Kate Emanuel
As Senior Vice President of Non-Profit and Government Affairs, Kate Emanuel oversees the Ad Council's relationships with the non-profit community, Congress and the Federal Government. Ms. Emanuel also oversees the Ad Council's Advisory Committee on Public Issues, which helps the Ad Council identify pressing social issues for its docket.
Posts by Kate
What do CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the Red Cross, Save the Children, Google, Facebook and Special Olympics all have in common?
Photo: Ken Cedeno
They were part of a fascinating discussion on “Mobilizing Communities in Crisis” this week. We hosted the event, along with Google, as part of “Ad Week” (think Fashion Week for the advertising/media community). With Anderson as a skilled moderator, the panelists touched on topics like donor fatigue, how social media is revolutionizing crises response in hotspots like Haiti or Pakistan and what other non-profits can learn from all this.
A few highlights:
-Google’s Prem Ramaswami (Product Manager) showed an absorbing video that explains the breadth of technology they employed within hours of the Haiti earthquake. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gp0-IAsbY8.
Here’s a recap: “Google launched a landing page, featuring organizations that were accepting cash and in-kind donations” as well as “aerial imagery and the ability to upload user-generated content such as YouTube videos. The page was launched in 12 languages … to help drive awareness to provide practical ways for people to help. In addition, Google displayed up-to-date high resolution imagery over the disaster region and our Google maps and Google earth products. We published a large set of imagery form our satellite providers. We made this data available for download for any third party to utilize. People used our imagery to do damage assessments and to identify refugee camps…there’s also a layer showing hospitals in Haiti.”
-Save the Children’s Carolyn Miles (Chief Operating Officer) talked about ways to keep the public engaged long-term after the images of a disaster fade away. She talked about their new campaign “Good Goes” that’s engaging Americans to help end global newborn and child mortality, and how they integrated all of their social media channels to create a unified communications campaign: http://www.facebook.com/goodgoes
-Special Olympics’ Tim Shriver, Jr. (co-founder of their “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign) brought a different perspective. Rather than mobilizing around a traditional “disaster,” how can a non-profit nimbly leverage an opportunity that’s suddenly in the public’s eye and engage and advocate? You do what youth leaders at Special Olympics did with their “r-word” campaign: create a viral, captivating campaign to eliminate the use of “retard” in everyday speech. Check this out–they even got Bill O’Reilly to apologize! Talk about being nimble–this video was created–start to finish–by high-school age youth, in just one night:
-Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg (Head of Consumer Marketing & Social Good Initiatives) gave some helpful tips on what non-profits can do with limited budgets: use “virality,” use video and use real stories. We need an entire blog post devoted to just this! (Stay tuned…) (more…)
Filed under: Campaigns, Communications, Internet, Social Media
Tags: crisis
She’s One Smart Mom
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the text4baby campaign. It’s an innovative mobile pilot program where expecting moms can receive free text messages each week, timed to their due date or baby’s date of birth. Women sign up for the service by texting BABY to 511411(or BEBE in Spanish).
It’s an educational program of the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition. They have a ton of partners, including corporations (J&J, Voxiva, Pfizer) and the Federal Government (White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, HHS, and the Department of Defense Military Health System).
The program is designed for pregnant women through their pregnancy and the first year of their baby’s life (the service will run through the end of 2011).
They cover all topics for expecting and new moms – here are some sample texts:
Have you visited a doctor or midwife? If not, you’ll need to right away. Call 800-311-2229 for free or low-cost health care & your local WIC program.
Keeping your baby’s mouth clean is important even before she has teeth! Wipe her gums each day with a wet washcloth or use a soft baby toothbrush.
Here’s how they avoided cost, privacy, content and HIPPA issues:
-They only collect phone number, zip code and due date or baby’s birth date.
-HMHB doesn’t sell or share any personally-identifiable user data with any third parties.
-It’s a free-to-end-user system. Even if the participant has a text messaging plan, there will be no deduction from that plan. The participating mobile operators (good for them!) have agreed to make this a free service.
-All user data is encrypted and stored on HIPAA-compliant secure servers.
-Messages do not include any product promotions. The content is purely educational and scientifically accurate.
-Content is developed by HMHB in collaboration with HHS/CDC, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and HRSA.
The results? So far, they have nearly 72,000 enrollees and more than 3.5 million messages have been sent. (And encouragingly, 96% of enrollees reporting that they would recommend the service to a friend.)
In terms of evaluating the program, they’re working on it (they can’t track any demographic information since they’re only asking for a phone number and zip code so evaluation is probably tricky). They do know about English (94%) vs Hispanic (6%) enrollees and they track by state. Top states include New Hampshire, Wyoming, Virginia, Kansas, W. Virginia, DC, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama and S. Carolina.
To learn more or become a partner, visit http://text4baby.ning.com.
Filed under: Communications, Federal Government Communications, Internet, New Media, Social Media
Online Contests! Who wants to play?
The Ad Council recently hosted a panel discussion, along with Google, on Online Contests. Presenters included YouTube, AARP, National Parks Foundation and ePrize. While it was mostly geared to nonprofits, the presenters provided some good “lessons learned” which I’ve included below.
For Federal government folks looking to create or improve their online contests and challenges, GSA’s Center for New Media and Citizen Engagement is helping agencies learn more about innovation challenges and prizes. Visit their site to get tools, examples, guidelines, case studies and sample rules. They will also soon launch Challenge.gov, which will be a one-stop shop for federal agencies to post challenges and for the public to find and participate in federal challenges.
Initial Steps for Success…
- Do your research.
- Prioritize your goals – what behaviors do you want to motivate? Your goals will help define the solution.
- Identify consumer touch points.
- Assign a budget.
- Keep it simple. You may not need as many bells as whistles as originally thought.
- YouTube: Create a great call-out video.
Promotion…
- You need to promote your promotion! Use email blasts, banners, homepage placement, Facebook posts, Tweets, Direct Mail (bill stuffer), events, mobile – use it all.
- Prizes should be topically relevant. The combination of a bigger grand prize coupled with frequent smaller instant win prizes has proven to be a powerful draw.
- Keep it simple – Simple clear message with clean creative. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.
- Leverage social networking, blogs, newsletters and websites.
- Think about advertising and which sites make sense for your contest and who it targets.
- Target individual YouTube users. Don’t be afraid to send messages.
- Utilize all resources (internal and external) available to you
- Engage your web and marketing teams
- Engage your partners/prospects
- Use social media/Integrate!
- Generate excitement about upcoming contest(s)
- Send emails to your database
- Have a sweepstakes or “teaser” contest
Internally…
- Don’t take on more than you can handle.
- If your budget is limited, keep it simple
- Engage a contest administration company if budget allows
- A major redesign/relaunch is not the best time to launch a complex campaign that requires technical integration.
- Bring some content from behind the registration wall, and don’t make it flash-based, in order for it to be viewed/found by search engines (missed out on organic traffic opportunity).
- Get legal in early and keep them updated each step of the way to ensure that there are no last minute surprises, i.e. incenting referrals are a no-no at AARP (which was learned just before launch).
After you launch…
- Keep it exciting – after 10-12 weeks, offer a new message or reason to engage
- Continue to grow and evolve. Keep it fresh.
- Create contest updates to keep people engaged throughout the contest.
- Finish strong and leverage your content to create mashups, ads and video press releases.
Filed under: Communications, Federal Government Communications, Internet, New Media, Social Media
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