You’ve certainly made it as a campaign movement when you get a feature in the Guardian….so congratulations should go to Avaaz who featured in the paper last week. Launched in 2007, in the last months alone they’ve had some notable successes on pressuring the government over BSkyB and Murdoch in the UK, corruption in India, stopping the Grand Prix in Bahrain and blocking a mega-dam in Brazil.
So here, to steal another idea from my paper of choice, is my ‘In Praise of….Avaaz’.
It’s a truly global movement – Over 9 millions members in 193 countries around the world. Together having taken tens of millions of actions and it’s a movement that’s rapidly growing in India, Brazil and South Africa. Plus they’re solely funded by their members.
It’s all about the metrics – The Guardian describes how Avaaz rigorously tests its campaign before launching them to most of their members.
“Campaign ideas are submitted by Avaaz’s members in the first instance. But once an idea is settled on, it still has to pass a rigorous selection procedure. First, a tester email is sent to a random selection of 10,000 members in a particular country. Any “tester” that doesn’t encourage at least 10% to open it is generally discarded.
Test emails that pass this threshold then need to ensure around a 40% conversion rate. Here, they’re testing the email’s contents. If the email’s going to fly, at least two in five of those who opened it need to go the extra mile: to click through to Avaaz’s website.
A campaign with promise will encourage more than 80% of those people to sign the petition. Emails that achieve this ratio – around 6% of the original audience – will then be rolled out to Avaaz’s entire membership in the relevant country.”
They’re not afraid to say it was ‘them that won it’ – I’ve observed that some campaigns exhibit a certain amount of modesty when they win a campaign.
Messages to supports are prefaced with ‘you helped to’ or ‘had an impact on’ as campaigns are careful not to ignore the other factors that can lead to campaign success. That’s not the case with Avaaz take for example from the April Reportback on two recent campaign successes.
“Just days ago, two things were different – questioning the global “war on drugs” was a huge taboo in government circles, and Formula 1 was set to hold their Grand Prix in Bahrain despite a brutal government crackdown on peaceful democracy protesters. Then our community got involved. Within 72 hours, more than 1 million of us joined these two campaigns, and we won!
Formula 1 has, under intense pressure, reversed its decision to race in Bahrain and the UN Secretary-General has agreed to establish a new task force on drugs, with world leaders beginning an historic new debate on regulation and decrimalisation. People power works, and we are seeing it more and more all over the world. Here are two stories of how …“
They know what they do well – It’s easy to criticise Avaaz for simply focusing on e-actions and not looking at building a grassroots movement, but that’s in party because they’re clear of the role they play explaining on their website.
“We focus on tipping-point moments of crisis and opportunity.
In the life of an issue or a cause, a moment sometimes arises when a decision must be made, and a massive, public outcry can suddenly make all the difference. Getting to that point can take years of painstaking work, usually behind the scenes, by dedicated people focusing on nothing else.
But when the moment does come, and the sunlight of public attention floods in, the most crucial decisions go one way or another depending on leaders’ perceptions of the political consequences of each option. It is in these brief windows of tremendous crisis and opportunity that the Avaaz community often makes its mark”
They’re supporting those on the front-line– By raising the money from 300,000 members of the Avaaz community to help work with those leading democracy movements in Syria, Yemen, Libya and more to get them equipment, connections to the world’s media and communications advice to help tell another story of what was happening when governments tried to clam down on internet access.
For more on Avaaz check out this profile of its founder Ricken Patel in the Times or a video of Ricken talking about the movement at a recent Guardian conference.
What would you add to the list? Does the Avaaz model have any drawbacks? What’s its greatest strength (and weakness)?
Category: e-campaigning
May the Force be with Greenpeace
Greenpeace have launched a fantastic new campaign today (Tuesday) – ‘Volkswagen. The Dark Side’ targeting car manufacture VW to ‘turn away from the Dark Side and give our planet a chance’.
It’s been going less than 12 hours, but already they’ve had over 38,000 people send a message to VW bosses, over 10,000 likes on their Facebook page, #vwdarkside has been trending in London for much of the days and thousands have viewed their excellent video spoof of hugely popular VW Star Wars film.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXndQuvOacU]
Here are the five reasons why I think it’s been a fantastic campaign launch.
1 – An inspired location – Old Street has also been trending all day as well. Why? It was the location that Greenpeace chose to launch the campaign. No VW garage in sight just the home of Silicon Roundabout and undoubtably more tweeters than any part of London. Dot a few Stormtroopers around the place and you’ve got lots of digitally connected people talking about your campaign on twitter.
2 – A competitive edge – The campaign doesn’t simply want you to send a message to the VW CEO, it wants you to recruit more friends (or Jedi’s) to join the campaign. You’re given your own training page and the more friends who join, take action on your recommendation or view your special page the more points you get, which helps you unlock new characters from Star Wars. The element of competition is inspired, and has meant that its been passed on a huge number of times.
3 – A everyday brand – No doubt a multitude of other targets who could leverage the changes that Greenpeace would like to see, but VW are a globally recognisable brand and one who have tried to build a green image. Thus they make ideal targets. Moreover the launch is showing that the decisions that need to be made to stop climate change are, in part in the hands of companies like VW. The campaign also makes a direct pitch to those who drive VWs in the sign-up page, a really nice touch.
4 – A great message – This isn’t simply a ‘aren’t VW really horrible and nasty’ campaign, rather a campaign to persuade VW to play its part in helping to save the world. The language that the website uses it’s all about encouraging VW to stop ‘using its influence to prevent us getting the laws we need to protect our planet and boost our economy’.
5 – Everyone loves Star Wars – With over 40 million views, the original VW advert has been hugely popular so by basing a campaign on this Greenpeace is already tapping into popular culture. It’s also a huge amount of fun and its impressive how Greenpeace have carried the Star Wars theme through every element of the launch (for example their policy report is entitled ‘The Dark Side of Volkswagen’ and is introduced by R2D2!).
What do you think? Are you as enthused about the campaign launch as I am? Have you seen it all before?
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Three questions ahead of @fairsay's clicktivism debate
Fairsay are holding what looks like it’ll be a fascinating debate on Monday night in Oxford around the issue of Activism vs. Slacktivism, with a great line up of speakers.
I can’t join in, but here are the three questions, that I’d be looking for answers to if I could make it along.
1 – What are the best examples of coordinating on and off line activism? I think most agree that ‘on-line’ activism alone won’t always lead to change and that it needs to be a key tool which is deployed as part of a wider strategy. If this is the case, what are the best examples of linking this together, and what do organisations need to be doing to harness the benefits of both?
2 – Have we convinced decision makers about the power of e-actions? I’ve written about this before but I worry that some decision makers see e-actions as a nuisance, rather than a legitimate campaign tool that allow large numbers of constituents to register their views. Is this the case and if so what more do we need to do to challenge this understanding?
3 – Have we convinced the public about the power of digital campaigning? Should the figures in recent surveys from organisations such as Theos, which show relatively low numbers of people think that e-campaign is actual likely to lead to change be a cause of concern? What do we need to do to address this?
If you’re new to the ‘clicktivism’ debate, do have a look at this comprehensive list of article’s that Jess Day has put together. Some good articles to start with would be;
Clicktivism is ruining leftist activism by Micah White, which kicked off much of the recent debate.
Small Change – Why the revolution will not be tweeted by Malcolm Gladwell
The case for online organising by Ben Brandzel
Exactly what role did social media play in the Egyptian revolution? on Social Media Today which looks at a very contemporary case study.
Finally, Study Finds the Internet Makes Youth More Engaged Citizens which injects some much needed academic rigour into the debate.
Clicktivism – will we acknowledge its impact by Brie Rogers Lowery reports on a similar discussion at the recent 6 billion ways conference.
Can 38 Degrees translate online ‘clicktivism’ success into off-line activism?
Some time last year, a friend forwarded me the following request from the campaign organisation, 38 Degrees;
We’ve decided it’s time to take this campaign offline, organising a series of meet-ups between members in and around they live. We’re looking for an experienced organiser to help us deliver on that part of the campaign over the next couple of months.
Without a doubt, 38 Degrees have been one of the campaigning successes of recent years, and in recent weeks they’ve been celebrating a ‘coming of age’ as they forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn on its plan to sell of England’s forests.
The movement has grown quickly and now counts over 500,000 members (who together have taken over 2.4m actions) and to the outsider it appears to have been able to be respond to the issues of the day quickly, while engaging its members.
But look beyond Save our Forests and you can see another interesting development. 38 degrees is going off-line, as it looks to build on the momentum it’s developed on-line to facilitate conversations and campaigning amongst its members through meet-ups around the NHS.
Like many, I’m going to be watching to see how 38 Degrees get on with interest. Given the meteoric rise that the campaign has experienced in the last year, I have a feeling that if anyone is going to pull it off then it’ll be them. The campaign has a great group of experts advising them, energy and in the new government to act as a common enemy for many. But here are 4 challenges that I think they might encounter as they make the leap from on-line to off-line.
1 – Can they keep the conversation going?
The language of the request seems to embrace the spirit that 38 Degrees is set up in. This isn’t about the top of the organisation decided to do something, more a genuine attempt at a more participatory approach to campaigning on a massive scale. I’ve been impressed with the way that 38 Degrees have gone about building the movement, regular e-mails asking me about my priorities and the push for ‘member get member’ recruitment to generate support for their actions.
It’s a refreshing change to see an organisation reject the more institutionalised approach that many campaign organisations adopt, but not lose its effectiveness in the process. The challenge will be to keep the conversation going, manage the tensions that are more likely to occur in the ‘messy’ reality that often exists when you throw together a group of people, while retaining the desire to continue to have impact.
2- Will it just be the usual suspects meeting in a different place?
I’d be fascinated to compare the membership of 38 Degrees to other more established campaigning outfits, like Friends of the Earth, World Development Movement, or even political parties. Have they managed to reach out and mobilise a new generation or group of activists? Or is it simply the same set of individuals who’ve already signed up to take action with the more traditional campaigning organisations just adding another outlet to their activism.
Equally, given the variety of actions toward progressive causes that 38 Degrees offer do they find tribes forming around different themes, with members only taking action on the issues that they’re interested in. Will they be able to unite them around the NHS campaign when they meet to face-to-face, or will this exclude some?
3 – Will it be as empowering?
Books have written about the success of the Obama election machine and its ability to put those who’d signed on-line to work off-line, but they came together for a reason, to get their candidate into the White House. The project was time-bound, had a clear aim and an existing structure (in the Democratic Party) to build upon.
38 Degrees have clearly built community on-line but will this come together off-line? Are the ties and identity that 38 Degrees members have strong enough to entice people with the prospect of sitting in a cold community hall to plan activities and will they be able to come up with an urgency to their actions?
4 – Can anything overcome the trend towards ‘cheque book’ activism?
The attraction of taking action with 38 Degrees is that it’s quick and easy, in a moment I can register my protest and make my views known without leaving my computer, hence the 2.4 million actions that have been taken. It’s a trend that most campaigning organisation is experiencing with the public effectively sub-contracting their activism to an organisation they trust.
This is one of the biggest changes the UK civil society has witnessed in the last decade and a trend repeated amongst the Trade Union movement and Political parties, which have also seen declining membership and engagement. Can 38 Degrees go against the flow and overcome it? I hope so, but I think they might have their work cut out.
#SaveOurForest – a campaign reader
Put a note against Thursday 17th February in your diary, as it marks an important moment for campaigning in the UK. The coming of age of 38 degrees.
Today, the online campaigning movement celebrated as it notched up its most high-profile victory yet, the government make a U-turn and abandons its plan to sell of the forests (watch the announcement to Parliament here).
Lots has already been written about the campaign, and I don’t think I can add much at present, here is a reader of some of the top articles which explore how the campaign unfolded and the impact it’s had.
1. The Guardian explores the important role that social media played in the campaign in Forest sell-off: Social media celebrates victory
2. Johnny Chatterton, from 38 degrees writes for Left Foot Forward about the size of the campaign, with his boss, David Babbs, Executive Director saying ‘Forest sell-off U-turn is a victory for people power‘
3. Chris Rose wrote last week about how ‘Clicktivism By-passes Inside Track To Harry Potter Forest‘ and also the roots that this campaign had in previous battles for forests around the country.
4. Jonathan Porritt criticised the larger environmental NGOs by not supporting the campaign of ‘collective betrayal‘ on his blog, while this blog argued that the campaign had highlighted some of the challenges large NGOs faced in responding to an issue with the agility an organisation like 38 degrees can.
5. The Sunday Telegraph ran many articles, demonstrating the broad support the campaign had ‘Save our forests, say celebrities and leading figure’ something that was clearly important in the victory.
6. But not everyone has been so kind, with Anthony Barnett at Open Democracy, suggesting that 38 degrees shouldn’t take all the credit for the campaign victory, following up on an earlier post challenging them not to compete but campaign with others.
7. But the last word picture should go to cartoonist Steve Bell in today’s Guardian.
What other articles have you read that help to explain the story behind the campaign? Why did this campaign work when so many others haven’t?
Future of No10 petition site kicked into long grass….again!
So Martha Lane Fox has today delivered her review of digital provision in central government and the future of the No10 petition site still remains unclear.
The site, which has seen 5 millions people take action, was taken down ahead of the May general election, and ever since its future has remained uncertain (I’ve argued this might not be a bad thing but it’d be good to know one way or another). For the last few weeks it has displayed the following message;
November 2010 – The overall future of all HMG digital comms and engagement is bound into the Martha Lane Fox review, which will be announced imminently. The future of e-petitions will be part of that review.
But a decision is going to be hard when the report which was released today says nothing about the site, e-petitions or how the government can use digital media to engage directly with citizens on public policy issues.
I might be missing something (another report from Lane Fox perhaps), but it seems that the Coalition Government is keen to continue to kick the future of the site into the long grass.
So much for a ‘new way of doing politics’.
Does campaigning work?
WWF try to answer the question
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z694KOtB1v4]
Why I'll be pleased to see the end of the No10 petition site
Third Sector PR is reporting on twitter that the No10 petition site might be a casualty of the new administration. The site, was set up in 2006, and is perhaps best remember for the million plus people who signed a petition about road tax. The creators MySociety suggest that over 5 million unique e-mail addresses have used the site since its inception, but I’d be pleased to see the end of the site.
Why?
One. Because I think it’s encouraged lazy campaigning. I’ve only once been involved in trying to encourage people to sign a No10 petition (and despite a huge effort we got about 2,000 names), but it seems that often it was an easy way to tick the ‘we’ve done something to target No10 box’. Good campaigning needs to be about thinking about the most effective target and then the most innovate way of reaching them. To think creatively about how you could get the issue to the attention of the right people within government. For some campaigning NGOs the petition site seemed to put a stop to that.
While I can understand the argument that when it was launched in 2006 it was a way of enabling and empowering anyone to raise an issue of concern, the sheer volume of petitions suggests that only those with a mechanism for broadcasting their idea succeeded. Campaigning has moved on and I think the recent examples of spontaneous, decentralised campaigns on twitter show that there are other tools for doing this.
I don’t think that many (any) policies were changed thanks to the petition site, and too many of them seemed to be a reaction to what was in the Daily Mail (close the Mega Mosque, save the Red Arrows funding, etc) on a particular day.
Two. Because I think it led to lazy engagement from the government with civil society. I understand that their were some guidelines about when No10 would respond to a petition, i.e. if it got over a certain number of actions, but placing numerical limits that are required to be met before enabling a response are very arbitrary. It felt that too often the site was a place for people with concerns to directed to and then forgotten.
My hope is that any review of the petition site leads to a better solution for how No10 will engage with e-campaigns. A proper e-mail address for the PM would help those with embedded campaign tools, while No10 thinking about how it’ll engage with campaigns that appear on a range of platforms (like twitter) would show that they’re following trends in the way people want to communicate with their government.
Community Websites: a new space for activism?
While much has been written about the power of Facebook, and the impact of other social media tools in campaigning, another growing phenomena, that I’ve seen much less written about is the growth (or perhaps resurgence) of community websites, one of the most high-profile of which is Mumsnet, which seems to be in the news almost every week at the moment.
I don’t have any reason to spend any time on Mumsnet, but a quick visit to the site reveal that its a community of thousands of parents, not just talking about parenting but increasingly discussing a whole range of other issues (it has a very active election section). It’s not the only site like it, some of them are super-local, others national, but they all draw together people who share something in common but often seem to flourish into broader discussions.
Ben Furber has an excellent blog on LabourList about what this might mean for the political parties in the upcoming general election, but campaigning organisations should be considering the implications for them.
The traditional way of organising campaigning is changing to a space where people share the same interests, views and outlook in a virtual space. For campaigners, here are a few exciting challenges and opportunities that I think they presents.
Opportunities
- To reach more (and new) activists, by dramatically reducing the barriers to entry, suddenly you don’t need to come along to a meeting, you can just log on and get involved. Equally you can spend as long as you like observing the discussions before you get involved.
- To allow people to share their campaigning experiences with each other in real time, what they’ve found works, what doesn’t work, encouraging those involved to provide advice to newcomers.
- To communicate rapid changes in strategy, no longer do organisations need to wait for the next mailing slot to update campaigners, the next campaign action or message can be communicated in real time.
- To engaging people in the development of the journey campaign, suddenly individuals are sharing ideas about targets and tactics, trying them out and reporting back what works. It provide a good platform to crowd source of ideas, and then encourage others to adopt the most effective.
Challenges
- To let go of the message, instead of the traditional campaigning method which sees the centre control the communications and asks, those involved will want to shape, change and interpret the message, suggest their own tactics, which might not always be seen as the most effective by the ‘professionals’.
- To move beyond communities beyond a single issue focus – the strength of these sites is that people who join them have something in common, and go to them for community with those like them. The challenge for organisations working on other issues outside of this will be to get these communities to adopt their campaigns.
For example the Mumsnet website,already has an active campaign page, most on issues of direct relevance to parents (like breastfeeding, miscarridge, and the ‘Million Mums’ campaign on maternal health).
Twitter – here to stay
So, after a very long summer break I’m back…one of my first blogs back in February was about twitter I asked if it was going to catch on.
I was cautiously optimistic, I wanted it to work, but was wary that it could go the way of other social media phenomena. Well what a 6 months Twitter has had. The numbers of people using it are still growing, and it’s not hyperbole to say that it’s changed the face of campaigning.
Changing Policy – Lots has been written about the role of twitter in mobilising people, but last week was perhaps a high-water mark for twitter.
On Monday, we had the Trafigura story exploding on twitter, within hours of the Guardian publishing a cryptic article on its website about an injunction we saw people starting to tweet what the parliamentary question was. Before long the story was leading on the mainstream news, and a scandal that was only going to get noticed by a few who had been following the story was everywhere, a very public PR disaster! Liam from louder.org.uk has a good post on this.
Then on Friday, we saw twitter mobilise a record 22,000 people to complain to the Press Complaints Commission about an article in the Daily Mail on the death of Stephen Gatley.
Before that we had the organisation BeThatChange organising a day of action which saw thousands of people trying to get Gordon Brown to go to COP, the response was that Ed Miliband put up a poll on his Ed’s Pledge website asking people to vote for their political priority ahead of Copenhagen. A few days later, and Gordon Brown announced he was going to COP.
No doubt there are many other examples that one could point to over the last few months, ILovetheNHS for example. Two thoughts about what these examples have in common, an immediacy within moments someone has picked up on the story, and in hours they’ve reached a tipping point that forces the target to respond. Secondly, few of these campaigns have been initiated by organisations but instead twitter has put the ability to mobilise in the hands of people with lots of followers on twitter. Some more agile movements may have been able to pick up on them (for example 38degrees around Trafigura), but twitter is helping to put mobilising power to those with virtual networks.
Engaging with policy makers – Today, two people I know got responses from @EdMilibandMP to their questions/comment and I’ve seen an interesting discussion with @SadiqKhan about an announcement he was making on parking. So what? Well unlike most communications with ministers/MPs, the chances are those policy makers have actually responded themselves, Twitter has cut out the comms department, the secretary and allowed people to share what they’re thinking directly with those holding the red box. No doubt this phenomena will come to an end when the number of followers becomes overwhelming, but for the time its a great opportunity to take advantage of.
Two others useful things;
– Back in the summer the people who matter in Whitehall issued these guidelines about how government department should be using twitter, while they were ridiculed for being too long, they’re the best set of guidelines I’ve found if you need to persuade senior management in your organisation to understand and use twitter.
– I’ve been experimenting with act.ly as a way of getting supporters to use twitter to show their support for a campaign, initial experience is good.