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Pablo Jeffress for the great "ianovation" picture.)

This post is from from my other blog here

During the recent US Presidential Election, Barack Obama made some welcome promises on the state of crisis in Darfur. The "unstinting resolve" that he mentioned was a strong statement that gave many people hope that the world's most powerful nation would, in fact, help bring peace and resolution to Darfur (learn more here).

If you live in the US, you can help remind your President-elect of these promises, by signing this petition. Please do so.

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Heather Snodgrass’ sharp personal observations will keep you coming back for more.

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Almost a generation ago we, the public, started to twig that there could be a downside to smoking. A whole swag of research followed – about the relative merits of additives, flavours (remember menthol?) and so on. In the end, it was settled – the best approach would be to add a tip to cigarettes so that the very worst elements of cigarette smoke would be filtered out for us.

Guess what happened. Well, you know the answer – cigarette smoke still kills us every year by the thousand.

You see, we never went to the “root cause” of the problem. We fluffed around the edges. We talked up the health impacts and bombarded consumers with “the facts” – and while there has been some successes, millions of young people around the world continue to take up smoking every year. Facts don’t change our behaviour – feelings do.

We are now facing similar confusion around Stephen Conroy’s internet filter. There are plenty of facts floating around:

• That the filter will slow down our broadband by around 80%
• That it will impact regional community far more than the city
• That it can be easily by-passed via peer-to-peer file sharing
• That it will massively increase the size of the internet site blacklist which is ALREADY in place

As Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children Fund states in the Sydney Morning Herald, the filter scheme is “‘fundamentally flawed’ because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources”.

But there is a root cause issue here – the facts point out the issues but don’t address our emotional response. It is NOT a filter we need. It’s EDUCATION. It’s empowerment. Why should we allow the federal government to WASTE $40 million of our hard-earned taxes when it could be so easily diverted into education – training for kids AND their parents. And it is important that we let the government know our thoughts.

With this internet filter, we are just papering over the problem. There will always be material available in our communities that we would rather not see. There are problems that we would rather not be exposed to. But our challenge, and our duty, is to stand-up to such issues – not avoid them. What price can we put on the empowering of our communities and our kids? As David Campbell might say, it’s “priceless”.

(BTW you can listen in to David’s podcast feed here).

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I always find it interesting that a great deal of thought will be put into the strategic planning of a campaign – but very little time will be devoted to creating a content strategy. After all, it is the content that will bring your campaign to life. And perhaps, more importantly, it is content that will feed your social media efforts.

Some time ago, I was interviewed by ethos3 – seven questions on storytelling – where I discussed the P-L-A-Y framework for brand engagement. I remember emphasising the importance of allowing people into the context of your world – like starting a story with “once upon a time”. For me, content marketing comes back to telling a story. It is using the techniques and devices of storytelling to change the way that someone relates to your business, brand or product. And it’s about allowing these people into the process of storytelling. For brands, that means changing the way that you think of your consumers. For businesses, it means transforming the relationships you have with customers. And for marketers, it means changing the very nature of the work that we do.

But if this is the case, where can you find out about content marketing?

Over the last 12 months, additional focus has been given to “content marketing”. The “Top 42” content marketing blogs have been tracked and compiled regularly on the Junta 42 website (servantofchaos.com is currently ranked #16), and Guy Kawasaki has recently created a new content marketing catalogue for his alltop.com site. Each of these sites provide a convenient listing of content marketing related sites – which is valuable for any marketer wanting to think through a content marketing strategy. (And while many people feel more than a little jaded about the relevance of lists with their rankings of “influence” or “authority”, I still feel that most lists like this listing of 150 social media blogs, can prove to be a great resource for all of us).

And in this interview with Bryan Person, David Alston shares his insights around the importance of content marketing. As VP Marketing for Radian6, David has a broad professional and personal interest in social media and the role that content marketing plays in lubricating our social/digital interactions. As David says, "Not everyone's a customer when you WANT them to be a customer" ... so content allows you to offer value (not a product) to build a relationship. And in social media, it’s relationships that count.

So, tell me … what’s your story? Why is content important to your brand?

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transformation in the way that information flows via citizen journalists/social media since September 11.

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Moshcam will soon have streaming video available on the web (Moshcam generously supported the concert by filming it for free).

It just goes to show what CAN be achieved by a strong purpose and a supportive and interested community. And if you would like to contribute to the Article Thirty-Nine cause, leave me a comment.

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Stan Johnson calls out the neat viral work of Droga 5 for their Guitar Hero YouTube video. But then Freddie Wong shows what can be done with limited resources, some creativity and a passion.

Of course, this is part of what can be considered “viral” – where a piece of work mutates by coming into contact with other forces. After all, the “aim” of a viral is not necessarily simply to spread (ie deliver reach) but to prompt conversation and participation. While Freddie only has one-seventh of the views that the original video has, I daresay, the production costs were much lower ;)

How does it feel to be out-viralled? The answer: it rocks.

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micro-interactions that we take for granted. And this is one of the core values of social media for brands – that the difference between what your customers INTEND and the way they BEHAVE disappears – and you are left with a sentiment that contributes to (or detracts from) your brand promise. More power to the community!

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Contexts and times change ... but Google lasts forever. So what do you think? Are we "one"? Were we ever?