Media Relations for a New Generation

Saturday I drove to Atlanta with my roommate to participate in The Rescue, an event in 100 cities across 10 countries by The Invisible Children. If you’ve never heard of The Invisible Children, educate yourself.

The Rescue was (and still is) an attempt to end Africa’s longest running war, Joseph Kony’s war in Uganda with an army of abducted child soldiers. The event started Saturday at 3 in every city and is still happening in the cities that haven’t yet been “rescued.” The plan is essentially a non-traditional media relations strategy: To be rescued, each city must attract major media coverage and a celebrity to the site to make a statement of support for The Rescue. The hundreds and thousands of people who gathered won’t leave until they’ve been rescued. In Atlanta, we were rescued 8ish on Saturday by Jeff Foxworthy and Fox 5 News. While I’m writing this, 11 cities still haven’t been rescued– and they’re holding out.

What makes this event different than a protest or something of the sort is the connectivity of 100 cities in 10 different countries all supporting each other online at the same time. Even in the cities where the media has refused to come, the longer the participants stay, the more exposure the movement gets and the more desperate their cries become. The Invisible Children set up an online hub for everyone involved that includes a live-streaming video at the headquarters (the hosts have not slept, making them very interesting at this point in time…), a real-time Twitter update down the side (#therescue was at the top of the Twitter trending topics this weekend), and hundreds of pictures, videos, montages, and articles from every city involved. People in London voicing support for the unrescued in Chicago. People united in a cause and able to encourage thousands of others from their vantage point on the other side of the world.

The thing is, with or without the so craved national media attention, this event is hugely successful. The Internet is a medium, and The Rescue has been ALL OVER IT for the entire weekend. It will continue to be as the stories of people not going to work to stay at the site make the story more and more dramatic. This media relations effort is different because the demonstrators are also creators of media. The event produced (and is producing) more pictures, more videos, and more interviews than media outlets could or would produce. And they’re all available 24/7 on the Web site, on blogs, on YouTube, on Twitter, etc.

Spokane, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, Huntington, Charleston, Richmond, Baltimore, and Harrisburg still need help. If you have any influence with media or moguls in any of these cities, please do what you can to aid their rescue. The last city, Chicago, was rescued yesterday by Oprah and her friend Gayle. They’ve invited the Invisible Children people to be on the show today at 4 pm! Check it out!

Message still matters more than method…or math

Image by JP Holecka

I read this post by JP Holecka of POWERSHiFTER Media in Vancouver about the follies of assuming that having a lot of new media “friends,” followers on Twitter, in particular, means a brand is somehow succeeding in creating a positive image in the minds of the masses.

“If you gather up a ton of Twitter followers and have nothing relevant to say. Your brand will become dull and tiresome quickly and the giant swath numbers your brand has worked hard to get will have zero value.”

No matter how you look at it, new media + lotsa followers ≠ mission accomplished !

In fact, lack of well-developed messaging strategy and openness to two-way symmetrical communication can ultimately make all those followers your worst nightmare. What could be worse than directly and personally pissing off several thousand people who used to be your biggest fans?

Holecka says your content, specifically on Twitter, should “be engaging, insightful, helpful and maybe even carry a narrative.”

So, matter how sexy a new online tool may seem, it is not a strategy apart from your strategic implementation of it–and getting as many followers as possible doesn’t count as strategy! Know what you want to accomplish through your chosen media– and then, carry it out with personality and benefit the people who do choose to engage with you.