• Should be developed enough to execute;
• Should be realisable as a usable product or service within the next two years.

You should:

1. Be willing to bring your idea to market yourself, and to commit to working with all organisations necessary to develop the product and/or implement the service;
2. Carefully answer all the questions on the entry form, and be available to answer supplementary questions from the jury between 1 and 29 September 2007;
3. Be willing to present your idea in Amsterdam on 29 September 2007, if you are one of the finalists. Failure to appear will render your entry invalid"

Within the site, there is an interesting interview with Emily Farnworth of The Climate Group. She essentially endorses the challenge. (You should check out The Climate Group as they seem to be doing some interesting partnerships with corporations and government to respond to climate change.)

Back to the Challenge: Sir Richard Branson will chair the jury which has green heavyweights like Greenpeace alongside corporate wanna-do-gooders like Tommy Hilfiger Inc. Corporations have money to support causes. Why shoudln't they ask the "community" at large for their thinking and in this case fund an innovation that emerges from the crowd?

Corporate Climate Response in London - NOW

We have been blogging and vlogging from the Corporate Climate Response conference in London for the past two days. The conference brings together experts in climate issues and corporations who are all instituting policies and products that start to address some of the challenges we face.

There are some spectacular vlog entries. And it's a great model for making a live event connected via the Internet.

Check out our coverage here>

Building Computer Brand Enthusiasts

If Apple's market share is well below 5% then why are they always the computer company that springs to mind when we talk about brand enthusiasts (or evangelists)? It is well-earned. While the "us vs. them" sensibility has lessened (expecially with the advent of the Intel Mac) and the fact that now the Post considers them no longer cult-ish, there is still that prevailing sense of specialness driven by design and word-of-mouth for Apple products.

But what is all the other market share doing to generate word-of-mouth and brand enthusiasm?

Lenovo

The Lenovo Tapes - portrayed as a 'found' set of tapes from the secret lab, this is clearly a cute plant from someone in the Lenovo marketing chain. But the tongue is clearly and firmly planted in cheek when you actually watch the videos that have made their way onto YouTube and other distributors. They make you smile and want to pass them along.

Which Side are You On? (aka The Persuadatron) - a fun polling application that slices global voting on a black (classic - what I have) and the new(?) Titanium version. Hint: Titanium is winning almost everywhere (I voted for black). As simple as it is, this application taps into the enthusiasm for the Thinkpad platform. I am a user and somewhere within our company we do work for these guys. But I am a genuine enthusiast and find the ThinkPad platform to be a consistently well-designed tool.

Dell

Wikipedia - looks like the Inspiron product managers got a little busy on Wikipedia typing in definitions. Apparently not as busy as the ThinkPad folks. (I especially like the latter's reference to the Japanese lunch box that inspired the ThinkPad form factor.)

Alienware Aquisition - let's hope that Dell learns somethings about brand enthusiasm, design and word-of-mouth from their latest aquisition.

Alienwate Sightings Guide - Alienware on tour with Rush! In the much-anticipated sequel Scooby Doo 2 (did that go straight to DVD?). This is actually a great guide to where you can "see" Alienware boxes in movies, TV and at Events. (Yes, it is too bad that they were in Soul Plane)

HP

HP Blogs - both the executives and a handful of employee blogs are listed in this official index. Some of my favorites include:

• HP Labs Blog
• The Tour de Kids Blog - The blog follows a race that starts today and benefits sick and hospitalized children. So it's a CSR-thing but sounds like a lot of fun. Remember those great online sports packages from Quokka? Wouldn't it be great to apply that here?
• The HP version of Duct Tape marketing - Yes, they have John Jantsch as a guest blogger offering up tips. he does not link back from his site in any obvious way nor does the HP DTM blog show up in the first few pages of Google. Still, it's a smart union if you are going after very small business.

HP Podcasts - They actually have quite a few including a 15:00 tribute to Lucille Packard.

So, from CSR programs to leveraging existing bloggers and creating "viral" pass-along content, each of these companies is exploring. Some tie in their CSR. Some don't seem to have a cohesive CSR focus. Some are building on the enthusiasm for the product. Seems like each has even more than can do to build clear reasons for us wannabe enthusiasts to jump more onboard.

Super CSR

We have been talking a lot lately about the role and opportunities open to companies to adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments. Many companies start exploring this as they believe it may give them some sort of competitive brand advantage. In a world with so many choices, some people may choose a brand that appears to be behaving in a socially reponsible way. I say this with lots of hesitancy. I just don't believe that social responsibility is a deciding factor for many consumers.

But there are those companies who have made it a true part of their brand - The Body Shop is the classic example. Here's how they describe their mission statement:

• "To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change.
• To creatively balance the financial and human needs of our stakeholders: employees, customers, franchisees, suppliers and shareholders.
  
• To courageously ensure that our business is ecologically sustainable: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future.
  
• To meaningfully contribute to local, national and international communities in which we trade, by adopting a code of conduct which ensures care, honesty, fairness and respect.
  
• To passionately campaign for the protection of the environment, human and civil rights, and against animal testing within the cosmetics and toiletries industry.
  
• To tirelessly work to narrow the gap between principle and practice, whilst making fun, passion and care part of our daily lives."

Dame Anita Roddick founded the company in her own image. That means her values are heartfelt and have made the company what it is today. She remains on the board.

This is the best way to approach CSR: do it because it matters to who and what the company is, not as part of a strategy to win/earn brandshare. In today's NY Times, there is a story about Ethos water (sold to Starbucks for $8 million a while back). The premise is straightforward. Five cents of every $1.80 bottle goes towards water projects in underdeveloped countries. It is a form of business akin to Newman's Own where the primary function of the business is to establish a sustainable effort to make things better in the world. The relevance of water-for-water is wasy to get. Many companies choose CSR initiatives that have nothing to do with their brand or what they do in the marketplace. Starbucks has always been committed to some form of CSR effort. Owning a brand like Ethos, a type of super-CSR entity, makes sense.