When Every Little Bit Really Does Count

The Good Cause

Tonight at 9:12pm David created a blog post for a friend in need. Daniela, with her three youngsters, made the courageous decision to exit a physically abusive marriage. Now homeless and far from home and support, her friends came to her aid. David posted a picture, an entreaty for donations and included a widget from ChipIn–a PayPal enabled payment system–to raise money that would provide Daniela the means to rent a small apartment for her family. His target was $5,000 and within two hours it easily passed $7,000 in donations.

To be fair, David is just any guy. He’s David Armano,  or @Armano on Twitter where you may already be one of his 8000+ followers. I am. You should. He puts great thinking and creativity into the SocialSphere everyday through his Logic+Emotion blog, twitterstream, twitpics, flickr visualizations, slideshare decks, bookmarks and more.  David populates and prolifically fills his SocialMap with an abundance of original thought, discoveries and insights. So, when he finally asked for something in return, the community answered his call. When he posted to his blog, he also asked in addition to giving that people help him spread the word by “retweeting” his link. They did and the response was immediate.

The widget allows you to track progress and it’s clear by the decimal point movement that people were making payments of all sizes, including very small, but meaningful ones. Because with The Long Tail and micropayments, a little can add up to a lot. In this case, a families dreams of a better life. Currently 218 donors have raised $7,099.31 or $32.56 per person on average.

To bluntly and awkwardly bring this back to the business of digital marketing and Real Branding, here are some lessons David delivered tonight:

• Brands that create value have the right to make the ask on occasion and their fans will respond
• Micro is the new black. Sure widgets have been around for at least three years when RockYou put its code up on MySpace and started tearing at the walled gardens creating a distribution and value-creating revolution. But now they’re getting people elected, or into their new home
• Blog post alone isn’t the solution as Forrester’s Jermiah Owyang has recently discovered; need to add viral and urgency through twitter. Add a twitter url and hashtag for your followers to use, making it easier to promote, track, aggregate through search and measure
• We digital folks never fail to be amazed when our magic works for us–and it does

Thanks David and family for the lessons from the heart. Every little bit counts. You can help the cause by clicking over and making your donation now (I don’t know how to embed widgets in WordPress otherwise you would be able to do it right here; don’t tell anyone . Be Great.

Google Black

Don’t know if you caught Google.com homepage today. They turned it black to bring awareness to Earth Hour, an initiative for “lights out” from 8-9pm on 3/29/08 in honor of energy conservation. Couple of thoughts on this: 1) causes are the new black for brands; 2) changing the background on web pages has worked since 1994; more should try this sparingly when right–easy hack and says more than a headline; 3) Google has a call for action to submit your cause for their homepage… international causes should get crackin’.

Missing You

Along with a lot to be thankful for, 2007 was a year of great loss as well.

On the agency side, Jon Barkan of GCI, a dear friend–anyone who spent time with him considered Jon in these ranks–passed away suddenly, leaving his wife and three children whom he adored. You can see the joy he created from comments added to his last post on Jon’s blog: Blogger: The Barkan Dawg – Post a Comment

Give While You Get Holiday Card

Country Crock has teamed up with HD Greetings to deliver a simple message: spread the joy during the holidays by sending a custom video ecard and share a story to feed a family. For each story shared on Country Crock’s website, they donate a meal to Second Harvest. The ecard includes a pan around a stylized 3D hearth into which you can upload your own picture, choose your own music and play a message from Amy Grant supporting the cause. Take five minutes to make the holiday brighter for someone you don’t know.

Loss of a Visionary, Michael Jackson The Beer Hunter

Every so often a person of great vision comes along to expose big truths and make the world a better place in the process. Michael Jackson, sometimes known as the Bard of Beer or from the PBS TV series of his naming, The Beer Hunter, was one of these and we lost him last Thursday at the age of 65. In what seems like too short of a life, he lived it more richly, intensely, truly than most can hope. 

Happy 20 years, Toronado

Last Saturday the Toronado in San Francisco celebrated its 20th Anniversary. It’s noteworthy for several reasons relevant to those invested in creating value and meaning from their work.  

Spotlight on Celiac

July 25, 2006 NY Times article pegs a growing trend for the gluten-intolerant, kindly framing it as a marked market opportunity, a fanatical base and highly personal insight pool from which to draw for dramatic communications opportunities. Popular numbers are 3mm consumers in the U.S., but as the father of a gluten-intolernat son I can share we’re hearing numbers/incidences higher than that anecdotally. Tip o’ the hat to Anheuser-Busch for seeing this opportunity and creating Redbridge for this audience–looking forward to having a beer with my boy when he comes of age. Obviously I’m loving all this attention for personal reasons, and also like the communication opportunity. If you’ve got a brand that wants to break out in this space, please comment. We want you to do well while doing good.

A Client You’d Be Proud To Work For

AdPulp covers Unilever’s bold, clear advocacy for its Dove Idea by committing to hiring “healthy” models in its advertisingwith a BMI of 18.5-25. This is the power of an Idea. From the Insight that most women have an unhealthy or dissatisfied view of themselves grew the Dove promise and Campaign for Real Beauty. How powerful and beautiful to see a media reflection of themselves where the aspiration is self-actualized beauty. As a father, I’m a huge fan of this new image. As a husband, it’s the beauty I embrace and resonates as strongly with my partner.

The strength of this Idea is that it is transcending the brand. It gave a powerful umbrella for the brand to grow as most Ideas will. But now it’s transcending to infect the entire global entity. Wow.

We get to work with Unilever on Lipton and are proud of the company even more than any single brand. We have great respect for our brand, and are looking forward to promoting the company Idea as well. Wouldn’t you?

Met a Real Brand in Person

Wavy Gravy is a Real Brand. I met him at an event hosted at Google by google.org’s Dr. Larry Brilliant. The event was one of many aiming to raise funds to complete a film on Wavy Gravy’s life called “Saint Misbehavin’ The Live and Times of Wavy Gravy.” I’ll share some impressions and then support my assertion of Wavy as a Real Brand.