Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how the worlds of marketing and social change converge. In particular, I’ve been interested in how the web enables us to flip the traditional, top-down model of advocacy and apply a more open, crowdsourced model of change-making.
We see great examples of this model in the environmental sector, where the likes of 350.org or Avaaz work to empower, not control, their supporters. We applied a similar philosophy on the TckTckTck campaign, where we provided broad messaging, simple branding and lots of online tools to the flotilla of partner organizations, community leaders and zealous individuals behind the campaign.
I stumbled onto this slide show by (I think) a German design firm which uses TckTckTCk as an example of “Branding 2.0 for NGOs”. Tellingly, the Tck campaign didn’t have anything to do with the creators of this slide show. They discovered it, liked the approach and built the thing all on their own. It’s a great example of this kind of “open source campaign”–a slightly abuse of the term ‘open source’, but forgive me–in action.
Bottled water is bad for the environment. The alternative, carrying around a water bottle, is becoming more common outside of college campuses and Commercial Drive. One (admittedly small) challenge of carrying your own water is finding locations to get the bottle refilled. Blue W aims to solve that problem:
Driven by a genuine appreciation for the hard work of municipal water providers, and motivated by success of the U.S. company www.tapitwater.com, we’ve developed the BlueW as a not-for-profit program for providing information on where to find healthy, safe municipal tap water – anywhere. Registered businesses represented on our map have agreed to refill your reusable container with water from their tap, without compelling you to make any additional purchases.
When you are thirsty, just look for the BlueW decal in participating shop and restaurant windows
It’s a great, worthy idea. However, it’s also classic top-down thinking. In order for a business to get listed on the site, you need to fill out a fairly bureaucratic registration form. Once you do, you receive “a Blue W information package containing the Blue W window decal and localized promotional print materials”.
This is a common approach for these social enterprises–the organization wants to build and manage a database of approved vendors, and establish itself as the arbiter of green. As another example, consider the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise project. The latter approach actually makes more sense–there’s legitimate due diligence to be done in identifying sustainable sources of seafood. But tap water?
The Blue W site–slick, with plenty of groovy animations–reflects this controlled, top-down philosophy. It’s neat and pretty, but rather buttoned-down. As a side note, this is the second site this week that’s had a splash page. The other, even flashier (or, perhaps, Flashier), was The Pixel Train. It’s 2010, folks, just let the user get to the goods.
Shepherding, not Dictating
What’s the right approach? Anybody could probably produce a richer data set more quickly using Twitter, Facebook, a custom Google map and a little crowd-sourcing. For starters, add a user-submission approach beyond businesses, where people can add water fountains, recreation centres and other public water directly sources to the map. Bonus points for building a mobile app that enables them to pinpoint a water source, describe it, snap a photo and have it magically appear on the site. Even more bonus points for seamless integration with Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp.
Plus, if it were my project, I’d find it hard to resist the pull of a cheeky pun for a URL, like, I don’t know, TapThat.ca?
The result would be a messier but more useful and richer tool. The project owner’s role becomes that of shepherding or guiding, as opposed to administering and dictating. By giving up control, they’d gain influence. The latter is much more valuable in the long run.
For more on this approach, consider checking out Web Thinking, a great manifesto by a couple of colleagues in the social change world.
Thanks to Mongrel Media, I have, oh, about 40 movie passes to a screening of One Week (caution: auto-playing video ahead), a most Canadian movie starring Joshua Jackson. Here’s the trailer:
Gordon Downie, Tofino and the Stanley Cup? Most Canadian movie ever. Incidentally, is that an actual NHL player at about 1:50? I don’t recognize him.
The film also features the lovely and talented Liane Balaban. I first saw her in New Waterford Girl, a really charming Nova Scotian film. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a look.
Mr. Jackson, I should add, has done an admirable job of sustaining and bolstering a career that could have died with final episode of “Dawson’s Creek”.
The screening is at the Scotiabank Theatre on Thursday, March 5th at 7:00pm. If you want a couple of free passes, come find me at Northern Voice.
Our latest phone book arrived today. I picked it up off the welcome mat, carried it through the house, out the back door and deposited it in the recycling bin. Pulling the plastic wrap off the thing, I noticed a little card affixed to the front of the book. It’s called the “ecoFinder”:
It’s a little card with advice on how to dispose of things like batteries, old phone books and the like. Apparently it’s also promoting a directory of “over 1,500 environmentally responsible businesses” that’s new to this year’s phone book. Or maybe the directory is just a pilot project in Quebec? I’m a little unclear, based on the media release. Hang on, here’s a hilarious release mentioning the directory in Victoria’s phone book, as well as the “noteworthy” news that “the residential and alphabetical business listings has been increased from 6 to 7 points”.
This is a classic case of greenwashing. Aware of their reputation as a big waster of paper, the Yellow Pages Group is trying to deflect attention toward their ham-handed efforts to ‘green’ their brand.
I was at a friend’s place last week. They lived in a big apartment complex, and the phone books were arrayed around the edges of the foyer like sand bags holding back a flood. If my own Yaletown apartment is any measure, dozens of those phone books end up in the recycling bin.
You Can’t Opt Out Yet
This is the first phone book we’d received at our current address. I decided I’d call the Yellow Pages Group and opt out of future phone books. Here’s the thing: you can’t.
It’s 2009, and you can’t choose not to receive the phone book. In July, 2007, Annie Marsolais, a Yellow Pages Group spokesperson said there were no plans to implement an opt-out program: “The print book is here to stay because there are advantages to the format.”
Less than two years later, the Yellow Pages Group has changed their tune. Ms. Marsolais recently said (and I’m translating with my dodgy French), “since certain people expressed a desire not to receive our directory anymore, in 2009 we’ll put in place a mechanism which will permit people to remove themselves from the list.”
It’s pretty shameful that it’s taken them until 2009 to apparently consider an opt-out process.
The Arguments For Phone Books are Dwindling
A couple of years ago, I remember wholeheartedly agreeing with Lee’s proposal that phone books should go from opt-out to opt-in. There’s some interesting debate in the comments, but just like newspapers, the writing’s on the wall. The yellow pages needs to transform itself, or die.
One of the more robust arguments is that phone books are a basic service that everybody, even those without internet access and cell phones, enjoys. That’s true, but it gets less convincing with each passing year. Consider that, in 2007, 73% of Canadians had internet access. That’s up from 57% in 2003. I suspect that we’ve nearly reached 80% in early 2009. At what point does the phone book simply have too few users?
To a lot of Canadians I know, the Yellow Pages is just a huge brick of junk mail that arrives all at once. I recognize that they use recycled materials to print the book, but there’s still a ridiculous amount of waste in the manufacturing, distributing and waste management of the books. The Yellow Pages Group is proud of the fact that they publish about 30 million directories. That’s pretty much one for every Canadian. I wonder how many of them never get opened.
How long do you think the Yellow Pages will last? 2012? 2020?
Yesterday, as you probably know (I first read about it on Beth’s site), Finance Minister Jim Flaherty gave a financial update of sorts in the House of Commons. I’m not an economist, so I won’t speculate on the pros and cons of the Conservatives’ no-stimulus stance. I am, however, interested in talking about their proposed cuts to political subsidies.
Parties currently receive $1.95 for every vote they receive in a federal election, provided they win at least two per cent of the nationwide popular vote. The annual subsidy is used to pay for staff and expenses.
But because the Conservatives have such a strong fundraising base, their subsidy represents only 37 per cent of the party’s total revenues. By comparison, the subsidy amounts to 63 per cent of the Liberals’ funding, 86 per cent of the Bloc’s, 57 per cent of the NDP’s and 65 per cent of the Greens’.
There is also, it’s worth noting, a $1000 cap on donations from unions, corporations and other organizations.
When the Liberals introduced this plan in 2003, I thought it was a terrifically democratic idea. Not only does it make each vote more meaningful, but it enables smaller and fringe parties to have a little more money to work with. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation supports the cuts, saying:
“It’s absurd that Canadian taxpayers are forced to subsidize through their taxes, political parties that they do not support, especially in the case of the Bloc Quebecois — a party that seeks to break up our country.”
I disagree. What could be more democratic than giving resources to all of the political voices, even the country’s critics? I don’t want my politicians beholden to corporate interests to the degree they are in the US.
In any case, there’s a great deal of sturm und drang in Ottawa about the proposed budget cuts. They amount, I gather, to about $50 million. The Conservatives knew this would be hugely controversial, and that it would look like they were exploiting home field advantage. Is their strategy backfiring (a bit like their cuts to the arts), or do they have a bigger picture in mind?
A while back I subscribed to the RSS feed for Statistics Canada. As you might imagine, the agency produces statistics and reports on a wide and occasionally bizarre array of stuff–fertilizer shipments, iron piping and so forth. As you know, these reports are regular fodder for journalists (and, uh, bloggers) hunting for low-hanging trend stories.
Today Statistics Canada released data on divorces across the country in 2005 (the newest year available, presumably). Using their handy data manipulation tool, I generated this chart:
So which province has the highest divorce rate? As you can see, it’s Alberta. I’m ignoring the northern territories, because the sample size is pretty small (Nunavut suffered all of 10 divorces in 2005).
What gives? Why are there 27% more divorces per capita in Alberta than in Saskatchewan? Is this like the US, where so-called conservative red states have a considerably higher incidence of divorce than blue states?
Here’s one thesis: people marry younger in Alberta, and the younger you marry, the likelier you are to get divorced. That’s disproven, though, because Saskatchewan has the lowest marriage age (27 for women, 29.3 for men) in the country as well as a low divorce rate.
A while back I subscribed to the RSS feed for Statistics Canada. As you might imagine, the agency produces statistics and reports on a wide and occasionally bizarre array of stuff–fertilizer shipments, iron piping and so forth. As you know, these reports are regular fodder for journalists (and, uh, bloggers) hunting for low-hanging trend stories.
Today Statistics Canada released data on divorces across the country in 2005 (the newest year available, presumably). Using their handy data manipulation tool, I generated this chart:
So which province has the highest divorce rate? As you can see, it’s Alberta. I’m ignoring the northern territories, because the sample size is pretty small (Nunavut suffered all of 10 divorces in 2005).
Is Alberta a Red State?
What gives? Why are there 27% more divorces per capita in Alberta than in Saskatchewan? Is this like the US, where so-called conservative red states have a considerably higher incidence of divorce than blue states?
Here’s one thesis: people marry younger in Alberta, and the younger you marry, the likelier you are to get divorced. That’s disproved, though, because Saskatchewan has the lowest marriage age (27 for women, 29.3 for men) in the country as well as a low divorce rate. That’s the red state theory–earlier marriages combined with lower socio-economic standing and less education. Stereotypes aside, I don’t think those factors apply to Alberta.
Here’s another idea that sounds plausible: compared to other provinces, Alberta has a low immigration rate. New Canadians, particularly those from Asia, are less likely to divorce.
Why do you think Alberta has the country’s highest rate of divorce?
Incidentally, while looking through some Statistics Canada research, I found this chart. The rate of divorce is apparently highest for those married about 4.5 years. After that there’s a long decline (to quote Neil Young). Once you hit 40 years of marriage, your odds of divorce are roughly two in 1000.
My father and step-mother are in South Africa at the moment. While at a favourite restaurant in Cullinan, my step-mother rediscovered Goldcrest Black Pitted Cherries, and how tasty they are over ice cream. Here’s a photo of the can:
She’s considering bringing some back, but wants to know if they’re available in Canada. She doesn’t, and I quote here, want to “carry coals to Newcastle”. Goldcrest’s site is no help, and my web searches have come up empty.
They’re apparently worth the effort, and my step-mother is excited because “the owner of the restaurant finally capitulated and gave the recipe to me”.
These are three clever videos I’ve come across in the last day and a half. Monique twittered about this Slate Vvideo, encouraging Americans to go northward in the event of another Republican president:
Professor Lessig is, as always, thoughtful and articulate in his critique of California’s Proposition 8, a referendum on banning gay marriage:
James sent me this well-crafted take on the Mad Men (a show I have difficulty getting excited about) opening credits from the Simpsons:
In passing, I note that none of these three videos are hosted on YouTube. It’s kind of a video hosting and sharing ghetto, when you get right down to it. You can’t ignore it, but discerning video creators seem to favour other solutions.
Oh, and yes, the imminent new site design is wider than this one, so that video frames won’t jut into the sidebars anymore.
