August 5th, 2010
My mother purchased this plant as a gift for the ELISE office opening in October 2007 in Philadelphia. At the time, it was so small, it barely looked appropriate on the floor, perhaps more appropriate as a desk plant. My mom actually apologized for its size upon handing it to me, but I knew it would grow.
Around that time, we had just signed Paul Polak as a client and were helping him prepare to launch Out of Poverty. The book was focused on market-based approaches and treating individuals at the bottom of the pyramid as customers rather than recipients of charitable donations. We were reading Sachs and Easterly, helping Paul shape his personal image, brand and messaging.
Now, I find myself still looking at the plant daily: it has flourished, consuming most of the floor space under the window. It reminds me of our growth as a marketing and strategic communications practice, and the increasing scale of our client network.
Our clients are focused on social innovation and entrepreneurship, and they include The Lemelson Foundation, the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Games for Health Project. Because of these related social missions, this collaborative knowledge creation generates tremendous leverage. Our choice to focus on this niche has created a valuable knowledge base and network.
We depend on deeply engaged, inspiring clients to continue to help us grow and today we are honored to announce a new client, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a network of like-minded social enterprises.
Specifically, ANDE is a non-profit, non-partisan policy program of the Aspen Institute. It is a global network of organizations with a common commitment to build entrepreneurship in the developing world. Since the official launch in March 2009, ANDE has grown to include over 90 organizations, including the Citi Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Shell Foundation and the Acumen Fund.
We welcome them to ELISE and are excited to be working with this organization.
We might just buy a plant to commemorate the occasion!
April 1st, 2010
Team ELISE spent five days last week in San Francisco for the NCIIA’s annual March Madness for the Mind showcase of student invention. As always, the event was a roaring success, and we met some really engaged collegiate entrepreneurs who we’re sure you’ll be hearing more from in the future.
But this year’s event still managed to be unique in many ways: it was the first time that March Madness for the Mind was held in San Francisco; the first year that an actual head-to-head element was added to the programming, in the form of an all-team video competition; and the first year that the NCIIA collaborated with Inventors Digest magazine to promote the event. In many ways, this looked like your standard media partnership: Inventors Digest featured NCIIA-supported inventors and NCIIA staffers in its pages (including a gorgeous cover story), and the NCIIA in turn made sure that Inventors Digest’s logo appeared on the March Madness for the Mind Web site and throughout the annual conference and at the public event. But the partnership took a turn into the experimental, incorporating an ambitious social media campaign surrounding the video competition.
At first, the social media integration was simple: NCIIA and Inventors Digest announced the partnership on their respective Web sites, then repeated the announcement, briefly, to their Facebook fans and Twitter followers. This enabled both organizations not only to get the word out about the video competition, but also to strengthen their connection through the use of hypertext—which is to say that every time Inventors Digest was mentioned on the NCIIA’s site, if even in passing, NCIIA provided a link back to Inventors Digest, and vice-versa. And a few weeks later, when Inventors Digest announced its own competition, to launch officially the day of March Madness for the Mind, the relationship between the two organizations was further solidified as it became the NCIIA’s turn to post about Inventors Digest’s activities.
Once the details of the partnership were solidified, ELISE created a social media release via PitchEngine that allowed us to streamline the process when we were actually doing the pitching: we could send a link to the release instead of needing to copy-paste or send an attachment; low-res photos were downloadable directly from the release’s slide show and high-res photos were linked at the bottom of the page; and compelling video could be viewed and linked to without any need to leave PitchEngine and visit YouTube. The release received several hundred views within the first days of being posted and began getting traction on its own: when doing our final round of short-lead pitching, we found that some bloggers had found the release on their own and were familiar with March Madness for the Mind before they heard from us. And at least one story about March Madness for the Mind appeared when an intrepid blogger stumbled across the release without receiving a pitch from our office at all.
The social media release was also dynamic, allowing for even the tiniest updates as they happened. So when the NCIIA/Inventors Digest video competition finally went live on the Inventors Digest Web site, we were able to seamlessly integrate the updated information into the release’s links section. We’d like to think that updating this link had at least a little something to do with the 109% Web traffic increase that Inventors Digest experienced during the run of the competition—but we’re well aware that, in reality, this highly successful component of the March Madness for the Mind social media campaign was only partly because of our stellar social media release.
Mostly, it was because the video competition went viral—and that’s the true mark of a successful social media campaign, because, as Peter Shankman will tell you, “viral” isn’t something you can force. If you have good content, internet users the whole world over will want to share it. You still need your communications team to help create this content and get it posted, but it’s up to the rest of the world to decide if it’s worth sharing.
And when they do? That’s how you know you ran your campaign right.
March 24th, 2010
Starting tomorrow, Team ELISE will be in San Francisco for the NCIIA’s annual March Madness for Mind, a showcase of collegiate invention and innovation held this year at the Exploratorium. During the event, Excellence and Entrepreneurship Teams (E-Teams)—collaborating groups of college students, faculty members and industry mentors who have received NCIIA grants—from all over the country will unveil their inventions to the public, many for the first time. This year, sixteen E-Teams from Brown (see above) to Stanford and all points in between will display their state-of-the-art medical, agricultural and environmental innovations during the exhibit.
The NCIIA has partnered with Inventors Digest, the nation’s longest running publication for the inventing culture, to host a video competition for participating E-Teams. Public voting ended last week, but the videos are still available on the Inventors Digest Web site. The winners of the competition will be announced at the event on Saturday March 27 after the top three videos are screened.
We’re excited to see which teams received the most votes and to get an up-close look at the work these dedicated and creative students and their professors have put in over the past year. More on our trip when we’re all back east!
March 9th, 2010
Image: Flickr user Ivan Walsh
Oh joy—another PR Tools discussion! Last we spoke, I argued for the importance for the press release in the PR industry. I still stand by my statement that “the press release is the foundation of any earned media campaign,” but just as one must adapt to live, one must also accept change to survive in the PR industry.
In the last eighteen months, Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, such as Chatroulette, have taken off. In order to exceed the status quo we (and other PR professionals as well) have had to adapt our styles, techniques and tools to maintain our audiences’ attention.
So how long do we have to maintain someone’s attention? According to Wikipedia, the average adult will only focus on something for eight seconds unless the person engages in a sustained focus—the act of actively concentrating on an object or task at hand for twenty minutes or more. This means that we have less than ten seconds to seduce our readers into an uninterrupted focus on our press release. Catchy headlines and sub-headers are nice and dandy but what better way to tempt our readers than to include pictures, slideshows, etc. in the press release? Websites like PitchEngine (an ELISE favorite) allow for graphics and videos to stream while the viewer reads or skims the release. Since publishing our NCIIA March Madness for the Mind 2010 release on PitchEngine it has been viewed over 300 times.
As society begins to rely more heavily on visual news rather than the written word, the PR industry must be malleable and willing to conform to new practices and techniques that will emotionally entice the reader and motivate them to read about the story. It isn’t enough to have a well-written story any more; graphics and visuals are necessary. How will you incorporate them into your next PR campaign?
January 5th, 2010
Happy New Year! We hope all of you are as excited for 2010 as we are here at ELISE. This is proving to be a fantastic year, chock-full of many new events and experiences. Over the next few months ELISE will be on the go, East Coast to West Coast and everywhere in between.
Here is just a sampling of some of our exciting work to come:
February 11-13, 2010: Tech4Society, an Ashoka-Lemelson celebration, will be held in Hyderabad, India. Tech4Society is a three-day conference that is expected to draw over 250 social entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders and movers and shakers who will explore how technology can drive social change.
March 5, 2010: Opening of the Marvels and Ciphers exhibit at the museum at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Old City, Philadelphia. The world premiere exhibition examines the dichotomy that exists between scientist and citizen: the first group trying to understand the universe, and the second trying to understand the scientist.
March 8, 2010: Richard Holmes will be hosting a lecture and reading at CHF. Holmes is a biographer, whose latest book, The Age of Wonder (2008), was recently named the best nonfiction book of 2009 by TIME. The Age of Wonder focuses on the life and work of the Romantic-age scientists who laid the foundation for modern science.
March 25-27, 2010: NCIIA’s annual March Madness for the Mind 2010 will be held at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California. The event showcases the nation’s top “E-Teams”—collaborating groups of college students, faculty and industry mentors who have received NCIIA grants—unveiling their inventions to the public, many for the first time.
Week of April 12, 2010: Launch of Kirk Boyd’s book, 2048: Humanity’s Agreement to Live Together, in San Francisco, California. The University of California, Berkeley Law Professor’s book focuses on an enforceable international agreement that will create a social order based upon human rights.
We are looking forward to all that 2010 has to offer. Let us know if we will see you at any of these events and be sure to visit us on this blog and our Facebook and Twitter pages for updates.
December 1st, 2009
Image Credit: Flickr user Jayel Aheram
For many of us, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are spent in true holiday style. We sing Christmas carols; we brave the over-crowded malls (or we don’t, and we buy everything on Amazon.com); we spend time with our loved ones. Even for those of us who are not religious, the holiday season is a happy time of year that really gives us the opportunity to sit back and be grateful for all that we have—at least in the developed world.
It’s perhaps for that reason that World AIDS day falls right in the middle of the holiday season. The World AIDS Campaign began this annual December 1 tradition in 1988—at a time when AIDS and HIV were greatly misunderstood—to promote education and understanding about the disease. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, World AIDS Day reminds us that there are others out there who are not so fortunate nor as carefree as we. When everything around is decked out in red and green, World AIDS Day asks us to focus, just a little, on the red.
The World AIDS Campaign is not an ELISE client, nor do we work with any AIDS-focused charities. But many of our clients support technology that could help reduce the spread of the virus, and facilitate its diagnosis, in the developing world. The Lemelson Foundation, for instance, granted funds to PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) to continue their work in developing a female condom that could not only protect women in the developing world from unwanted pregnancies, but also reduce these women’s risks of contracting HIV or another sexually-transmitted disease. A few months ago, the NCIIA awarded top honors at their annual BMEidea competition to NanoLab (formerly Lab-on-a-Stick), a portable diagnostic tool that could allow for early diagnoses of diseases, such as HIV and AIDS, in remote or developing areas that did not have diagnostic lab facilities. And over the summer, the Games for Health Conference in Boston hosted a presentation on Pamoja Mtanni, a videogame about HIV prevention for Kenyan youth.
We are proud to help these amazing projects, and others, gain the notoriety they deserve—on World AIDS Day and every other day of the year.
November 18th, 2009
The next time you excuse yourself to the restroom, you might pause to consider the 2.5 billion people worldwide who lack access to toilets and proper sanitation. That is nearly half the global population, and that is a lot of people. Tomorrow, November 19, is World Toilet Day, and while you probably don’t have it marked on your calendar, it represents a luxury that most of us take for granted. World Toilet Day celebrates the importance of sanitation and raises awareness for the billions of people whose health is endangered without it.
Some of our clients at ELISE are involved in projects that tackle these issues head on, in regions that are at the greatest risk. The Lemelson Foundation has teamed with Ashoka to support Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows who work directly to solve sanitation issues. Isaac Durojaiye founded DMT Mobile Toilets, the first mobile toilet initiative in Nigeria to provide facilities in strategic locations such as markets, parks and streets. Isaac is creating jobs as well, as all toilets are leased to unemployed youth who make fixed returns at the end of the day and keep any profit over that amount. In Kenya, David Kuria is creating high quality sanitation facilities accessible to the urban poor. The founder of IKO (coined from “eco”) Toilet, David engages urban communities in the design, construction, and management of the facilities.
In addition, The NCIIA provided a grant for the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Sustainable Solar Sanitation System. In partnership with the Emory University Center for Global Safe Water, Georgia Tech’s Research Institute has designed, built and tested a system, which, through solar energy, converts waste to fertilizer.
Here at ELISE, we are very inspired by our clients’ work to revolutionize sanitation and improve the health of communities across the world. By spreading the word about World Toilet Day, we hope that our readers will likewise be inspired to consider this global issue. Interested in taking part in the celebration? Check out the list of events. And happy flushing.
June 10th, 2009
Earlier today, the NCIIA announced the 2009 winners of its annual BMEidea Competition at the MD&M Conference in New York City. The awards are meant to honor top student innovators in the field of biomedical engineering.
First place, a cash prize of $10,000 went to Stanford University’s Lab-on-a-Stick project, which is a simple, affordable method for diagnosing illnesses with a disposable “stick” pre-treated with assorted protein receptors. Second place ($2,500) went to the University of Cincinnati’s SurgiSIL—a single-port laparoscopic tool that can reduce the risk of trauma, decrease healing time, and hide a single surgical incision in the belly button. Third place ($1,000) went to a Brown University team working on a rapid and accurate method for assessing Vitamin D levels.
The NCIIA has more information on their site here. Congratulations to all the winners!
June 8th, 2009
Over the next two weeks, ELISE communications will be traveling up and down the East Coast. With events in New York City, Boston and Alexandria, Virginia, ELISE is keeping busy.
This week ELISE will be in New York City on Tuesday and Wednesday, attending the NCIIA’s BMEidea Competition. We are excited to see who the first place winner will be!
Then, on Thursday and Friday, ELISE will be in Boston helping out with the fifth annual Games for Health Conference. The conference brings together a diverse set of health and technology professionals in a city known for its bustling game development and health care industries to discuss how interactive video games can advance health and health care solutions.
Next week Carrie has been asked to participate on a panel—organized by Berrett-Koehler—to help authors promote and grow their business. We will be there on June 19. The event is hosted by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD).
With all this traveling, it’s a good thing we are finally settling into our new office on Church Street. We’ll post photos of our new space soon!
