360DigitalInfluence

Yesterday we had the great honor of hosting an amazing panel of speakers at our Ogilvy DC office to discuss Gov 2.0.  An intrepid audience was not daunted by the early hour, the rain nor the delays of the red line.  They arrived ready to hear our panelists:

- Alexander Howard, O’Reilly Media
- Gwynne Kostin, U.S. General Services Administration
- Micah Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum
- Ari Melber, The Nation
- Mark Murray, NBC News

Quite a panel it was.  For those of you that joined us, thank you!  For those of you who missed it, please check out Alex’s recap here.  Below you can find the full version of the live stream (the event starts about 30 minutes into the live stream) as well as Alex’s abbreviated version.

Additionally, here were some of the moments that I found the most interesting-

The moderator, Rohit Bhargava, a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence group at Ogilvy PR,  kicked off the panel with a conversation about Gov 2.0 what it is, what it isn’t, etc.

When asked his opinion on Gov 2.0, Micah noted that where he got excited was the chance that Gov 2.0 offered the people, the possibility of a smarter government and the opportunity for government to give its citizens the ability to participate and help with the greatest challenges of our time.  He talked about how the Obama campaign came in with a bunch of promises regarding how they would use the web to co-create government to produce the services but that we were just seeing the beginning of this. ”There is a civic surplus waiting to be tapped of people who want the country to succeed,” he quipped and while he confronted a few in the audience with the contention that  the White House has failed at #opengov he offered up as consolation that they had at least successfully pushed #gov20 at agency level.

Gwynne shocked the group by bluntly stating, ”We’re still throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.”  She paid homage to the folks who have been working in this space for several administrations before it was called Gov 2.0 and discussed how despite that history this space was still new and agencies were still trying to figure out how to bring the services closer to where the people are.

Ari noted that there is a strong argument that the #Gov20 model is more representative than the 1.0 model and yet there was quite a ways left to go on that front.  Related to the question of who’s in and who’s out, in perhaps one of the most unexpected moments in the panel, Ari asked the audience: “Would you want an app to tell you how racially diverse your Facebook or Twitter networks are?”  He asked for a show of hands.  He then asked a mostly stunned group:  How many of you would want to share that information with others?

Mark spoke about the impact that he saw issue campaigns having on the upcoming elections and the political environment. In his estimation, the party out of power has had a tendency to be the most innovative in this space.  The ensuing question of course was: why?  The response?  Those in power have to govern and are often using the technology to govern.  Those out of power can be innovative with technology in their campaigns because they are not governing.

Building on Gwynne’s historical analysis, Alex also pushed the group noting that the conversation couldn’t just be about Washington.  It had to be about data that people could use in Washington but also locally.  He discussed how in his estimation the technology itself and platforms were tremendously relevant, giving a shout out to Drupal and Open Source Technology.  He also gave props to techpresident and Gov Loop.  The group discussed some excellent case studies and left us all with much to think about as it relates to the future of Gov 2.0, OpenGov, We Government and what that could hold.

Two weeks ago, I had a conversation with Brian Solis which pretty much echoed these sentiments from Gov 2.0 in the Web 2.0 world.   My biggest take away from the conversation with Solis was similar to my biggest take away from my participation in the Ogilvy DC Gov 2.0 event and that was this:  we are still in a period of evolution.  We are standing on the shoulders of those that came before us as it relates to this space and yet, it still a very new space that will in the end be defined by what we the people, our agencies, government and politicans choose to do with what we have.

Some highlights from the hashtag on the Twitterverse:

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With pharma carving out a greater presence online, marketers are seeing the importance of having a social presence to reach their audiences. And with over a third of adults reporting using social media to find health information¹ it’s no wonder why.

As Marshall McLuhan said 46 years ago, “the medium is the message.”  While McLuhan was discussin television and radio, the same holds true with marketing on social media.  Not all social media channels are the same, and with marketers eager to get online, it’s important to consider the right platforms for a product and/or campaign.

For example, while Facebook may have reached over 500 million users, that doesn’t mean a Facebook fan page is the best place for every pharmaceutical product. The key is to finding where the target audience is, what channels they use, and where conversations about the category are taking place. People aren’t likely to “fan” a product or condition on Facebook - associating themselves to their entire online network which could include friends, family and coworkers - that has a high “ick-factor” or could be considered embarrassing.

As well, just because a person may not want to associate themselves with a product or disease publically doesn’t mean they aren’t apt to participate in online discussions about it online. The lap-band gastric weight loss surgery is a great example.

A few, scattered “lap-band” Facebook pages exist, with a couple hundred members - not a high number by current standards. However, a deeper dive reveals a very active community regularly using forums and chat rooms to communicate to one another. For anonymity, the groups are often password protected and/or allow their participants to use made-up usernames. Often as users get more comfortable, and develop sub-communities of their own, we see these usernames give way to real names, and even scheduling of in person meet-ups of the community’s members.

The key to making the decision of where and how to market a product online is listening. By researching and evaluating where a target audience is active online, a marketer can develop a targeted campaign that is more likely to succeed and deliver the return on investment the company is looking for in executing such an initiative or campaign.

Sources:

1. iHealthReports. The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media. April 2008

What is Gov 2.0? What are some of the trends and opportunities in this space? What are some of the exciting break throughs? How can an organization benefit from it? Why should I care?

On Monday September 27th, Ogilvy 360 DI will be bringing together some of the preeminent thought leaders in this space to discuss these very questions. The event which will focus on how social media tools are shaping government, the 2010 elections and issue campaigns is standing room only. Nearly two hundred people have registered on Eventbrite. Seating will be on a first come first serve basis.

This week I had the honor of interviewing a couple of the panelists that will be featured during next week’s Ogilvy 360 DI Gov 2.0 Exchange. Their responses were candid and compelling; and provided a sneak peek at the conversation and themes we will tackle on Monday.

Ogilvy 360 DI: What do you see as the vision of Gov 2.0 and why is it relevant?

A: MICAH SIFRY, Co-founder and Editor, Personal Democracy Forum

At Personal Democracy Forum, we prefer the term “We-government,” the co-creating of new forms of collaboration and service that use technology, public data and the social web to address vital issues and solve public problems, that enables us to do more with less. It’s neither Right nor Left, not small government or big government, but effective do-it-ourselves-government.

This is relevant for obvious reasons. In many ways the old ideologies have run out of steam. Laissez-faire capitalism has been badly discredited by the financial meltdown (and Enron and accounting scandals before that); big government liberalism, where wise technocrats supposedly engineer good public policy on behalf of the public, has also run out steam, captured by special interest groups that block innovation.

Meanwhile we are living in a paradoxical moment of political gridlock and technological transformation. Every day that ordinary citizens watch their elected leaders struggle and mostly fail to get anything done in the face of organized blocking minorities, makes the public feel more powerless. But at the same time, every day a new tech innovation puts more power literally in our own hands. In such a moment, should we be surprised that the single biggest Twitter burst seen around any national event was not for President Obama’s State of the Union speech this past winter, but for the unveiling of the iPad, a few days later?

People are looking for new answers, and a lot of innovation is starting to emerge from the edges, where civic hackers are inventing new ways of combining public data with community engagement. That is the promise of We-government. Not e-government, where the authorities use the web to provide the public with information and services delivered from above, but where we reinvent government as a platform connecting all of us around the issues and needs that matter in our own lives most.

Ogilvy 360 DI: In your opinion, what are some of “the success stories” that exist in the Gov 2.0 space?

A: ALEXANDER HOWARD, Gov 2.0 Correspondent, O’Reilly Media

Alex Howard

First, given recent assessments and what I view as a general consensus by close observers, we’re in open government’s beta period. There are definitely both risks and rewards to the use of Web 2.0 by federal agencies.

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iTunes Ping

iTunes Ping, or Ping, launched this September to so much fanfare that I was reminded of last year’s Google Wave launch. However, like Google Wave iTunes Ping is an interesting concept that is proving difficult to execute.

Ping, not to be confused with the social network manager Ping.fm, is a software-based music oriented social networking service that is deployed and operated by Apple, and allows users to follow and interact with friends and artists. Ping was released as part of iTunes 10 and can only be used on the music player. The service launched in 23 countries and has gained over 1 million members so far.

When Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced Ping he explained the service as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes…[except that] it is not Facebook. It is not Twitter. It is something else we’ve come up with. It’s all about music.” This is definitely true, and Ping’s list of features includes the ability to see follow friends and artists to see what music they like and what concerts they are going to. Users can also post reviews of music, the songs they’ve purchased, and see custom song and album charts based on their own networks. Artists can also post videos and photos for fans to enjoy as well. According to Apple’s Ping announcement, Ping is based around the idea of social music discovery. Social music discovery is great, and I loving using tools that facilitate it, however I’m not too sure that that’s actually what Ping does.

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The rise of the internet over the last fifteen years has resulted in remarkable new possibilities for government and citizen engagement. Leaders inside and outside government are using social media tools to realize the principles of participation, collaboration, transparency and efficiency to address the challenges facing our country. This movement, often called Gov 2.0., is explored each year at a two day event I attended called the Gov 2.0 Summit.

Jules Polonetsky, Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, led a session titled “the Future of Privacy” and he shared a particularly interesting point of view on responsible data practices. Throughout the Summit, there was disagreement regarding the use of data; some demanded privacy while others advocated openness and easy distribution. Jules, however, had a more unique perspective: citizens will be more comfortable with their data being shared as long as there is an obvious and relevant purpose that benefits that citizen — what he calls “featurizing data use.”

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Almost all the major pharmaceutical companies are using Twitter now (or about to start) and there are Facebook pages and sponsorship deals with social networking sites tailored to doctors or surgeons. Most of these efforts are commonly described as social media because they are all forms of social communication.

Sometimes the most anti-social efforts online, however, are actually the ones that use the principles of social media best. Reading a book or a magazine is typically an anti-social activity, for example. Not because it makes you less personable, but because it is an activity you do by yourself generally with little interaction with others. Activities that are not inherently social are easy to underestimate in this time of an overly socialized Internet.

When you consider the target audience of physicians and medical professionals, you could make the argument that they have even less time to indulge this socialization need. Why can’t technology and social media be used to support this type of online interaction as well? This seems to be the premise behind a site from Sanofi-Aventis called iPractice that is getting quite a bit of attention from those who talk about social media efforts in the healthcare space. continue reading

I recently bought a new (old) home in Atlanta. Temperatures have been, well, hot and the AC has not stopped running all summer long. But when my energy bill tripled for last month’s usage I had to wonder if there was something I should do. So, I reached out to my social circle; but neighbors, friends and family all gave me different opinions on what was “normal” for this time of year. I just wanted to know what normal energy consumption should be and understand how my home compared. While I’m sure there’s an app for that, I opted for a simple search which brought me to Microsoft-hohm.com where I could see how my home compared with my neighbors, the state and the nation. In fact, the site suggested that I could save quite a bit of money if I took steps to make my home more energy efficient. Decision made. Add more insulation, seal the windows and then reevaluate.

My point here is that while some decisions, like buying a pair of jeans, might require a couple thumbs up from your friends on Facebook, involved decisions, major behavioral changes and shifts in opinion may require an up-close and personal encounter with aggregated data from a substantial sample of “people like you.” continue reading

A couple weeks ago, we started talking about what we’re excited about and what’s on our minds when it comes to Gov 2.0. We’ve had the chance to attend the Gov 2.0 Summit last week here in DC, to share our musings on Gov 2.0, and to ask for your insights. Now, we are less than two weeks out from our Ogilvy Exchange event on Monday, September 27th and are excited to invite you to join us.

We’ve gathered a dynamic panel of thinkers, writers and communicators who’ll discuss “How Social Media Tools are Shaping the Government, the 2010 Elections, and Issue Campaigns”. With the upcoming mid-term elections — and today’s DC primary (don’t forget to vote!) — we thought it’d be a great opportunity to take the pulse of the Obama Administration Gov 2.0 successes and failures and talk about how we see the role of social media affecting the upcoming elections.

The Exchange will take place on September 27, 2010 from 8:00 am – 10:00 am at our offices in Washington, DC. You can visit this link for more information and to RSVP. We’d love it if you would help spread the word.

Our panel includes:

- Alexander Howard, O’Reilly Media
- Gwynne Kostin, U.S. General Services Administration
- Micah Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum
- Ari Melber, The Nation
- Mark Murray, NBC News

Some of the questions we hope to address are….

• Does the Gov 2.0 momentum from 2008 still exist, and what does the future hold?
• Are the ideals of transparent, participatory democracy being fulfilled in government?
• What are some of the best, innovative case studies of what is possible in this space?
• What do the Administration, the media and the campaign stakeholders think is next for 2010 and 2012?
• How is the next generation of political advocates going to bring together social media to create a movement, to raise money, to organize locally, to fight opposition campaigns and to get out the vote?
• Will the Republicans be able to capitalize on this power as well as the Democrats?

…However, we’d love to open it up to you to submit questions you’d like the panel to answer and discuss. Leave a comment to post your question here or use our hashtag #ogilvy360di to tweet it. We’ll also be using the hashtag #gov20 in order to engage the Gov 2.0 community. We’ll see what the hot topics and burning questions are and open up the panel for we expect will be an informative and thought-provoking discussion.

Hope to see you there!

The Sunday circular was once a premier destination for grandparents armed with scissors at the prospect of saving $0.15 on frozen peas. I used to roll my eyes and wonder how this habit could be a smart investment of time. Then I found FatWallet.com, a site that gives users 1%-30% cash back with a few clicks of the mouse. Suddenly, FatWallet = the Sunday ads and my mouse = scissors.

It was then I realized the apple didn’t fall far from the tree and my miserly roots were exposed. Even though I was effortlessly getting cold, hard cash back on my click investment, I was hesitant to reveal this find to friends. Saving money hasn’t ever had its time in the spotlight. Microsoft tried to build momentum around the concept with Bing Cashback, but the program never took off and sang its swan song July 30. Geek got chic, so why couldn’t frugality?

And then, just when parsimony was destined to be a virtue relegated to secrecy and smoke-filled rooms, along came Groupon.

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What media would you actually pay to consume? That fundamental question is the most profound one driving all the discussion today about the future of media. Some believe the iPad and mobile tablet devices will reinvent how we read and consume media. Others feel this is just the latest in the overhyped and wholly exaggerated claims that old media is dying. At the recent International Newsroom Summit, The New York Times‘ publisher and chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. stated that he eventually expects that The NY Times will no longer be a physical newspaper.

While he declined to forecast a date when this might happen, his words are being seen by many as a prediction of the inevitable demise of the printed word. Another statement in his talk has received less attention, but perhaps may demonstrate a much more profound realization about the future of media:

“We believe that serious media organizations must start to collect additional revenue from their readers … information is less and less yearning to be free.”

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