Pretty neat new campaign by Greenpeace, this time against Volkswagen. Read the whole whole story at Futerra.

Funny new Greenpeace campaign against Mattel for using Asia Pulp & Paper as a 2nd/3rd tier supplier for its Barbie packaging. Combining the video shown below along with the URL http://greenpeace.org/ken which links to a special Facebook page app, the campaign is pretty neat for its humor (video viewership at 120,000 after 4 days online) among other unique features like changing your Facebook photo to an angry Ken, and sending an email to Mattel’s CEO Bob Eckert.

Here’s the LA Times coverage including reactions from Mattel, and Business Wire’s press release response from APP.

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via Toby Webb

Another great brand communications video here, this time from New Balance running shoes. Here they’re talking about the customization options for their US574 shoe along with tidbits about their operations and history in the Northeast U.S.

I like combining brand identity along with product marketing. It gives the message a bit of depth for those audiences who see the video for information about the shoe itself, but won’t come across a dedicated story about brand. You can see a variety of other videos from the New Balance YouTube channel (including tennis lessons!).

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via Core77

Apart from a great business model with a healthy product offering, I really dig Naked Pizza’s extensive use of video for brand communications that combines journalism, storytelling, and inside views to their operations. Founder Jeff Leach writes on their LivNaked blog and in these two video clips, tells us why their dough balls are special, and some historical insights on the diversity of vegetables our ancestors ate.

Dough Balls – [Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 2.5min]

Dietary Advice from our Evolutionary Past – [Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 3min]

Neat cause marketing video for the Surfrider Foundation in Brazil, by an agency called Script. Here’s the official description:

Script has created an action for Surfrider Foundation Brasil, called “Return”. The action has as purpose to raise awareness and alert people about the consequences of the garbage left on Rio’s beaches.

From a mailing list of surf shops and accredited NGOs, 10,000 boxes containing objects thrown on the sand were sent to people’s houses.

Besides plastic cups, ice-cream packages, cans and water bottles, each box also contained a label with the following message:

“The garbage thrown on the sea returns someday. For everybody.” — leaving it clear that, even who never threw garbage on the beach, one day, may suffer the consequences of such act.

The action was also performed in bars in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

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A couple months ago, I attended a neat panel discussion on how documentary films could reach larger audiences and hopefully have a positive impact or influence, based on the filmmaker’s intent. Here’s the official description:

“Documentary films unveil important truths, challenge assumptions, and often compel audiences to take action. Many of today’s filmmakers are faced with an additional challenge—how do they ensure their film will have a significant impact on the public and on the policies their story highlights? The collaboration of filmmakers with NGOs and community groups has created a new distribution model, and the measure of success now reaches beyond sales to changes in public perception and policy. Join filmmaker and activist Abigail Disney, Give Up Tomorrow director Michael Collins, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Impact Partners Dan Cogan, producer Cynthia Lowen of The Bully Project, Josh Baran of Baran Communications, and others for an insightful discussion on the new paths of distribution for nonfiction films and the ways filmmakers and their subjects are making their voices heard. Moderated by independent producer and Outreach Director of The Good Pitch, Sandi DuBowski.”

Josh spoke about “Race to Nowhere“, about education and kids stress. Distributed through schools and grassroots orgs, viewers paid $10, $5 of which went to the production company, and $5 to the school. Additionally, each school paid a nominal screening fee. Following the film, there was a discussion and action plan. Big organic publicity came after initial screenings.

“Gasland” was shown at Sundance Film Festival 2010, HBO picked it up, and it got 3.5 million viewers through their network. Compared to the 30k who saw it in theaters, that’s phenomenal. It was also shown through community and university screenings. CBS 60 minutes then did their own investigative story, followed by other news orgs around the country. Josh claims the flaming water faucet scenes were “gold”, and became the hook to draw people into the issue of fracking and water contamination.

Abigail spoke of how documentary filmmakers shouldn’t have to “beg for crumbs” and live poorly to make and distribute their production. There should be the option to somehow monetize it.

A big theme seemed to be how community screenings afforded people to stick around after the film and discuss it with others, compared to the big screen experience in which people leave their seats, and may talk about it within their little group on the way to the car.

Dan mentioned how “No Impact Man” had influenced 50k colleges to host voluntary “no-impact” weeks for students.

Abigail then talked about Lioness and the story of women combat fighting in Iraq. Though illegal, it was happening anyway. It started with women who could pat down Iraqi females, since male soldiers were severely chastised for doing so. These women never got combat pay and no healthcare treatment for PTSD or other ailments since they weren’t legally allowed to be fighting anyway. What ended up happening with enough exposure, is that it affected U.S. policy in the Senate, started discussions at Westpoint and the Defense Dept., and resulted in a commission’s recommendation to end the combat exclusion policy.

Cynthia spoke about “The Bully Project“, which premiered this Spring at Tribeca. They too are working on community screenings, 1st planned in Sept. in Philadelphia, with funding through foundations and nonprofits.

Personally, I really like the community screenings, but feel the option for distributing the film could be much wider through websites like Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix in addition to the cable networks. Depending on the situation (money/partners), I’d recommend creating a tiny program that downloads the movie and any additional media, through BitTorrent.

A couple months ago, I attended a short class on advocacy marketing and community management, led by Charles Lenchner of Organizing 2.0.

One of his points was that there was no such thing as “online organizing“. Similar to what Justin Isaf had said in an interview on communities, one can only communicate with and guide people to take action.

Charles discussed a brief history of nonprofit funding which started by first appealing to mothers, then to corporations and foundations, and finally to the general public and targeted individuals.

Longstanding nonprofits had worked with corporations and the government on employee contribution programs based on a fixed percentage of their income or nominal amounts. These proceeds would go to single beneficiary orgs or to a distributed fund like United Way. While this model worked well for many years, one downside for nonprofits in an employee funded model was the increasingly shorter employment lengths of individuals with any one org. Hence the need for branding and mass outreach to people targeted through CRM systems, beginning with direct mail and telephone.

Over time, we’ve progressed from rudimentary and distributed marketing data collection and intelligence systems to eCRM systems that vastly improved taskflows, metrics, and pipeline management, to the modern day social CRM paradigm.

While all 3 approaches co-exist in a dynamic marketing system, the opportunity that eCRM offers with email marketing is still VERY powerful and robust with strong analytics and the greatest opportunity to trial ideas, measure performance, and refine tactics.

As an example, he shared how MoveOn.org had tested various layouts, colors, and calls to action in their emails to constituents, measured results, and kept tweaking for maximum benefit. Great CRM is thus a strategic asset, in terms of the software, data, AND people who can use it.

Since email is the only guaranteed way to reach people (unless stuck in an automated spam filter), it only makes sense to try and get fans and interested parties within social media channels into one’s CRM. With a great offer or compelling reason, the right people should enter. The important thing though is RELEVANCY of those future communications with the folks who opted in. That comes down to profile data and segmented list types.

In many regards, this is a strong reason why Salesforce acquired Radian6. Develop greater knowledge about nonusers, critics, customers, influencers, and potential leads.

While it seems only logical then that the point of social network marketing is to somehow get users in your system, I’m afraid such an attitude unfortunately objectifies people online to targets to be marketed to. There’s a more humanistic approach though and it’s characterized by relevancy, transparency, and having a personable brand. Should social channels then be used primarily for awareness, engagement, and word of mouth? Probably.

If you’re interested in software reviews for nonprofits, Charles recommends checking out Idealware.org. Secondly, avoid absolutists around particular platforms. Conditions and needs will vary for every enterprise.

The Master Toolbox

• CRM, listening, digital pr, ads, social media
• Groupware and collaborative software (documents, conferencing, sharing)
• Web analytics (site visits, ctr, time on site, referrers)
• Site structuring for AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, action), creating conversion beacons
• SEO
• Video for cause awareness, progress feedback, online channels (features, distribution tools)
• Content development and management
• Email template design
• Digital strategist – consultant’s consultant (knows lay of land)

Interesting Aside: Charles notes that Charity Water owes most of its success through existing social equity in friends & influencers at big companies, from the very beginning to today. Therefore, nonprofits shouldn’t hope for big growth potential just by using social media tools, a great website, and terrific video storytelling.

Analyzing Tools and Approaches

• ROI v. ROO
• Value comparison between options
• Identify secondary costs like training, and opportunity costs
• Consider marketing objectives, funds, and volunteers

Kelly McDonald wrote this book I read recently that provides the principles of marketing along with tactics to understand and communicate with a whole variety of demographic, cultural, and values-based market segments. The nice thing about it was that although I wasn’t the target audience (being a marketing nerd), it seemed very approachable for small to medium sized businesses on the principles part, and insightful on the cultural part for every conceivable reader who picks this up.

In this day and age, every business owner can expand their sales by better understanding the potential client market base, and communicating with them in ways that are culturally relevant, meaningful, and appropriate too. Language, imagery, and approaches used with different market segments can fall flat because of a lack of empathy and understanding. Sometimes, they can be downright demeaning too if they’re based on stereotypes. Just like for online marketing, a single marketing approach is lame due to the large opportunity to precisely target prospects with unique needs.

This is a handbook that every business owner and corporate marketer (for the cultural training insights) should read due to its breadth, brevity, solid advice, and great stories. I particularly liked the chapter on immigrants, the acculturation process, and segmentation thereof. Check out the table of contents on Amazon for a topical overview.

Note: I received this book as a review copy and have made my best efforts to be objective about its value to potential readers. It was a fun read

Isn’t it great when campaign stories zag to begin with? This creative piece does just that; produced for Friends of the Earth UK. Humor, joy, hope, and other emotions are what make advocacy communications stand out. So long as they don’t stray too far, try to be witty, or don’t end appropriately and the essential message is lost on the viewer. Anyways…enjoy!

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via Ann Handley

Neat interactive game for Range Rover. I’m not quite sure if something similar would be possible with HTML5 and Javascript, though suppose it could be if there’s a video event attribute for “finished”, a sniffer for such states which then commands overlaid with images/text links at specific x/y coordinates, which then load corresponding new videos.

Anyways, I recommend trying it out yourself for fun. I think this format has MASSIVE potential for user-engagement…though of course you’d guess rightly so that I’m talking about communications rather than product marketing. It wouldn’t necessarily have to have a gaming element though. Just the option to dynamically experience the everyday work of an employee/volunteer (for recruiting), a beneficiary (for donations), and the list goes on. This is video storytelling squared. Give me the funding and an interactive agency that can produce it NOT in Flash…let’s go!

Here’s a bit of the PR pitcher’s description sent to me:

“Land Rover has released its first ever film, designed to generate awareness for a vehicle debuting this fall – the all-new 2012 Range Rover Evoque. “Being Henry” is an interactive online film that is all about “choices” and brings to life the unprecedented variety of options available with the Evoque. Leo Fitzpatrick of The Wire plays Henry throughout the film’s nine different story lines and 32 potential endings, under the award-winning direction of Nick Gordon. Viewers of the short film have the opportunity to make Henry’s choices, via a choose-your-own-adventure style interaction; ultimately, the choices made by the viewer on Henry’s behalf translate into their perfect car. Very subtle color, situational and emotional references in each choice ultimately result in the creation of the viewer’s perfect Range Rover Evoque, revealed at the end of the storyline.”

Visit: http://www.helloevoque.com/beinghenry