Don't you know who I am?

I read this Facebook post last week.

Howard was having difficulty with a company fixing an order of his. This post made me want to write some musings I've had for a while about social media and it's influence.

The is a common image of famous people getting things their own way. If they don't get good service, everybody knows about it and the business may suffer bad consequences. It's not uncommon for them to get special treatment where ever they are. This is because these people hold the public's attention. Look at the interest that is netted by people such as the Kardashians and other reality TV stars and it's not hard to see that a word or action from them could have some impact on the a business or person targeted.

It's a bit of a cliche on how important someone thinks they are if they say "Don't you know who I am?" when interacting with someone else. You see it happen in film and T.V. and with little variation the person who says that is someone of little importance just trying to enforce their will. However, in today's world of social media and international reach you never know who a person can be. There are lots of bloggers out there that have wide reach, not to mention Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. There are channels that I subscribe to on YouTube that have as many as 9 Million subscribers. If you are an online retailer and you do something bad to one of these people, you might find business impacted as word spreads.

I think the biggest lesson people should learn from social media is that you never know if the person you are talking to has an audience of social media minions. If you are a business, it is in your best interest to treat every customer like a VIP. In social interactions, it is best to be polite. If people choose to abuse that and take offense and persecute others, that is their choice and condemnation.

Activism or Slacktavism or Social Marketing

This last week I was challenged to do the ALS ice bucket challenge. I donated what I could and then took a cold shower.

There has been some criticism of the challenge. Some people disagree with the practice of using embryonic stem cell research, which is common with some forms of ALS research. But many others are criticizing the challenge as promoting slactavism. Maybe the best way to explain this is with a video (from somebody else).

There are many things that people do on social media in the name of charity, but what good does it do just to share, like, +1, or comment on something? Many people see the challenge as donate money or dump ice water on your head. With everybody dumping water on their head is any money being donated? Is this just a way for people to show how awesome they are by dousing themselves with celebrities, politicians, and business leaders. What good is it doing?

The short answer to this question is that the Ice Bucket Challenge has raised over 94 million (94.3 as of Aug 27th) with help from their donors (which include 2.1 million new donors). Their previous year's donation during the same period was 2.7 million. I don't think these numbers could be considered a coincidence. A 3492% increase is nothing to sneeze at. And they didn't have to advertise any of it. It just happened as people shared their videos.

One of my colleagues and I have been discussing this. She is tired of seeing videos of people dumping water on themselves and I can't blame her. But is it doing any real damage? Probably not - other than the multiple instances of people getting the cooler dropped on their head or other such mishaps. I can only assume that many of the people posting humorous videos of them getting wet (or not getting wet) are still donating. I can't imagine that Bill Gates would douse himself rather than donate to an acknowledged needed cause. Granted, he was probably an established donor before the challenge.

So, even though many people may be slacktavists, the campaign has still been a huge success. Even if the increase of funds was more modest it could be argued that the challenge did a lot help the battle with ALS. One of the biggest things that organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, face is getting their message and their product out into the public mind. Even if nobody explains what ALS is in their performance of the challenge the fact that thousands are dumping ice water on themselves in the name of ALS would cause people to investigate and consequently learn more about the condition. This is a kind of social marketing that many organizations would proverbially kill for. Just as it is possible for social media to launch the careers of many musicians and other careers having the ALS ice bucket challenge go viral the way it has will, hopefully, not just help this year but in years to come.