Adam Schultz

Holy crap!

My town is at war! I had no clue, baton down the hatches, hide the women and children, head for the hills…

Oh, wait, that’s just the worst email title ever.

Here is what I just received in my in-box.

Would it have killed them to say “Vigil in Durham to end the War” or how about “Vigil to end the Iraq War in Durham”

Now, you have to wonder if this is just a case of bad word choice or did they do it on purpose. It certainly got my attention and totally hijacked the brainstorming session I was having. Not that I actually thought they were referring to a war in Durham, just that the subject left plenty of room for miscommunication.

It wouldn’t be the first time they missed the mark on driving their point home.

What are you doing to end the War in Durham?

Did MoveOn.org announce a vigil to end the war in your city?
Did you know your city was at war?

This post started as my third comment in a string on a post over at MarketingHipster.com sparked by news that fans pulled all kinds of stunts including sending 45000 pounds of peanuts to CBS offices to bring a TV show back on the air.

Cord was pissed that people would raise that much ruckus and mobilize so well for a friggin TV show rather than putting that time and money into something more meaningful. He was totally on point.

I was commenting my outrage there for a while but my latest comment was to big for that little comment window.

Where is the political action campaign where we send 45000 pounds of cow shit to the white house to give back some of the BS he has given us over the past 7 years? I don’t think Move-On.org would ever send out a bulletin asking users to do that.

(Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Anyone want in?)

As marketers, we need to find a way to rally people around something that both reactivates this nerve that has gone numb and their need to pay attention to online entertainment.

Here are my first 4 Ideas
Find a way to create an online reality TV show that follows an activist group trying to raise awareness and make change in the country on issues ranging from homelessness to ousting Bush.
Try to get one of us (net brights) to run for political office where the entire campaign and then the whole time in office is transparently published and openly discussed on a day to day basis allowing the community to see and interact with the day to day political challenges.
Create an online network where all we do is create shows and interactive environs supporting this kind of programing utilizing net distribution like Joost, YouTube, Democracy instead of traditional broadcast.
Mobilize a community that will somehow deliver cow manure as close to the White House as they can safely get without getting arrested or thrown into Git-mo for a chemical attack on Our Nations Capital. “We are just fertilizing the lawn man, where is the law against that.”

(I am sure that idea 4 will get me on some no fly lists or at least a secret service entry in my log files)

Now what?

If anyone wants to help me with some of these ideas, I would love to put together a little squad under the Bold Actions banner to see what we can accomplish. Let me know if you are interested.

Be sure to comment your ideas, what do you think we can do to make a difference?

How can we stand up and fight for something meaningful.

UPDATE - 06-12-07 - After further consideration on idea 4 and a log file entry form the US Postal Service, sending fertilizer in the us mail might actually be illegal. So instead, I’m thinking little plastic poo. We could attach little messages to it. We might even be able to get a novelties company to donate the poo to our cause.

Dear Move-On.org,

I am writing to you as someone who just received a message from you to call my local representatives about upcoming energy legislation so that it won’t include subsidies to support the coal industry by subsidizing liquefied coal.

You made a well informed point about how it is being presented under the guise of doing something good for the environment while actually supporting higher greenhouse gas output. You ,furthermore, stated that it would be with money that should be and was not going to subsidize renewable energy.

Be that as it may, I felt more compelled to write this letter to you about your failure to get me to act than to actually make the calls to my representatives in the Senate.

“Why not?” You might be asking your self.

You made a greatly motivational case to get me angry, you even gave me a reason to act. I went so far as clicking on the link to make the calls to my Senators.

But, you didn’t close the deal for some reason.

Adam Schultz

So what happened? Why did I lose my urge to act?

I got to this page (above) and thought to myself,

OK, so I have to call these people and talk to them about the fact that I don’t agree with this thing that I just learned about.

But, I don’t know a whole lot about it.

I might have to talk to someone.

What do I say to them.

I can just leave a message about it.

Then, what if they call me back.

How long is this going to take.

Do I know enough to talk to a senator about this.

How long is this going to take.

I should be working.

What would I say anyway.

And then they lost me.

I started to think about how interesting the exchange I just had with myself was. Then I cared more about blogging this concept and exploring what went wrong than with taking the action.

How many other people were thinking the same thing I was?

What would it have taken for me (and and the rest of us) to act as requested rather than get distracted and not?

So what would it have taken?

I really don’t know. It’s the kind of thing that once you start to measure it or try to figure it out after the fact, you most likely get it wrong. You know, like Blink.

But that won’t stop me from trying.

The email worked. I felt like I needed to act. The button told me to “click here”, so I clicked. I think it was the landing page that failed them in this case. I think that if they would have assured me that the time commitment would be very low, given me a brief script and supplied me with some follow up links.

The crazy thing is that they have done all of that before and I did it, I acted, I made some phone calls and tracked my progress, the whole 9. Did they just get lazy or did they have a reason for doing it this way?

I’m sure that I am but a small part of their core action taking group and I would imagine that they have studied what works for maximum affect for the group as a whole.

But what if that is the problem? The whole group.

Another idea for consideration,

It would appear to me that they have 3 types of people on their mail list.

1. People who have never acted
2. People who have ever taken action
3. People who often take action

I haver never seen a change in the format of their emails since I first joined a couple of years ago. Even after my first click and call, I still get the same stuff.

It would make sense to me that people at different phases need different messaging.

For me, they know I will act. I care less about the details of the issue at hand and more about doing something to help make change, anything to help make change. If they were able to target that, I would un-undoubtedly be more valuable to them.

How many people do they have on their list that they could get more value out of by being smarter about the way they ask and how they craft their message?

What do you think?

Did you get this email?

Did you act?

What would it have taken to get you to do so?

Here is a simple update to my previous post from 6 months ago as to why KeywordRanking / Websourced / MarketSmart Interactive failed as a company.

Enjoy.

Need I say more?

I try to keep my political views quiet if I can, but, sometimes I just can’t contain myself.
What was it this time you ask?

My Jaw dropped to the floor when I saw George bush on Idol last night.

He was there to thank America for the 70 Million dollars they raised during their Idol gives back campaign last week. (updated to 70 from 50 on air tonight)

How dare he. How f–king dare he.

This is the same man who is asking congress for a 124 Billion dollar paycheck to spend on the un-just, illegal war he started in Iraq by un-apologetically lying to the American people.

The same man who - THAT DAY - vetoed that bill because it included a timetable for withdrawal.

I shouldn’t be surprised, we have all come to expect this kind of chutspa.

But still, to think, all he has to do is end this war and that $124,000,000,000 could be going to anything else.

Instead, he decides to blow it on this awful war. His decision. He’s the decider.

Then he has the balls to thank America for 70,000,000 and offers to sing in order to be helpful.

I’ll tell you what you can do jackass, you can end this war and put this money to some use here at home. Feed some hungry, shelter some homeless, end addiction right here at home, that’s what you can do.

Do you have any idea what an organization like this can do with just 500,000 dollars.

He thanks America for giving to help the people of Africa but what about the more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians that have died in Iraq over the past 4 years.

Look at these numbers:
$124,000,000,000 to fund the war, just for this year.
$70,000,000 raised by Idol that Bush was so thankfull to the American People for.
Thats only .05% of the war budget bush is asking for from congress.

.05%

Does anyone else feel like this is so disgustingly wrong.

And still, what can we do? What can we, as individuals do about this?

Does anyone else feel completely powerless here?

(steps of soap box, sighs heavily, shakes head in disgust, tries to go settle down)

Here is what some other people are saying:
http://jspot.org/?p=1207
http://pridepress.blogspot.com/2007/05/bush-defunds-war-and-appears-on.html
http://www.towleroad.com/2007/05/american_idol_p.html
http://editor-at-large.blogspot.com/2007/05/boycott-american-idol.html
http://blueracine.blogspot.com/2007/05/bush-panders-to-american-idol-audience.html

I saw this researching my previous post on SNL and the VA Tech Shootings.

The Washington Post and the New York Times are competing with each other with PPC Ads on keywords related to the VA Tech Shooting.

I’m not surprised, yet I am still taken back.

I’m sure this is common practice for media to capitalize on current events but it still urks me.

Then again, here I am blogging about it. I am sharing my feelings but I’m not paying money to get people to read it.

The marketer in me thinks that I would do the same thing if I were them. The human in me thinks it isn’t right to market to tragedy.

What do you think?

Where do you stand?

UPDATE:

As of April 18th at 9:00, The NY Times ad is no longer there. This could be for many reasons. They might have a conscience all of a sudden, they may have run out of $$ or they are only running the ads during certain times of day.

UPDATE-2:

I had a recent conversation with a friend that made me realize that while The Washington Post and The NY Times are bidding on those search terms, they are most likely not even breaking even due to the minimum bids google sets on high volume search terms.

At the end of the day,  It’s Google that has the most to gain.

Does anyone here have a social responsibility not to profit  from the deaths of 33 college students?

Is that evil?

Just watched SNL on TiVo.

Most days, I cant wait for the digital shorts, in some cases fast forwarding the rest of the show just to see it. I have been an even bigger fan of SNL since Sandberg and the Lonely Island Kids joined the crew.

This day, the short was “Dear Sister”. A dark, funny and, because of recent news at Va Tech, awkward story of senseless gun violence and an infectiously repetitive song.

I wanted to laugh, it’s funny, but I couldn’t. It was just too weird.

So, I did what any other blogger would do, I set out to find someone else who shared my feelings.

Strangely, I only found one post on the subject. That and the 615 comments on the short in YouTube running the gamut from sensitivity retardation to hypocritical snobbery.

I wonder how much press this odd coincidence will get.

Will it stay small and quiet or will it become a main stream issue?

How many people will try to connect this skit to todays events?

How will it affect people who see now for the first time, and think it is a spoof on the VA Tech shooting?

What happens when the context changes around your content after you set it loose into the world?

Thoughts?

So I have been procrastinating a bit on my promised review of Joost.

I wanted to organize a nice post that goes through the features, talks about the pros and cons and provides a open and fair dialog.

At the end of the day though, there is only one thing that matters.

Is this or is this not going to do to TV what VOIP did for telcom.

The answer is yes.

Basically, so far I love Joost. I love using it, I love watching it, and even with some of the features still buggy, it does what it needs to, provides me high quality on demand programming.

Now, that alone isn’t going to kill the big TV. Technology can only go so far. The real key indicator is what the networks do. If the networks provide their A+ content to Joost, it’s over.

If Joost can sign FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS, I will cancel my DirectTV subscription and use Joost exclusively. I am 90% certian that the rest of you would too.

Well guess what kids, we are 1/4 of the way there. CBS has committed its A+ content to the new platform.

Now I’m really starting to get excited.

Look for a more in depth review of Joost in conjunction with Marketing Hipster soon.

I am so frigging excited! I got my invite today!

I will write more once I have taken it for a spin around the block a couple of times.

Previous post about Joost.

UPDATE:
I recived 3 invites and am giving them away with some contests.
Joost Contest Ideas -Closed
Joost Pick-Up Lines -Closed
Joost Disses -Still Open

I actually think that Sanjaya Malakar is going to win American Idol.

I have been hearing tidbits about the “vote for the worst campaign” presently being launched by the blogosphere. At first I didnt’ think anything of it. But now, the fact that he has made it this far, the campaign must be doing something right. Then when tonight, he wasn’t even in the bottom 3, I’m thinking there just might be something to this. But recently, (like 2 minutes ago) I read this post from MediaLoper and I was completely convinced.

I can see now that every time he is not voted off, the movement picks up more steam, it starts moving faster, more people get on the train, it’s self perpetuating. They don’t do it for Sanjaya, they do it against American Idol, against Fox, against the mainstream, against everything that wasn’t made just for them that is always being forced upon them.

I’ll admit it, I have watched pretty much every episode of AI with my wife for the past 6 years. I have never voted. Not a single time. For the first time, I have something to vote for.

No matter what happens, whether Sanjaya wins because this movement captures the imaginations of Americans or because Fox has to make some special concessions or adjustments to put an end to the maddness, American Idol is done.

The tipping point has been reached and it is all down hill form here. The market has spoken, will Fox listen?

Who are you voting for?

PS. I also see a similar trend with the current presidential race. No matter what technologies and media outlets are deployed on behalf of the conservatives, the voice of the people will be heard, and finally, answered. Currently, That voice wants Barack, and there is nothing in the mainstream media that can do anything about it. Whether is it being done out of love for Barack or out of hate for the current system is quite possibly irrelevant.

UPDATE: April 18th, 9:00

Watched Idol last night, Simon is starting to get pissed that the San Man is still in the competition. Poor Simon, I don’t think he realizes yet that his show is no longer under his control.

UPDATE; April 19th, 10:30pm

Well, the reign is over. For some reason, Sanjaya very conspicously was voted off the day before the big “Idol Gives Back” show.

Part of me thinks that the whole Idol gives back thing was a political move to get the media attention off Sanjaya. Then the more intelegent and less conspiracy minded part of me is just glad they have given some of the Cash they have made on the Idol Cow to something other than their own bank accounts.

Back to conspiracy theories - Who thinks they finally just kicked Sanji off despite the voting results?