Digital Influence Mapping Project

Our government is too big not to get social media

There is an interesting conversation going on within our 360° Digital Influence team blog sparked by a post from Brian Giesen regarding the death of Web 1.0 for government. The question of whether our government gets social media or fundamental issues around the Internet is a false question. There is no monolithic "government." There is a diverse collection of people across different agencies and departments, most of who are trying anything they can do their jobs better. That includes exploring and adopting social media. I don't find the institutional inertia inside government agencies any thicker than many corporations.

There is lots of evidence that individuals throughout government are exploring and becoming expert with how to use social media productively. While there is plenty of evidence that others are struggling. In such a big ecosystem like "government" that is completely understandable.

Technology is complicated

Today's Washington Post Business section covers the hearings yesterday garding Internet privacy in relation to data mining and ad targeting. The story was in the print edition and I cannot find it online but the intersting points were:

• one Congressman citing the use of the term "cookies" and feeling the need to learn a new dictionary
• the general sense that the discusison aqbout technology, data and privacy in realtion to Internet advertising was too complex to really understand within the scope of the session

But the campaigns lead the way

Both parties are using social media to the fullest. That's common knowledge. It's not just the 2 big candidates but plenty of the others who run every year that are deep into the tools, communities and methodologies of social media and just good use of the Web.

• Obama for America
• John McCain for President
• Josh Hallet on local campaign sites
• Jerry Weinstein at The Huffington Post on the Personal Democracy Forum

And then they get elected

Look at Robert Scoble's trip to the Hill this past month. he found plenty of folks who "get it" including Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. See his video collection here.

Social Media and the World Bank

Pierre Wielezynski, a Communications Officer at The World Bank, and I presented to a great group of Internet pros from all over DC - government, non-profit, and commercial companies. Pierre offered tons of insight about what it means to be a social media evangelist inside an organization bolted as tight as The World Bank.

He has really accomplished a tremendous amount. Just last month he was in his Japan office training folks on some of the fundamentals that will help them in their jobs. (Our Japan Digital Influence team stopped in to share our POV and experiences).

He started by pointing out how other advocacy organizations were making big ripples or great starts including:

• One: the cause to allocate 1% of the US budget to fight AIDS and extreme poverty
• Greenpeace: primarily how they offer easy-to-tag 'Tag This Campaign' features
• Change.org: their feature that allows you to type in the plights you would like to solve in the world. The tag cloud generated by this simple tool inventories a lot of the issues the bank is focused on from "Sustainable food sources" to "ending global poverty"
• Good Search: every search can send pennies to a worthy cause.
• Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger: where use of the instant messenger delivers ad revenue to causes
• Kiva: allowing each of us to participate in micro-lending

His point? All this is going without the World Bank. Personally, I don't think he gives himself enough credit. His evangelism, his willingness to do a preso like this in front of 150 people from all sorts of agencies with his boss in the front row, and his willingness to be frank and open about what the Bank is and is not doing will likely do a lot to push the organization along.

700 vs. 20,000 Outlets

He made a terrific point with his slides showing their traditional communications effort (press realeases et al) over 4 months which generated 13,000 news mentions from 700 outlets - mostly traditional media.

Compare that with over 32,000 mentions from 20,000 blogs many of which were critiquing (okay, lambasting) the Bank. The Long Tail meets lack of control.

Ultimately his point is that we have to move from the Communications 1.0 model  - "disseminate polished messages to people" - towards a new model where our job is to "help staff communicate"

The World Bank Blog Makes Little "Bangs"

Yes, they have one. It is the Private Sector Development Blog which is gaining popularity. And there are real people behind it who readers can get to know and trust. This small effort is a giant step in the right direction. The direction? As he put it, we need to move away from the Big Bang theory of communications  - where we are trying to get that colossal clip (we here that all the time - "get us on The Today Show, Oprah, WSJ"). And we should move towards lots of little bangs like the ones created by this blog. 

Here's how the blog describes itself:

"The Private Sector Development Blog (PSD Blog) gathers together news, resources and ideas about the role of private enterprise in fighting poverty. The blog is informal and represents the quirks and opinions of the bloggers, not the World Bank Group."

The authors are all introduced on the same page.

There were many other agencies in the audience from The State Department to Homeland Security to the White House. They would all be lucky to have a smart enthusiast like Pierre pushing them forward into a participatory approach to communications vs. command-and-control. The fact that they were all there for our session on developing social media strategy was a good sign in and of itself.

26 Steps to Analog Voting in the Digital Age

This past Tuesday was, of course, the primary elections in Maryland and DC (and the rest of the country). I love to vote. It feels like the least that I can do and I always try to do the least that I can do....

So here's how it went:

1. I get up early to get to the polls when they open - 7am
2. I arrive at the Middle School which is lined with last-minute campaign workers extolling the virtues of all the candidates. They seem to be obeying the invisible no-fly zone by the doors.
3. I cross through the bushes and get intercepted by my friend Nina who hands me a 6x8" card listing out all of the progressive candidates. Very well designed, we both comment. This will come in handy later on...
4. The line to get to the first table is already out the door. I'm thinking 20 minutes to step one.
5. 10 minutes later, people start trickling out: "they don't have the electronic voting cards and don't know when they will." Well, this turns out to be the story all over Montgomery County. And in the computing trades.
6. The man in front of me laments, "I can't come back. I got here early 'cause that's the only time..."
7. I bolt. No way I am waiting until the cards may or may not show up. I find out later they didn't arrive until at least an hour later.
8. Long day at work. Prepping a viral video campaign. Tweaks on an issue ad campaign. Adjustments to our momblogger project. The usual.
9. I hear that the polls will be open an hour later - 9pm - due to the flub. I leave work in time to get back to the polling place at 7:50pm.
10. Same campaign workers hovering like tired bees outside the doors to the school. Same line-length.
11. I get in line figuring the 15 minutes or so but it's not moving. Rumours are spread by a campaign worker that they will stop using the electronic voting machines at 8pm.She says everyone in line by 8pm will get to vote on the machines.
12. A poll worker comes along the line and, sure enough, the voting machines are being shut down promptly at 8pm. Everyone will now have to use provisional voting (paper ballots). I like the machines and am severly bummed. I also realize that the process will now take longer. I am determined to vote. I ask her why the machines must go off. "I am under orders to turn them off. I don't know why."
13. The man in front of me asks if he would be shunned if he just walked away. because we are in Takoma Park , I tell him "yes."
14. Okay, so here's the overview of the new process (which I only learned a little at a time): Line #1 takes you to three poll workers who take your name verifying your identity by asking DOB, address. You get a little printout thingee. Line #2 leads to a table with 2 poll workers: the only two who know how to do proviisonal voting. This is clearly going to be the giant sphincter.
15. I make it through line one and join the end of line two. About 14 people ahead of me. I keep examining what the two poll workers are doing - filling out yellow forms, giving voters multi-page voting forms. Some people peel off to fill out the forms on the multipurpose tables (which have been multiplying as a tired custodian opens them reluctantly)
16. The man behind me grabs a folding chair: smart move.
17. NOW THE WHOPPER: They have just run out of Democratic voting forms (of course they are fine on the Republican ones). They have requested more from Rockville (1 hour away). It is now 8:30pm.
18. The poll worker quiets everyone to make an announcement. Someone keeps talking and she threatens to have them removed. Someone in the line says, "leave her alone." I am thinking mob revolt. There are about 50 voters in the room in one line or another.
19. ANNOUNCEMENT: 'yes, there are no forms. we want you to write your votes on a scrap of paper.' A SCRAP OF PAPER. She hands out scraps from some pad of voting instructions which no longer have any relevance. 
20. A voter offers to read off the candidates from some form she got in the mail so that people know the choices. Everyone scrambles for a bench at the tables. I don't have a pen. A tired poll worker hands me one. I remaiin standing hoping that gets me to the giant sphincter sooner.
21. Remember that list of progressive candidates (Step 3)? I pull that out. I think for a moment of just putting my name on that and handing it in. But that's got to be wrong.
22. I copy all the names onto the scrap of paper. I put my name on the top not sure if am supposed to or not. Maybe I am nominating myself.
23. The scene is chaos. Many of us are taking it for the existentialist test that it is. Some are angry. Jamie Raskin, candidate for State Senate comes in. I watch as he tries to understand what is going on. He shakes his head like trying to clear cobwebs. Soon he is on the cell phone talking with a judge or the governor-to-be.
24. I get to the table while the bingo game call-out is till going on. The very tired poll worker slides a foirm to me to fill out.
25. I bust through the form and am back at the table before they finish calling out candidates for judges in the background. He fills out a pink form. I seal the SCRAP OF PAPER in the envelope. He throws it all in a pile.
26. I am out of there - 9:30-ish. 30 people remain trying to fill out their self-drawn bingo cards.

No way my vote or any of the others in the room is being counted - ever. They say they have ten days to count the provisionals but the election was finally called on Thursday morning. My vote was meaningless. I love how everyone kept going through the motions as if they might matter.  Still, I will do it again next time. I am certain others will not.

How come election days are not work holidays?

Second Life This, Second Life That...Enough Already

With about 350,000 "users" and old-school game-style graphics, Second Life is second only to 100 million-member MySpace for popularity in the trades these days. I have posted on the emergence of social advocacy in this virtual space. Every other day somebody is releasing a press release about establishing a beachhead in SecondLife - American Apparel, that boxy car, some PR firm, you name it. Why do they do it? It's the press releases. For now anyway.

And now?

Mark Warner, future candidate for President, is creating a virtual persona in anticipation of holding a virtual town hall meeting. (I learn about this from FutureLab which is a great site). Is this the equivalent of Bill Clinton going on MTV? Of course not. But sort of. If a candidate wanted to truly embrace the new, why not create an avatar in a very popular online world. Now, can someone create a clone avatar of Mark Warner and have him do all sorts of silly things in SL? Is that within the virtual law?

Of course, now I realize that this story is on BoingBoing and that Cory Doctorow interviewed the avatar two hours ago in SL. Sorry I missed it.

Walmart Redux

Constantin Bastuera has a solid summary of what went on this past week on his blog. He tracks some fo the key issues that surfaced regarding Walmart's outreach and use of conservative bloggers:

Is this anything other than PR 101? Do the political tactics belong here?

Were the bloggers in question doing anything that journalists themselves haven't done yet perhaps in a more naive way?

How do we in the personal media space feel about "feeding" stories versus starting conversations. This was clearly the former.

Would Walmart have done better for themselves avoiding these non-transparent and somewhat sneaky tactics?

Whose responsibility is full disclosure? Potentially naive blogger or Public affairs-trained PR practitioner?

Coke Does It Again

Earlier last year, I posted on Coke's attempt to create a blog community on My Coke.

Now they have introduced a campaign Website for Coke Zero that is so patently patronizing, it's insulting. There is a blog and yes, it is drivel written by the ad team. They created a "manifesto" which goes like this:

"the zero movement manifesto

What the world needs is more zero.

Zero limits. Zero Consequences.

Why can't you have a sick of work day?
Why can't big nights come with zero morning afters?
Why don't relationships come with a gap year?
Why can't a hard day's work come with a happy ending?
Why not have a deep and meaningless?"

That is typical ad-speak. Pretty good, too, but it belongs behind the scenes driving ad copy. I don't think you can build a meaningful relationship with customers for a soft drink this way. And I like Coke. I don't drink it that much cause I'm getting older and all that sugar and caffeine reeks havoc on my little glimpses of serenity.

This is just the wrong way to try to reach folks. I find their photo gallery of alleged guerilla postings pretty funny, too. Coke is not an underground brand. It is not a street brand. It used to be the real thing and now it's desperate or so it seems by these tactics.

Someone else seems to think so to. They have created thezeromovementsucks.com. The only thing annoying about this is that the author, "Jay", doesn't identify himself. I am pretty sure this is not some conspiracy from Coke to launch an attack blog on their own product cause the site links to an intense advocacy site called killercoke.org that rallies against the attacks on Columbian labor union leaders at bottling plants in Columbia.

What a mess.

Digital Political Campaigns

Here is a great post - a post mortem on a campaign in NY run by Micah Sifry (sibling to David, founder of Technorati, I'm guessing) for Andrew Rasiej running for Public Advocate. They only recieved 5% of the vote but his story is a compelling blow-by-blow of what went right and what didn't work so well. Here is how he states their campaign priorities:

"We had three over-arching goals for this campaign:
1) that we could push into the public debate some big new ideas about reinventing municipal government, fostering civic engagement, and the value of getting everyone an affordable highspeed Internet connection;
2) that the right way to run for office is to be as open, transparent, people-centered, small-donor-based and network-driven as possible (building on the experiences of various 2004 campaigns); and
3) that reform-minded individuals, groups, writers, editorialists, bloggers, and institutions, along with locally-focused civic activists, would find all of this refreshing and inspiring and they would rally to our banner and help amplify our message."

How did they do (I mean besides the resounding defeat at the polls)? Here are two quotes which reveal what they discovered:

"...and we overestimated how much the Internet could compensate for our weaknesses, in terms of spreading our message and assisting with fundraising"

"Low name recognition plus low voter attention meant that network effects (such as a message spreading virally, or friends of the campaign being able to convince their friends to donate money) were almost impossible to produce."

A fascinating read.
 

Blogads and Advocacy

I had the opportunity to speak on a panel recently with Henry Copeland from Blogads. He was very smart (and appeared very confident, as perhaps, he should be). I know he is enthusiastically building a business serving ads specifically in the 20 million blogs out there.  Will he be able to defend his turf from the big ad networks?

One use of blogads that I find terrific is advocacy. Just yesterday, I posted a site mention for Since Sliced Bread, an advocacy site from the SEIU. Today I see an ad for them on Jeff Jarvis' blog. Based upon the obvious profile of most bloggers, advocacy across all sorts of issues is a terrific application of Blogads network. Take a look at their own gallery of 'best of' advocacy ads.

A Conference that Matters

There is a new deluge of conferences somehow focused on personal media. Many of the same speakers appear usually the first adopters (the short list of A-list bloggers). It's hard to tell whcih will be good, which will be just another Blogging 101, etc..

We found a conference that really matters. It is more like a summit meeting - small and intimate. Once we found it, we joined up as participants and are helping make it a success.

It's called We Media 05. It's put on by the Media Center which is a very interesting think tank underwritten by the Associated Press and others. It is very small, I am not sure anyone can still get in but we are inviting our clients who want to not just hear about the changes coming but want to engage in the discussion.

Here's how I summarized the value to my clients and colleagues:

1. You will be able to hear and talk to leaders who are wrestling with and, in some cases,  fueling these changes. Leaders like Al Gore from Current TV, Andrew Heyward - President of CBS News, folks from the BBC, A-list bloggers, and innovators in marketing like Craig Newmark (Craig's List).

2. Marketing is changing. We need to understand what's happening. This conference will leave you better prepared to evaluate the impact of personal media on your business.The best way to understand how blogs, microcasting and social computing will change our lives is to be part of the conversation. 

3. This conference is intimate and designed to facilitate connecting with the speakers and participants. Our own Howard Paster who runs WPP's public relations business will be there. Marcia Silverman, our CEO will be there.

Here's my description of the event for my clients:

Personal media is changing the rules of politics, business and culture. As the traditional media landscape seems to consolidate, the new, personal media landscape fractures content and content sources into millions of content creators each vying for attention (and search engine results).

Meet with media and business executives and a new wave of personal media entrepreneurs to join in the discussion. The best way to understand how blogs, microcasting and social computing will change our lives is to be part of the conversation.

Ogilvy has joined with The Media Center as a sponsor of the event in New York on Wednesday, October 5. It’s a unique opportunity for us to connect with peers and with the trailblazers of this global movement.

We guarantee that you will leave smarter and with some important new friends.

The event is being held from 7:30 am to 5 pm on October 5 at the world headquarters of The Associated Press, 430 West 33^rd Street. 15^th Floor.

If you can find a way to attend, it will probably be the most valuable conference you attend.

360 Degree Digital Influence

We have finally announced what we have actually been doing for the past year or more even. Ogilvy PR's 360 Degree Digital Influence offering has finally been announced. We have been working with personal media - blogs, wikis, microcasting - for the past year and a half. It started in two places: As any PR firm would, we had an interest in blogs and crisis management. You know, Kryptonite - that kind of story. It also took off amongst those of us who had been in interactive for a long time and saw blogs as more of a continuum of personal media and part of a larger landscape.

Here's how we describe the offering:

"Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide (Ogilvy PR) has launched a new, comprehensive digital marketing offering, 360 Degree Digital Influence, that helps clients navigate an increasingly complex digital environment.

Ogilvy PR's 360 Degree Digital Influence program offers clients a clear understanding of how their brand or issue is perceived in the digital world and provides the "road maps" needed to engage and influence key audiences. The program is comprised of two parts, Digital Influence Mapping and Digital Influence Engagement. The mapping component illustrates how a client is viewed across the digital space while simultaneously uncovering new opportunities to influence target audiences. Engagement provides the strategies and solutions necessary to connect with customers and constituencies across the digital spectrum. This digital space includes not only personal media such as blogs and wikis, but also search marketing, content syndication, Web site design, online contests and more."

Ogilvy's specialty is Brand Stewardship (aka 360 Degree Brand Stewardship) and managing large, complex "projects". The digital world is bigger and more complex not just out of natural growth but the collective "hop" forward that blogs, microcastimg (podcasts, vblogs, etc...), social computing behaviors, the rise of MySpace, the purchase of About.com, the arrival of appreciable text messaging in the US, and more.

Then:

Our digital lives used to look like this. We got our information from CNN.com, we found stuff via Yahoo, we used IM to connect with friends and colleagues.

Now:

Now it looks a lot more like this. It's exciting but its messy.