“Do you see your donors as a kind of “uncontacted tribe”? If you do, you’re not alone.”
“Their lives are utterly strange to us. Their habits and culture are utterly mysterious. We can only vaguely guess how they think.”
Another great post from Jeff Brooks at DonorPowerBlog:
Are your donors a “uncontacted tribe”?
I expect this is probably just the first in a series of videos of non-perishable ideas.
Who do charities sell to, and what are they selling? What impact does the internet have?
What do charities sell? from Brad Bell on Vimeo.
Go to Vimeo to watch or download an HD version.
What do charities sell?
If Nike sells shoes, what does RSPCA sell?
If Honda sells cars, what does SolarAid sell?
If Fiji Water sells water from the other side of the world, what does WaterAid sell?
Commercial brands are easy.
1. They sell products and services.
2. They deliver them to the same person who pays for them.
Simple.
Charities are different. They deliver products and services to one group of people, but sell something completely different to donors.
So what do charities sell?
In the past, we’ve said charities sell a good feeling — the warmth of altruism at the moment of giving.
Today, charities sell the same feeling.
Community:
a feeling of fellowship with others, from sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. From latin, common
The feeling just lasts longer.
Today, that feeling of community (share common attitudes interests ideas goals) can last more than just a moment.
Communicate:
to impart or exchange information, ideas, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, interests, goals. From latin, to share.
The internet makes it possible to extend that good feeling (exchange common information share ideas interests understand thoughts feelings common goals) indefinitely.
Donors know the internet allows them to give in more ways.
Donors know we just invented the cheapest, most democratic, most conversational and most sharing, community-building machine imaginable.
Donors know they can give more time, money, energy, passion, dedication - and get more in return.
People care about communities.
People nurture communities.
People are loyal to communities.
People give to communities to feel part of a community.
Join a community that’s passionate about animal welfare.
rspca.org
Get involved in a community bringing cheap, sustainable, energy to the developing world.
solar-aid.org
Be a part of a community ensuring the world’s poorest people have access to safe water and sanitation.
wateraid.org
The Go Big Always blog wins the award for Most Accurate Representation Of The State Of Community-Building In The Commercial Marketing Sector In 7 Words Or Less! for the headline, “Here’s my crap, please talk about it”
If only the titles of the awards were as accurate and succinct…
Go Big Always blog wins an Eloquent Yoda statuette.
Inferential nomination by James Cherkoff
If you are skeptical about just how far commercial brands can go in “not getting it,” have a look at the Purina Breeze “community.” Some brands approach community-building as if it were as simple as re-branding the local shopping mall as a community centre.
It appears we are slowly moving toward a system on the internet which will favour organizations with lots of money, at the expense of not-for-profit organizations and individuals.
As you probably know, a number of UK internet service providers (ISPs) have agreed to help the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) by spying on broadband customers and working with the BPI to send notices to people they believe have infringed copyright by downloading music files. For the moment, it seems the idea of terminating internet accounts after three notices has been shelved.
None of this is based on any new laws by government, it is just big companies getting together with other big companies to protect the interests of music corporations at the expense of customer’s privacy.
Similar moves are being made with ISPs and music corporations throughout the EU, and there is a general move for all the G8 countries to adopt US-style ‘intellectual property’ laws.
List of participating UK ISPs:
BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB, and TalkTalk (Carphone Warehouse.)
If our ISPs are going to be working for the BPI and Phorm by spying on us, then they aren’t working for their customers. Affected broadband packages should probably be free. Customers might want to consider moving to ISPs that are not taking money to spy.
While there are dozens of glaring legal and technical problems with such plans, they represent one strand in a bigger trend which uses new expensive computer kit to set up toll booths on the internet and use spying as a method of generating revenue.
When I stopped by the Virgin site, a web chat window popped up, so I tried it out. The Virgin salesperson wasn’t that keen to talk.
ISPs and network operators (telephone and cable companies) are beginning to generate new revenue by:
ONE
Syping on customers and selling the data to a 3rd party like Phorm to serve targeted advertising. Customers don’t get anything out of this deal. The ISPs get revenue from selling customer data to Phorm, who in turn gets revenue from advertisers buying more highly targeted audiences for ads. Read more: BBC | Call to prosecute BT for ad trial
There is a telling quote in the WikiLeaks summary of the leaked BT document which explains that part of the Phorm trial involved stripping charity ads from web sites, and replacing them with Phorm ads:
“In addition to the 18 million regular advertising injections or hijackings, it appears charity advertisements were hijacked and replaced with Phorm advertisements.”
UPDATE: The author of the summary on WikiLeaks has since stated that he has “been assured by Emma Sanderson at BT and Phorm’s solicitors that the charity ads were purchased and not hijacked.”
TWO
Spying on customers and slowing down their internet connections based on the content they are viewing. If a customer uses BitTorrent for example, which can be used for downloading files that infringe copyright, their internet connection could be slowed down. Many not-for-profit organizations use BitTorrent to share very large files. Media watchdog groups might use BitTorrent to share high resolution video files, so their community could collaboratively edit documentaries. Similarly, the BBC iPlayer uses a BitTorrent-like system to speed up video downloads. In the future, we could also see a large company like Microsoft, for example, has the anti-competitive option to pay ISPs and network operators to make it more difficult for Linux users to update their computer software. The Linux people are not-for-profit competitors who wouldn’t be able to pay for privileges.
THREE
Speeding up sites and services of those who pay them to do so, like commercial brands, and slowing down the connections of those who don’t, like not-for-profit organizations and individuals. Network operators and ISPs could charge companies like Google for being successful.
Of course, there are other obvious problems: if for example, ISPs and network operators are doing this kind of spying for commercial interests, why wouldn’t they do the same thing for governments? You know, just in case anyone gets any crazy ideas about democracy or freedom of speech.
What follows is a modified article on a report about best practices for brands using social networking sites. From the advice to marketers however, one could be forgiven for thinking the advice was for using television. It’s got the classic, mass media oriented, “we talk, you listen” voice of commercial brand marketing.
It’s probably not a huge insight to suggest that most all internet media has more in common with the telephone than with the mass media of TV, radio, and print. The mass media broadcast one-to-many messages. The phone and internet media tend to be more conversational. Casual. Personal. Chatty. Intimate. Like social networking sites!
So I thought: what if we treat social networking sites more like the telephone? How would the article read if they were talking about telephone marketing? Good marketing advice for using phones should be good advice for social networking sites, and bad marketing advice for phones would probably bad marketing advice for social networking sites.
So I did a find-and-replace on the article, and changed instances of “social networking pages” to “telephone numbers.” Let’s see how it pans out.
Brands wasting capabilities of telephone networks
LONDON - Online marketers are not using telephones properly to promote their brands, according to a report from JupiterResearch.
The report, ‘Branded Telephone Numbers: Best Practices for Successfully Engaging Users’, found that half of advertiser-branded telephone numbers in Europe have fewer than 1,000 callers.
The average branded telephone number, on networks such as O2 or Virgin, has only 6,494 callers.
Despite telephone marketing’s potential to engage users, many advertisers create branded telephone numbers that broadcast content rather than invite users to interact, according to the report.
Most advertisers are reportedly using their telephone numbers as they would typical online marketing microsites, rather than using the capabilities of the platform to increase consumer engagement.
However, JupiterResearch claims to have found a number of tactics that brands can use to make their telephone marketing more effective.
The research firm suggests that marketers should promote their telephone numbers with paid ads rather than rely on viral marketing to get the message out.
Advertisers are also advised to engage users who dial their brand’s number, with activities such as contests. Jupiter found that contests, on average, doubled the number of friends calling each branded number.
Nate Elliott, research director at JupiterResearch and lead author of the report, said: “Most advertisers simply don’t know how to market properly with telephone numbers.
“Too many marketers create dull, non-interactive telephone numbers and wait for a viral marketing effect to make users dial their number.
“But our research clearly shows that ongoing promotion and advertising, as well as the use of even relatively simple forms of engagement, are vital to the success of branded telephone number.”
Jupiter also found that marketers must appeal to phone users love of multimedia to get noticed. Telephone users are twice as likely to dial a branded phone number focused on media content than a branded number focused on products, according to the report.
David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch, said: “As online advertisers make increasingly large investments in telephone marketing and mobile phones, it’s vital that they get the most for their money.
“By following the examples of what’s worked for other marketers and listening to what consumers want — such as original and entertaining multimedia content — advertisers can greatly improve the effectiveness of their telephone marketing efforts.”
Brands such as Marmite and Nike are performing well on O2. Marmite has rustled up 92,054 fans since it launched a branded number on the network in February.
The group invites members to make suggestions on how Marmite “can be made even better” and start their own discussions around the brand.
Nike has 60,472 fans at the time of writing, while Nestle Rowntree’s Smarties branded Virgin number has attracted just 517 fans since launching in March this year.
Dior, which lists various products on its branded Virgin number has just 895 fans.
What do you think? Good advice?
In a Warning to all copyright enforcers: Three strikes and you’re out, Cory Doctorow attempts to come up with some plausible reaction to recent moves to implement an international 3 strikes rule for people who use the internet to breach copyright.
Doctorow writes:
You see, the big copyright companies – record labels, broadcasters, film studios, software companies – are lobbying in the halls of power around the world (including Westminster) for a three strikes rule for copyright infringers. They want to oblige internet service providers (ISPs) to sever the broadband links of any customer who has been thrice accused of downloading infringing material, and to oblige web-hosting companies to terminate the accounts of anyone accused of sticking infringing material on a web server three times.
In the article, Cory suggests it would only be fair if the same rules apply to the companies sending out copyright notices. If they get it wrong 3 times, they get their internet cut off. It’s a simple tit for tat suggestion that’s really difficult to argue with.
Read, Warning to all copyright enforcers: Three strikes and you’re out. It’s the only entertaining article I’ve read on the issue.
In addition to Cory’s modest proposal, I would suggest a fairer punishment is also in order. After all, we don’t pluck out the eyeballs of kids who sneak into the movie theatre. The punishment ought to fit the crime. And I’m so hooked into the internet, I’m not sure how I would continue to survive without it. I couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t learn anything. I couldn’t communicate with my family. I’d have to switch to a real bank. Granted, I wouldn’t have any income. Who would hire a web designer without internet access? Or an IT manager? Or an internet marketer. Thank god I took my father’s advice: I’ve got video editing to fall back on!
I think a fairer punishment would be house arrest. That would teach someone like me a lesson - be careful who you piss off - but keep me off the dole. I could telecommute. I could video chat meetings. I could remotely fix machines! It would reduce commuter congestion in Central London! That would be the environmentally-friendly punishment for owning a laser printer with the cinematic taste of a 12 year old.
References
The Inexact Science Behind D.M.C.A. Takedown Notices, The New York TImes
While charities wonder about whether and how to use social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut, a storm is brewing around the problem of ‘the walled garden’ or in geek speak, data portability.
In short, the problem is if you use Facebook, you can’t talk to Bebo users or Orkut users, and vise versa. Each service is like a walled garden on the internet. If your friends use Facebook, you need to use Facebook to talk to them. It’s a bit like having a multitude of mobile phone networks, where people can only talk to other people that use the same network.
If some of your friends use Facebook, and some use Bebo, you either have to choose which group to communicate with or open one account in each, and do twice as much work keeping them up to date. Not only that, but if you want to switch from Facebook to Orkut for example, you can’t get ‘your stuff’ from Facebook. Your data is not portable. If you want it on Orkut or Bebo, you have to recreate it from from scratch.
Quite frankly, that goes against the grain of the internet. The reason the internet is such a powerful communications medium is because there are flexible, standardized ways of doing things. Social networking sites break this tradition, and everyone pays the price. It’s not good for developers of social networking applications. It’s not good for users, and it’s not even good for social networking sites. And of course, it’s not good for charities: do you have a Facebook page, a Bebo page, and Orkut page, or one of everything? Does your charity have a Facebook app, a Bebo app, and Orkut app, or one of everything?
Efforts are being made to standardize via the Data Portability project. But it’s not always smooth sailing. For the latest war news, have a look at Google Friend Connect Disabled By Facebook on Publishing 2.0.
Have a look at this wonderful, interactive campaign comic - 51st State - which serves as an index to all the info about the issue of Canada’s new ‘Made-in-the-USA’ copyright bill, C-61. The text is entirely is composed of quotes which link to the sources on 193 websites, blogs, films, papers and articles.
The C-61 proposal has the most support from Hollywood and the record companies, and has seemingly earned overwhelming condemnation from Canadian lawyers, professors, musicians, filmmakers, and consumers.
Go to the download page!
While I brought the subject up to show off the brilliant comic, the issue may be of interest to people in the United States, the EU, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Mexico, as new, secret copyright laws are due to be adopted via the G8 as early as the summit in July 2008.
The proposed agreement - called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) brings copyright law (which is normally a matter for parliamentary debate) under the umbrella of trade agreements. This means corporate lobbyists and governments can come up with laws that suit their interests in secret.
A leaked document suggests ACTA is considering its own world police force (seriously, just like Team America!) who would be able to stop random people at customs in any of the participating countries and go through their laptop or iPod looking for material which may infringe copyright. Travellers are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and could be fined and have their devices destroyed if they don’t have proof of purchase.
Another important provision would give your broadband supplier immunity from prosecution in exchange for spying on you and providing the information to the media corporations without an warrant, should they suspect you are infringing copyright. I assume this means everyone is spied on and whether there are charges or not - Hey! look at all the valuable marketing data we inadvertently have. Let’s sell it!
It seems to me these laws are not so much about stopping commercial piracy, as they are about extending an increasingly archaic business model which is at odds with digital technology - nobody really needs record companies any more. Citizens, and their rights to expression and privacy, are merely the unfortunate collateral damage of this process, as are our institutions and the rest of the economy. It’s the revenge of old media on new media.
James Cherkoff on Modern Marketing blog makes some excellent points about authenticity on the web, discussing Coors new YouTube ads:
People find the social web attractive because it’s a very personal sphere where they can share the reality of their lives - without a key message in sight. And that spontaneous vitality is tough for even the best creative departments to fake. In other words, it’s difficult to craft ‘real’. But that hasn’t stopped some brands trying.
Read the rest of This Message Is Real
I love this kind of existential terror advertising. It seems very Philip K. Dick. No one is who you think they are, and nothing is as it seems.
It reminds me of the kind of marketing where you find out your conversations with friends about cool new gadgets were actually ads. I saw a documentary recently that looked at a UK buzz marketing company that had 7 year old children marketing toys to each other at school. They would work them into school projects. The children were paid in toys. Watch the clip.
Is the Coors ad a super high-realist, YouTube verite fiction that’s happy to be mistaken for the real? Or is it a kind of buzz marketing ‘happening’ where the friends-who-are-not-really-our-friends show up at the BBQ and act obnoxious?
James pinpoints the problem: “In traditional media you can get away with such fictional narrative. But on the social web it just looks contrived.”
But the marketing death spiral doesn’t end there. James’ example of the “imaginative riposte,” turns out to be yet another ad. Since you posted your article, James, the video makers have clarified that *they* were paid – and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just no budget, made-in-a-day internet advertising - which is their business. They say, “Stealth ads are lame.”
Similarly, at least one other response disproving the ad, “in an eccentric, quirky manner” was also paid for by Coors, according to Silicon Alley Insider. Ever get the feeling that consumers are obsolete?
It strikes me that the reason authenticity matters more on the internet is because internet media is conversational. In contrast, TV is monological. Fiction is common with monological media, like TV, movies, books, billboards, magazines, and so on. In contrast, consider fiction on the phone, by email, via instant messaging.
But it’s not so much a problem of fiction. The bigger problem is commercial brands can’t deal with the conversational media of the internet, as they quite simply have nothing to talk about. They can do monologs about products, but when it comes to conversation, they have nothing to contribute. So they either buy contributions, or fake them. And either way, it makes them look bad. People realize they have nothing to say.
Ironically perhaps, one kind of organization has lots to say: charities. They can talk about changing the world. Charities not only have something real to contribute, they give real people something to contribute to.
On Donor Power Blog, Jeff Brooks begins a discussion criticizing an MTV Burma ad.
Jeff writes,
“So in response to the tragedy in Burma, warplanes from around the world converge on Burma and drop flowers? We respond by blanketing the human-devoid landscape with sympathy blossoms? Excuse me, but could you go over that concept again? And what exactly is this intended to motivate people to think, feel, or do?”
In response, Terre suggested,
“This video is meant to stimulate curiosity and emotion, particularly in young people (it’s MTV, after all).”
“Those of us who’ve been in the business awhile need to be careful our thinking doesn’t become arthritic.”
I’m not sure age has anything to do with the criticism.
I find it an odd spot because it’s basically a branding ad for a feeling; a feeling about Burma that has little to do with the Burmese and everything to do with us. I find the ad very kitchy - like a non-satirical version of Team America, directed by Tim Burton.
Looking for some way to measure the ad, I compared it to a Burma relief video from Avaaz.
The videos compared:
Avaaz - young media (internet, DIY, YouTube)
MTV - old media (broadcast TV, big and glossy corporate media machine)
Avaaz - very DRTV (can you get more direct response?)
MTV - brand ad (’drive traffic’ to web site for more info)
Avaaz - a million euros raised (so far)
MTV - a million euros spent (on the ad)
Avaaz - concrete politics (help the monks help the people; how I act matters)
MTV - confused politics (can’t send aid, don’t try; weapons are always the answer; how I feeeel matters)
Avaaz - Burmese speak for themselves
MTV - Burmese don’t exist
Avaaz - reality
MTV - fantasy
I would counter that the MTV Burma ad may appeal to a younger demographic - given the options of having a brand ad or a brand ad - but the overall approach is very olde worlde, corporate and the result of arthritic marketing ideas.
That skims the surface. I hesitate to mention the problem with the heroic fighter jets and ‘cluster bombs’ - in a week in which a long awaited US government report stated that the current administration lied to get support for a war of aggression against Iraq - as it would offend our fragile sense of history and political reality.
