Observations in the pub

I stumbled upon this; Don't dump on me: the 4 behaviours of the social web, in an old fashioned way i.e. using Google as opposed to a clever digital tool. The theory behind it appealed, although I suspect it’s too clever to be actually true, and it got me to thinking.

Back in the day, when we were campaigning for the UK climate change law, we had at our disposal lots of energy, resources and youthful talent (myself excepted). We had a free hand to try many things, and my love of pubs, extensive research (drinking), a random Futerra lecture about engaging new audiences lots of pub conversations led me to push the idea of environmentally themed pub quizzes.

The theory went like this. Folk develop and shape their ideas in pub conversations – and the British spend a lot of time in the pubs. After a few pints, pub conversations evolve into a boasting competition – think the skalds of Viking sagas but without the weapons. The essence of a boasting completion is to impress your friends (and the opposite sex) with some innovative quip, or a delicate morsel of information – the Fact (capitalisation intended). Well performing Facts get remembered and recycled into the next pub conversation making one seem witty and urbane.

So the question is how to introduce such Facts into the conversation? We’d done beer mats – albeit badly, and whereas in hindsight there are probably a dozen other tools available (posters on toilet doors remain interesting to me), we ended up with pub quizzes. The idea would be to make them fun, focused on those nuggets- which people remember, and we’d build support for change, one pint at a time.

Then of course I asked a campaigner to write some questions (I was more naïve back them) and the quiz degenerated into a dull quagmire of climate geekery [pdf], and terrifying factoids to keep one up at night. So much for something light-hearted to reach new audiences and to sneak ideas into popular debate, but still the idea is sound.

So back to social behaviour; the essence is that in the digital world there are droplets (or content generator) who create ideas, or information. Then these ideas / information are distributed by sharers, tofolk (polishers) who then reflect, comment on and polish those ideas before republishing them. Again they are shared and polished again, until over time the waves of internet tides slowly shape those ideas into new pearls, ideas that have been refined, and passed around until they become the new memes of how things should be, or always have been.

As a theory, no one I know has seen it to be true, but again the idea seems sound, it feels like a series of pub conversation, and more how debate used to be, before the passivity of relying on Television to tell you what you think (Before TV).

100 years ago debate and the fundamentals of politics happened in church halls, working men’s clubs and public meetings and attracted large amounts of people to get involved / attend. Whereas a bit old skool but useful (I’ve organised a lot of public meetings), this remains how people discuss and decide what to think about an issue or a candidate. So where are those online spaces, the digital interactive challenges to spoon fed media? And how to create and nurture them?

New ideas do appear, and they are powerful when they do. Once upon a time, killing whales was completely acceptable, cutting down the rainforests was the sensible thing to do, burning fossil fuels was never going to affect humanity, but somehow the meme changed, and the abstract became something people care passionately about. So how to feed and propagate such ideas and memes in the digital sphere?

The theory of droplets, distributors, polishers and pearls is too academic for a pragmatist, but perhaps if I engineer the structures to create the conversation, to allow like-minded people to generate content, to discuss and to pass the content around – then maybe I can model a new theory, but based on an observable reality that matches the digital pathways we carve.

Mercenary activism

Times are tight, the comprehensive spending review did no-one any favours and the NGO sector is shrinking as cuts hit the most generous segments of society, i.e. public sector workers.

As the spotlight descends of activism, we start to consider the challenges of getting feedback about what’s going on, measuring the impact of what happened and perhaps trying to value the contribution that activists and volunteers make to a campaign success.

So to some idle speculation on a Sunday morning, starting with some numbers in my head.

Baselines

• Organising a good public meeting with a MP, a postal invitation letter, some local advertising, a reasonable venue and the details costs perhaps £1000
• A decent photo op, with some good props that stays mainly within the law, with a professional camera person, costs maybe twice that, so perhaps £2000
• A photo op / direct comms / small action, again with professional media, perhaps with activists staying over somewhere, costs more, perhaps somewhere between £5K and £10K
• A medium action, with climbers, legal implications, a bigger pool of activists (maybe 30 ish), hired vehicles, support, sustenance and the like, maybe 25K to 30K
• And a big job, with 60-100 people, well you’re looking to £50K or more, and lots more when ships and boats get involved, so perhaps worth ignoring for now.

Impact

Various MPs have, over the years, told me (as a yardstick) that they value an email / campaign postcard as about 1 votes worth of interest in an issue. A personal letter/email where the individual has spent time, perhaps 10 votes, and a face to face visit from a constituent as worth perhaps 50 votes.

By extension I’ve worked on the assumption that a piece in the local paper is worth 100 votes, and perhaps speaking in from of an audience (at a public meeting) is worth at least the votes of the people present so another 100 votes.

Throw in a bit of smoke and mirrors, the excitement of planted questions, the opportunity to record the answers and a bit of local capacity building then maybe a public meeting is worth 300 to 350 votes worth of impact.

So if one assumes this is an effective way of reaching a decision maker, then that works out at about £3/vote, and by extension, once could assume, a campaign postcard is worth much the same.

Lead generation

In the current climate, fundraisers are desperately keen to get their hands on data for sympathetic people, ideally with a phone number attached.

Oxfam ran that excruciating ‘I’m In’ campaign a few years ago, which looked like a petition used by paid street fundraisers, but which (as I understand it) was pure data capture. Based on your postcode (and the income level of the area), you would then receive a phone call asking for money.

Good campaign postcards IMO incorporate data capture because it is worth knowing who your friends are. You can then, for instance, invite them to a public meeting, or to email a decision maker or to generally make themselves useful and active.

The fundraisers might value a good piece of data, with a phone number at £6, so if 2/3 of campaign postcards have data attached, and half that data includes a phone number, then an average campaign postcard is with perhaps another £2 to the organisation.

Summary

After a bit more maths, this implies a campaign postcard, with data capture, is worth about £5 to an organisation.

That a small team of volunteers campaigning on a Saturday afternoon will generate £500 worth of such postcards.

That a local group campaigning 10 times a year, will generate £5000 worth, and that a network of 60 groups will generate about £300K’s worth. I like these sums

And a speculative end point. During the campaign for a climate change law, there was lots of data analysis, and a suggestion that when a MP receives 100-150 pieces of correspondence they then make a decision on an issue, and would generally show support if there was no reason not to.

If £750 worth of street campaigning reaches a decision maker then how does one justify a direct comms event costing £5K? Perhaps in the national media? Or in the value of the decision maker (1 minister = 5 backbenchers), or in the value of such events to change a decision makers mind?