by Jacqueline Koch | Nov 23, 2017 |
“WE THE PEOPLE: ARE GREATER THAN FEAR.” Artist Shephard Fairey adapted a photo by Ridwan Adhami to create a triptych of the post-Trump era.
By Jacqueline Koch, Co-Founder, Partner – Boost! Collective
We’ve hit the one-year mark since the 2016 election. The 2017 election results offer a glimmer of hope. Last month at the 2017 Seattle Interactive Conference, National Geographic photographer Aaron Huey, founder of the Amplifier Foundation, recounted his shift from a traditional media platform to art. He outlined the role of artists as storytellers in major cultural movements and the power of language as a unifier between “red” and “blue.”
It’s a compelling premise: Art as a tremendous story-accelerant in fueling a cultural or social justice movement. Yet the photojournalist in me buckled. Art? What about the power of images and photo documentary work?
Here is where I’m coming from. When I picked up a camera for a career path, it was with the conviction that images have the power to change the world. Look at the giants of photojournalism who shaped our understanding of history—from Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith and Eddie Adams to James Nachtwey, Nick Ut and Mary Ellen Mark, just to name a few. They told important stories that had yet to be told. They connected us with the rich and layered world we live in.
But then the world changed in ways we couldn’t anticipate. The internet, royalty free images, a withered the media industry, Facebook, Instagram and the ubiquitous iPhone. Today, everyone is a photographer, a citizen journalist, a blogger. Some of the most iconic images of our time are snapshots from a smartphone or point-and-shoot. Think Abu Graib. To survive, many photojournalists I know, myself included, had to reinvent themselves, be it in academia, new media, PR or other related pursuits.
A few lucky ones soldier on. But then there are outliers. Take Aaron Huey, who pivoted in an unexpected and highly innovative direction, redefining the power of images through a heady combination of photos, art and language.
Without a doubt, National Geographic is a great gig. But Huey was looking for a more robust platform for advocacy journalism, which is ever more essential in the Trump era.
“Art is the light in these very dark times,” Huey stated.
Trump had yet to announce his presidential aspirations in 2014, when Huey launched the Amplifier Foundation, an “art machine for social change.” It was the next level for an expanding portfolio of documentary work of the Lakota on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, TED talks and a series of interactive multi-media collaborations, including a National Geographic-supported community storytelling project. It built on previous collaborations with artist activists, Shepard Fairey, renowned for his Obama “HOPE” posters, which went viral in 2008 and Ernesto Yerena, creator of Hecho Con Ganas.
A triptych for the Trump era
Fast forward to Trump’s unexpected election win. Journalism just wasn’t enough to do the advocacy work, Huey explained. He and Fairey joined forces again to launch a simple-but-brilliant guerrilla fundraising and art distribution movement.
“Today we are in a very different moment, one that requires new images that reject the hate, fear, and open racism that were normalized during the 2016 presidential campaign,” reads the “We the People” Kickstarter intro.
Armed with a mighty series of compelling illustrations, each by recognized artist activists, Amplifier threw an artistic collaboration into high gear. The goal: To sidestep restrictions on signs and banners—and free speech?—on Inauguration Day. It was an overwhelming success. A jaw-dropping 22,840 backers raised a whopping $1,365,105 to fund “a hack” that would distribute the images on a massive scale. Full-page ads ran in major publications providing marchers with posters to take into the streets, hang in windows or paste on walls.
Today these iconic illustrations are the triptych for the post-Trump era. Three compelling images—a Latina, an African American and a Muslim woman—by photographers Arlene Majorado, Delphine Diallo, and Ridwan Adhami, respectively. Each is rendered with Fairey’s trademark style and reinforces a singular statement that unites all Americans: We the People.
Untouchable language in the American narrative
And it’s here that Huey’s story takes another interesting turn. It starts with a question we should all be asking ourselves. “What do you say when the world’s attention is focused on one place,” Huey asked, “…when the whole world is watching?”
The American narrative has been highjacked, Huey continued. How do we get it back on track? Huey gathered thought leaders, students, journalists, heads of leading foundation and poets to create “language labs.” Through these brainstorming sessions, they identified “untouchable language.” It is language that cannot be violated, that is a unifier and that is neither “red” nor “blue.” This paired “We the People” with three basic tenets: We are greater than fear. We defend dignity. We protect each other.
“Art as advocacy. It’s beautifully simple, but really hard to do well,” Huey noted. But art, like some of the most the memorable photographs documenting history, has undeniable power,
“… to represent change, to move change and to assist us in how we walk in the world,” he added.
We’ve hit the one-year mark since the 2016 election. And the world continues to change in unexpected ways. Despite an assault on the media, fake news, Russian interference in the election and #MeToo, the 2017 election results offer a glimmer of hope. They also give me a renewed appreciation for Huey’s approach. In translating powerful images into art, buttressed by simple statements, demanding that we stand by our fundamental values, is it possible we might return to them?
We the People, We the Future
“I don’t have faith in the grownups,” Huey joked. So with backing from Stanford University, Amplifier developed an educational webinar program to bring art in the classroom—engaging more than 2,000 teachers to date—and fostering dialogue around civics, climate change and cross-cultural understanding.
Amplifier has set sights on the future by betting on school children. Yet in the Trump era, there is still a corporate elephant in the room, and Huey wants to tackle it too. Can big business learn how to be a good corporate citizen from art-driven advocacy?
Huey explained that social innovation can also take place in a corporate environment through simple but intentional steps. “Define what you believe in and create a compass,” he said, noting that the success of We the People Kickstarter campaign was founded in “people-power” and was catalyzed by words they believed in.
“If we believe these words, this is our compass,” he said. “Within every company, let there be a compass.”
by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 3, 2017 |
By Jacqueline Koch
Translating the story of our time starts with a single word
Sun and smoke! If you weren’t from the Emerald City, you’d think this was the big draw for this weekend’s Hempfest. If you are from the Emerald City, then you know better. Sun and smoke became our terrifying daily weather forecast for the first half of August.
As wildfires raged in British Columbia, Canada, and smoke poured over the border, this summer our usually Emerald City took on a peculiar, apocalyptic, “Hello Beijing!” look. In a painful twist of coincidence—or is it irony?—Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” As they say, “timing is everything” and as the film drew movie goers across the country, we Seattleites bear witness from our beautiful Pacific Northwest perch: all the warnings issued in Gore’s first film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” (2006) are coming to pass.
“The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences,” Gore stated in the film.
Now 11 years down the road, Seattle made international headlines as a reference point to the reality of climate change. And make no mistake, climate change is the defining story of our era. Look to The Guardian —The Biggest Story in the World— and National Geographic, “The biggest story of our time.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Most people (40-80%) think that climate change will harm Americans, (LEFT) but few (20-50%) think it will happen to them (RIGHT).
Climate change believers and doubters
So as we are choking on billows of wildfire smoke, why do clouds of doubt and denial continue to gather, swirl and muddy public opinion? Last spring, The New York Times offered a colorful set of data maps to illustrate the different views, conversations and questions surrounding climate change.
Why do most people think that climate change will harm Americans, but at the same time, they don’t think it will impact them personally? Everybody talks about the weather. But the climate? It turns out, it is not discussed everywhere.
What leads to this gap in understanding? Disinformation campaigns? Special interests? Fake news? We can spend a lot of time debating the great disconnect in the public understanding of climate change – yet let’s remember that 97 percent of climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.
Boost! Collective is founded on the power of storytelling, so we ask the question: Where did we go wrong in telling the climate change story, one of existential importance to us all?
A theory of climate change
Perhaps it all starts with a word: “theory.” Climate science is often couched in terms of “a theory.” (Note the danger quotes!). The public and the scientific community, including academics, researchers, scholars, each have their interpretation. And the resulting lack of alignment has pitted a mere hunch or guess—as the general public would more likely define theory—against how scientists apply the word, as a body of well-substantiated facts, repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.
In a number of easy-to-understand graphics offered by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we begin to grasp the breadth of diverging public perceptions about climate change, and, perhaps begin to understand how to address gaps in public understanding. We must take into account that “climate change communication is shaped by our different experiences, mental and cultural models, and underlying values and world views.”
But it still sounds like one Phd talking to another. Roughly translated: It’s time to understand our audience. Or audiences. And let’s adapt the message to ensure that they truly understand that change is real, climate change is happening.
Developing a shared language
So as a veil of unbreathable air descended on our fair city, forcing children and the elderly to stay inside, it’s high time to truly adopt a shared language. We must invest in, elevate and make the academic firepower that brings us these important insights accessible to all. So how do we harness these voices to ignite smarter policy and public understanding?
“Academics need to start playing a more prominent role in society instead of largely remaining observers who write about the world from within ivory towers and publish their findings in journals hidden behind expensive digital paywalls,” stated Savo Heleta, manager, Internationalization at Home and Research, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
At the heart of his recent article—Academics can change the world – if they stop talking only to their peers—he points to the ways in which academics can push their valuable research and insights into the mainstream conversation. With the help of university and government incentives and training that embeds “the art of explaining complex concepts to a lay audience,” they can dramatically expand their role in a broader dialogue.
It’s an exciting trend for our time—lose the big words, the jargon and tell us a story instead. The climate change story is real, and really scary. We all have much to gain, now more than ever, should academics take the important step to translate their work for a broader audience.
If they don’t, we will only continue to wade deeper into Gore’s “period of consequences.”
Stay tuned for our next installment, exploring how women voices—as mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, community leaders and public intellectuals—are shaping the climate change conversation.
Boost! Collective is actively involved in the conversation of issues that matter: equality and social justice, environment, wilderness preservation, homelessness, healthcare, global health and development and technology and education, among others. This is the first in a series of blogs that will address the ways in which we include all voices in these conversations, and to make them rich, layered and comprehensive so as to realize meaningful, positive social change.
by Jacqueline Koch | Apr 14, 2017 |
By Janinne Brunyee
It may not be sexy, but messaging may be one of the most important foundational tasks your team will ever take on. This is true whether you’re launching a new company or a new product or service. Why? Because messaging allows you to communicate the value of what you are delivering to each key audience simply and clearly: investors, customers, partners, employees and more.
Your message allows you to answer the question why? Why should your audience care about your offering? What transformation are you enabling for them? It also allows you to explain briefly how you are delivering value and what tangible results your audience can expect.
There are other reasons to develop messaging as well. A well thought out messaging framework that has been socialized within your organization ensures that everyone is in effect “singing off the same hymn sheet” when asked the question: What does your company do?
One client provided a great example: “If you ask each of the 16 people who work in this group what we do, each one will give a different response.” The impact, internally and externally can be quite significant as customers receive different messages and employees are not really sure what they are working on and why.
Another reason for creating a formalized messaging framework is that it acts as a foundation for creating downstream content – everything from customer presentations, web copy, email templates, press release boilerplates and more. Not only does a messaging framework allow you to spin up content quickly, but it ensures that all content consistently communicates the value that your offering delivers.
Messaging: a three-step process
In reality, the exercise of creating messaging is simultaneously a science and an art. At Boost! Collective, we have developed a methodology, the science, that is a three-step process that starts with uncovering your unique value proposition.
First, we gather all existing audience-facing materials, if any exist, so we can see how you have been talking about your offering to date. Then, we review the websites of three competitors. Our goal is to uncover their implicit messaging so we can develop messaging for you that is unique. We also want to understand what category your competitor’s offerings falls into. This is particularly important if you are creating a new category or are trying to stand out in a crowded field. It’s not enough, for example, to say that your offering is a predictive analytics platform. Clearly, this is too broad and barely gets you into the ballpark. You need to add a few descriptors: Financial performance analytics platform, for example.
Defining your unique value
We then conduct a value proposition workshop with your team during which we ask a series of structured questions designed to uncover three unique value promises you deliver to your audience. These value promises are supported by concrete features or services that allow you to deliver on each promise.
Finally, we interview three people who are representative of your targeted audience – customers, investors, partners etc. We ask them similar questions so that we can validate whether they value the same things that your team identified.
Now comes the art.
We take these inputs and use them to fill out our Messaging Framework template, starting with the three value promises and their supporting points. We also identify two or three audience challenges that each promise resolves.
Delivering an elevator pitch
Then, the magic happens. We write the elevator pitch which ends up being a bit of a “paint-by-numbers’” exercise that draws on the promises, the supporting points and the challenges.
The elevator pitch ends up being 3 paragraphs. The first, ideally, is a single sentence of around 25 words. This sentence should provide the following information:
- The name of your offering
- The category for your offering (i.e. marketing analytics platform)
- The audience you are addressing
- The value you deliver (one or more of your value promises)
How you deliver the value (what your offering does)
This first paragraph should communicate everything you need to convey if you only have limited time and space. It should stand alone.
The second and third paragraphs should each convey a bit more information. By the time you’ve finished, you should have used all three value promises and as many supporting points as are useful. Together, all three paragraphs should total about 100 words.
While this process may seem daunting, it can be completed step-by step. Bringing in impartial outsiders to lead the process who have no skin in the game can be extremely valuable. The key step is to define the unique value that your offering delivers as honestly as possible. This is not the time to be drinking any Kool Aid!
Whether you are a startup, an existing company launching a new product or it’s time to refresh the messaging for an existing product, we would love to work with you. We believe messaging is the first step on the journey to driving deep and authentic connections with your audiences. The next step? Using storytelling to bring your messaging
BOOST! COLLECTIVE is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We work collaboratively to discover, create and tell powerful stories that drive deep engagement.
by Jacqueline Koch | Feb 24, 2015 |
Coming up with one sentence that conveys the value that a product or service delivers to customers and how it is different from competitors can be very challenging. So challenging in fact, that many companies skip this step altogether. As someone who creates messaging and positioning statements for a living, I’m always trying to see if I can reverse engineer a company’s marketing message by looking at their website content. More often or not, as much as I try, I cannot find that single sentence that tells me:
- What is the product or service
- Who is the product or service intended for
- What benefit is delivered
- What results can be expected
Put like that, it seems pretty simple, right? Believe me when I tell you that it takes focus and discipline to craft a marketing message that resonates with customers. This is particularly true if your product is not yet in the market.
Having a messaging framework is REALLY important
Once in place, though, a messaging framework is an invaluable tool for content creators. Not only does it provide the structure and high level content for creating web copy, data sheets and customer presentations, but it ensures that all derivative content created by other roles in your organization and/or partners is aligned with core messaging. And it is critical that customers and other stakeholders receive a consistent message about the value of your product or service each time they interact with your organization.
Creating messaging is not a ‘once-and-done’ exercise
But messaging is not a one-time exercise. Market conditions change. The way customers use your product or service over time may change as you add more features/benefits. Your sellers are talking to your customers every day. They know what ‘works’ and what does not ring true. Your Customer Advisory Board and user groups are also an invaluable source of intelligence that can inform your messaging over time.
Run messaging by SMEs and sellers
Boost! recently had the opportunity to help a client with a decades old highly profitable offering reboot messaging. First, we constructed a messaging framework by working from existing web copy and datasheets. Predictably, there was little messaging consistency across the various channels and writers had drifted from the framework over time. We also reviewed the marketing messaging of key competitors.
Next, we created a new straw man messaging framework based on interviews with the core marketing team. Then we set up a Content Reviewer’s Board which included relevant subject matter experts and more importantly, key members of the sales organization. We worked iteratively with the Reviewer’s Board until everyone signed off on the new framework. Finally, we asked the sellers to test the messaging with customers.
Use the framework to create new content
Once the final messaging framework was in place, we created a brand new set of customer-facing sales tools including new web copy, customer presentation and datasheets. Of course, we ran each piece of content we created through the Reviewer’s Board to ensure that it would have the maximum impact with customers. We also made sure that the messaging framework is available to other content creators within the organization as well as partners who resell the offering.
Take the challenge
I am challenging you to look at your own website and customer collateral. Call us if you messaging is outdated or inconsistent. We’d love to bring some focus and freshness to this critical part of your marketing mix. Learn how else Boost! can help your organization today.
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