Without a Yard

Herein lies the sequel to the last post on humour & activism…some interesting case studies & words of encouragement have been ping’ed back.

Honourable mentions & fond reminiscing over LOLs of yore went to many American-election-related clips (Sarah Silverman’s Great Schlep, Barely Political’s Obama Girl meme) & last winter’s brutal Prop 8 melee in California, whose only silver lining/legacy is this over-the-top-star-studded-musical a melodic religious fundamentalist parody.

Celebrity aside, the juice that kept these URLs circulating was the humourous content - what many marketers/communicators love to call ’sticky’ messaging - transmitted thanks to a wry undertone, quirky theme or flat-out parody.

The need to be *truly* funny was driven home by this week’s Sunlight Foundation blog post about how ineffective standard mass emails are for political/advocacy campaigns.

We’ve become increasingly immune to receiving messages guiltily prodding us into action, making donations or heightening our awareness through this inbox-filling-platform.  Just think - how many emails with witty titles do you delete sight-unseen on the daily?

One of the great things about pumping out newsletter-style emails to your preaching-to-the-converted-list is the metrics that you can mine for unique hits, forwards, open-rates, etc.

Sadly, according to the folks at Sunlight, open rates ain’t what they used to be.  Jake Brewer echoed many consultant/client concerns musing:

“I have a confession to make, though. I really don’t like email that much. I see 30% open rate and think “70% delete rate.” I see 8% click through, and think… “oh jeez.”

Strongly encourage you to check out his entire post as he eerily accurately dissects what has now become the cookie-cutter template for all advocacy/NGO emails:

SUBJ: Something catchy/funny/intriguing/pun to get you to open the email

That prompted an ‘oh jeez’ of my own…guilty as charged.  Often.  Moving beyond cheeky wordplay, what other funny elements can campaign communicators whip out to stand out?

One recent example, which used cheeky language IRL & online, stands out because it focused on the mobile platform’s hottest PYT, Foursquare.

Earthjustice’s San Francisco campaign is now in metro stations to assist their legal efforts to prosecute the oil companies behind the spill. BART stations around SF are displaying this advertisement, prompting transit users to check into a location called “Earthjustice Ad“, which results in an Earthjustice donor chipping in $10.

Many reasons to love this campaign, let’s try to list most of’em here:

• No onus on participants to donate

• BUT campaign message lingers in user’s Foursquare stream…& Earthjustice hopes users’ll scratch curious itches by visiting the NGO’s site…& hopefully/eventually donating themselves…

• By checking into the location, user’s friends’ streams are notified (the kids are calling this ‘viral’ these days)

• More bang-for-buck on ad-buy

• Metrics, metrics, metrics

• Novelty & time-killing aspect of foursquare is a perfect fit for transit downtimes (types the mayor of three streetcar lines…)

Now Earthjustice isn’t about to bonus its staff with a foursquare-funded Faberge egghunt anytime soon.

A quick visit to the registered location page itself yields some underwhelming results:

But, hey, it’s early days & in the grand scheme of things it’s $3,100 that I’d bet Earthjustice wouldn’t receive otherwise from these transit users’ involvement.  (There’s also a ‘Various Locations‘ version, too, with similar uptake).

It’d be great to hear what your predictions are for the next wave of cheeky/funny/quirky advocacy work going & how big of a role will mobile/location-based apps play…

Thought it might be informative to dust off ye olde bloge to share a quick & dirty summary of the twitter conversations that are happening this weekend regarding the G20 summit (& more often than not, the riots/vandalism that surrounded them).  Despite being smugly camped out in the east end, crazy stuff still managed to go down in my hood, & like many Torontonians I took to the webs to passive aggressively vent:

Overall, Twitter users commenting on the G20 reached 448 million, which will no doubt trickle to over 450 million by tomorrow:

A sample size of 500 most recent tweets referencing the G20 found less than 3% positive, 18% outright negative & a surprisingly large percentage, almost 80%, neutral. This bears true with a simple search reference-check, mainly descriptive comments about the weekend events:

This next stat is especially interesting, & we’ll see more of this trend in RT-momentum as live streaming breaking news becomes the norm on Twitter, & as more users experiment with actual live-streaming video capabilities on their mobile devices. With almost a third of all G20 tweets overall, the power of the “RT” can’t be ignored. For many this weekend, re-tweeted photos (Queen W/Spadina standoff), OHs (over-heard comments)/quotes & descriptions, flooded streams & instantaneously propelled one user’s note into a massive new audience:

And more often than not, that one user’s note that flooded other’s streams wasn’t coming from a high profile journo or media outlet. Only 2% of high authority twitter users were chiming in on the G20, which includes references in RTs:

& if there is any question whether the riot/vandalism overtook the media agenda/online user’s attention span…well, this is the graph of words associated with the G20, most often used ‘Spadina’/'Queen’/'Protester’/'Protest’ & CP24. Kudos vandals - you won the internet.

Big thanks to the Sysomos lads for building the tubes that makes all the pretty piecharts!

Had the pleasure of attending a thought-provoking journalism seminar last night, which was organized by the lovely crews of Samara & Massey College.  The first in a series, the evening’s lecture featured Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and current editor-in-chief, president & CEO of ProPublica.

What sets ProPublica apart from many up and coming online news outlets (or MSM using citizen journalists to round out their roster of writers), is its success rate partnering with mainstream media outlets (NYTimes, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, 60 minutes, etc) at the early stages of investigative journalism or at the final hand-off/distribution stage.  They are able to undertake ambitious research from their “independent, non-profit newsroom” thanks to a foundation grant, which sustains the basic operating costs, and are now looking to create a more sustainable financing model with various funders and small individual donations.

For example, last summer ProPublica investigated the high rates of re-hires among negligent nurses in the state of California, and paired up with the LATimes to expose the lax oversight in tracking potentially (& often fatal) staffing decisions.  Between the two outlets’ teams, they researched every Californian nurse disciplinary case from 2002-08 (over 2,000) and revealed that the average lag-time on action by the Board of Registered Nursing was over three years, & many cases were left forgotten.  One day after the story was published, Governor Schwarzenegger replaced almost every member of the Board, citing the newspaper & online organization’s coverage as bringing the issue to light.

Examples abound of long-form investigative journalism affecting change by exposing negligence, corruption and fraud - so the question isn’t exist/disappear…but one wonders if only addressing the shrinking budgets/staff of MSM, a larger issue is unaddressed - our shrinking attention span. (Insert obligatory ‘Google makes us stupid‘ link, &/or pop-stat used by many UX’ers that the average user’s attention span is now whittled down to 5 seconds)

Encouragingly enough for online news outlets, yesterday the Pew Internet & American Life Project released new online news usage data with internet news listed above print and radio in popularity, with 61% of Americans reading news online vs. 50% reading a local paper & 17% reading a national paper.  Of the online-ers 1/3 were reading on their mobile device.  But when we say ‘reading’ are people really reading?

One ProPublica fact that threw me was the proud statement that they’d launched an iPhone app and had a Blackberry version in the wings.  While I’m the first to strongly encourage clients to reach their audiences on as many platforms as possible, eschewing the ‘If you build it they will come’ attitude & instead respectfully joining communities that are interested in your offering, silver-bullet-izing the mobile platform for long-form journalism cannot jive without major mods.

In the same way we couldn’t create a hit radio programme walking into a studio & recording a ‘Simpsons’ script - reading a full-length long-form investigative piece on a 3”x2” screen is a tough slog for the online crew.  Are there any online outlets doing a good job of serializing content so that it’s broken up into manageable mobile-friendly chunks, while also grabbing the audience’s attention with cliff-hanger-style endings every couple days, or embedding multi-media content to supplement the copy?  Any way to use audio to create subscription-based podcast versions of the stories - if there was ever a sustainable online revenue model for journalism, it might be long-tail-able via iTunes - or at least worth a shot…

So this year was, erm, interesting.  Thankfully there were loads of fantastic LPs/EPs & shows to lift our collective spirits, right guys? Right?

Like every year, a virtual tip of the hat is directed Waub’s way for starting the best annual tradition among our crew.  Extra thanks go out to everyone who contributed to those list emails or posted lists on their respective sites.

I have been agonizing/procrastinating for over a month.  Had a Top 20 list burning a hole in my draft folder & I think I have whittled it down properly…So in no particular order, I give you:

Zeus - Sounds Like Zeus EP - Tho last year’s promise of a full-length won’t materialize til February, this tiny perfect pop confection arrived just in time for Zeus’ pint-sized, yet triumphant, takeover of the Arts&Crafts NXNEshowcase.  Neil’s tune ‘Marching Through Your Head’ is my personal fav, but the Phil Collins cover of ‘That’s All’ is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser!

Joel Plaskett - Three - 3xs the usual amazing JP output but surprisingly (unlike almost every other concept album in the history of rock music after Sgt Pepper’s) strung together with a cohesive theme, both lyrically and melodically, featuring beautiful guest vocals and insane hooks.  This undertaking stands on par with Down at the Khyber

Gentleman Reg - Jet Black - He’s Reg.  He can do no (faux)albino wrong.

Cats On Fire - Our Temperance Movement - Frosty Finnish climate makes for toasty warm indoor fireworks.  I am entirely biased because they are Finnish. (Insert Kayne interruption joke *here*)

Sprengjuhöllin - Bestu Kveðjur - What can I say?  I love Scandinavian dudes.  These psych pop lads are what The Coral would sound like if they were fronted by Sondre Lerche - borderline saccharine-sweet, but genuinely heartfelt. Now that they’re penning English-language lyrics, they’ll hopefully have 2010 North American success to match their string of homeland #1s.

Do Make Say Think - Other Truths - This record makes me wish I was still in school so it could be my go-to-instrumental background writing s/t. If you have a chance to catch DMST/Happiness Project on tour - PROMISE ME you will attend.  Happiness Project is such a phenomenal experience live, I cried. (& I only cry for Rufus or when someone drops a delicious gooey cookie from Le Gourmand)

Bahamas - Pink Strat - This record is more of a ‘07-09 souvenir for the zillions of treks to the Magpie for Paso Mino or some other brilliant indie incarnation of Afie Jurvanen (here I go again with the Finns…).  I can promise with a clear-conscience that this record will make you smile - it’s perfect.

Dan Mangan - Nice, Nice, Very Nice - This is the only album that overlaps with the year-end list by almighty music guru Frank at Chromewaves.  So I’ve got that going for me…Although it’s ridiculously earnest/shockingly adorable, Dan’s gravely voice balances it out & it turns into this laddish singer-songwriter masterpiece.

PJ Harvey & John Parish - A Woman A Man Walked By - Pretty sure if I had to pick a #1 that this would be it…not necessarily due to its musical merits, but mainly because I’m a *little* stubborn.  I’ve been so disappointed that throughout the year, & especially now, this LP hasn’t gotten any love.  People take PJ for granted! I’m convinced if some new YouTubeing/Twittering waif in Portland put this haunting, sexy, gutsy, intense, raw, intelligent record out, you’d hear it in every pseudo bohemian cafe from here to Timbuktu.  But what the hell do I know?

Noah And The Whale - The First Days Of Spring - Every couple years you need a new ‘break glass in case of sad bastard emergency (heartbreak, boredom, general malaise, crap manager who accuses one of job hunting whilst on medical leave, etc)’ record.  This is your new one if you get sick of your old Belle & Sebastian LPs.

Honourable Mentions:
St. Vincent - Actor
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz!
Bruce Peninsula - A Mountain Is A Mouth
The Wooden Sky - If I don’t come home you’ll know I’m gone
Bon Iver - Blood Bank EP
Julie Fader - Outside In
M. Ward - Hold Time
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Robert Francis - Before Nightfall
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Before I spam my entire FB peeps’ update stream with ‘Meghan favourited a YouTube video’ notices, I’ll give massive official blahg shout out to Fader magazine (who throws the BEST sxsw parties, BTW) for their inspired new web campaign sponsored by Southern Comfort.  ‘At the Bar with Southern Comfort‘ is weekly series of YouTube videos has filmed bands in their favourite hometown bars & asks them to perform acoustic covers - & the choices by the bands are just - wow.

Dunno if Fader approached SoCo or if this just came out of their existing advertiser/publisher arrangement, but IMHO this is a great campaign.  Fader said in July that an upcoming SoCo tour with Polyphonic Spree (meh) & The Hold Steady (yea) is happening along these all-cover-song-lines….

As anyone knows from most major music fests, absorbing some sponsorship/logo/branded stuff is a given to book decent acts & turn a profit.

Here’s a sample of the vids - Daredevil Christopher Wright in Madison, Wisconsin covering Megafaun’s Drains. & to all the pristine prissies who accuse musicians of selling out for doing stuff like this…don’t even get me started…

p.s. Canuck <3s’ll go aflutter for Born Ruffians‘ Luke Lalonde covering the Boss at the best mojito joint in TO, Souz Dal.