El Gaffney

The Fast and The Fleeting?

As Sean recently pointed out, I’ve been becoming more attracted to fast. Specifically, I’m interested in how people (and organizations made up of motivated and empowered people) are using speed to shape culture, build brands, and grow businesses. It started quite a while ago but thanks to a recent string of personal/professional experiences such as ESPN’s Olympics ad and Obama Baton, it’s right in the middle of my radar.

So you won’t be surprised that after last week’s historic election, I found two examples of crazy quick turnarounds particularly sweet.

First, after returning from hologram world (CNN’s set), will.i.am released this video the day after the election:

Second, the guys and gals over at South Park were completely topical with this episode, which aired less than a week after the election. From the article:

…their production team redefined the concept of timely scripted television entertainment. Talk about a turnaround! Even if Parker and Stone produced much of it in advance, the episode didn’t just acknowledge President-elect Barack Obama’s momentous win – it included specific references to Election Night, among them Obama’s destined to be historic acceptance speech.

Now the questions are around the effectiveness of producing and launching these fast-to-market (-media) content. For example, many are wondering: How fast will it be forgotten?

Tags: obama, southpark, will.i.am

Vote.

The message is simple. The period is intentional. The action is critical.

As someone who has voted in every election since legal—even registered when living in Minnesota to vote in the 2006 Congressional races—I’ve always viewed the action as a civic duty. I’m pretty sure that’s how it was taught in school. This is the first time I see voting as an opportunity, as a privilege. Not only am I reminded by my non U.S. citizen friends living here, who would (insert hyperbole here) to vote, but also I couldn’t be more excited to be part of something so big. Sure voting has always been a national activity. But it’s never felt so historic or made me feel connected nationally and globally.

For that matter, it’s never made me feel so close to my family. I’m out on Long Island today to cast my vote along with my immediate family members. This election has certainly been a global event, but it has also been a family affair. For a year at least, we have had discussions and debates (during the Democratic Primaries mostly), we have swapped stories of local politics, and we have sent countless emails and links to each other.

We have come together. We have rallied around Barack Obama. Of course, we want change. But we have chosen to believe in and invest in Hope.

I said once a few months ago, “McCain makes me want to hide. Obama makes me want to help.” I’ll admit that’s a bit dramatic. Yet, the sentiment still holds true. While McCain has based much of his campaign on the kind of fear that makes me want to look out for my own best interests, Obama has reminded us that we’re all in this together. He has called upon and inspired many individuals already to take greater responsibility for making (and actions to make) our communities better places to live and our country (once again) a symbol of progress, adaptability, respect and possibility. I think each would be a capable President; however, only one candidate has shown himself to be a thoughtful, steady and visionary leader. That’s what we need in the U.S. and the world.

I can’t wait to cast my vote for Barack Obama.

Tags: family, obama, vote

Obama Baton: We’re Just Faster

It’s hard for big companies (and agencies) to compete with the speed of inspired individuals.

While the examples are certainly focused on politically-motivated people, I think the same is pretty much true for most organizations. It’s hard to be nimble. It’s scary to launch and learn. It takes a lot of constant monitoring and hands on responding.

This week has been a solid one for Obama Baton. Just over two weeks since the original idea was had, we’re building momentum and an audience of supporters, many of whom are following on Twitter and joined our Facebook groups for New York and Chicago. We’ve also received some really nice shout-outs.

Yet, when it comes to the spreading of an idea, we can’t even compare to “That One”. Within a day of the second Presidential debate—when McCain referred to Senator Obama using the term in quotes—this site was live and selling “That One” gear. They recognized the meme immediately when they heard it, and now their Facebook page already has over 21,000 fans.

My final example (not to be confused with the final countdown - via @lilmissjen) of a person compelled to create by Barack has got to be Mike Cuffe with The Obama Experiment - via @darrylohrt. And though it may have taken longer than the above creations from idea to execution, he has promoted his work with a video of art speed painting.

Lastly, I want to wish good luck to Kevin, who will be running the Chicago Marathon this Sunday with Obama Baton. Thanks everyone for your support. Please continue to pass it on.

Tags: friends, marathon, obama, obamabaton, running, viral

Obama Baton Dot Com

Big news in the life of our idea: The Obama Baton site is live.

Clay + Kevin + the rest of the Hustlewood team have been working their butts off, Giorgio (can’t resist the Zoolander reference) and have managed to get a site up and running (can’t resist the pun) in less than ten days. We’re still revising it and will likely continue to do so over the next week (if not more) as we learn what’s working and discover opportunities to enhance the experience. What that means is making the idea and call to action more clear and compelling, the blog portion more interesting and useful, and the pieces (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook NYC & CHI, etc.) work more seamlessly and effectively together.

As I said in my last post, we’re trying to be as transparent and inclusive in building this idea (and we hope, movement) as possible. We’re using our blogs and now the blog on obamabaton.com to do so. (Please comment over there with any Obama Baton-specific thoughts you have.) And we’re learning quite a bit along the way. But we’ve still got a long way to go—a couple of marathons at least—before Barack wins on November 4th. So please visit the site, show your support, and Pass It On.

Tags: obama, obamabaton, running, web2.0

How to Start a Movement

We decided to bring people into the process (mid-process) to show you how we’re going about setting up Obama Baton. We’re documenting pretty much the entire setup and roll-out to help us learn for future projects. Hopefully you’ll learn something as well by seeing what goes into starting a movement (or at least trying to start one). Over the next few days/weeks, hopefully you’ll also see the pieces come together. (Otherwise, I’ll have to change the title to “How Not to Start a Movement.”)

Since Clay kicked it off by making a bad-ass video titled “How To Wireframe”, I figured I’d follow up with another “How To” post. Definitely got aggressive with the title, but creating a movement is the goal. Let’s begin at, well, the beginning.

The inspiration: Very simply, Barack Obama. I, like many of you, have been moved by our Democratic Presidential candidate. I credit him with building broad interest in politics. But more importantly (knowing that interest would have grown given dissatisfaction with Bush and our current economic crisis), I credit Barack with generating true enthusiasm about our future. I’m in Paul’s camp of believing in the power of the Hope message. We both understand it hasn’t been proven to stir people to action quite like fear. Even so, it took him through the primaries and continues to motivate many of us to do something…including me.

What’s great is a ton of people have take action—whether at the grassroots or national level, whether in the art community or celebrities or youth, whether working within his campaign or outside of it. Yet, ‘wanting to do something’ is where I’ve been for months, and I get the sense that I’ve not been alone. Until last week, September 24th, when I had an idea worth sharing:

I show you this screen grab from my GChat conversation with Clay for two reasons. First, because it’s always interesting (at least for me) to see ideas in their birthplace (i.e. napkins, sketch books, PowerPoint, etc.). Second, because sharing an idea makes it that much more likely to come to life. in this case, Clay and his Hustlewood team were the fire-starters, the catalysts for action. A special thanks to Kevin for the work he’s been doing here designing our above logo and soon-to-launch site.) Third, because sharing also makes your idea better from adding others’ thoughts or just clarifying your own. The next line in that convo was “let’s do barackbaton.com - with virtual baton to sign, hold design competition…” As you can see, the name has changed (initially called Barack Baton - those who know me know I love me some alliteration) and the idea has become more focused on real life interactions.

Getting the right people on board (especially people with skills/passions, other than writing which you can tell by the length of this email is the area I enjoy most) was key. Additionally, I’m getting some other parts in place such as:

1. Developing a voice for Obama Baton before and after the site launches. I’ve, unsurprisingly for those in the ad world, decided on Twitter. Had been looking into Yammer but have to stay where my people are.

2. Creating a face for Obama Baton and showing the faces of its supporters. For this, I’ve gone to Flickr. Take a peak at the logos, which we’ve made available to take, as well as some shots of my family with the baton. Which brings me to step 3.

3. Buying the physical batons. On a tight time-line, this was a bit harder than expected given I was looking for blue batons specifically that were not made of cheap plastic. After unsuccessful trips to Sports Authority, Modell’s, Paragon and Jack Rabbits in Manhattan, I finally found a couple nice aluminum ones at Super Runners Shop in Huntington, NY and was able to get them engraved at Things We Remember at Walt Whitman Mall.

4. Building a community for Obama Baton supporters and runners in New York on Facebook. Chicago coming very soon.

That’s that for the next hour at least. More to come as we run full speed forward. Hope you found that interesting. Now it’s your turn. Follow Obama Baton, Take Photos and tag them “obamabaton”, and/or Join the Obama Baton group. Or comment here.

Tags: facebook, flickr, movement, obama, obamabaton, twitter