You may have heard about the P&G Digital Night and how it will might change the world. Hopefully we will, but probably not in the way it's been hyped in the media.
A diverse cross-section of minds have come together to work with P&G in conjunction with the Tide Loads of Hope program. It's an initiative that started after Hurricane Katrina to assist disaster victims.
Tonight (March 11, 2009) we have come together in Cincinnati for some friendly coopetition and help sell t-shirts to raise funds for the program. 100% of profits go towards helping disaster victims.
Shirts are $20; free shipping on orders of two or more.
The competition part – by clicking through to the site using this link and buying a shirt, my team will get credit. You can watch the night unfold on Twitter by searching for #pgdigital.
More info – David Armano is on my team, he gives more detail here.
Thanks for your consideration!
And thanks to everyone who's helped with dollars and/or messaging. Warren Sukernek. Tim Hayden. Chris Brogan. Laura Fitton. And more.
I love the social network component. Great idea! And I just bought my red T-shirt.
Thanks Warren!
Before I wrote what follows I scanned the #pgdigital board and didn’t see the following idea – if its there I overlooked it and apologies in advance in case I haven’t acknowledged someone.
The idea is this: how many of the participants realized they participated voluntarily in a brilliantly designed experiment to subject their opinions and prognostications to very, very intense and factual scrutiny?
The folks involved probably are some of the most effective, socially networked people in the business world; they have the tools, networks, skills, experience, skill, organization, following etc. These folks are smart, passionate, persuasive.
And in the process of lighting up their social networks (in a manner that minimized risk of incidental P&G brand damage), they’ve created the social network equivalent of a super nova – a marked, distinctive and very measurable event. Just as the energy of a supernova reveals patterns in space, the energy of the #pgdigital event will course through the social networks, revealing the depth, breadth, influence and power of various networks. (What fun it it would be to debate what mattered more: tactical effectiveness or network depth? Compelling message or superior medium?)
The energy from the event will also shine a light on the application and effectiveness of different Web 2.0 tools (twits, blogs, social sites, collections, etc.). Ultimately, all of the social activity from the event can be evaluated in a single undisputable very measurable outcome – which team and the most t-shirts. (By the way, I noticed a limited number of t-shirt colors – was one of the design objectives to get the teams to drive purchase to “their” color?) And all of the activities that led to the sales can be tracked, captured, collected, analyzed and evaluated. Talk about data driven decision making.
What a beautiful *scientific* experiment.
And at the risk of mixing metaphors, is it not ironic that P&G so effectively seduced the hand-selected social network diggeratti that they volunteered to be the experiment’s willing lab animals?
I wonder: which theories, hypothosesis, opinons, and ideas will survive such brutally effective evaluation?
Wow… now its time to think about who/how to collect and analyze the experimental data. Almost makes me wish I was quant jock.
I’d love to see that evaluation – in fact, I’m very much looking forward to the blog posts that publish in the days ahead from people who didn’t attend the event in person. My take – and I’m not saying that you imply this – is that the impact you describe was not anticipated. Any analysis of tools and networks will certainly be interesting to review. Send links my way!