Guest post: how cult YouTube directors can interest a young demographic in the issue of climate change

Who better to write this blog post on Blog Action Day 2009 than my sister Cheryl Campbell?

Cheryl is the executive director of tve, a charity that has been making films and documentaries about the environment for 25 years. Here she writes of her sons’ fascination for the cult YouTube videos of Eddsworld and Ted Crusty which  inspired her to work with the very same directors inviting them to give their take on climate change. What better way to appeal to a youngYouTube generation than to work with the stars of the medium.

I like the subject of this post written for this blog on this day of all days.

Blog Action Day 2009 focuses on climate change. These Digital Times is a blog dedicated to observing and supporting all our journeys from traditional to digital media. tve, a traditional maker of films about climate change,  launches something completely different using the tools of new media to get its message across. Cheryl’s post neatly brings all these elements together.

Read what she has to say. Watch the videos.  And send a message to world leaders about climate change.

Eighteen months ago I asked my young son to show me on YouTube what it was that (with all parental filters in place, of course!) was keeping him and his mates so fascinated, what it was that, when they got together as a group, made the computer more interesting than television or the XBOX.

Last night, as a result of that fascinating tour of YouTube channels, tve launched A Million Views on Copenhagen, a series of short, quirky irreverent climate change videos produced by  – and for – the YouTube generation.

tve, which is a UK based charity, has been making films and documentaries about the key environment and development challenges of our time for 25 years. Last year our films reached at least 300 million homes via global television broadcast and many more viewers via broadcasts on nearly 90 national and regional television channels. As you would expect, we are busy making films both long and short in the lead up to the crucial UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

But how to connect with that younger “hard to reach” audience? Some of these cult YouTube producers have vast followings of on-line fans, including Eddsworld, Ted Crusty and Custard Productions. We decided to invite them to produce a series for us, to give us their individual takes on climate change in the run up to the conference in Copenhagen in December. They’re joined by Alisha Tuladhar, a 16 year old schoolgirl from Nepal, and Mike-Steve Adeleye, an award-winning Namibian animator.

And we’ve been delighted with the results. Their films are exciting, innovative and engaging: a polar bear falling from the sky, plastic trees and a Lego campaigner against carbon tax are just some of the ways these members of the YouTube generation deliver their takes on climate change. It has been great to work with all the filmmakers: Edd Gould and Tom Ridgewell of Eddsworld, Mike Tapscott (Ted Crusty), Keshen Matus of Custard Productions, Mike-Steve Adeleye and Alisha Tuladhar. We thank them for sharing their creativity with us.

And so far, from the comments mounting up on our YouTube channel, it looks as we are achieving what we as a charity set out to do – inspiring change – with plenty of entertainment mixed in. “That’s it! I’m plugging out my particle accelerator!” “Woot! Another hilarious eddsworld movie and this time it has a meaning” “haha loved it it made the message bout global warming clear in a funny way” “I better go turn off a light switch now” – let’s keep those comments coming!

tve is not a campaigning organisation. But we often have most impact where we work closely with an organisation who knows how to take the interest and awareness we generate with viewers (be that through television or online) and turn it into action. In this our 25th year we’ve been delighted to partner with one of our founders, WWF, to give viewers of the series  that opportunity  ahead of Copenhagen. Viewers will be invited to Vote Earth and send a message to world leaders by clicking here and joining the call for a global deal on climate change at Copenhagen.

We’re hoping to attract a million views to the series by December so please do click through to tve on YouTube , watch the films. And finally, none of this would have been possible without the support of the Artemis Charitable Foundation. I am hugely grateful to the Foundation for enabling us to reach new audiences with such an exciting and cutting edge series.

Other UBM colleagues who have written for Blog Action Day 2009 are Anthony Hildebrand, Brian Sims, Ron Alallouf, Phil Clark, Grahame Morrison, Rob Enslin and Ed Sexton.

Here is a link to my contribution to Blog Action Day 2008.

Is an MA in Social Media strictly necessary?

Would you be impressed by a candidate boasting the University of Salford’s proposed MA in Social Media (hat tip Chi-chi Ekweozor)?

Recruitment is becoming a key issue for any traditional company building its digital business. Does it continue to appoint people in the image of its existing employees, and then spend months training them, or should a company only consider candidates with a minimum social media footprint?

The Guardian has just recruited Lauren Luke, a 27-year-old single mother and YouTube make-up star, as a columnist. As Online Journalism Blog’s Paul Bradshaw says

I’ve written previously that if you want to get into journalism you should have a blog. I’d add to that: if you want your own column, you should build up a following on YouTube too. News organisations will increasingly not just be looking for people who know what they’re talking about, but how to distribute it effectively online.

Note that Ms Luke is a make-up artiste first and a YouTuber second. Similarly no company, whatever its legacy, is suddenly going to drop its requirement for core skills and be seduced by social media. 

Calculators, emails and now Twitter

Social media is just the next technological development to impact on the workplace. When the excitement has died down, what would be the point of knowing about the kit rather than the core skills themselves? Did we appoint people in the 1970s who knew how to use calculators or shortlist candidates in the 1990s who were good at sending emails?  Why appoint someone skilled in Twitter if they cannot write, market or sell?

No. All we need are people good at the core skills who happen to have set up a blog, a Twitter account and/or used LinkedIn.

It does not seem much to ask. But it ain’t an MA.

Photo credit: David the Pimp Daddy

Could Barnado’s “feral children” advertisement ever become the UK’s Motrin saga?

Over the weekend, the power of social media to undermine a company’s reputation was on full display in the US. Mothers Twittered and blogged drug company Motrin into submission over its advertisement on YouTube targeting baby-sling wearing mums. The “Motrin Mothers“ were outraged that any company could use what they saw as a negative image about child-rearing. By Monday morning, the company was truly humbled as its website had collapsed and nobody seemed to be around to deal with the fall-out, read Jeremiah Owyang and David Armano.

Could the same happen in the UK? Monday saw the release of an advertisement by Barnado’s, a charity for children. ”Feral children“ portrays a group of rednecks piling into a car to go shoot “vermin” who turn out to be children on a social housing estate. The justification? That each comment made by the would-be hunters have actually been made by real people to UK newspaper websites.

 It is a raw, powerful video with some shocking imagery. There has been some reaction in the traditional press and forums. As of today, Addictomatic shows some activity on blogs but Twitter not much. Is the UK so underdeveloped in social media compared to the US? Can UK organisations or companies rely on a continuing broadcast culture to preserve their reputations? Are people a lot less emotive on such subjects than their US cousins?

I leave you to compare the two videos below.

Six steps to get started in social media

I am often asked by my colleagues and people on Tweets how to START in the world of social media, particularly blogging. So here’s my six step plan

1. I would follow (ie sign up for their email alerted postings) blogs by former journalists so Jeff Jarvis (also Guardian columnist),  Craig Stolz, Mark Potts. Note how people comment on postings, how many comment, the etiquette of commenting (join the debate, leave something intriguing, not a plea to read your posting) and where some of the comments lead you to – bloggers you might never have heard of. Remember the key act of blogging is the posting of a comment on another person’s blog and drawing the traffic back to your site or blog. But, before you set up that blog, practise commenting on other blogs.
2. Read some of the leading social media marketers such as Peter Kim, Jeremiah Owyang, David Armano. There is a huge wave of companies using social media to market themselves in the US. These bloggers cover the phenomenon just as the first splash hits the UK. 
3. Read a good blog about blogging so you get to understand the culture –  Darren Rowse’s Problogger. 
4. Set up a Twitter account and start following people like Jay Rosen, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan (find them on my Twitter where I FOLLOW them). When their Tweets start coming through on your account, click through the links that they send out. Some will be of no interest but some will take you to some amazing places – leaders of social media are actually sharing their thoughts and views with you. Could old media ever have done such a thing? 
5. Set up a LinkedIn or Facebook account, if you have not already done so. Note how different they both are to use, in terms of contacts found and content used. Open a Flickr account and start sending photos to it from your mobile phone – it spews out an email address just for you.  Start a YouTube account and save some favourite videos. All these things are really easy once you get your head into working out how to do it. Go to Google and see how high up your name appears, riding the social media bounce. 
6. Over a very short period, all this activity will all start coming together and you will feel the need to set up a FriendFeed to aggregate it all in one place. And, only at this point, will you be ready to set up a blog having thought really hard about your subject, nicely focused and firmly anchored in your specialism.

Will you let me know how it goes or, better still, show me through social media – a comment on my blog linking back to yours, or a comment on my FriendFeed  – how you are progressing?

Zemanta – what is it like to use?

Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase

 Ever since I stumbled into this amazing linked in, collaborative world of blogs and social media, I am eternally looking for aggregators -  aggregators that bring all my digital activity together, like FriendFeedfor example.

So it was with delight that I read about upgrades to Zemanta in this morning’s ReadWriteWeb. It describes it thus.

Zemanta, the blogging tool which harnesses semantic technology to add relevant content to your posts, has just released a major upgradeto their service. This new release allows you specify the sources you want to see in the suggestions list that Zemanta provides. You can now incorporate your own social networks, RSS feeds, and photos from your Flickr account into your blog posts. This makes Zemanta a lot more appealing to established bloggers who are in less need of suggestions and more in need of automation.

Well it has been a tough evening! Let me reiterate the problems:

• the download is easy enough but one simple step is missed out – that once the programme is downloaded, you needed to go to the dashboard of your blog to see the “tick” icon. I spent some time trying to work out why is was not working when it was on my site already!
• I managed to input my email address inaccurately. Unfortunately the function to correct your email or even to ask Zemanta for a reminder of your password is not yet available. “Next week” I am told!
• When you make the links to Facebook or MyBlogLog or whatever, it has an annoying habit of not saving it.

But a big BUT. Don’t be put off for these reasons.

• when I emailed the help desk, I got the most extraordinary response including a minute-by-minute guide from operations manager Marko Mrdjenovic using Skpe’s instant messaging.
• I cannot praise enough what is happening as I write this. Zemanta is feeding me links to sites I am mentioning but also offering up illustrations.
• It gets better. I have input several of my groups from Facebook, MyBlogLog and Twitter. If I mention anything that aligns with their profiles, it offers up them as well, suggesting links.
• Oh, and Zemanta also fills out the tags for you!

Frankly it looks amazing like it is going to be amazing. Get downloading!

PS And if my future postings look somewhat over-hyperlinked, sorry!

PPS For all those non-web designers, programmers reading this blog, Zemanta is a lot less easy than Sweetcron.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Get Zemified! with Zemanta