I noticed a new igoogle application that caught my interest. In addition to designing your home page with a whole host of designs, now igoogle has cause-related themes or your favorite advocacy group. The user can choose from a variety of looks…Rainforest Action Alliance, Sierra Club, Alliance for Climate Protection, WWF, Clean Cool-Air Planet, Doctors without Borders, Room to Read, etc. It is very cool and glad to see how mainstream advocacy has become. There are about 40 themes and the most popular so far is WWF, as seen above. Check it out.
Tags: Advocacy, cause-related, igoogle
McKinsey Quarterly just issued an article by Stanford University Professor Hayagreeva Rao based on his new book Market Rebels. The article, “Market Rebels and Radical Innovation” describes what companies need to do to truly innovate. In short, they need to get activists working for them. As you must probably know from the title of this blog, Rao’s ideas fit well with our work on what ignites and mobilizes Advocates. Rao describes the importance of articulating a “hot cause” (something that resonates and creates a community) at work and mobilizes members to commit which they name “cool mobilization.” The article urges companies to think of their employees like insurgents. To get your insurgents to produce creative change, Rao suggests:
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Use symbols to communicate
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Make good use of emotions of pride and anger “to unfreeze and move inert organizations forward”
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Make employees experience what it is like to be a customer
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Change one-way communications to two-way communications
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Go where the energy is
We help clients find their hot causes and cooly mobilize by harnessing the power of Advocates. It works.
Tags: Advocacy, McKinsey, Rao
My Weber Shandwick colleague William Brent heads our cleantech practice. Cleantech has over two million hits on Google. What is cleantech? According to Wikipedia, cleantech is “a term used to describe knowledge-based products or services that improve operational performance, productivity, or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste, or pollution.” William is an uber-cleantech advocate and is called Mr Cleantech by many. It is also the name of his blog. Some might call him a green advocate but he notes on his blog that the word “green” was voted one of the most overused words in 2008. William says that he interested in working with people and companies that develop technologies and business models that challenge the way we consume.
At the start of 2009, Mr Cleantech reported on his first Annual Cleantech Media Survey among 100 media types including bloggers, magazine writers, etc. and found:
· 77% said they expect media to significantly emphasize policy-related cleantech coverage this year
· Nearly 75% expect to see growing demand for cleantech sector news this year relative to last year
· Solar, according to the media, will be the most covered renewable in 2009, followed at a distance by wind and next generation biofuels. Energy efficiency will be the top covered non-renewable cleantech story for 2009, followed by carbon market and related technologies.
· More than half of the media surveyed report that blogs are the tool of choice to tell the clean tech story over the next 12 months. They also expect new media to grow in the months ahead and for traditional media to slow in reporting on this sector.
William has more information on his survey but notes that policy will play a big role in 2009. No surprise as Obama finally takes office. In fact, the Financial Times had a full page article on Clean Technology and Obama. “Much of the immediate hope rests on the promised economic stimulus package. The buzz in the Valley is that as much as $100bm could be used to support green technologies.”
Looking forward to William’s 2010 survey….
Tags: Advocacy, clean tech, green, Mr Cleantech, William Brent
With the global economy in crisis and consumer confidence down, it’s no surprise that charities and non-profits are concerned about their viability. I came across some sobering statistics…
- The Red Cross is suffering a 30% drop in responses and contributions from new donors, and corporate donations coming in at lower amounts.
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Catholic Charities USA reports that January-October 2008 contributions fell to $7.6 million, down 4% from the same period in 2007.
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The Meals on Wheels Association of America says roughly two-thirds of its members recently reported drops in both corporate and individual donations and some regional programs were forced to close down in 2008.
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Just under half the 1,200 owner-managers polled by U.K. accountancy firm Tenon said that supporting their local community was important to their business, down from 71 per cent that said it was in 2007.
If they aren’t already, charitable organizations should be tapping into their advocates. Weber Shandwick’s global survey, the New Wave of Advocacy conducted with KRC Research, revealed compelling reasons why such organizations should harness the power of “issue or cause advocates.”
First, they are a small but influential segment – nearly 1 in 5 global adults (18%) say they have actively supported an issue or cause in the past two years but they in turn encourage 26 other people, on average, to join in their support. Aside from any financial support, they demonstrate their support by wearing something that displays their cause (27%), sending letters to a company or elected official regarding their cause (21%), and posting comments of support online (20%). Further, when they are given the opportunity to react to a request for support, they do so quickly: 47% take less than one day to act and most (88%) don’t need more than a few weeks to get engaged.
Not surprisingly, broadcast and print media do the most to shape an advocate’s opinion about an issue or cause, but appeals from friends, family and coworkers are by far the most effective for triggering support action. Which brings us to why it’s so critical, now more than ever, for charities, non-profits and philanthropies to engage in advocate-building. Take, for example, the March of Dimes which provides its supporters with a step-by-stop guide for recruiting others to walk and join their cause. A simple bullet-point set of tips demonstrates how basic an advocacy program can be.
Influence keeps changing. Whereas influence used to be in the hands of powerful institutions, companies or opinion shapers, today’s influence is decidedly with the consumer. We have heard that again and again. In a BusinessWeek article on the most influential companies, Jena McGregor wrote a few lines and quoted some people that struck me.
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Gary Hamel: “Influence is like water, always flowing somewhere.”
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Old Korea proverb: “Power lasts 10 years. Influence, not more than a hundred.”
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McGregor: “A company’s physical assets are less important now than the force of its ideas.”
What was missing in the piece was the growing impact of Advocates to champion one’s influence or power. Without Advocates’ fuel, the engine will stall. You can have the best idea, best product or best company, but in today’s world you need your fans, enthusiasts and advocates to advance them and make them known. In the next decade, we will see a greater emphasis on companies and institutions reaching out more aggressively to their best customers…their Advocates. Just wait and see.
Tags: Advocacy, BusinessWeek, champions, Most Influential
