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

Finish that F’in Book Already

Continuing the theme from my last post about the video digestibility, I was just introduced to a service by Eric that take continuous media snacking into account…and given I haven’t made it to the final page of a book in more than two months, should be right up my alley. (I hope.)

It’s called DailyLit and true to its name, it provides literature in bite-sized quantity via email or RSS feed daily (or on the exact schedule you’d prefer, so you don’t have to receive text on weekends for example). And to answer your next question, if you have more time you can receive the next installment (and more) on-demand.

According to the founders:

We created DailyLit because we spent hours each day on email but could not find the time to read a book. Now the books come to us by email. Problem solved.

I know Matt is going to wish he thought of this given this post of his detailing the challenge laid out and solved above. As someone who hates starting something and leaving it incomplete, such as the three books I’m stalled on right now—Sharp Teeth, 1776, and A New Earth—I thinking very seriously about browsing/signing up pronto.

Actually upon further investigation, I found this incredible idea/service they are providing free of charge: Book Reading Groups via Twitter. How sweet is that! And it’s rare for me to quote something a CEO says for a press release but you really get the sense that DailyLit’s Susan Danziger is sincere:

We’re interested in exploring new ways to make books more accessible to readers, and sending book installments via Twitter is an innovative way to do just that. I also love the idea of creating a group experience by having folks from different parts of the world read books according to the same schedule.

Very cool idea and very smart execution.

Tags: books, reading, twitter, web2.0

Why Didn’t Your Brand Think of That Utility?

I was just reading an Adweek article, Nike embracing brand utility specifically on the web, and it reminded me of a couple things I’ve come across recently online on some of my favorite blogs. Since I haven’t written about the subject since my U.S. Open (tennis, sorry Tiger) AMEX experience post, I figured I’d do so now. Plus, I’m now remembering that inspiration has come from Ed Cotton’s post on now being a great time for brands to offer real value to people.

First, Russell Davies writes about Booklert, which allows authors to track the rank of their book(s) (or competitors’) on Amazon and receive updates via email or Twitter. As Mr. Davies notes that this is the type of thing a major book business should have thought of to offer as a service to its authors.

Second, Brand Flakes for Breakfast posts about the Awesome Highlighter, which allows you to highlight the exact text or image that you want someone to read/see on any site and them send them a new highlighted link. As BFFB wonders, “why isn’t Staples sponsoring these guys?” Taking it one step earlier, why didn’t they come up with it?

I’m out of town for a friend’s bachelor party starting tomorrow, and thanks to Mike’s Hard Lemonade I have a better reason. Not quite a utility as much as entertaining and somewhat useful content (made for a good OOO email). If only they embraced the 4-day weekend like I am.

I think more words are linked than normal text. It’s late.

P.S. Admittedly this is a bit of a stretch for this post, but why isn’t Sharp or some other HD TV company coming up with (via Consumerist) such an interesting way to explain the HD difference?

Tags: brands, twitter, utility

Comcast is Caring/Twittering

We all love to hate the cable company…as well as all the phone companies according to Noah’s observations on (his creation) Brand Tags. But especially the cable company and especially because of their lousy customer service. To be fair, they’re definitely in one of those “we only notice when things go wrong” industries. But truthfully, considering most of us don’t ask very much of them—like Clotaire Rapaille’s code for America, we just want it to work—it seems they could do more to delight us. The first part of that phrase, SURPRISE, goes without saying, but is also the entire reason for this post.

So it was with great interest, enthusiasm and yes, shock that I heard a couple weekends ago Comcast was jumping into Twitter. I have Time Warner, who I, of course, despise—the guy who replaced my second cable box was more than pleasant and only a bit late yet he also acknowledged that “all these new DVR boxes are havin’ problems”—so it is no direct help to me. Yet, I figured I’d holler at @comcastcares to see how this experiment may work.

In no more than 10 minutes I had these responses:

I’m sorry but that is aweso- I mean fantastic. Hopefully it will invest more heavily in this space (perhaps IM service like Delta has now) and apply what it learns to enhance customer service across the company. Who knows how quickly they can start to change its perceptions on Brand Tags.

And yes, I also know this is not the biggest piece of Comcast news today.

Tags: brands, comcast, twitter, web2.0

Where Has All the Interestingness Gone?

A post by Michael K. yesterday questioned what happened to all of the planners blogging. I’ve noticed the same thing in my netvibes feed, especially recently. Now it’s possible SXSW is one reason for last couple of week’s declines, but I’m pretty sure it started before that. (And it would seem if planners attended they’d be coming back strong with the recap posts.) I can speak for myself and fill in “too busy” as my multiple choice answer. (Yes, fill in—not check mark or ‘x’ or half fill in because I want it to go through on the Scan-Tron.) However, it’s hard to believe that the decrease in planner posts generally is merely a coincidence. Mike provocatively asks if blogging is dying. I hope not.

But it does seem it may be being squeezed by Twitter and Tumblr on one end and papers, articles, manifestos, books on the other (including The Age of Conversation: Part Deux, to which I will be contributing).

I, for one, have been far better at updating my Tumblr than my blog, and a look at the first page of each will show how much more interesting I’ve been over there. I almost wrote that I’ve “been spending more time on Tumblr,” but that would be false. In fact, I have come to my blog to start posting a few times and realized I didn’t have the inspiration, the words, or the time. Tumblr currently seems to fit into my life better at this point, and I realize I may be over-extending myself keeping both and perhaps even duplicating efforts. If anyone has figured out a plan for managing the blog + Tumblr efficiently or has a strong perspective I’d love to hear it. Frankly I’m jealous of Chet on a regular basis that he’s firmly set and singularly on the the Tumblr platform.

Oh yeah, and of course there’s also the upwards of a billion dollars being lost in productivity starting this week due to March Madness. I’d factor last week’s Big East Tournament into my own productivity levels, but I’m certain many more people are likely impacted by the NCAA Tournament (which I’ve noticed many girls like to call “the Final Four” all the way through - as in: “Are you going to watch the Final Four on Thursday?” or “Are you filling out your Final Four bracket?”). Anyway, back to a crazy week of work, basketball, plays (yes, tonight I’m performing - I’ll let you all know about the next shows on Saturday and Tuesday of the following week), and Tumbling.

Tags: interesting, tumblr, twitter