Principals had shut their ears to 9 million reading programs. Inspection revealed the brand truth that One School One Book was a local community development movement and not just a reading program. Web strategy refocused fund raising from huge corporations to individuals.
The Objective: Enroll several schools to participate. Raise funds for a fledgling organization.
The Barrier: Principals didn’t wish to hear about yet another reading program.
Insight: Talking to schools who had tried One School One Book before we realized this was more of a community builder. As a whole school — students, staff, parents, even bus drivers read one book; the story brought everyone close. It brought the parents and teachers working together.
The Strategy:
- Changed the conversation from “reading program” to “community building initiative”
- Suggested a new brand name “WeBook”: more contemporary, actionable, and involving
- A web site that articulated the organization’s mission in a quick 2 minute animation
- Web site that showed how each party: teachers, parents, principals, corporations had a role in the ambition
- Communication campaign expressing the involvement students and the school enjoy during One School One Book
- Fund raising focused on individual donations through web site and blog widgets rather than big corporations. Also, re-focused fund raising from national corporations to local small business.
Please find some of the fleshed out work in this SlideShare presentation below (works great full screen):
I enjoyed this work because: I don’t remember being read to as a child. I never enjoyed reading till college. I know the effects, because I experience the world of difference reading brings. This was personal. This was also one of the most memorable team efforts. We began overwhelmed at the scope of what was expected of us. In the course of time, each member volunteered for the parts that magically fell into place to make the whole.
Besides, I got the opportunity to contribute beyond my “brand manager” duties in the way of making an animation film, which is right here.
Idea #1: Facebook+Retail outlet like Old Navy/Gap/Nike mashup. I select a few products I like from the retailer web site and publish it on my facebook stream to solicit recommendations/comments/feedback from friends on facebook. Should be enabled to select the friends I want opinion from. This could apply to almost any online retailer.
Idea #2: Google maps + any retail chain. I draw a rectangle (or any shape) on a map. Say I draw a little shape over SoHo, then I search for jacket, it should show me the products that are physically available in stores within that area. Then I should be able to compare the products on different parameters. It would be like an online mall. I think this will be a cool extension to the already integrated online stores of Old Navy+Gap+Banana Republic+Piperlime+Athleta. ‘Cos sometimes, you don’t want to wait for something to ship.
If you know of these ideas already being used by someone do share examples. Thanks.
Update (7/20/09 11:35am est): Of course I should have bet on Zappos doing this before anyone else. Today my friend and fellow CBM Anish Shah posted a link to my.zappos.com on facebook. Investigation reveals Zappos launched this beta on July 17th.
Go Zappos!
Update 7/29/2009 Orbitz too has integrated Facebook Connect now allowing you to broadcast your travel plans to friends, who then can click through and book a similar plan (as reported by Inside Facebook).
This straight from the Orbitz application page on Facebook
Share your trips! Book a flight, hotel, or vacation package on Orbitz and use the handy Share link to let friends and family know where you’re off to next.
Share your hotel reviews! All Orbitz hotel customers have the option of sharing to Facebook once they complete a review. Steer friends toward the good experiences and away from the bad ones. That’s what being a friend is, right?
While I think this is kind of cool, I think a recommendation seeking feature would be an even more involving experience. As far as vacations are concerned, you take vacations lot less frequently than you take recommendations for vacations. Something intresting can be done around friends’ photos. Sure, it might not have a direct benefit like someone clicking on your travel plan and buying it right away (which I assume will anyway have a very low conversion rate) but then it is social. But I’m sure these guys are working on it.
Why Hippies Turn Yuppies at 25 OR Why Insurance becomes cheaper at 25: The Frontal Lobe
You can tell that I am fresh off a Malcolm Gladwell book, can’t you? That would be Outliers: The Story of Success.
The post title, unlike Gladwell’s in depth and long term research has to do with spending five minutes on wikipedia reading about the functions of the human brain’s frontal lobe and the quick opinions I made up (something’s working huh.)
I posted these lines on twitter (which sent it to facebook) and a friend of mine asked me to elaborate. I will tell you what I told him on facebook.
The frontal lobe of the brain matures at the age of 25. “The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determinesimilarities and differences between things or events. ” from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_lobe#Function
If you want to disrespect a risk taker: a risk taking creative artist, advertiser, marketer, sportsman, x-gamer, stunt man, fiance, someone getting a tattoo a teenager getting 56 face tattoos on her face, you could tell them “I am not in awe of your courage. I feel sorry for your immature frontal lobe.” But then if you happen to say it differently like this, “I am not in awe of your courage. You have an immature frontal lobe” I fear the connection pathways between your own frontal lobe and limbic system are damaged evinced by the lack of emotion in your statement.
You see how the engineering of the human brain, and a scientific understanding of it explains and cuts through the romantic and philosophical opinions we would have about human personality and behavior. It explains so much about creativity itself. This knowledge will also help me respect any seemingly risky yet bold, or impulsive yet inspiring and exciting decision I hear from 25+ people around me, including meself.
I completely relate with this revelation (to me) because I have witnessed my own transformation from a bit of a hippie in college to a little bit of a yuppie by the time I graduated grad school. I don’t even mind wearing suits now. Although, I am pretty sure it will, and hope my frontal lobe stops maturing at 90% so I am not rendered extremely risk averse and turn totally subservient to all of society’s standards.
I am super excited that I received my Google Voice invitation yesterday. Playing around with it, I found a feature that will help you get two of your friends in love, or get Obama and George Bush on the phone (if you know their numbers), or bring peace in the world (US only).
With the ‘Click2Call’ feature on Google voice you can call any US phone. Google Voice will ask you to select which one of your phones you want to take the call from. [Google Voice makes the call>then sends it to your preferred phone>then you hear the phone on the other end ringing, then you do as you've always done.] Since Google Voice allows you to integrate all your phones to this one GV number, you have the option to ask GV to make the call from any one of your phones.
But this is where it gets funny (and buggy in my opinion; there are some major privacy issues Google Voice will have to fix). You have the option to enter any phone number in the “Phone to ring” textbox and any other number in the ‘Call’ textbox and get those two numbers connected on a phone conversation! I tried it with my cousin. Entered his mobile number on the ‘phone to ring’ and his landline on the ‘call’ field and sure, those two subservient phones called each other.
So what is stopping you from getting two of your friends you have always known will make a great couple connected in this creepy way? Or call Colin Farell on one side and connect him to some crazy serial killer you met at a networking event? Or get Obama and Ahmadinejad on a call, without preconditions? (actually, the last one won’t work.)
What is Language Knowledge Pool: The knowledge in a language and a term I just made up that perhaps someone already made up.
Why should we measure it and How can we measure it:
Every language has a lot of knowledge. Every English book Mark Twain wrote is knowledge in the English language. Everybody who knows a language has access to that knowledge and access to what that knowledge can bring (theoretically speaking; practically there still are obstacles). Others don’t have access to that knowledge and vice versa.
I am considering everything from the Mahabharatha, Old & New Testament, Illiad, Quran, Aristotle, Aryabhatta, Newton, Shakespeare, Vinci, Fibonacci, to He’s Not That Into You, both book and film, all the music and movies in the world, every newspaper article, every advertising billboard, tweets, to a conversation a father has with a kid. You could call this information, but knowledge is more interesting, because that is what we are ultimately getting at.
Amount of knowledge is constantly growing.
Language is a knowledge creating device, or at least a major enabler. And I believe that knowledge is a human enabler, aids all kinds of growth (economic, cultural) and human welfare. Ultimately having the opportunity to make more people more happy.
Growth of knowledge has a cascading effect, it is very exponential in nature. A PhD paper in a university gets reported in a journal, gets a small circle of academicians inspired to apply those ideas, who write other things and make other things, and influence another rung to write everything from pulp fiction to television shows to tabloids to film and comedy shows and a million blog posts about it, all of which can impact the birth of many new businesses that create jobs that put food on table, or trigger conversations at subway stations or bars, or at dinner tables, or a 1 hour session with a therapist, all these conversations made someone think something new, deal with their problems and relationships, brought a smile to someone, or made them realize the mistakes they were making.
Imagine arriving at a number that suggests a language’s knowledge pool value (LKPV) at a given time.
My hypothesis is that:
at a given time, for a unit number of people, a language with a higher LKPV has the opportunity to make the unit number of people more happy than a language with a lower LKPV. (yes, happiness has different meanings for different people, but this happy is an average, or maybe a least common denominator of all the different kinds of happy in the world just for some mathematical simplicity)
Primary (and secondary) Parameters Influencing LKPV:
Some languages create knowledge faster. Others are slower. This mostly has little to do with the language itself, and just to do with the number of people using it.
Certainly rate of knowledge growth would be one parameter in deciding LKPV. Rate of growth would be measured by the number of stuff that gets out per unit of time. If there are more books and movies being created in English in 2009 than Spanish, then English gets more points. Recency of creation will also be a parameter that can amplify the LKPV.
If one language is a raging waterfall suitable for grade 5 rafting, while languages like Sanskrit and Greek run deep. Their knowledge history runs thousands of years back. And these languages get points for their depth, but Sanskrit loses points because of a low rate of knowledge creation, (not many 24×7 Sanskrit news channels are they?). Those people back then put a lot of time and thought into their work that is really of high quality and maturity. When I watch The Dark Knight I can recognize it is a reduced and trickle down version of the Geetopadesham (from Mahabharatha) and I know it is also a trickle down version of some western mythologies.
Basically, if we had better access to these deep languages we could move on to the better ideas that they trigger faster and wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel on many things we don’t realize have already been thought of. For instance, if I had already read a document about the ideas I talk about in this post, I could have moved on to the ideas those would have triggered (I forced myself not to google these ideas I was having to be in a controlled environment).
So depth is another parameter that factors the LKPV.
Of course, language knowledge pools aren’t completely isolated pools. They are connected with canals of translation. Over the centuries, the idea of democracy, having originated in Greek (am not googling this, I think I might be pretty right) passed through translations into other languages, and thus other lands and peoples. Now I’m taking a calculated guess that English has the largest knowledge pool and French has a pool slightly smaller. If a lot of English is translated into, say Marathi, then Marathi gets points for that incoming wisdom (even if it is a translation of movie you thought was stupid, there will be space for some qualitative points too, we’ll need to figure that out). Marathi translated to English will also give English some points, but it might be less because it is coming from a smaller pool (many other variables, like differentiation of knowledge, that I will talk about later, also factor in whether it will be more or less).
The speed, amount, width of translation to a language will greatly influence the ‘interflow of knowledge’ points a language gets. We will also find clusters of well connected language pools. If one cluster is poorly connected with another cluster then the good ideas from that might take between few years to centuries to travel into the other cluster: ideas like democracy, liberty, tolerance, or how to install mysql on your system without ripping your hair out. And in this time we risk people unable to realize their potential, or make enough for their family, or perhaps there are generations lost in the chase of materialistic pleasures who could have been saved by the idea of moderation – all this negativity and discontent could lead to several violent riots and wars.
Differentiation is also a major parameter. The knowledge in all languages is not the same (the main reason why all this interflow is important). Tamil might have very unique knowledge about some kind of music and architecture, same might be the case for Mandarin, or Japanese, etc. There must be some knowledge in the Telugu pool about paddy farming that many other languages might not have. English might have a lot of knowledge about how to do some stem cell transplant procedure and German might have very unique knowledge on how to make cars run fast and Gujarati (I bet) has some unique knowledge on how to make amazing dhoklas. (okay am being a bit stereotypical about some languages, but if I knew more languages and drew more knowledge from them then I wouldn’t be so.)
So differentiation gets points.
Take all these primary and secondary parameters and you will finally have an LKPV figure for every language.
These different numbers should be on the dashboards of all kinds of leaders of the world. With these they will surely have an idea on the economic and cultural situation of people of these languages and can make projections and plan policies.
I think translation is very important. Not one language for the whole world, but translation. Imposing a single language for a whole lot of people creates a lot of social unrest that is counter productive to the purpose of connecting the world. While finding faster, scalable, and accurate ways to translate challenges our human skills and occupies us during our time here constructively (really, the best we can ask from our life time).
Talking about some of the social issues that challenge the world, we really won’t solve AIDS, poverty in the world, saving the environment, or even the digital divide, if we don’t spend our energy on nailing faster, scalable, accurate methods of translation.
Of course, in the long term, when languages become more connected, the water in all the pools will start to taste and feel the same, the same ideas everywhere, we could become unhealthily homogenous, we could lose our diversity that makes us beautiful, all that could get us all jaded, there could be nothing new to discover, and that might be the last day of humanity. That reminds me of the last time we were not divided by language. But it did not go down too well because we angered the higher authority. Remember? And the higher authority came down upon us with great vengeance because they realized if we all understood each other, nothing would be restrained from us that we as people of the world imagine to do (and I know this thanks to translations)
Genesis 11:1-9 (King James Version): (from wikipedia)
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
[Image: The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563) from wikimedia]
Update: septemmber 23rd 2009
some important links regards Indian languages and translation
http://girgit.chitthajagat.in/
A continuing debate on the relevance of The Big Idea in the age of several small utility digital ideas
Ana Andjelic made very compelling for and against arguments about the relevance of “the big idea” in the age of digital branding where the paradigm seems to have shifted to executing several, small, utility ideas so they just work and bring simple delights – in her blog [i love marketing]. You really have to read that post (very comprehensive), the comments (very intelligent), and the sequel to that post before this one. (this started as a comment and turned out too long).
After all that I was pretty convinced big ideas with their strategy pitch lines are completely irrelevant. I can think of two cases where they are still very relevant though.
A big idea is very relevant for a new brand whose story (brand purpose) nobody knows yet.
Big Ideas seem like Big Lies as Alan Wolk points out in the comments for well known brands, such as Dove (evolution was so 
imho) because not only do we know every aspect of their epic that they put out every year, but with internet we hear a lot about other people’s experiences, the details of the product, the history of the corporation, so on. When we compare factual information with the next Big Idea, there’s a risk it might seem disingenous.
But new brands need to wave us their banner. If all they did was periodically put out small ideas without a bigger story, we wouldn’t bother to assimilate that message very well.
For instance, at Modea (friend works there) they are working on Lenox tools. Never heard of it before. Their banner is “cut something”. Perhaps a less adrenalin-rushed version of “just do it” in the context of tools, yet very straight forward and exciting (who don wanna cut somethin?). Makes their purpose pretty clear. They have a website too http://www.cutsomething.com.
When I heard “cut something” for the first time, I created a directory in my mind by that name, and every little web thingy they do – be it competition blade cutting comparison on youtube, or an sms contest, I file it in that directory.
The same goes for Barack Obama. He was a new brand and his big idea was change. Then he did many a web thingy & non web thingy that helped support that banner of change.
Now BO is a well known brand: people know the story, the purpose. Now people will judge him on the basis of the utility things he does that people interface with. The next time he runs for office it is going to be difficult for him to script a new big idea because if it departs much from perception it will seem like a big lie.
Corollary: A Big Idea is also relevant when you are looking to add a lot of people to your market. Case in point: Dos Equis, The Most Interesting Man in the World. I don’t usually drink beer (I don’t usually drink any alcohol) but this dude makes me want to drink Dos Equis.
I have felt like I have nothing more than 140 characters to say what hasn’t been said in some other blog, hence, the sabbatical. While the ecological motions of the earth have very little direct influence on my mind, I have a feeling, with summer, clouds are a’ collecting in my mind and will soon shower into this blog. I had reservations about this post, but all showers start with a drizzle. Here’s a link dump of what I have been reading lately:
First up, I believe there is an important difference between a capitalist and a capitalist swine. Love the first; hate the latter.
Ryan Roberts and Merideth Peck were to make their 3-minute duet presentation in our presentation skills class with Peter Coughter this afternoon. Instead, they chose to take more than their allotted time and indulged the class in a simulation game. Good call Ryan & Merideth. Peter gave them points for leadership and for taking the trouble to arrange the game.
The strategy game is Star Power (spoiler alert!!!) The game started with every member in class (about 45 of us) picking 5 poker chips from a bag. 4 colors of chips, each of different value, inversely proportional to the number of those kinds of chips in the bag. Say a green chip was worth a point, if you got 4, you got 4 points plus some bonus points. This enabled for some trade: for instance, if I had a single black chip worth 8 and 3 red chips worth a point each, I could trade my most valuable black chip to get a green chip, and get a bonus that justified giving away the most valuable chip.
The floor opens for trading with a few rules: you can’t speak until you hold hand (to shake) with someone you want to trade with; once you hold hand you must trade; you don’t show what chip you are trading; you can trade one chip for many. The floor was open for 10 minutes.
I played a pretty dirty game. I wanted to cheat. I swindled Anish trading him a lower value chip after promising a higher value chip. I swindled Edwin Mclure too. I have played the card game “bluff” enough so I thought I wouldn’t have any moral barrier to cheat them as far as the game was concerned. But even though it was a simulation game, and knowing that I went into it wanting to swindle people, I felt very guilty. My first lesson from the game: embarrassment comes from inside when you fail yourself, not as a response to bad reputation. This forced me to work more people to find a win-win fair trade.
Once the floor was closed for trading, we put our scores on the board. Three levels had been made and with all the swindling I made it to the top level.
Ryan & Merideth had rearranged the chairs in the lecture room. One small group of chairs at the head of the class, one slightly bigger group of chairs at the back, all other chairs were taken out. The richest people sat in the first group of chairs, the second rung at the back and the third sat on the floor.
Each group was given 3 bonus chips; each worth 3 points that as a group we could hand out to members of the group. As the elite group we checked the highest score of the next group and gave the chips to the lowest three members of our group to make sure our club was still in tact. We wanted to raise the bar for people to get into our club. We had about 3 minutes to make this decision.
Unfortunately for our club, one of us, Alex had 21 points, and the three who were at 20 got ahead of him. Unfortunately for us, the lower team sent someone with 22 points, so we lost one of our members who now became part of the bourgeois. He hated us.
We were given three bags of chips, I mean, real edible chips. Just us the rich kids got it. With that it became pretty evident where this game was going. We were all going to leave with an understanding of how people behave as individuals or groups at different classes. Now I pretty much wanted to be the best capitalist swine I could be. I wanted to share the food, so most others in the group. It was embarrassing to not share the food with the other teams. But we wanted to play the best example of the worst class of elites, so we didn’t share the bag of chips.
Each club was given bags of poker chips. All the chips I picked up were of the top two values. I suspected some rigging. The game boosted the rich to become richer. It was only later I realized what impact this boost had.
Now we were told that the trading floor would open but before that the elite club could make some trading rules and the bourgeois and poor class could send some petition. The poor class sent two petitions, the first one said, “gives us the food” the other one said, “fuck you”. Very conscious that we were being sickening, we made some restrictive rules. We knew the other classes would unionize and give up individual ambitions to make sure the one who had the best opportunity got enough points to go through. So we introduced two restrictive trade policies. The two classes couldn’t trade amongst each other; they could only trade with us, the elites.
The trading floor opened and both classes refused to trade with us. They started bending the rules by “giving” away chips to the ones with best opportunity rather than trading. The elite club traded within, which was a very small pool. I traded a black chip to get my fourth green chip so I could get a bonus. My next lesson: with the restrictive trade policies we set, we had limited the trade opportunities immensely. I only earned 2 points in this trading session. This was such a stagnant economy.
The game was closed at this point and opened for comments and discussion.
The third class expressed that the vast gap between them and the elite class meant that they completely gave up on any ambition to get there. They had talked themselves into being happy with what they had. They also expressed their anger over not being allowed to trade amongst themselves because they really wanted the one with best opportunity to go through. The bourgeois accused the few candidates they had helped graduate for not representing them when the rules were made. Those who had climbed up the ranks complained they didn’t have enough influence and had to comply with the group.
The bourgeois and the lower class thought as a commune and wanted to make points to go up. Another reason they thought as a commune was perhaps because they sat as a commune. If they were making decisions from their individual homes, their jealously for the ones with best opportunity might have been more on display. Interestingly the elite was more concerned in keeping the lower classes down than making more points for itself.
Overall, the lower class expressed helplessness, the bourgeois frustration and anger, and the elite washed their hands off with “that’s how it is, you would do the same thing in this position”, “we were just being nasty to play the game” and some genuine guilt.
I didn’t feel too terrible for being terrible because I was being nasty to be nasty. Some expressed that this game depicts exactly how unjust life is.
I left the game with more optimism. I feel if we had played that game 10 times, the 10th time the elite group (with the experience carried from being in lower classes) would have played lot fairer. Human beings today have learned from the French revolution, the Russian revolution, the naxal movement, the ill effects of communism, the ill effects of crazy capitalism and we are a society that is a lot fairer than it used to be. Of course we make many a lapse from time to time but I’m encouraged to know we lead towards a fairer world and mankind’s timeline is not a circle of injustice.
Picture: “Pyramid of Capitalist System”
