I read a really interesting idea in an article on digital diplomacy in The New York Timesmagazine section one week ago. The article was about Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two State department employees who are taking digital to new horizons. The former is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff and the latter is the first senior adivser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Twitter is a mainstay of their assault on diplomacy red tape and I was surprised by the remarkable amount of freedom they have to change public affairs through social networking. Kudos to Hillary Clinton for letting their digital diplomacy flow. They are truly advocates for the next generation of politics.
The article mentioned their “techdels” which are technology delegations that they lead in various countries. As the article points out, they invite software engineers, entrepreneurs and tech CEOs to come together and think of innovative ways to support democracy and spread the word about freedom. One example they give is figuring out how to crowd source an end to human trafficking in Russia.
The article mentioned one idea that came up in a meeting with billionnaire Carlos Slim. The techdel was musing about how people in Mexico City all have cell phones and text all the time, no matter how poor they are. Someone suggested the idea of having a short text code to report a crime. The SMS would strip out all personal information but the reported crime would show up in a database that the police could monitor and the public could see mapped online. The idea is that these advocate crime reporters would be anonymous but crime around the world would be more transparent and possibly stoppable. As an advocacy idea, this is a good one. Thought it was worth mentioning here.
There is a group in France called La Barbe or “The Beard” that advocates for more women on boards in that country. Apparently the women show up in disguise (yes, wearing beards!) at annual meetings to let these female-few companies hear a piece of their minds. The women wear the beards for fear of retribution and being found out. French lawmakers are giving some thought to requiring at least 40% of boards to be made up of women within six years. A similar law exists in Norway where quotas exist. In France, 9 1/2 percent of boards have women compared to 12.2% in the US and 34% in Norway. Learned about this in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Interesting way to advocate for greater gender equality in the board room or should I say beard room. Advocacy exists in all places and for all kinds of causes. Advocacy is genderless.
We just completed a survey on civility in America. The survey was conducted with Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate and KRC Research. We decided to dig deep into the tone and level of discourse in this country and surveyed 1,000 Americans online. I’d like to share with you some of the findings which point to an erosion in how people communicate with each other and with our public institutions. Since being informed is so fundamental to our democracy, our research might make people think twice before cancelling out other people’s opinions online and offline. You might also want to take a look at how Politico framed our research and underscored our point even further. As advocates for strong public discourse and hearing both sides of an issue, here are a few select findings: [For more information, please go to this link for the press release and here for the executive summary.]
Two-out-of-three Americans consider a general lack of civility to be a major problem for the nation and 72 percent think that poor behavior has gotten worse in recent years.While the American people believe their friends, family and places of worship are bucking the trend toward incivility, a majority of the public sees uncivil behavior throughout society – especially in politics and high schools; on talk radio and our nation’s highways; in Hollywood and professional sports.
Seventy-two percent of Americans view the political world and government as uncivil – the highest percentage recorded in the poll – and the absence of civility appears to be having an impact on participation and interest in the political process among broad swaths of the public.
Nearly half the American people (49%) are tuning out government and politics, and almost two-thirds of those people (63%) cite the general tone and level of civility as a major factor in their decision. Forty-six percent of the people are tuning out opinion pieces and editorials in the media, and 45 percent cite incivility as a major factor. Thirty-eight percent are tuning out news coverage and reporting and half of them (50%) attribute their actions to the lack of civility.
Each major political party gives the other low marks on civility. Seventy-one percent of Democrats view Republicans as uncivil, and 74 percent of Republicans view Democrats as uncivil. Political independents regard Congressional Republicans more uncivil than Congressional Democrats, although they rate both parties more uncivil than civil (58 and 50 percent, respectively).“Our research provides hard evidence that constituents and consumers alike are fed up with the polarization of our political system and the uncivil tone of our country as a whole,” said Jack Leslie, Chairman of Weber Shandwick. “As a result, Americans are tuning out and turning away from news, information and informed opinions that make up the very foundation of American democracy.”
Have you heard of the Giving Pledge? I had not heard of it and there is good reason–I am not wealthy. The Giving Pledge is a new organization whereby wealthy (uber-wealthy) Americans pledge to donate 50% or more of their fortune to philantrophy. Warren Buffet just signed his pledge to donate his wealth and others are being encouraged to join this noteworthy movement of advocates for philanthrocates (a new word I just made up). There will even be a “Great Givers” annual meeting where the wealthy will gather to discuss how to best make use of their wealth giving. A very worthwhile cause to aid the world solve some of the most intractable problems and help people in greater need. Thank goodness there are people with a head on their shoulders. Here is how it is explained on the website.
The Giving Pledge is an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice either during their lifetime or after their death.
Each person who chooses to pledge will make this statement publicly, along with a letter explaining their decision to pledge. At an annual event, those who take the pledge will come together to share ideas and learn from each other.
The Pledge is a moral commitment to give, not a legal contract. It does not involve pooling money or supporting a particular set of causes or organizations.
While the Giving Pledge is specifically focused on billionaires, the idea takes its inspiration from efforts in the past and at present that encourage and recognize givers of all financial means and backgrounds. We are inspired by the example set by millions of Americans who give generously (and often at great personal sacrifice) to make the world a better place.
I came across a survey conducted among Americans who have a leadership role in their communities. You might call them engaged advocates. The survey was about philantrophic organizations which we all know something about but obviously not much as you will soon read. The survey by the Packard Foundation with Harris Interactive found that foundations are largely invisible, even among those who should know better. Only 43% of these engaged Americans were able to name a foundation on their first try. Whereas 13% consider themselves to be very or extremely informed about foundations, 60% feel somewhat or not at all informed about them. The results are just plain scary — only 15% can cite an example of how a foundation has impacted their community. The survey results add up to one plain fact which is that foundations need to communicate better to their best customers, community advocates, because they are the ones who are most likely to spread the word and keep their good work front and center in the public domain. Greater communications are clearly in order here.
I never thought about it but when I searched, I found nearly 1.4 million quotes about advocacy. And on the site I just linked to, there were several about social entrepreneurs which is a good way of talking about advocates. The one below is short and to the point about advocacy. However, sometimes just giving a fish can make all the difference in the world.
Do you have a dog or cat in need of grooming? If so, here is an opportunity to advocate for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean-up efforts. Consider taking your pet to a groomer who will donate your pet’s fur to Matter of Trust, a San Francisco nonprofit organization that has established a process for collecting animal fur and human hair to create nylon “booms” that naturally absorb oil from the water. Last week retailer PETCO began shipping donations of pet fur from its grooming salons to aid in creating these booms to soak up and remove oil from Gulf of Mexico waters. Once fur shipments arrive in the Gulf Coast region, volunteers gather to assemble the booms and prepare for their deployment. The booms are made by stuffing donated nylon stockings with hair and fur. With nearly 1,000 grooming salons pitching in, PETCO expected to ship up to a ton of donated fur per day hoping to reach 5 tons through this past weekend.
As a pet owner, I say it’s about time my pets begin contributing to society! Joking aside, this is a truly unique and worthwhile program. Get your four-legged friends to advocate for the wildlife in the Gulf who so gravely face endangerment.
Apparently April was Advocacy Measurement Month. I collected a number of fantastic and enormously valuable reports and articles published during April or so that are highly relevant to evaluating the impact of advocacy. I’ve summarized interesting findings and stats from each piece below that I thought are worth noting but hope that you’ll find the bytes interesting enough to click-thru to read the full analyses.
Word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions
McKinsey has developed the “word-of-mouth equity” index which measures a brand’s power to generate messages that influence the consumer’s decision to purchase
In the mobile-phone market, McKinsey has found that the pass-on rates for messages can increase a company’s market share by 10 percent (positive messages) and reduce it by 20 percent (negative messages) over a two-year period. [If you are familiar with Weber Shandwick’s advocacy research, you may recall that badvocacy, or brand criticism, reaches nearly twice as many people as brand advocacy.]
Marketers tend to build campaigns around emotional positioning, but McKinsey found that consumers actually talk and generate buzz about product functions
About 8 to 10 percent of consumers are influentials, whose common factor is trust and competence in a particular subject area. Influentials generate three times more word-of-mouth messages than noninfluentials do, and each message has four times more impact on a recipient’s purchasing decision. About 1 percent of these people are digital influentials—most notably, bloggers—with disproportionate power to influence
Marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones
Through online word-of-mouth, people make over 500 billion impressions on each other about products and services annually. Forrester Research estimates that U.S. social network users create 256 billion impressions on other social networkers per year and blog posts, blog comments, ratings and reviews, etc. generate another 250 billion impressions per year (hence the roughly 500 billion impressions)
Forrester concludes:
People’s influence on each other rivals online advertising. For comparison, for a 12-month period ending September 30 last year, Nielsen Online estimates advertisers created 1.974 trillion online advertising impressions, compared to the 500 billion impressions people make on each other about products and services. And peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends.
A minority of people generate 80% of the impressions. About 6.2% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence impressions. Around 13.8% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence posts.
One common form of advocacy on Facebook is through social ads. That is, if a user’s friends are fans of a brand on Facebook, the ad unit itself will contain the names of those friends. But does this lightweight form of endorsement actually impact the effectiveness of the advertising? Nielsen and Facebook compared the responses of users who had seen ads with social context against users who saw ads with no social context from the same campaign. A user would be eligible to see social context if one of their friends had previously “Become a Fan” of the brand running the advertisement.
The result? Social advocacy impacts consumers three-fold: Ad recall is substantially higher with social advocacy with a lift of 16% (vs. 10% for non-social ads), the awareness lift is doubled, and the purchase intent lift increases from 2% to nearly 8%.
This report provides methods for quantifying your social media advocates, their reach/influence and their impact. It assumes that a company already has an agreed upon definition of advocates and a process for identifying them, for example, the individuals generating positive or negative discussion about your brand.
Finally, having nothing at all to do with measuring advocacy, April saw the release of a movie called “The Joneses.” David Duchovny and Demi Moore star as a couple planted by a consumer marketing company in a gated community to spread word-of-mouth about its goods and services with the upscale community. The intent, of course, is to drive demand for the products. When I read the review for this movie (haven’t seen it), I thought of how the value advocacy has become so acknowledged by the mainstream.
Fast Company just issued their list of most innovative companies and new on the list is Patients Like Me. It is a very smart idea that benefits many and provides patients with their own advocate communities to discuss chronic ailments and treatment. Patients can absolutely benefit from each other’s experiences. The idea is so simple but so profound. Patients are given the power to control their disease and to share what they learn with others. It was started by three MIT engineers in 2004. They are working to share data with doctors, pharma companies, research organizations, nonprofits and others.
Again, another example of how advocacy communities can benefit each other and possibly provide feedback to pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession. Moreover, it a treatment is not working, here is a good forum to seeing how others are affected and get patient to patient advice.
Recently became aware of this very cool mobile application that lets consumers advocate for causes just by scanning certain products in stores or restaurants with their iPhone or Android. It is called CauseWorld and it is sponsored by Citibank, Kraft Foods and Proctor & Gamble who have provided nearly $1,000,000 for you to donate. No purchase of their products is necessary – you walk into a store and scan the barcode of products. Each time you scan a product you earn “karmas” and when you earn enough, you can donate them to a variety of charities with which CauseWorld partners.
A really innovative way of turning advocacy into action.
All About Advocacy is a blog written by and for people who believe in the accelerating power of Advocates in society today.
Contributors include a wide range of Weber Shandwick Advocates (plus any other Advocacy fans like yourself) who share their unique perspectives about this new shift in communications.
We encourage comments from our readers! That’s what advocacy is all about!
For further information about this blog go to the About page. For author biogs please go to the Contributing Advocates page.
Disclaimer
Everything posted in this blog represents personal opinion of the individual authors. It does not necessarily represent the views of Weber Shandwick or its clients.
I read a really interesting idea in an article on digital diplomacy in The New York Times magazine section one week ago. The article was about Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two State department employees who are taking digital to new horizons. The former is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff and the latter is the first senior adivser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Twitter is a mainstay of their assault on diplomacy red tape and I was surprised by the remarkable amount of freedom they have to change public affairs through social networking. Kudos to Hillary Clinton for letting their digital diplomacy flow. They are truly advocates for the next generation of politics.
There is a group in France called La Barbe or “The Beard” that advocates for more women on boards in that country. Apparently the women show up in disguise (yes, wearing beards!) at annual meetings to let these female-few companies hear a piece of their minds. The women wear the beards for fear of retribution and being found out. French lawmakers are giving some thought to requiring at least 40% of boards to be made up of women within six years. A similar law exists in Norway where quotas exist. In France, 9 1/2 percent of boards have women compared to 12.2% in the US and 34% in Norway. Learned about this in 
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