#next11 - Social Media for Good

WARNING: Liveblogging. Here be errors, inaccuracies and typos

Peter Bihr

The panel is working on the assumption that social media is going to go away as a separate, but become integrated into the whole of the business.

Mike Arauz, Undercurrent

Mr Arauz prefers to do over-complex presentations. But today (phew) he’s going to try and keep it simple. In the summer of 2004, a group of people built a system that allowed them to deliver messages to 1000s of places all over the world. And he’s going to go through a whole number of examples like that…

I Love Bees – an immersive game that promoted Halo 2. Thousands of gamers worked together to solve puzzles and take on challenges. The ARG evolved to the point where “Melissa” (the alien character) would call one payphone, and demand that someone at another payphone somewhere in the world, and the person who answered had to have the answer. The developers pushed it down to 15 seconds – and still the players managed it.

Reddit & Stephen Colbert – How do you get Stephen Colbert’s attention for your plan? Work together to raise money for a charity he’s on the board off – and he went on to host the rally they wanted him to.

Ask Metafilter – a spin-off community from Metafilter, full of people who enjoy research. One day, a post: “Help me help my fiend in DC.” The friend, a woman, had come over on a shaky visa situation. She was going to meet some people in New York, and her friend was concerned that she would be kidnapped, or dragged into sex slavery. In 24 hours, 20 to 50 people called embassies, government agencies, the FBI, the police, the woman herself. By the time she got to New York, she had met a safe person from the community, the NYP investigated the people she was to meet, and they turned out to be sex trafficers…

I t Gets Better – After a series of teen suicides by kids who were being bullied for being gay, Dan Savage and his husband posted a video. 3 days later they had one extra video. Within a month they had thousands, including a messaged of support from Obama.

So why do people do things they don’t have to?

• Accomplishing satisfying work
• Get good at something
• Spend time with people I like
• Be part of something bigger

Will Sansom, Contagious

Contagious is a quarterly magazine looking at the future of marketing and engagement. And we’re in an era when people tune out of anything that looks like marketing. But he argues that it’s all become marketing (God, I hope not). People are looking for entertainment and meaningful experiences.  That’s why you can’t carpet-bomb people with social media – it needs to be meaningful.

Trends:

1. Projects, not campaigns

Lots of brands are having success through effective change in the real world. You can’t plan and schedule this in the same way as traditional campaigns. They need to be designed to live and grow organically. Volvo’s right to clean air is cites as an example.

“Dude we should do” – problem of jumping on bandwagons. Chose the media that work for your idea, not whatever’s trendy.

Doesn’t have to be worthy – Nightlife Exchange Project

Is you project so good people would share it without media, then you have something that will work.

2. Networks of the Unacquainted

Getting people to connect around common interests, and reaping the benefit. Examples:

• Real Women of Philadelphia – started life as a UGC competition with Philadelphia recipes. Built a huge community, sales up by 8%.
• Sneakerpedia – wiki community for sneaker heads. The only branding is a tiny logo under the banner.
• Heineken Star Player

3. The Emotional Power of Response

• @jessGreenwood tweeted @flyairnz asking them to change the music in the airline lounge. She was paged, called to the desk and asked to change the music… Of course, she tweeted to her thousands of followers about the experience.
• @interfloraUK monitoring Twitter for people who are having a bad day – and sending them flowers to cheer them up.

Social data – lets you treat people as people. Data is the oil of social media – useless until you refine it.

• @twelpforce – Best Buy’s tech pros on twitter offering real time after sales services. Creates a real relationship with recent customers.
• iButterfly – an augmented reality butterfly collection game – and the butterfly becomes a coupon for a local retaier – and they’re sharable with friends…

Amanda Rose, Twestival

She was nine when LiveAid happened – but that sense of being part of something bigger than yourself left a deep impact on her. He had big dreams of changing the world 20 years ago, but then became part of the PR world. About 5 years ago she had the “wow” moment of social media with Facebook. She did a Masters about Twitter (I was interviewed for it 😉 ). She found that it changed events, because of the backchannel…

In 2008, she and friends organised a meet-up, a good night out, called Twestival – and it was great. And she couldn’t help thinking that this was something that should happen all over the world. But it took finding the right charity – and that turned out to be Charity Water.

202 Twestivals simultaneously around the world was the result. 55 new wells in 3 countries was the result.

Now there’s two different branches of Twestical: Global and Local. Over the four campaigns, they’ve raised $1.75m and 200+ cities have participated.

Social media has changed the game – they was no way all those volunteers worldwide could have been mobilised without Twitter. Even Facebook couldn’t have done it.

Amanda doesn’t have a home right now. She was in Sicily, and now going to Thailand, and then Switzerland… Skype and social media have enabled that working pattern.

The first Twestival cost her £200. To raise that much money for £200 – pretty crazy. She’s not a fan of “Tweet this” – she wants to see connection and tangible results.