Guns, “Nones” and $1’s: 6 Things You Should Know About Millennials

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Here are two stats about Milliennials that strike me as worth mentioning. #1: the under-30 crowd increasingly does not associate itself with any formal religion. (Pew Research 10/12 ).  #2 This same under-30 crowd has the lowest gun ownership, compared with all other age cohorts. (General Social Survey). Gallup-None-NPRGraphic2

ImageNow, a social scientist might say these trends are unrelated.  Ahh, but that’s where the storyteller/ branding aficionado in me begs to differ!   Rather than clinging to their guns and religion, it seems Millennials don’t particularly like associating themselves with the brands and organized institutions of the past.   They like to be independent thinkers. In fact, Millennials identify themselves politically as Independents, rather than D’s or R’s (another study).  

And while they don’t need any formal institution like a political party telling them what to believe or say, Millennials definitely keep up with their peers through social media. No, not Facebook you old boomer people.  I mean  Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter.

But here’s another interesting stat: 71% of Millennials have raised money for/on behalf of a nonprofit. And for those who haven’t, the main reason is that NOBODY ASKED. Shouting, sorry. Image

What that says to me is Nobody Asked in a Medium They Pay Attention to, anyway. Also, they like learning about nonprofit opportunities from their peers. And they like to know that what they do or give will Actually Make a Difference (see my other posts on showing nonprofit impact w/video stories!)Image

So….if you want to reach Millennials, remember that they…

  1. probably won’t shoot you
  2. nor will they pray for you (at least, not in a formal place of worship)
  3. do like to think for themselves
  4. don’t necessarily like being Official Members of Organized Groups
  5. and if you want their time and money, please have one of their peers ask them nicely for it
  6. Oh, and show them your results please!
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Brand on Fire: Congress Less Popular Than Head Lice

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3 Glass Bottles-1b sWhen a national opinion poll shows you’re less popular than root canals and head lice, you know your brand is in trouble.  Public Policy Polling’s just released poll on Congress found just that.

If your own brand is in trouble, what are some emergency measures you can take?

  1. Own it, don’t avoid it. “Yes we made a mistake, yes we’re going to fix it” has been proven time and again to work better than avoidance. Remember the famous Jeffrey Jarvis Dell Sucks fiasco.
  2. Use social media. If a customer calls you out on a mistake through social channels (i.e. comments on your website, Facebook page or Twitter), apologize directly through the same social channel and explain how you will solve the problem. That way, other customers see you take action. Take a page from the best online retailers here (Zappos, for example).
  3. Let authentic positive voices drown out negative ones. If you are being hammered by an outlier unhappy or even vengeful voice, engage your supporters to drown them out, rather than trying to take them on yourself. This can include encouraging (through other channels like email) your supporters to post positive comments, or even upload positive videos about their experiences with your product or organization.

Of course all of these suggestions only apply when the individual/company/organization takes responsibility for the quality of its work. Much as I love my hardworking friends who are staffers on the Hill, this may or may not apply to Congress as a whole.

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Taking a Page from Downton Abbey

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labyrinth copyright B.DeLouise120 Million viewers worldwide. It’s an enviable demographic, let alone for a PBS show. Downton Abbey has proven to be the most-watched Masterpiece series in history, with fans from China to Norway to Brazil.  What makes it work? According to creator Julian Fellowes, who won the screenplay Oscar for Gosford Park, it’s the universality of its themes. While factually British, “most of the stories are about emotional situations that everyone can understand” he told the New York Times in a recent story.  

When I’m asked what videos work best for social web (and also for live events)—I say the same thing: bring the audience into emotional situations they can relate to, even aspire to. Whether you are promoting a charity or a membership association, a corporate enterprise or a commercial product, your video needs to connect to your viewers/donors/buyers on a personal level. Videos that get the most shares, embeds, likes and forwards are usually those with a first-person storyline, authentic voices, in relatable situations. They don’t include “an introduction from the CEO,” nor are they heavily branded with logos and taglines.

So here are a few Do’s and Don’ts for your 2013 video projects, based on the wildly successful Downton formula:

  1. DO use the number of characters people can follow for the length of viewing. Downton has about 15 characters, but it is a weekly, 90-minute drama; so if your video is only 90-seconds long, don’t include 5 interview subjects! Try no more than 3 people per 120 seconds, for a max of 6 in a 10-minute show (which is too long anyway).
  2. DON’T use your CEO, Board Chair or other head honchos on camera unless they are funny, or willing to be seen in an unconventional or even unflattering light (a la CBS’s “Undercover Boss” or the IBM spoof of The Office “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale”).
  3. DO find compelling “plot lines” that show your organization’s effectiveness in real situations or highlight the reason your product or charity exists.
  4. DO be willing to let your viewers contribute their own ideas and provide opportunities for them to follow your “characters” in other online and offline venues.
  5. DO put as much production value (i.e. budget) into your video as you can possibly afford—people notice, especially in HD.
  6. DON’T be afraid to be traditional—just do it well!
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Does College Make You Stupid?

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Red Berries - IMG_4552 sHere’s an equation for you: Tanking economy + overpriced colleges + online education = more college dropouts. Today, thousands of college-aged students are opting out, or dropping out of college.  And with heroes like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who can blame them? The “UnCollege” experience, as outlined in Alex William’s recent New York Times article, allows these students to conduct self-directed learning over the internet, and on the job.  A love of learning should be the outcome of any educational program, so I’ve no issue with the do-it-yourselfers. Maybe sitting in lecture classes makes you stupid, unable to seek knowledge in more interactive and personal ways. I’m also for on-the-job learning. I did that myself, jumping into TV production right out of college and getting my School of Hard Knocks MBA by launching and managing three small businesses starting at age 23.

But I’m also torn about the idea of missing out on college. For me, the experience was so much more than classes. It was learning how to get along with roommates, having out-of-class debates with professors, and lasting experiences and friendships through extra-curriculars. Not to mention a great network of people to know after graduation. Even if the internet had been around back then (computers were in their infancy–by my junior year we could play Pong), I’m not sure I would have had the skills and knowledge to search the web properly, or make a rational plan for acquiring the things I needed to know. Not that my college course selection didn’t have a certain randomness to it. Along with social pressures not unlike today’s, what with choosing classes that your friends liked.

Watching my kids manage technology, I’m in awe of this digital native generation that knows its way around these devices and the internet. Maybe they can self-educate.  Oh, wait. They are playing another round of Madden instead of doing their homework. Maybe not.

The problem is, faced with all this technology, many schools aren’t helping kids make choices. My high schooler is typical in that his school bans the use of iPhones, laptops and the like during class time. Shouldn’t his teachers be embracing these technologies and integrating them into the classroom? Isn’t the Smart Board so, um, yesterday?

So I’m worried about a generation of digital natives without filters or true internet research skills, who then opt for self-teaching instead of college.  What strategies do they really know to determine what’s good and bad information? Can they make productive plans about what knowledge to acquire about which subjects? Do they understand who is behind the information they see? Do they have the basic cultural competencies to have decent conversations about books and films and ideas?  Maybe more than I realize.  They certainly know enough to be cheating in record numbers. I just watched a one-hour documentary “Faking the Grade” that taught me ways to cheat in school I hadn’t even considered—though the technologies involved are often ones I use all the time to make videos.

So this all makes me wonder: Can the do-it-yourselfers get the same benefits as those who go to college? Are they more self-directed as learners? Maybe these kids don’t feel the pressure to cheat as much as the ones trying to get into/succeed in college? Or maybe they just cheat in different ways? 

I’ve no answers, only questions. Interested to hear your thoughts.

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Join Me in DC @GV Expo and @WIFTI Summit

I look forward to seeing many of you in my workshop on “Repurposing Video Content to Social Media” at GVExpo on Wednesday, November 28th and “Brand U” on Saturday, December 1st during Women in Film and Television International (WIFTI) Summit. Or join me @brandbuzz with any follow-up questions.

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What Else We Could Buy with $3Billion

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$3 Billion. That’s what the Obama and Romney campaigns have spent, combined. What else that money could have bought? Here are five thinImagegs I think have more value than a year’s worth of campaign commercials.

A year’s worth of meals for 5.5 million needy American families.  That’s using the cost-per-meal data for a family of four from the nonprofit Feeding America . According to the USDA, the top states with food insecurity for children—meaning highest percentage of households where kids don’t know where their next meal will come from—are: Mississippi (19.2%), Texas (18.5%), Arkansas (19.2%), Alabama (17.4%), Georgia (17.4%), Florida (16.2%) and North Carolina (17.1%). It’s too bad so many of these states are considered political “battleground” states, but not battlegrounds in the war on hunger.

Eradicate polio worldwide. With some funds left over for ongoing education and vaccinations, $3 billion should cover it. That’s using numbers from the 2011 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation white paper  on  the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which is currently underfunded despite their support, largely because of reductions in funding from G8 nations like ours who apparently spend the money on elections instead.

Provide clean drinking water for 150 million people. More than 1 in 8 people in the world don’t have access to safe drinking water, which then contributes to high rates of infant mortality, diseases, and conflicts over resources.  According to the World Health Organization, for every $1 invested in water and sanitation, there is an economic return of between $3 and $34, so the world would get back $55.5 billion from this investment

Repair infrastructure–our inland waterways. We think of ourselves as a nation of roads, but American consumers actually depend on thousands of miles of inland and intra-coastal waterways to move approximately 630 million tons of cargo valued at more than $73 billion annually. (American Society for Civil Engineers, Infrastructure Report Card) . By 2020, 80% of our current locks in this system will be out of date and in need of repair at a cost of $50 million each. So we could get to work on 1/3 of them right now, at a savings of billions in undelivered or delayed cargo.

Toys for the kids. Okay, so you don’t want to invest in food, water or healthcare for the needy, or infrastructure repairs for the country. How about playing Saint Nick and distributing 120 million toys to kids who need them? At under $25 each, you could offer a Lego Ultimate Building Set, Syma Remote Controlled Helicopter, or Tiny Tikes basketball hoop for the little ones. Or Amazon or iTunes gift cards for the older set.

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Video Messaging Best Practices

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  1.   Connect Your Videos to Your Brand. That doesn’t mean you have to mention your organization or company every 10 seconds in your next web video. In fact, studies show that indirectly branded video content goes viral at a faster rate. But the stories you create should still be meaningful and connected to your overall brand story. If the video lives somewhere other than your website, such as Vimeo or YouTube, be sure you have some kind of tag and call to action at the end, so people know how to reach you/donate to you/take action on your issue.
  2. Know Your Target Audience. Think about sub-demographics and what kinds of content appeal to them.   Also consider the viewing environment for the video. One size doesn’t fit all, so plan ahead to create multiple versions of your content that are most appropriate for each target and viewing situation. If your story has multiple parts/levels, consider breaking into smaller pieces and placing the content with different headings, links, and keywords in order to attract the right audience.
  3. Invest Now for More Rewards Later. Many organizations make the mistake of thinking that if something is going to appear on the web, it can be produced on a shoestring because it’s a one-use item.  To the contrary, every penny you spend should be powerful, credible, and the source material can be useful downstream. But only if you’ve bothered to a) create it at a decent quality, and b) organize it so that more than one editor/producer can find what they need.  Having transcriptions made of interviews and keeping the PDF’s with the footage is very helpful. So is tagging all “b-roll” with keywords of time, location, and content.
  4. Shorter is Usually Better. In live event or conference environment, audiences can enjoy videos of 5-8 minutes in length. When viewing your video on the web, in a tiny box–most likely while it is competing with other content on the screen–a viewer will only tolerate 1-2 minutes of content. Mobile web viewers actually can be willing to watch content for longer, presumably because they are “stuck” using a mobile device rather than a larger screen. Either way, make every second count, using visuals, music, audio, graphics–everything at your disposal–to make a message with impact.
  5. Measure Impact. Speaking of impact, measure it! So many organizations produce video content without a handle on whether or not it is effective. Plan a way to find out. It could be counting how many venues you can locate posts with a link to your video. It could be a short email survey to a random sampling of people who received your web link via email. At live events, you can ask people to use a hashtag to tweet something about your content. Or you can drill down into data already provided by You Tube, Google, or other online services.  Number of hits is less relevant than what viewers DID after viewing your video.
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Binders Full of Women

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Mitt Romney’s now infamous comment at last night’s debate  has opened a new line into our nation’s ongoing discussion about affirmative action. When he was Governor of Massachusetts, Romney says he had to reach outside the usual application process to ensure that men weren’t the only ones applying for his cabinet positions. Luckily, he was in a state ranked first among all 50 in higher education attainment, where more than 50% of the population hold at least a 2-year degree (Lumina Foundation, 2010). So with a little outreach, the Governor easily found plenty of qualified female applicants. If he’d been governor of Alabama, though, his task would have been much more difficult, since that state’s percentage of folks with any college is only 31%. And if he’d been leading a state with a large Hispanic population, that number would also be low. According to the 2010 Census, just 19 percent of Latinos between 25 and 64 years old had at least a two-year college degree. For whites, the figure is 43 percent.

One of the keys to our economic success as a nation has been ensuring that All Americans, including newer immigrants and women, get access to higher education. My own all-girls school was founded by a woman, Jesse Moon Holton, who was a leader in educating young women, and  created the best school motto I’ve ever heard “I shall find a way or make one.”  That motto reminds me daily of brave little MalalaYousafzai of Pakistan, who risked her life just to go to school. Thankfully we don’t live in a society where extremists mount school buses to shoot kids trying to get an education.

But we do put far too many obstacles in the way of people who want this path to economic inclusion.  As a society, we should do everything possible—affirmative action in higher education, The Dream Act,  funding early childhood education (and yes, a few bucks to Big Bird)–to ensure that every corporate CEO and government leader who wants to hire talent has available to her binders full of qualified and well-educated African-Americans, Hispanics and women of all ethnicities ready and able to succeed.

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The UVA Battle and the Struggle Between Nonprofit and Corporate Leadership Models

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Concentric circles of leadershipThe Sullivan vs. Dragas battle at UVA is a classic case of nonprofit versus corporate leadership styles. UVA president Teresa Sullivan’s approach–getting to know the university’s key constituencies–is best suited to nonprofits, in which shouting “Follow Me!” rarely gets you more than a sore throat. But Helen Dragas, Chair of UVA’s Board of Visitors, is known for her no-nonsense business style. She expected the newly minted (18 months IS recent in NST–Nonprofit Standard Time) university president  to “stop listening and lead.” (If you haven’t been following, the Chronicle of Higher Ed helpfully summarizes the battle here.) Particularly in a university setting, where you have power centers including tenured faculty who frankly don’t have to follow anyone thank you very much, as well as a constant stream of new students and important donors, Sullivan’s style of taking the time to “listen and learn” before launching major change initiatives will likely win the day.

This battle comes at an interesting time. As nonprofits have been moving steadily to adopt a “more corporate” model of governance, corporations have been embracing social sector models of getting things done. (And hey, after the Wall Street meltdown, my money is on the nonprofit sector so to speak.) In her recent letter to shareholders, Calvert Investments CEO Barbara Krumsiek (disclaimer–Barbara and I know one another through a nonprofit board) noted the increase of sustainability proposals at shareholder meetings, and the implementation by more than 400 business sector CEOs of the United Nation’s Women’s Empowerment Principles, which were adapted from Calvert’s own Women’s Principles in 2010. In their new white paper subtitled “Is Your Board Prepared?”, Ernst & Young point out that social and environmental issues accounted for 40% of shareholder proposals on corporate proxy ballots last year–up one-third from 2010.

That trend away from business models to social sector models is addressed by Jim Collins in his recent monograph “Good to Great in the Social Sectors,” a follow-up to his famed book on high-functioning businesses. In the new book he questions the implementation of business practices in the social sector, saying”we must reject the idea…thgat the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become ‘more like a business.'”  In fact, the metrics for success in a mission-based operation are very different than those in the for-profit. Delivery on the mission is primary. Lowering cost-per-delivery, while essential to good accounting, is not a measurement of success. Neither is efficiency in certain areas. Sometimes nonprofits need to spend a lot of time listening to their “customers” in order to deliver better services, and this listening is often done by social workers or nurses or pastors–professional listeners, but not folks in a marketing setting. The way they may evolve a solution to a particular customer problem may not be the most cost-efficient delivery of service, but it might create the best outcomes in the community served.

The same can be said of effective nonprofit leadership styles. Someone who understands how to harness the different concentric circles of supporters–from staff to donors to volunteers (and students and faculty, in the case of an educational institution) are going to be more successful in moving a strategic plan forward to get the mission accomplished.

So my bet is on Sullivan. What about yours?

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Adidas Shoots its own Brand in the Foot

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A shoe featuring orange shackles reminiscent of those word by slaves? It’s hard to imagine the design team at Adidas missed the implications of its newest sneaker just announced on Facebook (and just as quickly removed).   But then again maybe not. Being a German-based company with an all-white (male and middle-aged) executive team with an all white (middle-aged) supervisory board, perhaps they overlooked the way many Americans–and not just African Americans–would view the shoe design.  And hey, I’m white and middle aged too. But I know that age diversity, international diversity, as well as ethnic diversity is often an Achilles heel (I know, I know, I couldn’t help myself) of organizations in all shapes and sizes. We live in a multi-national, multi-cultural world. It’s essential to have people in every department–especially public-facing ones like marketing brands–who bring different life experiences to the table.

Brands must always be creative, bringing new products and services to market. Maybe this is just a small mistep (woops, did it again!) for a company in a highly competitive market segment. But perhaps this experience can remind Adidas–and all of us–that our institutions ultimately reflect our people and our values.

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