Archive - January, 2011

Videogame-Changers

January 25, 2011 in Social Movements, Social Technology with 0 Comments


Jane McGonigal is a breathless evangelist for using gaming to help solve the major social challenges of our time. Her TED Talk above, presented last year, is already one of my all-time favorites. She penned a piece recently in the Wall Street Journal — Be a Gamer, Change the World — where she argued persuasively that gamers could collectively be called to redirect some of the millions of hours they spend solving problems in virtual worlds to coming up with practical solutions for the real world.

These gamers aren’t rejecting reality entirely, of course. They have careers, goals, schoolwork, families and real lives that they care about. But as they devote more of their free time to game worlds, they often feel that the real world is missing something. Gamers want to know: Where in the real world is the gamer’s sense of being fully alive, focused and engaged in every moment? The real world just doesn’t offer up the same sort of carefully designed pleasures, thrilling challenges and powerful social bonding that the gamer finds in virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential or to make us happy. Those who continue to dismiss games as merely escapist entertainment will find themselves at a major disadvantage in the years ahead, as more gamers start to harness this power for real good. My research over the past decade at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute for the Future has shown that games consistently provide us with the four ingredients that make for a happy and meaningful life: satisfying work, real hope for success, strong social connections and the chance to become a part of something bigger than ourselves.

I agree with McGonigal that games are not “merely” escapist, and I buy into her premise that gamers are a huge untapped resource for social action and social change, but I believe the escapist qualities of gaming need to be mitigated even further.

The ideal scenario would be two-sided — to create games that engage people online with an epic, world-saving mission in a satisfying, hermetically-sealed environment and that also force gamers to engage with the messy, challenging and often painful and ugly real (offline) world.

At the same time that you are making gaming more purposeful, why not also see if we can make reality more game-like?

Continue Reading…

A Tribute to R. Sargent Shriver (1915-2011)

January 24, 2011 in Personal Reflection with 0 Comments

I was in Washington, DC last week helping the Shriver Family memorialize and celebrate the monumental life of their father and grandfather, R. Sargent Shriver. It was one of the most meaningful experiences of my personal and professional life. I’ve always been idealistic, but I learned from the life of this great man how to more fully live those ideals.

Sargent Shriver’s legacy stands as a towering example of the power of public service.

He was a man who believed with all of his heart that government (now a dirty word) could be bold and innovative, could promote human dignity, and could be a positive and transformative force in people’s lives.

He was America’s social conscience who focused his purpose, passion and power on championing our country’s highest ideals and caring for the poor, the disabled, the disadvantaged and the downtrodden.

He has left an indelible mark on our country through the countless social programs and organizations that he inspired, directed or founded, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Special Olympics, the National Center on Poverty Law, Legal Services, and the Peace Corps, for which he served as the program’s first director under President Kennedy.

I spoke to a Peace Corps alumnus at the funeral mass in Potomac, Maryland who said that his service decades earlier was the high-water mark of his life, the thing he was most proud of. And to think that more than 200,000 Americans have served oversees through the program. And that is just one of the social innovations for which Sarge could take credit.

I came home from the wake and funeral mass inspired to be a better man — to work harder, live larger, dream bigger, love better and leave my own legacy.

And now, I’m reading his extraordinary biography.

If you would like to leave your own tribute to Sargent Shriver, you can do so at his memorial website.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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UPDATE: In 1967, Sargent Shriver returned to his alma mater, Yale University, to deliver a speech at the Yale Daily News Banquet. In it, he said this:

If those are problems that are bothering you, they are the same ones that bother me, also. The question is, what can we do about it?
Down through history, men have been asking that question. One of the clearest answers was given by Plato 2300 years ago: “you cannot make people good; the most you can do is create the conditions in which the good life can be lived.”
But how will these conditions be created? How can we create a world where every man can obtain what he needs — and be free to pursue the happiness he wants.
One way is, to concentrate as much time, money and talent on social inventions as we now spend on social diversions.

Decades later, I say, amen.

Unused Cell Phones, Meet Verizon Hopeline

January 14, 2011 in Cause Marketing, Corporate, Social Marketing with 0 Comments

After some vigorous New Year’s desk organizing, I unearthed two old Blackberrys in the back of one drawer. I’m fairly certain that I kept them around because I had no idea what to do with them at the time.

While working with the Verizon Wireless team on their sponsorship of a past project, I learned that the company has a charitable program called Hopeline that recycles and refurbishes unused cell phones and accessories to support domestic violence shelters. It’s a smart idea because it transforms recycling into something even more emotionally satisfying: donating.

So, I just brought the phones down to the Verizon Wireless store yesterday and dropped them in the collection bin. Being saintly is as simple as that.

The program really has had some impressive impact and reach. From their website:

Since the launch of the cell phone recycling program, HopeLine from Verizon has:
•    Collected more than 7 million phones
•    Awarded more than $7.9 million in cash grants to domestic violence agencies and organizations throughout the country
•    Distributed more than 90,000 phones with the equivalent of more than 300 million minutes of free wireless service to be used by victims of domestic violence
•    Properly disposed of 1.6 million no-longer-used wireless phones in an environmentally sound way
•    Kept more than 200 tons of electronic waste and batteries out of landfills

So now you know how to put an end to your own cell phone desk cemetery.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Banding Together Against Rebranding

January 14, 2011 in Branding, Communications Strategy, Corporate with 0 Comments

In the wake of Starbucks announcing its new logo, followed by yet another brouhaha, The Economist explores why consumers seem to uniformly despise rebranding efforts:

One answer is that people have a passionate attachment to some brands. They do not merely buy clothes at Gap or coffee at Starbucks, but consider themselves to belong to “communities” defined by what they consume. A second reason is that the more choices people have, the more they seem to value the familiar. These days there are so many choices available to Western consumers—the average supermarket stocks 30,000 items and America’s patent and trademark office issues some 200,000 patents a year—that they are in danger of being overwhelmed. Homo economicus may be capable of carefully considering all available products…

The debate about logos reveals something interesting about power as well as passion. Much of the rage in the blogosphere is driven by a sense that “they” (the corporate stiffs) have changed something without consulting “us” (the people who really matter). This partly reflects a hunch that consumers have more power in an increasingly crowded market for goods. But it also reflects the sense that brands belong to everyone, not just to the corporations that nominally control them.

Companies have gone out of their way to encourage these attitudes. They not only work hard to create emotional bonds with consumers (Victoria’s Secret is one of many firms, including The Economist, that encourage customers to “like” them on Facebook). They involve them in what used to be regarded as internal corporate operations. Snapple asks Snapple-drinkers to come up with ideas for new drinks. Threadless encourages people to compete to design T-shirts.

I wonder: Is the recent string of logo redesign flops (see also here and here) more about poor rollout communications strategy than about the logos themselves?

Since building a strong brand naturally requires the customer — it develops through daily top down and bottom up exchanges — why wouldn’t rebranding proceed in the same way?

I think it’s now becoming essential for communications plans to identify appropriate ways to engage, and tap into the passion of, their loyalists through key stages of the rebranding process if they are to secure buy-in.

Go read all about it.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Starbucks Siren: Iconic Enough to Stand Alone?

January 5, 2011 in Branding, Corporate with 1 Comment

Howard Schultz today unveiled the new Starbucks visual identity (photo above) in a corporate blog entitled Looking Forward to Starbucks Next Chapter.

Throughout the last four decades, the Siren has been there through it all. And now, we’ve given her a small but meaningful update to ensure that the Starbucks brand continues to embrace our heritage in ways that are true to our core values and that also ensure we remain relevant and poised for future growth.

I understand the desire to open up the brand to give “Starbucks Coffee” the flexibility to expand its business beyond coffee, but why not leave the name “Starbucks” and drop “Coffee” from the logo for this new/next iteration.

I feel like the company went too far, too fast.

In terms of the brand hierarchy, I would say the Siren is only the third most important — or iconic — aspect of the company’s visual identity. I think it ranks behind the name Starbucks and the logo’s unmistakable shade of green.

While I like the modern “update” they’ve made to the Siren, and understand the desire to have it stand on its own as an icon, I think it still needs to be scaffolded by the Starbucks name for the time being.

It’s not a strong enough mark yet to stand out, stand alone, or stand in for the Starbucks brand.

What do you think? Is the Starbucks Siren iconic enough to stand alone?
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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