The Canadian Red Cross is capitalizing on social networks by using twitter volunteers to quickly spread the story of the urgent situation in the Horn of Africa.

Described by the CBC as a “humanitarian disaster in slow motion,” famine in East Africa is killing small children – an estimated 1 in 3 are at risk of death – and devastating lives.

The Red Cross’s strategy to get the story out to the twittersphere is elegantly simple and employs the most basic tool: human nature.

Anyone can sign up to be a member of the Canadian Red Cross Twitter Team. You’ll receive “important updates” and will be “among the first to know how the Canadian Red Cross is responding.” And, you’ll get “…updated information to share with [your] networks on the situation and how Canadians can help.” You’ll be featured on their site, too, with a photo and profile.

In other words, you’ll not only be doing good. You’ll be an insider, partnering with a major humanitarian organization and aware of the situation as it unfolds. And that status, I think, is what motivates many heavy users of Twitter – the desire to have early, accurate knowledge to share with their networks, thereby cementing their credibility and adding followers.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Saving lives is a pretty compelling reason to capitalize on people’s instinct to reach out, their desire to act for social good, and – let’s face it – their need to be first to the story.

Current members of the Twitter Team range from well-known Canadians such as @anndouglas (8,148 followers) and @bifnaked (38,052 followers) to lesser-known Canadians with followers numbering in the hundreds.

I'd be very interested to know the results of this strategy -- as a method to raise awareness and to drive donations.  

Note: If you'd like to help, donate to the Canadian Red Cross or visit the CBC's  East Africa Relief website for links to other organizations bringing aid to families suffering from the famine. 

And, join the Canadian Red Cross Twitter Team and spread word of the crisis, and how to help, across your network.

Cutting down a bit of the belly each day is easy by simply using this 1 weird old tip. Click here to see what it is…

It’s a winning combination of words and phrases and you see a similar structure all over the web, in magazines and in tabloids.  Here's why it works:

It’s limited, and therefore achievable. We’re all stressed out and busy – stretched to the limit. But we can manage “1 tip,” or “four quick ways to…” or “three simple steps to…” 

It’s different… If the method for cutting down belly fat is “weird,” it’s likely not something you’ve tried before (like dieting, which is hard, or exercising, which is even more difficult). It’s intriguing, and maybe it’ll be easier than the “normal” way (which you’ve tried, and weren’t successful at).

It’s serious. It’s 1 weird “old” tip. It’s been around. It’s not scientific, which is threateningly intellectual, but it’s “old,” which gives it the gravitas you need to believe it. It’s something that people once knew but that has since been forgotten or lost – up until now, when you happened to stumble upon it on the internet.

It’s easy. It’s a “tip.” Sometimes it’s “1 simple trick,” or “1 easy step” – the important thing is that it seems achievable. Unlike, for example, a process, methodology, or regime. Nobody wants those. Too hard.

It’s personal. A tip is something you’d get from a friend. It’s insider information, compelling, tried and true.

It’s suspenseful. “Click here to see what it is…” It’s a tease, a come-on. It’s so good they’re not going to give it away right here on your wall. You’re going to work for it a (little) bit… It’s got to be good!

There are variations on this theme, of course. Sometimes the method is “old” or “weird,” but “rare,” “unique” and “remote” also work well. Sometimes it’s a “sneaky trick” – something that gets around the problem – or a “simple trick” – something you just hadn’t heard of until now. Sometimes it’s a “new discovery” – a double whammy since it’s new to you and to the world. Science hasn’t disproven it yet. Science can be such a drag… Sometimes it’s “forgotten.” “Forgotten,” as mentioned above, works like “old.” It’s got the weight of the ages behind it, but it got lost in the rush of modernity. Now it’s back, and it’s going to help you.

Does the tip for losing belly fat work? Probably not. Does the ad work? Definitely!

And here’s the thing. If I pop off tonight – and I’d really rather not – I don’t want my friends and family to post “RIP Jinnean” in their Facebook status, or via their Twitter feed. I know many of the social mores and manners my parents tried to instill in me are laughable and/or irrelevant today because I have, ahem, “friends,” who poke fun at my more amusing manner holdovers, but seriously, “RIP” just isn’t the right thing to write in a public forum when someone dies.

So how do you respectfully comment on someone’s death? Mark Dailey, a Toronto journalist and TV personality, died today of cancer. I saw some RIPs out in the Twitterverse, but I also read these – different, but equally compelling and heartfelt – posts:

 Very sad to hear Mark Dailey’s passing – the voice of Toronto succumbed to fight with cancer. @SeanMoffitt

 Mark Dailey. Well, shit. I’m sorry. @ivortossell

Saddened to hear the news of Mark Daileys passing. Professional, warm, generous; he was always there for Toronto. He is missed. @iamdavidmiller

There you go. That’s how it’s done. And for those interested in where death is headed digitally, check out 1000memories.com/

An interesting story – kind of a cautionary tale, really – has been making the rounds on Twitter and Facebook over the last few days. It’s about Cooks Source, a culinary magazine that published an article by Monica Gaudio that it stole from her blog.

As told in Salon Magazine, Cooks Source published the article without Gaudio’s knowledge, let alone permission. The Salon article entertainingly lays out the course of events that occurred as Gaudio struggled to deal with the theft of her story. It’s a great read.

Burned

The punch line is that the Cooks Source Facebook fan page and online version of the magazine was hijacked by the “collective outrage” of people who heard about the story. A fake Twitter feed was set up, too.

This leads to an interesting article published this month in the McKinsey Quarterly: “Beyond paid media: Marketing’s new vocabulary,” by David Edelman and Brian Salsberg. 

Sold and Hijacked

The McKinsey article points out that beyond traditional paid media (television and radio commercials, print advertising, billboards, etc.), companies today can “exploit many alternative forms of media,” and that as those forms “reflect dramatic changes in the way consumers perceive and absorb marketing messages…some strategic-marketing frameworks—such as the popular ‘paid, owned, earned’ one—are in serious need of updating.”

The article suggests adding two new media types to the framework: sold and hijacked.

“Sold” refers to a company that “invites other marketers to place their content on its owned media.”

“Hijacked” is what happened to Cooks Source – Hijacked is when “Your company’s asset or campaign is taken hostage by those who oppose it.”

The authors point out that when hijacked, “the company’s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep.” Nestlé and Domino’s Pizza are given as examples, and I’ve argued that BP is an example, too. In the case of Cooks Source, they set up a new Facebook page, claiming that their old page had been “hacked.” 

Keeping your eye on the pot 

The McKinsey authors stress the importance to marketers of being on the frontlines, monitoring the real-time conversations that are taking place on social networks and elsewhere, and of developing “a clear community or social network strategy.” 

Cooks Source clearly doesn't have one. Do you?

Note: See “Beyond paid media: Marketing’s new vocabulary” for the authors’ four priorities for marketing organizations (near bottom of article.)

It was a beautiful day, and all the neighbourhood kids were popping in and out of each other’s houses. One tousle-headed visitor with a fist-full of lego noticed a sample direct mail piece on our kitchen table.

 “Oh, cool!” he said. “We got that at our house, too.” And then, speaking to my son, he said, “Here, I’ll show you how to open it, it’s really neat – when you open the doors there’s stuff behind them.”

 So. Got a kid inside an envelope. Got that warm glow of success. Yes, it’s a (very) small sample. But it’s Thanksgiving, so I’m going to take what I can get, and be thankful!

I spend most of my workday sitting on my derriere, pressing keys. I’m one of those get-up-often-and-move people, but still I mostly sit. We all do. So I was pretty excited last week when I had an opportunity to go on a press check with our senior production guy and the senior art director whose work was being printed.

It’s easy to forget the behind-the-scenes stuff. We come up with concepts and write, design, and present. Then a little later we get the tangible proofs of our work, mark it up a bit, and send it away again. With the exception of the production team and a few astute art directors, most of us don’t think about how the end product actually gets made. It’s like the grocery store. We buy a piece of meat, remove it from its Styrofoam tray and plastic wrapping, and cook and eat it without contemplating how it got to the grocery store in the first place.

What’s interesting in print advertising is that despite how high-tech the front-end of the process has become, the back-end is basic manufacturing. The manufacturing process may also be high-tech, but it’s other things, too. It’s logistics. It’s partly manual. It can’t easily be interrupted or changed. It relies on teams of people doing the right things at the right time, and complicated machinery running smoothly. There’s no room for error and timing is everything.

I’ve become blasé about technology, and I suspect you have too. We may not know exactly how things are done, but we’re sure that they can be. And probably at the push of a button. But it doesn’t work that way. Behind the gloss of intuitive GUIs and wireless access to everything is the old-fashioned reality of trucks and machines and paper and inks. And behind that is the expertise and experience of the people who do the work. And that’s pretty cool.

I don’t know what to make of (some) Americans’ reaction to Tony Hayward’s accent. I know a combination of xenophobia and a tradition of a sense of cultural inferiority to Brits may play into it. But I’m surprised at how it’s being held up as being emblematic.

Hayward, as the physical embodiment of BP and of the Gulf disaster, is being parsed down to a fundamental aspect of his being. What intrigues me is that it’s not just what he’s saying that’s in question, it’s how he’s enunciating it.

Hayward’s accent has become both a personal and corporate liability.

Here’s the HeraldScotland on June 20:

 Hayward has been a punching bag for anti-corporate rage ever since he planted his Oxford brogues in his mouth once too often. Thanks to the Home Counties lilt to his accent, this has sometimes crossed over into outright xenophobia. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner summed it up for NBC television: “Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That’s the bottom line."

And blogger Jane Genova, a Connecticut speechwriter and ghostwriter whose blog I stumbled on while searching the subject, writes on June 6, 2010:

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward has been so horrific in his public statements that the British accent has become downright cartoonish.  Expect it to be lampooned everywhere from "SNL" to the monologue on "Letterman."

While Genova’s suggestion that the British accent has become “downright cartoonish” seems exaggerated, the accent did become the subject (along with Hayward) of a cartoon. Political satirist Garry Trudeau takes on the issue in two recent Doonesbury cartoons with typical wry humour.

Duke says, “You need to play down the Brit connection, Tony. And I’d start by losing the fancy accent.” When the Tony character turns down the advice – “Mr. Duke, changing my accent is a bit of a non-starter” – Duke perseveres: “Can you do Ringo? Everyone loves Ringo.”

I’m not surprised that the public’s reaction to Hayward has been visceral. But I am (perhaps naively) surprised at how negative a value it has ascribed to the CEO’s accent, which is seen both as a personal marker and as symbolic of the BP brand. Does this underline the precariousness of a “brand voice,” and the power of shifting perceptions? Had Hayward been a transparent and better communicator, would his accent be such an issue? 

In my last post I talked about an interview I’d heard on CBC radio’s Spark with June Cohen, Executive Producer at TED. In addition to the concept of taking “ideas worth spreading” to developing countries via TED’s new Open TV Project, the other topic Cohen was jazzed up about and that interested me was what she called “radical openness.” (Or as it’s also known, “radical transparency.”)

And radical transparency has become a LOT more interesting in the wake of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP is intent on getting its message out. The company’s tweets are frequent, as are its status updates on Facebook (it looks like the same feed). The BP website is up-to-the-minute with video, claim information and more, featured on the home page and the “Gulf of Mexico Response” page as well.

And, in a May 21 press release, posted on its website, the company reiterated its commitment to its oil spill response transparency.

Still, it feels a lot like “push PR.” And organizations like The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Greenpeace are demanding “more footage and documents from BP to assess the true situation of the oil spill.”

(Interestingly, the original push for transparency from BP on its website may have come from the White House, rather than BP itself.)

The really big question for me is, where is the conversation?

BP is managing its messaging very well, but that’s all it is – messaging. BP asks, “Do you have ideas to help us?” and lets visitors submit enquiries on its website, but those questions and answers aren’t visible on the site. Similarly, the BP America Facebook page shows posts ostensibly by “BP + Others” on its wall, but every post is prefaced by the BP logo. There are no posts under “Just Others.” (BP’s failings here are skewered in a great fake twitter feed – see BPGlobalPR).

So the critique is taking place publically on the web, but it’s running in a parallel line to BP’s carefully crafted “response” messaging – and two simultaneous monologues don’t make a dialogue, folks.

There’s something radical happening, all right, something that will affect our oceans, marine life, water fowl and much more – but transparency isn’t part of it.

Today’s show included an interview by Young with June Cohen, Executive Producer at TED.

It was particularly interesting to me for two reasons. First, while I’m a fan of the TED talks, which are available and sharable online in keeping with TED’s tagline, “Ideas Worth Spreading,” I wasn't aware of TED’s strong desire to disseminate the talks to developing countries.

Cohen described TED’s new Open TV Project. It makes the TED talks available to broadcasters, for free, around the world, “provided they follow our guidelines which means no interruptions or commercial messages during the talks.”

TED’s plan is to distribute across every available video platform. And, according to Cohen, TV is still the dominant video platform, and is “still one of the most effective ways of reaching the developing world, where online penetration rates are still quite low.”

This project is amazing in its ability to get people around the world sharing ideas and information, and engaging in conversations, research and actions that can enable change.

What strike me, though, are the possibilities for TED Talks on mobile in the developing world, especially in Africa, where mobile phone ownership is considerably higher than ownership of personal computers. There are clearly major hurdles today to providing rich content on African mobile networks, and to gaining widespread access to smart phones, but still, I wonder how long it will be before the Open TV Project is moot in developing countries where mobile technology has leapfrogged PC use due to lack of traditional infrastructure and high cost. (For an interesting, though somewhat dated (2007) analysis of mobile content in Africa, see Russell Southwood’s article “Africa enters the age of mobile content.”) 

As of 2008 there has been an iphone app (TED app) that, according to this AppleInsider article, “allows you to view all the videos and audio available on Ted.com right on your iPhone, and doesn't just link you to youtube videos either, opting for full quicktime movies.”

I visited the Turkana district of Northern Kenya last fall while a team of us shot a video appeal for our client, World Vision Canada. It may sound cheesy, but I love the idea that sometime soon, one of the doctors, teachers, economists, agronomists, village elders or anyone else that we met might be inspired by a TED talk in the same way I have – but under the stars in the Rift Valley.

And second… in my next post!

You can hear Nora Young interview June Cohen from TED on itunes. Search for "spark cbc" and look for 2010-05-16 Spark 113: Vocoders, microfluidities, and hybrid leaders.

Sound familiar?

Sure. But what’s equally fascinating, though less documented, is reverse scope creep. It’s like the tide going out right after you get your swimsuit and sunscreen on.  You’re all set to play in the ocean but instead you wind up beached, inspecting tide pools and trying to avoid stepping on marooned jellyfish. 

Reverse scope creep is creatively challenging. How, you ask yourself, can I take my original big idea and execute it in a small way, but retain its essence of “bigness”? How can I infuse corporeal integrity into something that’s become rather flimsy?

The big-idea-turned-small project is an opportunity to hone your craft, and to make something interesting, contained, and perhaps even unexpected. Whether, “there was no budget for vision” as a friend of mine says, or whether your vision and your client’s simply didn’t match, you still had the original big idea. Even if it doesn’t get completed, it’s still valid, and you can still feel good about it. You’ll use it, or elements of it, another time. Your clients will applaud your passion and your strategy, even if unfulfilled.

And remember, tidal pools are arguably as interesting as the ocean. Some uniquely adaptable animals live there, and, as John Steinbeck writes: "It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again." (The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Reference filched from Wikipedia.)