Fundraising with Instagram: #FoodShareFilter

Posted on April 15, 2013 by communicable

Fundraising with Instagram. How the hell do you do that? Enter Manos Unidas, a Spanish NGO that engaged DDB Madrid to develop the first charity photo filter app - #FoodShareFilter for Instagram – so our endless food pics can help feed the hungry.

Slacktivism is a form of activism

#FoodShareFilter model is simple. You download the app ($1.15), take a picture of your food, which is something thousands of us do every day anyway, and share it. The money goes to hunger programs run by Manos Unidas. #FoodShareFilter hashtag spreads the message. This is nothing short of genius, and a perfect fit for Instagram.

I would love to see Second Harvest and Daily Bread in Toronto get their Instagram fundraising game on. Instagram is solidifying its status as a platform that charities ignore at their peril.

However, DDB Madrid misspelled “Campaign” in the ad tagline, and the copy in the English version just doesn’t cut it: “A new way to spread a supportive message and help end poverty has born”? All this wonderful work and stupid spelling mistakes?!? And why was this English version posted on “DDBSpainChannel” and not Manos Unidas YouTube channel? This part makes me sad, but it underscores the importance of talking to global audience when we raise money. Thinking bigger. Doing better work. And finding good translators!

Sources

Update: Mashable came out with a story about the app two days after I wrote this blog post. Nice to know I was there first!

50 coffee meetings update

Posted on April 9, 2013 by communicable

I am doing a 50 coffee meetings challenge, and this article on effective coffee meetings came handy. Thought I’d share it here.

The future of logos: GIFs

Posted on April 9, 2013 by communicable

Think about it. There’s no reason for logos – or any other element of a webpage for that matter – to stay static anymore.

We have responsive design, we have HTML5, and fun things like the parallax effect, which is a fancy name for a web page with various moving parts. Check out the coolness of the paralax effect illustrated by Mailchimp, GE, ESPN, and even Milwaukee police.

Google rolled out a search for GIFs. Twitter launched Vine. I don’t love Vine, but the power of moving images like this kind of blows my mind.

Neiman Marcus gets it. YouTube hacked itself and did the best Harlem Shake ever. I have seen various uses of moving images on Tumblr - here’s one of my recent favourites. I’m mesmerized by Julien Smith’s sleeping breathing dog on breather.com. But there’s so much more fun to be had.

Time to forget the static page.

ROM unveils new logo and well, what do you think?

Posted on March 25, 2013 by communicable

Royal Ontario Museum unveiled its new logo – and as much as I am trying to love it, I just can’t.

Here’s why I think the old logo served ROM better

Colours – old logo had upbeat, vibrant, friendly, fun, cool colours that translated well into all other ROM properties – digital and print.
Shape of the building was part of the logo and it made the ROM logo even more recognizable. Simply put, it helped bring up and solidify the visual reference of the real ROM. And if you’ve never been, it had a wacky, artsy, cool quality about it.
Social media and mobile friendly logo – whenever I saw any tweets from ROM, it was easy to tell those apart from everyone else’s tweets, because the old logo stood out.

New logo

I get it, and I don’t hate the concept. ROM plans to use its “O” to highlight various museum exhibits and showcase other museum attractions. The new “O” is “dynamic” (check out those cool butterflies in the video about the new logo). ROM must’ve felt they’d like to play with the logo more, and build on it. In spite of the good intentions, this is how it looks in my Twitter stream: white on white “O” just looks odd, like something is missing. And I imagine once they ‘hack’ their logo, it might look even worse. And “O” awkwardly takes a bite out of the neighbouring “M”. Yum.

This is what the new logo looks like when the negative space in “O” is “spruced up” by an image. Does it deliver on the promise of “dynamic”? Does it make you want to go to the ROM?

And the colour purple? I suppose that’s the “royal” part, but it looks dated. The black and white iteration currently on the museum’s website header suggests to me that the ROM itself feels ambivalent about the new look. I certainly prefer the black-and-white version. It’s elegant and clear, but, for a place like ROM you really do want to see a fun creative logo in colour.

How about you? Do you like the new ROM logo?

Disclaimer: I am not a professional logo designer, but ROM’s target audience isn’t made of professional designers. Logos should have a mass appeal, and this one somehow reminded me of RIM. How’s that a good thing for a museum.

CSI takes on Crowdfunding

Posted on March 21, 2013 by communicable

I am thrilled to see CSI launch its own crowdfunding site: http://www.csicatalyst.org/ - Crowdfunding for a better world. Have I signed up? You bet I did.

I have written about the future of crowdfunding as marketing. I’d like to be proven wrong.

CSI’s catalyst platform powered by HiveWire has got good vibes, and I hope to see more projects on it. We don’t have Kiva here in Canada, and to be fair, Kiva’s focus is on eradicating poverty. So CSI with its mission to support social entrepreneurship and it’s newly launched crowdfunding platform is as close to the genius and values of microfinancing as it gets. Go explore it. Play with it. Add your own projects.

Unleash the true power behind the idea of crowdfunding – people helping people to make our world a better place.

So this doesn’t happen:

50 Coffee Meetings – Carolyn Van

Posted on March 14, 2013 by communicable

I am embarking on a 50 coffee meetings challenge.

50 coffee meetings. It should stick in your head as a metaphor for networking. For getting outside of your comfort zone. For starting relationships today that won’t pay off for a year. It’s the entrepreneur’s equivalent of “10,000 hours.”

Carolyn Van picked ING Direct Cafe for our coffee meeting – that’s where she often spends her coffee breaks as a co-founder and head of sharks of Third Ocean, among all other cool things she does. Carolyn is truly passionate and knowledgable about all things digital and innovative, and I will be watching her new initiative Venus Ventures closely. We need more smart women like her in the startup community, and we need to support each other as professionals, entrepreneurs and friends.

Because, to quote another brilliant entrepreneur Sarah Prevette, “The most powerful tool we have is each other”. Carolyn Van quickly grasped the brilliance of the 50 coffees idea and joined the movement – starting her own 50 coffees soon.

Carolyn, I loved our coffee. Thank you for the encouragement, willingness to help and many bright ideas. I’m looking forward to being your coffee #9. I feel like we barely scratched the surface of what can be, so let’s get together again

50 Coffee Meetings

Posted on March 13, 2013 by communicable

I am embarking on a 50 coffee meetings challenge.

50 coffee meetings. It should stick in your head as a metaphor for networking. For getting outside of your comfort zone. For starting relationships today that won’t pay off for a year. It’s the entrepreneur’s equivalent of “10,000 hours.”

This simple auctionable bit of advice made a lot of sense, especially once I saw the power of 50 Coffees in action. If you are reading this, and you are working on new ideas as I am, I challenge you to start your own 50 coffee meetings and write about all the cool people you meet.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you 50 coffees.

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