what can i do email

Here's a sample from Ed 08 of the "what can I do" email.

Dear sarah marland,

Hello Again!

As I talk to people around the country about the ED in 08 campaign, they continually ask me, "What can we do today?"

I have two answers:

1. Tell all of your friends, coworkers and family members about Strong American Schools, the ED in 08 campaign and the need to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election.

2. Ask everyone you contact to spread the word about Ed in 08 also.

You can do that two ways: Just forward this email to everyone you know or write your own personal email.

I have taken the liberty of writing some text that you might include in a mass email to your whole address book. Please feel free to use it.

I am writing to let you know about a new group that has launched a powerful, long-term campaign to make education a priority in next year's election.

Strong American Schools is a nonpartisan public awareness and action campaign offering a voice to every American who supports "ED in 08." Its goal is to ensure that the nation engages in a rigorous debate and to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election. It hopes that candidates will offer genuine leadership and tell voters how they intend to strengthen America's schools so all students receive the education they deserve.

Please visit its Web site at www.EDin08.com -- get some statistics on the schools in your state -- and download the brief papers on the state of our schools and the campaign's three priorities: national standards, effective teaching in every classroom and time and support for learning.

You can help in this important campaign. Get your friends involved. Forward this email to them, or use the convenient form on the Ed in 08 Web site to tell your family, friends and coworkers about the ED in 08 campaign.

I know the ED in 08 campaign is planning many enhancements for its Web site that will allow visitors like you to play an active role in making education a top priority in the election. By signing up to receive its email alerts, you will be informed as it rolls out these new features.

After you send those emails, keep in touch with the campaign through our Web site or catch my almost daily thoughts in "Roy's Blog on Schools".

Thank you for reaching out to your friends, coworkers and family members on our behalf. And thank you for supporting ED in 08.

All the best,

Roy Romer
Chairman
Strong American Schools

more data visualisation

I love visual representations of data -- it's gives people a quick snapshot of what is otherwise very dry stats. Here's one about Indigenous Australians life expectency compared with the rest of Australia.

mars bars stay vegetarian

It's a campaign success story. The company who make Mars Bars in the UK announced that they were going to change their Mars recipe so that it included animal products. The Vegetarian Society freaked out, and organised a campaign to get Mars to stay vego. In one week, over 6,000 people phoned and emailed the company to complain. It worked.

Here's what the company had to say:

"The consumer is our boss and we had lots of feedback from consumers who were unhappy about the change," Ms Dawson said.

"It became very clear, very quickly that we had made a mistake, for which I am sorry.

"There are three million vegetarians in the UK and not only did we disappoint them, but we upset a lot of the consumers."

When we're dealing with big companies, they do listen to consumers, but it's got to be a concerted, concentrated effort.

How did they do it?
1. They kept it simple, and they had one clear ask.
2. It was tied into an event that was already happening -- National Vegetarian Week, so it gave people a focus for that week.
3. They didn't ask people to do too much or do anything too complicated. There were 3 simple things that people could do.

> Ask your MP to sign an early day motion.
It's good because it's not just talk to your MP, it's ask to MP to do something specific. Then they have really good tips about contacting your MP, including what to do if they say yes or no to the request. At the bottom of the page, they link you to the next page, which is the next thing that you can do.
>Write a letter to your local paper
>Email masterfoods on their customer feedback form, or phone their customer service line.

making reports accessible

AIUSA have released a report on violence and Indigenous women, and one of the materials they created was a slideshow. The slideshow draws out key information and uses pictures to engage people. It also makes policy wonk reports accessible to wider audiences.

UNICEF do it extremely well and also use other tools like mapping and visual representations of statistics. Check out the multimedia versions of their flagship report, State of the world's children.

Neat little idea!

You guys may have seen this already but thought it was worth a mention.

I really like the way Adbusters run many of their campaigns.

Simple, clever and easily accessible - love it! And a neat little idea that could be adapted to lots of things.

I saw one in 'real' life and it looked fabulous. Effective!

(If only it had a call to action on it!)

http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/blog/index.php?id=358

Mandie :)

ah, a worthy cause.

Petition for Paris Hilton to be pardoned.

While this specific petition isn't interesting in any way, the site that it's appeared on is. iPetition is a free online activism tool for developing petitions. Apparently there's ways of tracking and monitoring who signs any given petition. Neat.

aiusa email

They've done it again. AIUSA have sent another engaging, motivating email written in a chatty, personable style with a cool action. Check out the Darfur one below.

What makes it work?
They use a few classic copywriting techniques:

1. Start the piece with a question.
2. Put the ask (download the song) in a couple of places in the piece.
3. Tell a story (starting with OK, I admit it.) It makes the reader feel like they're talking to a friend.
4. Bring it home at the end with a motivating sentence -- this one includes a promise, an ask, and tells people that they're part of something with a bigger purpose, that's going to make a difference.


Dear Sarah,

What do Green Day, Marianne Faithful, Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson have in common?
Stumped?

They’ve all recorded covers of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero.” But only Green Day’s version – recorded for the forthcoming album Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur – benefits Amnesty’s critical work to stop the human rights catastrophe taking place in Sudan.

Download the song now.

Ok. I admit it. I didn’t know what Green Day had in common with those other musicians before I sat down to write this. Usually, I’m much more tuned in to what’s going on in the political and human rights fields – not what’s buzzing on the music blogs. But that’s why Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur is so exciting.

Amnesty International is keeping with our tradition of combining music with activism – harnessing the power and reach of both to stop the violence and horrific human rights abuses happening each and every day in Darfur.

You can help support our campaign. Download Green Day’s song now.

With more than 50 musical artists contributing, Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur is picking up steam and getting a lot of attention. In anticipation of the album’s release in June, Green Day, REM and Los Lonely Boys have released advance tracks. Plus, we’ve been front and center at Coachella – the three-day music festival in Indio, California – staging bed-ins inspired by Lennon and Yoko Ono’s historic “Bed-Ins for Peace” 38 years ago.
The creativity and momentum around this campaign are truly remarkable – and it gives me renewed hope that we can turn the tide of violence and bring peace to the children, women and men living under siege in Darfur. To find out more about our campaign and our work visit www.instantkarma.org .

I promise to keep you posted on all the latest news about the Instant Karma campaign. And in the meantime, tell your friends and family about us. Forward this email to people you know who love music, people who care about human dignity and people – like me – who believe the two together are unstoppable.

Sincerely,

Larry Cox
Executive Director

sneaker campaign

Here's a non-political campaign to get Nike to make the sneakers that Michael J. Fox wore in Back to the Future 2.

The cynic in me thinks that it's a great way for Nike to build a market for a pair of shoes that don't exist yet.

text your own adventure

The premise is that you watch the video on You-Tube, then text what kind of ending you want to the story. It's a great way to engage people and get them involved in a campaign as well as making it easy for them to pass on to their friends.

I'm thinking of using something like it for the china campaign.

http://www.personaldemocracy.com/node/1397

US education campaign

Last week the Bill and Melinda Gates and the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundations announced a $60 million campaign, Ed 08, to put public education at the centre of issues debated in presidential election cycle.

Ed 08

The website's got a couple of neat features:

I really like the map on the front page. When you mouse over each state it shows you how many kids don't finish high school in that state. It's a simple way to get a lot of information to the user.

The send to a friend form has a pre-written letter in it, which is unusual (normally they don't have anything, or maybe just a couple of lines). It's also written in an engaging style starting with "Did you know ...". I also like how the form letter starts a paragraph space below the starting point for people to write above it. It's well spaced.

New Tactics in Human Rights

As a resource, one that I have used in the past is new Tactics in Human Rights. It's tactics, but it has a nice international flavour where people do culturally appropriate activism for their region/country. http://www.newtactics.org/

activism tracker

Hi A-Team,

A few months ago, in the days before planning, I was working on an activism scan -- a paper documenting some well-known campaigns and analysing their success. I've decided that instead of writing a long paper that will sit in a dusty file on the G drive, I've created this blog to keep track of
of noteworthy campaigns and activism and any cool ideas I come across.

It's a private blog, which means only people I give access to will be able to read it. You can use it how you want. You can use it as a source of ideas, you can comment on any posts and we can have a discussion about things, or you can post your own ideas. If you don't want to contribute, that's OK too.

I hope it's helpful!

Sarah