El Gaffney

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

Take It to the House, The White House

It’s hard not to be into the U.S. Presidential race this year. But with the Democratic primary ending a couple weekends ago (suspended not ended, right?) and the NBA Finals in full swing, I was not expecting last week to be a particularly political one. However, as I went through my feeds (horse, not elephant or donkey – okay, that was weak stuff), I found the most intriguing posts and articles were politics-related. And though this blog is not focused on this subject, it’s also not very focused, which affords me the opportunity to combine interests and pass on the stuff I find interesting.

That said, I was extremely delighted to see my buddy, Jake, back on the blogging horse (again, bipartisan horse) with his take on the Veep Selection. As he holds a degree in Philosophy from my alma mater (and mathematics for those counting – I can’t help myself) as well as has lineage in Congress (my father’s father was a mechanic…), I always like to get his perspective in this area. And his thoughts on whom each candidate should choose for the VP position are definitely worth the read.

Out of respect to Tim Russert—did anyone else watch the Remembering show this weekend? So moving—, I wanted to keep the intersection of politics and immaturity to a minimum last Friday. Though the mourning period isn’t over, I did want to pass on these things that made me cringe before they are too out of date:
1. This fake McCain and Montag correspondence.
2. This real Fox headline.

Finally, for anyone who hasn’t seen Obama’s Fight the Smears yet, take a look. There’s a reason he keeps getting positive articles written about his web strategy. Tools like this one, which to paraphrase BFFB re-frame the conversation (smears, not claims) and allow you to spend more time having the conversations that matter to the American public.

Tags: america, obama

Do Day: Pic, Quote and Video

It’s a busy one and figured the help start-up shout-out would do for the Do Day, but thought I take a hot second to hook everyone up with a little mid-week motivation (or assets for presentations).

via katie

Brands have grown up using content to communicate.
But do we really need more content? Or are we tense enough as it is?
Perhaps there are other things brands could do, rather than adding to the ever-expanding infinity, to be entertaining or useful. To earn some attention.
Someone has to help alleviate all this tension.
Could the future of brands be in collation, curation, aggregation, dissemination, navigation, catalysation (insert other words that end in -ation of your choice here) – rather than traditional creation?

-faris articulating (or more appropriately, his articulATION of) something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately

via greg

Tags: action, Friends, obama

Do Day: What? You Don’t Have A Logo!?!

I was going to call this “Me-keting” or “Marketmeing” but I didn’t think either of those qualify as new terms worth coining on putting in the subject. What’s worse is I’m not sure they’re even original. Either way, I’ve been thinking a bit lately about all my online accounts (from Seesmic—which I stopped using—to Y! Live on which I’m currently watching Aki)…and I’ve been thinking lately about my brand (El Gaffney vs. Seth Gaffney and specifically what is the persona I present online).

Also, I was talking with Clay and Eric about a side project (that hopefully I’ll be featuring in a very near Do Day) for which one of them asked for a picture and a logo. “A logo?,” I thought, “I guess I can hit them up with the El Gaffney side profile with drawn in mustache image.” Though while it was done by a real designer (at my first agency), I felt a bit naked. Why didn’t I have a logo? (Daddy, I want a golden ticket!)

Then, that same day, I saw Eric’s post about Logobama over at Marketing.fm. This site has meets people’s profile (logo) needs in such a smart and easy way—and more interestingly, the idea to create this site seems to have stemmed from online observation…

We’ve been noticing a trend of people displaying their support for Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential campaign by using his logo as their avatar, or visual representation on the web. We thought, ‘what can we do to show our support?’

So we created Logobama, a place for you to create your own custom Obama logo and use it wherever you want. As Obama says, ‘we are the change we have been waiting for.’ That’s what Obama is representing… someone who wants all of us to participate in changing the world. And together, we can make this change, one logo at a time.

It let’s you personalize his logo and download it at full size or for a variety of other places web-goers will likely have profiles. (i.e. YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc.) Here’s the one I created:

Yes, very much in the spirit of “A More Perfect Union”. And yes, I did have cornrows for a few days…until I started feeling gross and getting headaches.

So, all that said, I think as more and more young people grow up with many profiles and understanding the many dimensions of their online experience, they’ll naturally think about themselves as brands. They’ll know that while there are many profiles and dimensions, there is only one them (ME)—there is not your personal persona (friend one is different from family) and your business face, which you can present to each appropriate audience. And they’ll learn quickly how to and be equipped to manage their brands. And yes, they’ll probably have logos (and the skills sets and tools to make their own). So, I still want mine…and perhaps a more unique photo while we’re at it.

Tags: brands, logo, obama, personal

Do Day: Inspired by Obama

I’ve never been particularly inclined to write about politics on my blog. There are lots of people (including my friend Jake) that are more knowledgeable about the subject. There a lots of blogs and magazines and shows that are devoted to it. Plus, frankly, I never really cared very much other than to solidify my views on social issues and hate on George W. But that has changed. Now I run home to watch Super Tuesday coverage, not the Georgetown basketball game. (Granted, we were playing South Florida.) I fall asleep to replayed candidate speeches on CSPAN not Scrubs reruns. I seek out more information on their sites and more content on YouTube. I anxiously await the next debate.

And I don’t give dissatisfaction with Bush the credit for this spike in and sustained interest. I was pretty angry in ‘04 as well. I’m excited by the fact that we have a serious female candidate (more so than when we had a Jew as a VP on the ticket) and the prospect of our first woman President. I even like her. However, while she represents a change in leadership (policy and proof that we’ve grown as a nation), she still represents what I find uninteresting and uninspiring about politics. If she and Edwards were the two Democratic candidates left last night, I would have felt a “win” for one vs. the other more critical. Yet I can tell you with certainty, if I watched at all (unlikely) I would not have watched with enthusiasm, with eager anticipation…the way I did last night.

Barack Obama makes me passionate about politics. (Yes, I found myself researching the process of awarding delegates last night.) He makes me believe things can be different. And most importantly, makes me and others feel they must do something. He inspires action (which is what Do Day is all about). I stayed up to watch his speech last night, and something he said hit such a nerve that I got out of bed to find a pen and write it down:

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Tags: action, obama