Virginia Miracle

<2 Part Disclaimer: My company (Ogilvy PR) is doing social media work with Ford.  We did not execute the project being discussed in this post>

The case “story” I shared with the AdTech audience a few weeks ago showed of a number of elements executing a digital influence strategy through discussing some of the work that Ford has been doing.  In one slide, I featured a photo of Brad & Emma – 2 Fiesta “agents” chosen to drive Ford Fiesta for 6 months prior to it becoming available in the US and take it on monthly missions.  Little did I know that @cupster – a direct connection to Brad & Emma and key player in their campaign site followthefiesta.com – would be in the audience.

After getting connected to them digitally, I asked if they would share some insight into WHY they wanted to apply to drive and spread WOM on a car they had never driven.  I also asked about the role of social media in their strategy.  After all, they DID get the car.  Here is some wisdom from @followthefiesta:

VM: You and Emma were clearly extremely passionate about becoming one of the 100 Agents in the Fiesta Movement.  How did you hear about the opportunity?  What appealed to you about the Fiesta?

FTF: We had a blast working on this project! I heard about this ‘contest’ from a friend that entered and it turned into a little ‘friendly’ competition.  The idea that we could hit the open roads in a new car (that no one has seen) and set out on adventures is what appealed most to us.  We work indoors in a live performing arts theater everyday. So, the excuse to get outdoors in the fresh air is an added bonus too!

VM: How did you decide what forms of social media to include in your Follow the Fiesta campaign (blog, twitter, youtube, google friend connect, other?)?

FTF: We searched around a bit to discover what other people that had entered were using as the key social networking components. We immediately purchased our domain name followthefiesta.com and then began branding this across the other forms of social media. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook Fan Page, etc all helped us try to get people to watch our audition video.  From the very beginning, we knew that we wanted to create a brand (followthefiesta) and a tagline (follow brad follow emma) so people would remember us through out the project. After we came up with the site name and tagline, we approached Adam (Cuppyyarrish.com) to see if he thought we could actually pull off everything that we felt needed to happen to get the exposure and grab the attention of the Selection Committee. We created the audition video and also several shorter videos (we like to call Nuggets) used to promote our brand.

VM: How are you and Emma resolving who actually gets to DRIVE the car?

FTF: The great thing about that situation is that we both work at the Craterian Theater (www.craterian.org ) and have the same identical schedule. We carpool to work and for errands around town. (So, not only did we win the contest but we are doing our part by keeping extra cars off the roadways by carpooling!) We do a pretty good job taking turns driving, and now that I’m not as ‘rusty’ with the manual transmission Emma may have to race me to get to the drivers seat first!

VM: I love your Ryan Stiles nugget video.  Any other celeb appearances in Follow’s future?

FTF: We’re always on the look-out for additional appearances and hope to get a few more down the road. Ryan was a great sport!  Stay tuned for a few more surprises that will include some well known personalities.

Note: this is cross posted at the 360 DI Fresh Influence blog.

Recently, some of us around the 360 DI team have spent some serious quality time with the  international advocacy-movement building experts at Purpose Campaigns.  Inspired by one of his Australian quotable quotes, I asked co-founder Jeremy Heimans to answer a few questions for the Fresh Influence blog.

VM: I recently heard you say that “newsletters are the enemy” for building advocacy movements.  Given that you have built a number of global  movements from the ground up (Global MoveOn compliment  Avaaz (pictured above), anti-nuclear Global Zero, and GetUp Australia to name a few), can you share a few core tenets of designing and maintaining a truly “action”-oriented brand? Read more…

I had never heard the phrase “pandemic flu” before my arrival at Ogilvy 18 months ago.  Having never worked in public health or (thankfully) lived through a scare, it wasn’t anything that crossed my consciousness.  Upon coming here, however, and learning about the great work this team did with the US Department of Health and Human Services Pandemic Flu Leadership blog, I started to learn about the role that personal preparedness will play in preventing a Pandemic and the power of social media in spreading that message.  It was also an example of the potent combination of a credible author (then Secretary of HHS Michael Leavitt) with a controversial topic and a social media platform for discussion.

In the last 48 hours, there have been some mainstream media articles pointing fingers at Twitter, where #swineflu has been the #1 or #1 trend for the last 3 days, as the culprit of spreading hysteria and bad information.  While I’m not particularly interested in long tail analysis on swine flu OR in taking medical advice from my Tweeps, social media can be a quick and powerful way to amplify some very credible sources of health information.  Looking at Twitter as a detriment is pointless when it can have power to spread correct information.  The CDC has embraced the tool and the 3 month old @cdcemergency handle is up to almost 40k followers who want to get their health information from the horse’s mouth, but on a platform that they already embrace.

Ogilvy in Asia has additionally put together a very helpful aggregation of up-to-the-minute credible sources of health information on the Swine Flu.  If you are wondering about something you have seen on facebook, the news, heard from a friend, etc, this is a great resource to check that information against the CDC and WHO.

Another source for interesting analysis from the science side can be found over at ScienceBlogs.com which has put together a great collection of perspectives on the issue from a peer-reviewed, science-based, hysteria-free perspective.  And with that, I’m off to wash my hands for the 5th time today.

I am just back from an amazing experience at ad:tech San Francisco and some extremely encouraging news in dark economic times.  The encouraging news is that capitalism is doing exactly what it should be in a recession – innovating like mad. 

The 360 Digital Influence strategic approach to Word of Mouth Marketing was 1 of 3 innovations highlighted in the keynote address given by advertising legend/Ogilvy Vice Chair Steve Hayden.  Fear, love and advertising was the title of the presentation and the theme that carried throughout the 3 features.  The Fear & Love statements for what we do at 360 DI were the same: The consumer is in control.  This inspires both fear and love, but new innovations in technology and approach make it possible to succeed in the new world order.

If you aren’t familiar with Steve Hayden, I wont bore you with his long resume, but the single piece of trivia that drove fear and love in my soul was learning he was the creative force behind Apple’s 1984 ad. 

If the main speaker didn’t raise the stakes enough, the fact that I was presenting a strategic approach after 2 highly technical whiz-bang demos did.  Shockingly enough, however, in a crowd full of tech folks, a strategic approach on how to employ all of these wonderful new technologies to move business results is and innovation and sparked a lot of great follow on discussions.

I demonstrated our approach through telling a story about Ford that carried from the Listening and insights gathering stage through Planningand influencer identification through Engagement and Measurement.  In the listening stage, I featured an image generated by Crimson Hexagon’s VoxTrot tool showing how conversation topics surrounding auto purchase cluster naturally:

Crimson Hexagon Auto Conversation

From there, we moved into Planning and I showed a live demo from our friends at Linkfluence on how conversations among auto purchase influencers can spread.  I can’t embed the full demo, but here’s a screenshot demonstrating the influence of a post on treehugger about green technology.

Technology has allowed the practice of Word of Mouth Marketing and employing social media to move from a pilot-based throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what stocks. to become truly strategic communications.  Hopefully this shift will give it the credibility necessary for companies to be able to rethink the way they interact with customers to make sure the give and take can be truly meaningful.

Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Jeffrey Eugenides speak about the writing of his Pulitzer winning novel Middlesex.

As Prof. Eugenides was talking about the NINE YEAR experience of researching, writing and rewriting, it struck me that his craft is in some ways the ultimate MACROmedia – the antithesis of trying to distill your thoughts into 140 characters and belching them out in real time.  There were, however, a number of nuggets of wisdom that he shared as a novelist to which a social media content creator can relate:

1) Eugenides shared that the most hated comment he receives after introducing himself is “I always wanted to be a novelist – I just never had the time” – implying that pretty much anyone could write a Pulitzer Prize winning novel given enough “time off”.  On the social media front, we often hear “How do you find time for that crazy stuff?  I’m too busy!”  Social media can indeed save you time used correctly and allows you to maintain more and different types of relationships at once.  It does not replace the in person networking that most businesspeople consider to be part of their careers, but it can greatly enhance it.  In short, you make time for the things you deem important and once you do, you’ll be surprised how efficient you get.  (Check out Ian Sohn’s great piece on making time for social media here).

2) “You can’t do too much research, but you can put too much in your book.” This is a helpful guiding principle to anyone who gives presentations on a regular basis.  The point of a presentation is never to download the complete exhaustive sum total of your knowledge on a subject – it is to include only what is relevant to your audience in a way that is compelling and will make an impression on them.

3) Individual identity trumps gender.  “I” is more important than “he” or “she”. This is a takeaway specifically from Eugenides’ struggle with the challenge of writing from the perspective of an intersex narrator, but I found it to be an applicable concept to my life.  Social media and the ways it allows us to express ourselves – in words, images, avatars, and connections enables self definition and expression that breaks the old business rules.  Social media can help us defy the paths that used to be set by education, company, old boy networks, etc.  Social media + the economic flat spin should make this even more true – the time is now to craft your own social media “I”.