just another blog pressed for words

Many of you may be familiar with charity:water, the non-profit started by an ambitious entrepreneur, Scott Harrison, who after spending some time in South America and Africa and getting to know intimately some of the issues the poorest among the continents’ residents faced, began to understand that some of the world’s most crucial health emergencies, diseases, and more all stem from one specific source– lack of access to safe, clean drinking water. And unlike most, he set off on a mission to do something about it.

But now that charity:water is a few years in, the story of how and why it started is less important than why it still exists, and what it is contributing in the world. To start off the new year, they just sent out to all of their followers and loyal fans a roundup of what they have achieved in 2009, and it is truly impressive.

What I find most inspiring about charity:water is that its success is almost in full due to the passion of a small group of people who started something that they believed in, and its momentum is carried by the passionate crowds of people they have since inspired. Unlike some other charities and causes, they don’t fall back on old standards of shoving celebrity appeal in our faces to try and illicit reactions, but rather let the idea and the necessity for action speak for itself. Sure, now that the charity has taken off there is a bit more shine and even cameo appearances to it, but it’s almost never the main focus, nor do celebrities stand as the face of the movement (and importantly, they were drawn to it after the fact, not in an effort to launch it).

There are no crying babies with flies in their eyes, but rather images of hope, optimism, and communities getting the hand-up they need for a chance to live long and productive lives. Something that started as an under the radar idea by an ex-club promoter, in just a few years time inspired involvement the likes of which we rarely see- including the first ever twestival, a global gathering in cities around the world of everyday people, taking just a few hours of their time to raise money for a cause they believe in (over $250K was raised by this entirely community organized and planned event).

Given all of the economic turmoil in the developed world over the past 1+ year and the resulting decline in overall charitable giving, it’s truly inspiring to me to see a success story like this. And it’s a great way to showcase what happens when brands (charity or otherwise) allow passionate people to co-create experiences around an idea. Charity:water started getting noticed not because of actors talking about it in fluffy interviews or massive, big-budget TV campaigns, but because of the energized core of people who truly believed they had a chance to do something important in the world, and who willed it into existence.

To me, part of the success of charity:water to is that they quickly and naturally identified who the most active and engaged people were, and let them do much of the work on behalf of the cause. For them, Twitter was an invaluable tool, and as they started getting more and more interest from followers wanting to get involved, they turned the reigns over in large part to self-styled community organizers across the world, who built out their own networks and without whom things like twestival may have never happened.

And I think it also highlights the importance of focus in a fluid and dynamic world, where trying to connect with everything and everyone in the world simply isn’t feasible and in most cases could even be wasteful and counterproductive. Not everyone may believe in what you do or what you stand for, but I think if you can find that vocal and active core, things tend to take on a momentum of their own, and draw in more people than you could ever bring in on your own (as a brand, charity, individual, whatever).

Congrats to Scott Harrison and everyone at charity:water on a job well done. Can’t wait to see where things go, and help out, in 2010.

If you’re not familiar with the planning school of the web, some quick background for you. It was started by Russell Davies in 2005 as a way of giving the planning community (both those currently in it and those aspiring to be) a way to get some additional practice in responding quickly to a strategic problem/assignment and submitting their ideas to a community of planner peers, to hear unfiltered feedback on what they send in. Different leaders in the planning community trade off responsibility for coming up with the assignments, and it makes for a rich variety of challenges.

Earlier this week, Gareth posted the latest fast strategy assignment. And it’s a good one. These are never easy, but always result in some great entries and even get some new talent exposure. For reference, check out the last assignment and see the feedback judges provided.

Basically, this new challenge is about writing a persuasive and powerful strategic argument, quickly and succinctly- one page is all you get.

The specifics:

You work for Wal-Mart’s agency as a planner.  Your client, at the CMOs behest, has asked you to consider whether Wal-Mart should build a standalone social network for the brand to help deepen the role Wal-Mart plays in the lives of the 2 out of 3 Americans who visit them every week.  Your job is to write a point of view and recommendation on what action should be taken.  In one page.  It will be sent direct to the CMO who is traveling China looking at expansion opportunities.

Some things to think about:  What’s your point of view?  Why?  What’s the CMOs point of view?  What’s the brand’s history (here’s an intro to their past in this space)?  How do you play into this or change it? What’s your evidence for the case you are making?  Is the page as pithy and punchy as it could be?

Please send your one page document to the email address on this site by midnight PT on Sunday October 4.

A while back (actually what seems like ages ago) I wrote about an unexpected experience while flying and the resulting impact it had on my impression of that airline. At the time it was a reminder that even though the experience of flying these days is generally god awful, an airline which has the foresight to hire the right people can offset some of that when those people come in contact with frustrated fliers, and help to make the whole process just a bit easier.

I’ll be perfectly honest- I have no love for any airline. I don’t like the lack of transparency in the way they operate, the completely inexplicable lack of communication when flights get delayed or canceled, and I’m no fan of surly gate attendants and flight crews who just add to the general stress and irritation of the experience. Safe to say, airlines start in the negative with me, and they have a long way to go to impress me before I even set foot on the plane. Quite frankly, I’m just expecting a bad experience start to finish.

But recently I had a similar experience to the one I had way back in 07 that momentarily lifted that cloud of skepticism and pushed me to potentially rethink what I thought of that particular airline (if in fact this person was indicative of who they hire). That airline was Delta, and the person in question was a rare bright spot in a mix of rude and irritable flight attendants. After a particularly long day of travel, frantic work, and high pressure meetings, the only thing I wanted when I got onto my flight was a cold beer. After asking this particular flight attendant for one, I started to reach into my pocket for my wallet. She quietly placed her hand on my shoulder and shook her head, waving away my attempt to pay.

Whether she sensed the exhaustion in my face, in my tone of voice, in my demeanor, I can’t really know. But she picked up on something, and through her small gesture that she probably didn’t think twice about, she essentially placed me into a positive state of mind for the remainder of the flight. The shock of a positive and pleasant interaction with someone who works at an airline was rare enough for it to fully change the way I was feeling at that moment. And for the rest of the flight.

And that small occurrence got me thinking not surprisingly about our industry. As Gareth recently put it, chasing the spectacle when the small stuff is what really makes people’s lives better seems a bit odd these days. So does, in my humble opinion, chasing fame when fame for us doesn’t necessarily make people’s everyday lives better.

Despite all of the attention being paid to the supremacy of utility value in our digital world over the fireworks show, seems like we’re still too often finding ourselves in the position of being asked or trying to do the latter. I suppose it’s in part driven by the broken model of industry awards that recognize advertising that agency folks like versus advertising or ideas that actually make a difference in the lives of regular people.

The other part to me seems to be many people- client and agency folk alike- who are willing to pay lipservice to a changing world but not yet ready to commit their own efforts and attention to that world. It’s funny and sad at the same time to think that the biggest obstacle to progress is in fact ourselves.

But at the same time, feels like it’s our most exciting challenge. And one I’m personally invested in, and hope that many others are as well.This is our moment to change the way we operate, even if some don’t want to, because I think we simply have to. It’s never easy, but it’s necessary. And seems to me that those who do it right will be the ones remembered as having ushered in a new era for our industry.

Just getting started on lazyfeed, and have to say I’m really into it so far. Like Google Reader in realtime, but even more simple. Rather than having to go blog by blog, site by site subscribing to various feeds, all lazyfeed asks you to do is type in some key words (some of mine so far are ‘iPhone’, ‘mobileweb’, ‘userexperience’) and it then scrapes the web and pulls in articles, blog posts, and a host of other content that relate to your key word. Just save that stream, and then it automatically starts updating your stuff in realtime.

Easily lets you connect back to your various existing identities (twitter, facebook, flickr) and pulls in your tagged items from there too (though I see they left out google reader- maybe they weren’t allowed to include that functionality? Wouldn’t mind a Posterous addition either, but too early to start complaining, it did just launch after all). And, you can pretty easily share stuff from lazyfeed back out to your other nets.

Always finding myself these days looking for ever simpler aggregation tools to manage the overload of info that my Reader currently is, and have to say this may be one of the best I’ve used in a while. Can see getting a lot of use out of this one. And given that it’s pretty solid right from the start aside from a few minor complaints, will be very curious to see how it evolves and improves over time as they start to get more and more feedback from people.

(found via @mashable)

Seems like everyday there are new tools and apps being created for twitter that seek to make the experience better and more manageable. Conversations about whether or not twitter will be around in the future aside, today it still proves to be a valuable source of interesting information.

Mashable points to a new one that is quite interesting as well- twitter for busy people. Basically it allows you to see the latest tweet from any of the people you follow, so that those who post less frequently don’t get drowned out by the people posting multiple times a day.

Smart and simple way to address the vast amount of info and updates coming at you regardless of what app you use. I sometimes feel like I’m losing out on some valuable thoughts, info, links, etc from people who may only choose to tweet when they have something specific to share rather than a real-time, stream of consciousness post.

Worth checking out if you share my dilemma (twilemma? ah, I had to do it. Tabtabai will love that one).