This week I participated in a Social Media Week New York panel “Putting the Social in CSR” along with Bonin Bough from Pepsico, Deb Berman from Just Means, and Chrysi Philalithes from (RED). Its an extremely timely topic and one we have been thinking a lot about from a number of different angles. The great news? Social media provides the media for corporations to leverage their Corporate Social Responsibility investments to yield greater fruit for both the customer and the beneficiary.

The time-worn model of CSR of “Purchase X and we’ll contribute to Y up to $Z amount” can leave all parties feeling a little empty. Consumers know the company has already earmarked the money for the cause and is now trying to blackmail us into unlocking it by picking their brand over the equivalent. That similarly does little for the cause beyond the actual money donated – there’s little room on a package to tell the charity’s story and there’s no way for the consumer to choose to become more involved. To paraphrase John & Yoko, “EMPTY CSR IS OVER if you want it”.

Social media allows for the type of participation that can provide better return on CSR investments to all. Just a few:

* Connecting Customer and Cause – Activating around a CSR commitment in social spaces allows the customer to choose to go a step beyond just the purchase for token donation to donating themselves, connecting to the cause’s social space or promoting the cause to there social nets.
* Inspiring Meaningful Involvement – Social media allows companies to set up infrastructure for their customers to be the connection that makes the biggest difference. For example, Time Warner Cable (Disclosure: Ogilvy client, but we are not responsible for CSR), has made a 5-year $100MM commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through their Connect a Million Minds initative. They are measuring success not with number of $$ donated, but number of minds connected – a function not of their donation, but the number of people they have inspired & empowered to take advantage of the infrastructure they have created.
* Platform for Awareness & Promotion The much publicized Pepsi Refresh Project is taking a huge step in CSR – providing $20 million in grants to individuals and small organizations with good ideas to improve their local communities. Pepsi provides a platform to tell your story, promote your idea, and is doling out 32 grants per month to the democratically selected winners. The impact for these causes will go far beyond a microscopic logo on a box.

To reference Ann Charles’ Mashable piece on CSR 2.0, the new way to look at CSR is the “triple bottom line of people, planet and profit”. Maybe social media adds a fourth P – participation – that could be a goal in itself. Participation benefits the brand, beneficiary, and consumer alike and will fuel the type of CSR that will hopefully increase the efforts and investments of corporations in some of society’s most serious challenges.

In general, the thought of another “social network”, another login and password, or another place on the internet to have to go and do things stresses me out.  This is different – the specificity of the information and the mystery algorithm’s potential to find someone with who I am intellectually sympatico turned me into an instant addict. It’s less MySpace and more of a nerdy, bleeding heart, semi-celebrity eHarmony. I have already exchanged emails with one of my “matches”.

The timing of this is genius – I am looking forward to this year’s event even more and feel like I already have an agenda of kindred spirits to meet. Simultaneously, they have opened registration for next year’s TED 2011. So, lessons?

- TED is the master of optimizing the full year – not just an event, but the lead up to and the follow up after. Each is a moment for meaningful engagement
- Amazon-like connection suggestions - By collecting so much information from me, TED was able to offer me truly tailored “matches”. Many events offer you a list of who is attending and offer you the chance to make a connection, but this is the first time that I’ve had a truly relevant list presented to me.
- Facilitate Sparking Personal Relationships – Beyond the phenomenal lineup of speakers, the appeal of the event is belonging to the community of “TEDsters” and there’s no better way to integrate a new member than to empower them to start Day 1 with live connections.

Bill was in attendance at the December 16 WOM Supergenius conference in Chicago where I along with some other old WOMMA friends including Jake McKee, Spike Jones, and John Moore was speaking at the invitation of Andy Sernovitz and his team from Gaspedal.  While all the sessions were great, Bill’s was the only one where I broke out a pen and started trying to capture what was being said word for word.

What better way to kick off 2010 than remembering why we care about WOM in the first place from a brand that is most certainly worthy of a weekend (or a 6 year ambassadorship)?   Thus, enjoy the paraphrased quotes from Bill Samuels, Jr  – some of which originated with from his dad.  I hope they can inspire us all to a 2010 of meaningful marketing resolutions…

<our target audience is…> Anyone with an above average interest in taste and taste distinctiveness that we would enjoy having home for dinner.

<how will we reach them?> We will not enter the airspace of anyone who has not invited us to enter it.

We will talk to the people who want to talk to us.

Wherever we travel, we blow the whistle at 5 and they all come running.

We send Ambassadors text emails from Bill, because your friends don’t send you Flash emails.

Surprise and delight is more powerful than a reward triggered by taking an action.

Every gift we send is a tool to help you introduce your friends to your brand, Maker’s Mark.

Thanks for the reminders, Bill.  And for the reminder to specify brands when ordering a bourbon & ginger.

The reason for the marketing/site hiccup is is probably pretty simple – in most organizations, the team that controls the experience and the team driving people to that site are usually different. However, they have to be in sync for the company to realize value from either group’s efforts. Here are a few quick best practices to make sure your marketing team is maximizing holiday joy and minimizing abandoned carts:

1) Stable sites – having a 1-day sale or special until midnight? Ignore the Twitter playbook and go for zero downtime during the holiday.
2) Tell me I’m in the right place – Whatever marketing used to get me to the site should be front and center
3) Make my “work” as easy as possible – There is definitely “some assembly required” on those personalized gifts. I tried ordering photo ornaments on 5 different sites before I found an option that was attractive, functional (allowing the upload/editing), and where the cart actually worked when it was time for the credit card. It’s all about the basics.
4) Transparent promotions – This one will be unpopular, but the ability to search online makes the fact that some channels or sub-groups are getting a better deal than others readily apparent. Experiment with earning loyalty by serving up the most relevant promotions.
5) Message Integration Cross-Channel – If this week’s theme is outerwear or helicopters, carry it through. During such a cluttered time of year, the shopper won’t be able to absorb different messages through different channels at the same time (e.g. Old Navy’s weekly messages + their Facebook conversation calendar).
5) Make it easy to get help or advice – Livechat, email that actually gets answered, FAQ, or a link to your Facebook wall – whatever it may be, give me some help options.

And with that, I’m off to knock the last few items off my list…

Here are 3 of my favorite communications pieces:

1) The widget below allows you to read the charter in English, Arabic, Spanish, and Hebrew and affirm it directly in the widget.  If you are inspired by this project, please click “share” and consider embedding on your own site or blog.

2) The second is a video of people from all walks of life reading the words of the charter itself.  This was debuted at the event this morning and created some heartswell.

3) The final is a piece that our team in Australia (under the leadership of DC ex-pat Brian Giesen) put together with an amazing lineup of Australian bloggers and personalities.

Australians on Compassion from TED Prize on Vimeo.

Social media has been a hero in this project – called out by all the religious dignitaries involved as helping to facilitate collaboration on definitions of compassion and crafting the charter itself.  If this good news can then spread the word of this collaborative and inspirational document, it will truly be the first, instead of the last chapter of something special.

The below table is a consolidation of lessons shared in an internal discussion of 360 DI strategists across the network for best practices before during and after an event.

An additional follow up consideration for all, especially for complex programs, is Social Influencer Relationship Management.

If you have some experience designing or participating in these brand events, please throw in your $.02.  I think it could benefit all parties to avoid the pitfalls in mistaking participants invited due to their audience and influence for people who are already passionate about everything your brand does.

How do you handle this statement? In the past, I have chosen to fight it with a mountain of demographic data (or the handy Forrester technographics tool), but demographic data can easily be dismissed as too generic or inflated.  This is as much a state of mind issue as state of the reality issue anyway. Here are some other options to address:
• Train and encourage personal social media adoption in the workplace. Once it becomes a part of your life, it is much easier to understand the benefits, relevance to your customers, and how your might marry the two. This is  harder than it seems – it is very easy to help someone set up a Facebook account, but an uphill battle to get them to use it.
• Get specific data on your customers’ social media usage. This could be done through primary methods like polls or through secondary research such as looking for mentions in social media (free tools include Summize Twitter search, searching on Facebook, or Google Blogsearch). While demographic data may not hold water with your peers, demonstrating that  your customers are looking for you is extremely compelling.
• Run a pilot in your “Sweet Spot” to show results. When all else fails, ask forgiveness.  (note: this could be risky, but sometimes very successful).

What have YOU done in your workplace, your agency, or around your dinner table to respond when you hear that social media is just for kids?

Can’t attend? Never fear, there are plenty of ways to not only learn, but participate and make your voice heard and opinion counted from wherever you might be:

• Summit LIVE – Sessions are live Ustreaming from AND the LIVE tab of the very robust LIVESTRONG Facebook fan page or from livestrongblog.org (which also includes aggregation of tweets from the floor).
• Follow @livestrong on Twitter for interesting tidbits of data as they are released live on stage of the summit and opportunities to respond to Twitpolls.
• Visit LIVESTRONGAction to sign the World Cancer Declaration and have your name included on the list of those demanding that cancer be a global priority that will be presented at the close to the summit.

<Disclosure: Ogilvy Client- – cross posted on the Fresh Influence blog>

Given that the race is now over and our attentions focused on the upcoming LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit in Ireland, I had kind of forgotten about this.  Last night, however, I got a Direct Message from the Chalkbot with a link to this:

This is a photo of my tweet from 6 weeks ago in “real life” on the TdF raceway.  If you could read the fine print on the bottom, it actually gives the GPS coordinates of where it was chalked and the date and time it appeared.

This is a great example of creating another opportunity of Nike + LIVESTRONG providing additional conversational capital and opportunities for engagement.  The way that this principle sometimes plays into our lives at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is that we will create assets from events with influencers – interview videos, photos, etc.  They become an additional way to provide value and a great opportunity to keep the conversation going.

And on the LIVESTRONG front, the Tour is over, but the fight goes on.  Follow the road to the Global Cancer Summit in Dublin and beyond at livestrongblog.org.

(Disclosure: LIVESTRONG is a client, but the Chalkbot project is not in our purvue)

Co-Creation – 5 minutes after the theater doors opened, the stage was covered with cards, letters and notes with heartfelt requests of favorites, standards and covers for Bruce & the band.  He read some of the notes on stage and, while he jokingly responded to someone yelling an arcane request “we’ll play what we like”, he definitely made a point of letting the audience shape the show.  The fact that every show is different drives nerds like me to research setlists and hit multiple tourstops.

Transparency – There is no rockstar or even jazz virtuoso posturing.  Bruce chose to play the highly-requested Harbor Lights solo and explained that it was because the band hadn’t played it fully orchestrated in so long that they would be rusty.  He also apologized in advance for 1 tune that wasn’t good in sound check, but they needed to get used to playing it live (still sounded great).  And for the first time I’ve ever heard, he ended the show saying “I know times are tight and I really appreciate you all coming out”.

Surprises, Mashups, Inside Jokes - Bruce performed a live debut, played the dulcimer (which I had never seen him do), and pulled off a couple of song mashups that were headscratchers even for me.  The encore was technically 1 song – Mandolin Rain – but jammed through pieces of the lesser known Shadow Hand, Halcyon Days and the Dead song Black Muddy River for those hardcore fans hanging on every note.  Another little fun shoutout was a Sopranos nod with “Got Yourself a Gun” during an earlier tune.  Newcomers may not even notice, but there is an element of discovery makes repeat customers feel lke insiders.

Remember Your Roots – 10 – 15 years ago, Bruce regularly also had a live feature where he invited women on stage to dance to Rainbow’s Cadillac.  I even found a video of this happening at his show on millenium eve – memorable because the weight of the women broke the revolving stage (and yes, I was there).  Listen for the chorus of “Women are Smarter” in the song.   I hadn’t seen him do it in a while, and as the picture at the head of this post shows, he brought it back because “they finally got the stank back on it”.  That’s Bruce on top of the piano playing the accordian.   Another example of honoring roots is Bruce always playing The Way It Is, End of The Innocence, and Mandolin Rain.  This is that moment of recall for those who may be less familiar with his work and a chance for him to really push the envelope on how he twists and turns 20+ year old tunes.

Give it Away Now – If you love something set it free.  Bruce’s new record company has just put up a complete livestream of his new album – 5 weeks before release.  Will it stop me from buying the real thing?  Far from it.  It gets me excited now and has me making more concert plans.

All of the above principles give me a real, multidimensional story to tell about Bruce.  Are you feeding your customers’ hunger for conversational capital?