Tag: Worklife

We spend a good part of our time at Brodeur helping clients figure out their messaging.

What are the key messages your audience needs to hear?

What words, metaphors and images should you use to convey them?

How do you structure your story so that it is relevant to the people you are talking to?

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i don’t have a very deep wardrobe as far as ties are concerned, so when i found out i was flying up to boston to interview with a public relations firm i did what any reasonable man would do:

i grabbed my (female) friend from the cubical next door and went to macy’s.

shirt, tie. got a jacket later (finene’s basement, much cheaper). honestly, i looked pretty good. but, when i got up to boston for my interview, i had actually had to look up how to tie a tie in the current corporate environment.

for all intents and purposes, the last time i tied a tie was in 2004 and it was one of those skinny little quarter knots that were “in” back then — not the big chunky knots that people are rolling with today. something as fat as a windsor knot a decade ago would have triggered some sort of “the 70’s called, they’d like their tie back” reference.

so i downloaded the above photo on my phone in the bathroom of the starbucks on the corner of berkeley and boyleston, locked the door, and spent ten minutes figuring it out. (fwiw, there was a line when i came out.)

obviously, everything when fine at the interview but during the course of the meeting i got mocked — mocked? yeah, let’s go with mocked — by the CEO for wearing a tie to the interview.

… and it’s been a thing ever since.

over the next 8 weeks, pretty much every email thread i had with the man with the name on the door included some reference to that tie.

now, the additional layer of “funny” on this topic is that my dress for the interview serious deliberation at the recruitment firm behind my hiring (i was headhunted at a conference i spoke at, and ironically it was such a poorly run conference i had vowed to never speak at it again).

even the head of the recruitment firm chimmed in, but after about 20 minutes of deliberations but it was finally decided that i could “get away” without a tie, but it would be a risk because “boston is much more conservative than D.C.”

turned out that may not have been the case.

Over the past five years, the contest has collected over 100,000 photos from nearly 50,000 supporters. The corresponding Flickr presence has grown to more than 300,000 photos and over 24,000 participants.

This year we’re doing it all over again — only adding the ability to submit photo using Facebook credentials. Here’s hoping…

The campaign includes an integrated mini-site, social community efforts via Facebook Events and meetup.com, outreach to chefs and food bloggers, and a series of YouTube animations.

UPDATE The effort resulted in over 600 picnics (that we know of, and we estimate we only know about 30% of them) in 60 countries around the world — number I certainly won’t kick out of bed in the morning.

i’m pretty sure that makes me famous, though certainly not controversial as it garnered only one (1!) measly comment — next time i’ll light myself on fire.

besides the normal online donation stuff my team always does, we’re using the opportunity to launch our first mobile text-to-donate effort.

viewers will be able to text “COAST” to 50555 to donate $10 to The Nature Conservancy’s Fund for Gulf Coast Restoration. needless to say, i’m fascinated to see how it goes.

so, tune in tonight … and help me justify my paycheck.

another presentation on social media today, this one at the Foundation Center in downtown D.C. this group was looking for a more basic information about social media, so we talked much more about what people (especially small orgs) should be doing in the social media space.

the panel was setup by Dahna Goldstein of PhilanTech, who had a bio that would rival most noble laureates, and again featured Jocelyn Harmon (of Marketing for Non-Profits fame).

no fire alarm this time, which was a good thing, because (with questions) we went a full hour over our allotted time. a lot of fascinating discussions, especially from a portion of the non-profit community (the smaller part) that might not have the same bandwidth and resources to devote to the topic.

Sea World / Busch Gardens and their “Animal Ambassadors” stopped by the Conservancy this morning … and a couple hundred of us gathered in the garden out back to see a Red-necked Wallaby, some type of lizard, an American Alligator and Magellan Penguin. Shamu (the killer whale) did not attend, nor was he expected (can you imagine *that* kennel carrier?)

I have to say that (a) the southern tip of Argentina is back at the top of my travel list, and (b) everyday would be better with penguins.

we are using my.nature.org to serves relevant, personalized content to the Conservancy’s online supporter communities, as well as to post a ton of user-generated content we collect from our flickr efforts, the message of hope campaign, and our everyday environmental tips.

UPDATE: In the 18 months since the campaign’s launch, my.nature.org has garnered nearly 800,000 visits and 1.5 million page views. The site’s user generated content campaigns have become fixtures on the Conservancy’s social media presences, including Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. i’ll take it.

We recently participated in a sweeping study that looks at the health of bird populations around the country and what this means for the future of our birds. With that in mind, and in full recognition of how incrediably strong our birding community is, we launched a mini-site where people can learn about the threats to birds in the U.S., share their best places to bird, and submit their favorite bird photos.

We also threw in a sweet little desktop screensaver of bird images from our Flickr community.

(that’s the nature conservancy’s tree planting effort in the brazillian rain forest that I raised money for last earth day — and helped launch as part of my day job.)

I haven’t heard anything about who the donor was, or how they chose us, but it’s fantastic to see such an important cause get the recognition (imho) it so richly deserves.

Presented at a day long “Master Class” on opt-in email lists, organized by a colleague from Convio. My part of the conference was a bit of a rehash from last fall’s presentation at the Convio summit, and again centered on all sorts of acquisition testing (use of premiums, donor database analysis, engagement campaigns and email appends).

Spoke at the Convio Summit, about how to use a gated community (our Great Places Network) to acquire and engage non-profit supporters online. This includes everything from registration forms, to offline marketing of online resources, to five or six different types of tests around engagement and acquisition strategies.