Archive for the ‘Green’ Category

How the Grinch Stole Green Christmas

Posted on: November 28th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 7 Comments

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Holiday presents — consumerism at its best — represent the great opportunity for all retailers. Merchants and product manufacturers seek brisk sales to ensure a profit for the year, thus the naming convention of “Black Friday.” Yet, instead of embracing consumerism, which coincidentally drives green product sales, most green bloggers and information outlets engage in Buy Nothing Day, an effort to protest consumerism.

The logic lies from a spiritual ethos of abstinence and self-driven worth to the more well-grounded idea of reducing carbon footprints. Yet, what green supporters fail to realize is how the Grinch-like attitude actually hurts the larger cause.

People will still buy gifts for their loved ones! One can moralize quite a bit about the idea of a product representing love, but the symbolic gift ingrained in this culture’s ethos will not be reversed. No one can imagine showing up to their parents’ house without a gift, even if it was something as simple as a beautifully written letter or a collage.

This gets back to why environmentalists continually fail in their efforts to affect change. Their outreach engages in a school marmish finger wagging exercise in punishing consumers for being bad. It’s like the Grinch who Stole Christmas. As if the economy wasn’t enough guilt!

Making people feel bad for buying anything is not smart. Making people feel like heroes for buying green AND saving the world seems like a brilliant idea, and one that enhances the panache of green.

The Nature Conservancy’s Green Gift Monday effort works because it embraces consumerism instead of shunning it. Green Gift Monday seeks to channel some of the inevitable consumer energy ($890 million last year) towards “responsible, meaningful holiday gifts.” Included are green gift buying lists from the likes of TreeHugger and of course, charitable actions.

While The Nature Conservancy has some corporate backing in its effort, the larger green industry missed this boat. Consider that U.S. News and World Report’s holiday gift guide has one green product in it. Not one of the electronic devices on Mashable’s Gift Guide is green.

It’s not hard to see, this Christmas green is not sexy. Grinching green doesn’t help. Until green becomes well marketed and sexier, consumer focus and behavioral change won’t occur.

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Wrapping Up Book Writing, Blog Changes

Posted on: October 22nd, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 4 Comments

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On Monday, I will publish the last draft material from my forthcoming book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate, a case study from a familiar face in the online business world, but this time showing a fascinating new development. For all intents and purposes, after drafting that case study today the book will be completed and in the editing processes. Thank you to the many folks who have helped me get there.

Next up are a few things. As I am expecting the birth of my first born child over the next few weeks, there will be an intentional slow down on blogging. Next week will be my last full week of blogging, and then I will scale back significantly in November. It’s time to be present for this moment in time, one that at 38 years old, I am extremely grateful to see.

In December, I will resume a more frequent pace of blogging. Now that the book is completed, I intend to return to a once a week post on the environment, probably on Fridays. I see this as a personal commitment that I have dedicated time and energy to for the past couple of years. It’s important to resume this focus now that the Fifth Estate has been drafted. The environmental crisis is the most important issue of our time, in my opinion, and it cannot be ignored.

Reflections on the Book

I actually thought writing a second published book would be easier (actually it’s my fourth, I have two unpublished novels, too). Au contraire. After the criticism for the first book, I found myself extremely focused and even anal about how the text would be presented, and what information was included. Worse, while I was much more precise in my time usage and method, the energy was that much more intense, too, creating a personal drain.

Whether or not those measures have produced a better book will ultimately be in the eyes of the marketplace next Spring. Now Is Gone was generally well reviewed, but frankly, I think this book is much better. It’s got about five years of hardened strategy and tactical social media experience coupled with another five years of business ownership and 17 overall years of communications experience in it, most of it in the technology space. As a repeat award winner in online media, I think this kind of experience-based thought is a huge differentiator.

In private, I have been referring to it as my Art of War book. In a nutshell, it focuses on getting an organization (biz or NPO) ready to build, then though architecting and sustaining a successful social media strategy. I don’t think I will ever have to write another book about conversational media again. I left it all on the table.

And while yes, it is “just another social media book” I’m pretty sure people will put it down thinking they just got almost everything they could want from a 150 page primer. And that Welcome to the Fifth Estate is better than almost everything else out there in the marketplace.

Blogging a Book and Free

Many of you know that significant swaths of draft material are on this blog, free for your taking. Why would anyone give away their intellectual property for free?

Well, yes, I am a tenant of creative commons and free content as a means to build a business (and have done so successfully twice, I might add), I actually wanted feedback. Three different responses were actually incorporated in the book, and Ike Pigott renamed the book based on his feedback.

Also — particularly in social media — I know a lot of authors write books to build business authority and thought leadership stature. Certainly, these are great benefits of being an author. But what a successful book really does is disseminate ideas into the marketplace. When you see how this book is marketed in April, I hope you’ll note that this is my primary intent — injecting best practice ideas into the larger marketplace.

Ideas are meant to be disseminated, not owned. If people attribute these Fifth Estate blog posts or the ideas in the book to me great. If not, great. In fact, you will see well over 100 citations in the book, so many of the ideas reported in the Fifth Estate are actually other people’s ideas. The point is these ideas are meant to empower YOU to do great things!

Again, thank you for your support as I wrote the book.

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Blog Action Day Case Study – charity: water

Posted on: October 15th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 7 Comments

charity: water 2010 September Campaign: Clean Water for the Bayaka from charity: water on Vimeo.

Today is Blog Action Day, and across the world tens of thousands of people will blog to benefit clean water. It’s a much needed discussion. Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. This is a year where we have treated our water with complete lack of respect, from BP’s Deep Horizon oil spill and the ensuing dispersant nightmare to the red sludge poisoning of the Danube River.

I have decided to participate again this year, but because of book writing, rather than write a long post, I’d like to offer a case study on charity: water, the primary beneficiary of Blog Action Day. The case study will appear in my new book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate.

In addition, as the environment has been and continue to remain a major issue for me I have decided to fundraise this holiday season for charity: water using my client Razoo‘s DonateAnyWhere widget. Please give and help build water wells in developing countries.

Case Study on charity: water for the Fifth Estate

One of the more storied brands in nonprofit social media has been charity: water. From its appearance as a favorite amongst bloggers to its designation as beneficiary for the first Twestival, charity: water remains present. As social has evolved, so has charity: water’s efforts, demonstrating a brand that can sustain and build upon its community. This was reaffirmed with its 2010 September campaign.

In 2006, founder Scott Harrison ‘gave up’ his September birthday party and raised enough money to build 6 wells in Uganda. In 2007, more people joined in and raised $150,000 to provide water projects in Kenya. The 2008 campaign saw charity: water focus on Ethiopia and raise $1 million. In 2009, the social media integrated mycharity: water platform was launched to enable grassroots fundraising for anyone supporting the cause. In 13 months that site raised over $4 million.

In September 2010, charity: water focused on Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world. Our key goal: bring clean and safe drinking water to all 16,000 Bayaka people without access to clean water, and to provide all of
them with access we needed to fund solutions that would give 90,000 clean water via 210 water projects. The goal is to raise $1.7 million – all of it online, and the vast majority of it via individual fundraising campaigns on mycharity: water.

Engagement

Water in Motion

The organization used several social media channels and tools to engage stakeholders:

  • Vimeo to share video footage
  • Facebook to connect with the audience via daily updates, contests, and more
  • Custom ‘September’ tab with quiz, gifts etc
  • Twitter as always to connect with charity: water’s community and drive significant traffic

In addition to social media, charity: water deployed a largr integrated campaign. Elements included email marketing, outreach to influential figures and celebrities, a full media and search plan provided pro bono by Razorfish and pro bono PR support to pitch bloggers and traditional media from Golin Harris.

The average fundraiser on mycharity: water raises $1000, so the organization hoped to recruit at least 2000 campaigners. The greatest point of connection was a ‘Live Drill’ on September 7 in Moale, an isolated village that has never had clean water and twice in the past 20 years had seen attempted wells fail. Unfortunately, the charity: water well failed once more. But the cause shared the story, and the community responded with resolve.

Results

September was charity: water’s most successful month ever in terms of money raised on mycharitywater.org and traffic to our site, significantly outshining any other month in the cause’s history. By early October, the 2010 effort started with a large surge, totalling $720,901 raised, 100% online via mycharitywater.org,
100% by grassroots individual fundraisers. In all, 2040 people started September campaigns between Aug 16 and Sep 30 to raise money for CAR. The campaign isn’t over, and will continue to fundraise for the remainder of the year.

Grassroots fundraisers varied from celebrities to communities, as well as beneficiaries. Will and Jada Smith joined the fight and gave up their September birthdays and raised more than $60,000. The Ruby on Rails programming community raised over $37,000:
Tariku, a child adopted from Ethiopia who lost a brother to waterborne disease, raised over $5000.

“Core brand attributes make it easy for us to play in social media,” said Paull Young, Director of Digital Media for charity: water. “Our 100% model means we send every dollar donated to the field, making us true partners with our donors. Trust: We ‘prove’ our projects by marking each water project on Google Maps and showing our donors where their individual money went. Transparency: we’re not afraid to ‘fail’ as shown by our live drill. Our greatest commitment is to our fundraisers, we’re much more focused on working with our supporters to help them raise money for us, than in repeatedly asking them for money or trying to drive clicks on a donate button.”

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