Books, Meet Your Future: Our Choice App

If happiness is about managing expectations, then books are seriously stoked right now.

We humans were promised hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes and our bitterness knows no limits. But thanks to Push Pop Press and former Vice President Al Gore, books can rest assured that their evolution is in safe hands.

The book-app they created provides an immersive experience that brings Our Choice, Gore’s book about the solutions to climate change, to full digital life. With all the interactive multimedia (photos, video, audio, geolocation), the experience more closely resembles game play than reading.

Frankly, the environmental movement needed this shot in the arm. It has been on life support recently.

When Apple first launched the iPhone and iPad, the company messaged the products as magical and revolutionary. I now understand that positioning as less hyperbole and brand braggadocio than a statement about the promise and potential that others would help them fulfill.

Through this app, the iPad’s potential is being realized.

Oh, and by the way. The crisis of climate change is, in fact, real. And there are solutions. Alas, only if more legislators could get their hands on a iPad and take less crazy pills.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Publicists: The Social Media Clean Up Crews

It seems every week brings another high-profile social media mishap. I’ve been saying this for a long time and wrote about it recently: social media isn’t a job for interns. Well, according to the NY Times, social media isn’t a job for celebrities either.

This line summed up the perils of celebrity tweeting best for me:

“I don’t think about it as if I’m talking to a reporter,” he said of Twitter. “It’s a bit strange.”

It’s very easy for a celebrity to be lulled into the false impression that they are only communicating to their own followers and fans.

On an intellectual level, celebrities know that every tweet or Facebook post is public information broadly available to the media. But the casual directness, immediacy, intimacy, and one-to-one engagement that social media affords can confuse that understanding.

Most celebrities are natural performers. They intuitively know what will make their fans happy and social media allows them real-time feedback and confirmation of their instincts. Yet, what may serve, amuse or charm one’s own “community” may not play well in a wider context. What hits the spot for one group may badly miss the mark for another.

There are simply no walls around social media performances, and that’s a painful lesson many celebrities learn.

When asked, my advice is always — apply a filter. And I’m sure that advice is music to a publicist’s ears.

- Matthew DiGirolamo

9 Crisis Communications Tips From Biz Stone

On his personal blog last night, Biz Stone gave a terrific response to Fortune’s predictable Trouble @Twitter article that was meme-ing around, well, Twitter all day yesterday.

His blog, The Trouble Bubble, was so smartly executed that it could be a case study for successful executive-level crisis communications. Not every negative or probing article requires a response. Not every criticism or complaint needs to be addressed. But when a reporter questions the soundness of an organization’s management, operations, vision or culture, then an executive-level response is merited beyond just a soundbite or short statement. And this is how it’s done well.

So, based on his post, I give you:

9 TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS FROM BIZ STONE

We founded Twitter, Inc. in March of 2007 and while we have long said it’s about the users, not the service, we have nevertheless enjoyed favorable media coverage. What took so long for somebody to write the article that says we are falling apart?

Tip 1: Provide historical perspective — long view backwards.

The normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. It’s much more interesting that way. Twitter has had so many ups and downs you’d think we would have had more negative press. To me, it’s like watching the movie Rocky—he’s up, he’s down, he’s out, he wins!

Tip 2: Put criticism in context. Show perspective.

Fortune magazine finally stepped up to knock us down with a cover article, “Trouble@Twitter.”

Tip 3: Thank those who are complaining or criticizing for doing an important job and providing valuable information or lessons.

Here are some examples of how this works. After mostly positive coverage of Facebook, Fortune finally published an article in April of 2009 titled, “Is Facebook Losing Its Glow?” However, later that year they published, “What Backlash? Facebook Is Growing Like Mad.” Google received similar treatment. In July 2010 Fortune published, “Google, The Search Party Is Over.” Later that year, they published, “Google Continues To Gain Search Marketshare.”

Tip 4: Be matter of fact in tone. Build your own case logically and methodically.

We’ve had lots of positive press from Fortune in the past. In July of 2010 they published an article titled, “Twitter’s Business Model: A Visionary Experiment.” The article ended with, “Facebook might want to take notes.” It may seem odd, but from my perspective, this means we are being taken very seriously. Twitter is an important company and it’s under scrutiny from journalists—this is exactly how it’s supposed to work.

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The Micro-Mantra: Three Words To Live By

Yesterday, @MariaShriver created the worldwide trending topic on Twitter – #threewordstoliveby.

This is the tweet that started the trend. And this is the one that first established the hashtag.

People all over the world have been writing their three-word life credos. Other celebrities have chimed in. Brands like Nike and AMC have advertised around it.

Maria kicked it off with an inspirational tone — “Here are three words to live by: pass it on.” — and so it continued that way for hours: tens of thousands of messages — some uplifting, others profound, a few silly — circulating around the Twittersphere.

Maria shared dozens of her favorite micro-mantras through re-tweets to her nearly 700,000 followers.  Once it became a trending topic in the United States, she encouraged her followers to make it a global phenomenon.

And then it did.

When it went completely viral, it went beyond her. Over time, the original messenger was dropped. But, surprisingly, the original positive spirit of the message remained. Well, mostly.

A little less than 24 hours later, it’s still the top trending hashtag worldwide.

So, what three words guide your life? Join the conversation.

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Ego-Friendly the Best Way to Sell Eco-Friendly

I love the living Christmas tree concept as a marketing case study for how to sell green/environmentally-responsible/eco-friendly products and services.

The trick is: sell them as ego-friendly.

Notice how often the customers who are interviewed mention the “selling points” of valuing life, family, holiday traditions, emotional connections and personal convenience.

Just because a product or service happens to be eco-friendly, doesn’t mean it has to be primarily sold that way.  Some people will respond to the “environmental aspect” — as one customer indicates — but you will more likely appeal to the majority of potential customers by positioning your product or service as ego-friendly.

Now, I want one.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Don’t Forget Men in Cause Marketing

The 2010 PRWeek/Barkley PR Cause Survey was just released with a male-centric headline. Men, the survey discovered, are just as likely to support cause marketing programs as women.

Though a handful of brands have directly or indirectly targeted men in their cause efforts, they are in the minority. This means there is a significant opportunity to engage a demographic that is highly invested – and interested – in supporting cause efforts, finds this year’s PRWeek/Barkley PR Cause Survey. For the first time, this year’s study polled 536 men about their attitudes toward cause marketing, in addition to 79 marketers about their companies’ cause marketing programs. Of those surveyed this year, 88% believe it’s important for companies to support a cause, compared to the 91% of women that responded the same way in last year’s survey.

I understand it’s the job of publicists to make news by teasing out a surprising angle in a study like this, but what surprises me most is that it took a national survey to find that men also connect on a deeper personal level with companies that are good citizens.

Sure, men and women may relate to different kinds of issues or causes based on their own gendered experience. And they may have different reasons for supporting a given cause.

But it has never been my experience as a marketer (and, well, as a human) that only women are interested in brands exhibiting a higher level of social consciousness.

Sure, if you brand a cause with the color pink then men will get that they are not being “targeted” and will tune out. But pink does not equal purpose. Promoting a brand’s core values cuts across gender. The desire of people to live with a deeper sense of purpose — a purpose motive — is not gendered. It’s a universal pursuit.

This is only breaking news to those who don’t understand the real power of cause marketing: uniting people with a common sense of purpose.

Supporting a cause as citizens — and as consumers — can lift us all up to the level of humanity.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Best Companies Deliver Profits and Purpose

For the last few days, I’ve been cleaning up from my work on The Women’s Conference 2010. It was a massive event — 6 days, 7 events, 160 speakers, 70 sponsors and partners, 300 exhibitors, 350 credentialed media, and more than 30,000 attendees. I was enormously proud to be a part of it.

If you have worked on any event, you will understand this statement: I didn’t get a chance to see any of the speeches or conversations live. It was all just a behind-the-scenes blur.

I’m getting a chance to watch it all now on-demand and I was particularly charmed by this main stage conversation moderated by Brian Williams and featuring Nike Co-Founder and Chairman Phil Knight, Starbucks President & CEO Howard Schultz, and New York Times Columnist Nick Kristof.

The conversation was titled “Values, Vision and Voice: Men Who Get It” and it covered topics ranging from the influence of women, lessons learned and finding purpose in one’s career to business, philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.

The discussion builds slowly but all of the panelists seemed to get into their respective “zones” after Brian Williams introduced and played the Nike Foundation’s captivating and inspiring Girl Effect animated film. The video is not new but it generated quite a buzz during and after the conference. Attendees raved about it, and for good reason.

For me, the highlight of the conversation was Howard Schultz drawing meaning from a childhood story. When he was seven, his father broke his leg and hip, was unable to work, and lost his job. Schultz referred poetically to the experience of being injured and unable to work, with no health insurance and no workman’s compensation, as the “fracturing of the American Dream”.

This experience, Schultz notes, informed his business philosophy and inspired him to create a company that delivered not just profits, but a strong sense of purpose, too.

I never imagined on any level that one day I would be building or be responsible for a company the size of Starbucks. But I thought early on that we should imprint the values of Starbucks in a way that would make my father proud of a company that perhaps he never got a chance to work for. And so Starbucks became the first company in America to provide comprehensive health insurance to every single employee, including part timers. What I’ve learned over the years is that you can build a company with a conscience that makes a profit, that does good in the world, that attracts new employees…if you can build a company or brand that has a reservoir of trust — not because of its product but because of its values — then it endures.

I respect and admire each of the men involved (who knew Brian Williams was such a cut up?), but I thought Schultz was the star on that stage.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Online & Offline Networks Together Create Change

The kind of dramatic, status quo-busting social change that happened in the 1960s won’t happen via Twitter or Facebook, argues Malcolm Gladwell in his latest piece for The New Yorker – “Small Change: Why The Revolution Won’t Be Tweeted“.

As always, Gladwell draws some interesting and important distinctions. Between high and low-risk activism. Between strong and weak-tie social phenomena. Between hierarchical and decentralized organization.

Real social change, Gladwell submits, requires that people be encouraged by their strong ties to engage in high-risk, strategic activism led by hierarchical organizations.

The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with…This is in many ways a wonderful thing. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

I’ve been writing and thinking about the power of networks recently, and while I admire Gladwell’s sharp, analytical thinking very much, I think he misses a key distinction in his piece.

He uses “network” to stand for a decentralized power structure like Twitter and Facebook, but there is nothing about a network that requires decentralization.

Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.

I agree that online networks like Facebook and Twitter are decentralized structures, but aren’t the organizations Gladwell cites — those with “clear lines of authority” guiding the civil rights movement with strategic thinking like the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference — also a kind of social network?

Aren’t they just offline networks with structure and leadership?

This description from Gladwell’s piece of the black churches that fueled the civil right movement reads a lot like a definition of a network…a hierarchical one:

At the center of the movement was the black church, which had, as Aldon D. Morris points out in his superb 1984 study, “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” a carefully demarcated division of labor, with various standing committees and disciplined groups. “Each group was task-oriented and coordinated its activities through authority structures,” Morris writes. “Individuals were held accountable for their assigned duties, and important conflicts were resolved by the minister, who usually exercised ultimate authority over the congregation.”

Individuals organized into groups. Groups into organizations. Organizations connected to other similarly structured organizations. That’s a network!

Gladwell usually hits home runs, but he hit one off the wall in deep center with this article. He should have added a distinction between online and offline networks.

Social media and online networking can play a vital role in creating social change provided it is complemented with offline networking: strong organizational leadership and face-to-face, in-person connections. Online and offline feed and re-enforce each other.

In modern activism, online and offline networking will have to work in concert to create any social change.

It’s the tactical use of both — low risk and high risk activism, weak ties and strong ties, decentralized and centralized structures, bottom up and top down, virtual and real world — that excites activists so much these days.

Weak ties on Facebook and Twitter can encourage first steps. Stronger ties offline can encourage the next.

Online networks can turn people out for low-risk forms of activism — showing up for an event, for example. Once there, they can be inspired by the experience and organized by the leadership to activate them for higher-risk participation in the future.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Is Apple Anti-Social?

In the days leading up to Apple’s press conference last week, this video of a shorts and sandals-wearing Steve Jobs (circa ’97) introducing the Think Different campaign went viral. Perhaps the appropriate term is that it went bacterial. It was a fairly local outbreak. In a span of three days, I saw it appear on at least six different blogs I read regularly.

It really is a terrific look back at a company on the verge of reinventing itself — and a valuable primer on branding from a natural marketer. Jobs make three key points in this video:

1. “Marketing is about values…”

2. “Apple, at the core – its core value — is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better…”

3. “Values, core values, shouldn’t change…”

And so I ask: Has Apple changed its core values since this remarkable moment?

In 1997, Jobs articulated a radically progressive worldview. Under his leadership, Apple’s “soul” would be about empowering bold, creative, revolutionary people to “change things” and “push the human race forward”.

It seems to me, Jobs wanted to position Apple as a brand that offered a positive definition of freedom — a freedom to. To create. To take risks. To change the status quo. To mix it up. To blaze a trail. To be yourself. It was all about positive freedom.  All outward looking.

Success hasn’t been kind to this early vision, though.

The now infamous late night email exchange between Gawker’s Ryan Tate and an unfiltered Steve Jobs revealed how much of the CEO’s worldview has shifted since Apple’s underdog days.

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Choosing Customers: “The night, too, is for sport”

After reading Seth Godin’s short blog on the subject a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the extent to which brands choose their customers.

His take was that we can choose the customers we desire, the audiences we want to associate with.

Yes, you get to choose them, not the other way around. You choose them with your pricing, your content, your promotion, your outreach and your product line.

I watched this Puma ad (hat tip @GuidoWongolini) with that lens on. According to Creative Review, the ad was created by Droga5 and directed by Ringan Ledwidge.

Besides being a well crafted, beautifully written, pitch-perfect piece of commercial art, it’s also a case study in social messaging and how to define your audience.

All athletic footwear brands have lines of sneakers retailers refer to as “casual” or “urban footwear.” What makes this campaign interesting is that Puma is the first of the high performance, pure sport athletic brands that thought of creating a new tribe for this product (side)line.

With this campaign, Puma is choosing their customers: the social athletes, the play harders, the revved up revelers.

Welcome to the world, the “after hours athlete.” There was a time in my life when I would have met you on this playing field, would have joined your team, but I go to sleep way too early for your pick up games.

I’m content to admire your endurance — and watch you get some action — from the bleachers.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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