Groundswell as a Voice for the Disenfranchised

Like millions of other American's I followed the case of Adnan Syed through the popular podcast Serial so I was absolutely delighted to hear this past weekend that he was granted a hearing to present new evidence that was available during his original trial but for one reason or another was ignored or unknown to his lawyer at the time. A New York Times article that delves into the decision of the judge here. 

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I think this is a striking example of the true power of groundswell. As Li and Bernoff explain in their book, the key to groundswell is the ability of a company or brand or group to utilize the available tools of social media to create a conversation and a community surrounding that brand or idea.  More specifically, groundswell advocates actively listening to and interacting with the community surrounding your brand using platforms such as facebook and twitter, using these platforms to advance your agenda through promotions and other marketing tools. So how does the case of Adnan Syed fit into these ideas and what could it mean for the future?

(Adnan Syed)

Serial, and the continuing podcasts that have cropped up in the wake of Serial, have shown how a compelling story, or real world issue such as the one presented in Adnan's case can interact with the groundswell to build a passionate driven community around a broader issue, and thus bring to light problems within our society that have gone unnoticed, giving voices to the voiceless and using the people to bring about meaningful change in our world. Adnan's case is a prime example of this.  Without Serial, and the massive community of individuals who listened to, became interested in, and invested themselves in the case, Adnan would likely not be in the position he is currently in, but because so many people became interested in his case, and built a community around the belief that he is innocent, this case has been brought back from the brink of obscurity into the light of day, and brought the attention of groups like the Innocence Project.

The biggest thing I've learned from studying this case in the context of groundswell, is to remember that groundswell doesn't just work for large corporations, politicians and for profit corporations.  Non-profits, social movements, even individuals who have a story to be told can use the groundswell to start or further a movement.  Last year alone according to an editorial blog post from Social Media for Nonprofits there were 5 massive movements, all started through twitter and social media that are defined by their hashtags.  #YesAllWomen, #Ferguson, #IceBucketChallenge, #UmbrellaMovement, and #IllRideWithYou.  Each of these in different ways, used social media and the groundswell as a catalyst to bring to light and talk about a major problem in our world.

Checking in on the Sander's Campaign

It's been a very interesting two weeks for the Democrat's running in the 2016 Presidential Election.  Joe Biden has officially announced he will not be running for president, and both Jim Webb and Lincoln Chaffee have announced the end of their respective campaigns leaving a field of just three candidates: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley.  

There have also been two major events for the candidates in the past two weeks, the first Democrat Debate hosted by CNN, and the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Des Moines Iowa which is a major fundraising event for the Democrat party in Iowa where all three candidates gave speeches.  

Going back to Google trends we can see the impact that the Democrat's first debate had on both Sanders and Clinton

(I don't know why google trends just drops off at the end there because interest from the media and searches is absolutely still happening)

From this trend, you can see that the debate had an enormous impact that the first debate had on interest in Sanders amongst searches and news outlets.  Many polls after the debate argued that Hillary won the debate, but that Sanders had a strong enough showing that he is still her largest challenger by a large margin. 

Going back to Social Mention paints an interesting picture, for this search I used Sander's campaign slogan, FeeltheBern

42%

strength

6:1

sentiment

23%

passion

31%

reach

20 seconds avg. per mention

last mention 52 seconds ago

76 unique authors

57 retweets

The more I played around with the searches, and results, the more I became interested in how it categorizes things as positive and negative, and the accuracy of the results. So I dove into what it categorized as a negative mention, of which there were a grand total of 4 showing from the past month. The first was a tweet and it looked like this: 

Where does Bernie Sanders stand on the issues? https://t.co/BDmPzhaH6V via @feelthebernorg

— KYGrace (@KYGrace) October 27, 2015

The next three mentions all came from Reddit.  Specifically they all came from r/SandersForPresident, which is as you could probably guess, is a forum about electing Sanders for President.  The first of the three things deemed negative, which is linked here is a a collection of Sanders related activist groups, information about how to vote in the primary, and Sanders' stance on the issues.  Also not really that Negative. The third is an interesting perspective on a protest a couple of days ago that happened at a Sanders march in NYC where some protesters from the far far left protested that Sanders wasn't liberal enough.  Finally, the last post from reddit asks if there's a forum to have daily discussions on the issues brought up by the Sander's campaign and platform such as socialism and mass incarceration and income inequality.  not positive, but also not negative.  Now looking at the positive mentions for his campaign slogan.

.@BernieSanders to Verizon Workers : "I will be there with you until a fair contract is negotiated" #FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/6mVcFF63sz

— Texas For Bernie (@TexasForBernie) October 26, 2015

Sorry, Hillary, gay rights advocates say Bernie is right on #DOMA history. #FeelTheBern #LGBT https://t.co/9HsjzcNtXB via @HuffPostPol

— Puttcarp (@Puttcarp) October 27, 2015

Roger Waters Loves Bernie Sanders, Fears Hillary Clinton #feelthebern https://t.co/KGNwTng1Do via @rollingstone

— Mingo Dog (@MingoHowl) October 27, 2015

Icerocket's results for #FeeltheBern also paint an interesting picture, with several conservative blog posts at the top of the results, that by their very nature of being conservative are negative.  The tweets shown however, paint a very positive picture for Sanders, much like the positive tweets found on socialmention.  

So, what does this all mean for the campaign? Let's break down the pro's con's and suggestions for the future.

Pros:

• The Sanders' campaign has ignited a lot of passion amongst young voters
• Sanders is currently the only real challenger to front runner Hillary Clinton
• Strong record on equality, anti-war, anti-Wall Street
• Pro Sanders' individuals are extremely passionate about Sanders' campaign
• Among the groundswell Sanders' support is high, with a lot of passion, and a lot of positive sentimentality.  

Cons:

• Sanders' positions on the issues may be too far left for most of America
• Sanders' has been giving the same speeches over and over again
• no real support or endorsement from mainstream Democrat party
• As a Democrat he's kinda weak on gun control, faces attacks from pro-Palestinian groups
• Only just beginning to be taken seriously by mass media
• Considered by many to not be a viable candidate

Suggestions:

• Make as many appearances with the media as possible
• Don't be afraid to directly confront Clinton's stances on the issues you are strong on
• Push for voting drives, visit college towns and push people to register to vote and get them excited to vote in the primaries and election
• Change up your speeches

As the race stands today, Hillary Clinton is going to be the next Democrat nominee for President.  If the Sanders' campaign is going to change that, then they need to push for more positive coverage in mainstream media, and directly confront Clinton's stances on the issues, and how she's only recently changed her stances in many places that Sanders' has held firmly Democrat positions on for decades in some cases. 

Stepping back and looking at the larger picture, the biggest concern facing the Democrat party going into the general election may be that Sanders' supporters don't turn out to vote if he isn't elected.  To quote an article about the Jefferson-Jackson dinner this past weekend:

“The enthusiasm of the Sanders supporters was simply astounding. I haven’t heard that level of support in quite a few caucus cycles,” said Dennis Goldford, a Drake University professor who studies the Iowa caucuses. “I’d bet the enthusiasm of his supporters at least rivaled, if not exceeded, that of Obama in 2007.” Source

The most striking thing about the dinner was the way Sanders’ bleachers began to empty as soon as the Vermont U.S. senator’s speech ended — and before O’Malley or Clinton had spoken, said John Deeth, an Iowa City Democrat who blogs about Iowa politics. Source

So as heated as this race gets in the coming months leading up to the nominations for President, the most important thing for both the Sanders' and Clinton campaigns other than winning, is making sure that whoever loses, is able to fully transition that support over to the Democrat candidate, or face the reality of a Republican President.  

The Customer Comes First

Let's talk about Apple for a bit. How many of you own an Apple computer? An Ipod? An Iphone? Have you ever thought about why you bought an Apple product? There's an interesting TED talk by Simon Sinek that talks about the success of Apple and why they're so successful. And I think it gets at some of what Groundswell is talking about in part 3, and how the future of marketing is customer-centric, and embracing the groundswell is transformative for your brand, and the way your company operates.  

(Isn't that a great thumbnail)

By focusing on not what companies do, and what they make, but bringing customers in on the vision of the company, and why, Apple have built a brand that is world renowned and while they're known for making very good computers, their advertising tends to focus less on "all the cool features" but more on what people do with it.  Take their holiday ad for example.  

Or how about their Apple Music Ad from earlier this year?

Even before the rise of social media, and the rise of the modern groundswell, Apple ads were always a bit different.  What Sinek talks about in the Ted Talk above, is the idea that Apple leads by showing us the "why".  

By selling us this idea that Apple is better, not because their products are better but because they have this vision around which they build their products. And this vision, this idea that Apple has involved us all in is how a computer company has been able to sell us everything from tv's to phone's to MP3 players for the past decade. Because Apple has spoken to the dreamer, the musician, the outcast, the visionary in all of us, and they've connected with us. Apple has been so far ahead of everyone else for so long because before there even was the social media groundswell, Apple had already involved the consumer, they had already sold us their vision. And we believed in it. 

I'm a pretty avid baseball fan, and have been following playoff's very closely. I happened to be watching the Met's vs. Dodgers game this past weekend when what's going to be known as the "Chase Utley" incident happened.  For some background, Chase Utley, a player for the Dodgers, slid into shortstop Ruben Tejada while attempting to break up a double play and broke Tejada's leg.  

Warning the video shows Tejada breaking his leg

Following this incident, twitter exploded with backlash against Utley, calling him and the play all sorts of dirty negative things.  Its absolutely astounding how fast the response was.

I think this is an example of paying attention to the groundswell, and just how fast things can turn once people begin to have a negative image of you or your brand. Anger is a powerful tool and whether it be a sports play resulting in a player being seriously injured, or an inappropriate or offensive social media post, the negative things bring out the quickest reactions.  

For a couple business examples, let's look at U.S. Airways, and Home Depot.  

U.S. Airways

In 2014, U.S. Airways was apparently in the process of flagging a highly pornographic tweet sent to them when they accidentally tweeted out the image themselves prompting a quick and immediate backlash and infamy.  

Home Depot

In 2013 Home Depot tweeted out a highly racist picture of three drummers, two of whom were African American and the middle drummer was in a gorilla costume while the Home Depot logo was everywhere in the picture.  The racist tweet was taken down shortly after, but the damage had been done.

Groundswell and Making a Difference

One of the biggest and most important facets of the notion of "groundswell" and the unique opportunities that exists in our world today is the ability to use social media mobilization to bring to light issues, and problems within our world that may be very close to home, but in a world before twitter and facebook and massively popular blogs and podcasts, would never see the light of day.



While I was trying to think of a connection between Charlene Li, and Josh Bernoff's book Groundswell that spoke to me, I happened to check my phone and noticed that the most recent episode of Undisclosed was released. Undisclosed is currently the 17th most popular podcast on Itunes and continues the story told by Serial, which was the single most listened to podcast of all time.  If you don't know what either of these are, they follow the case of the murder of Hae Min Lee, a high school student in Baltimore Maryland back in 1999 and the subsequent investigation and eventual conviction of Adnan Syed. It's an absolutely enthralling and at times, utterly painful story. I give both my highest recommendation, but if you don't trust my recommendation go read some of the reviews on either podcast, Serial has over 4000 reviews on Itunes.


(Adnan in 1999)

The book Groundswell talks a lot about content creation, and how to manage content creators and use what people think about your brand to your advantage as a company.  It talks about things like: responding to criticism and problems effectively and how by doing that you can turn people into energized spokespeople for your company, it talks about actively listening to what people are saying about your brand, about making people feel like their voice matters, building communities around your brand, and how to tap into the groundswell to better your business.  And all these things are great ideas, and a necessary part of public relations and marketing now.  But for all the wonderful things the groundswell can do for brands and businesses, look at what it's done for non-profit companies, for bringing to light problems in society that have been ignored for so long, for motivating and energizing people to talk about and try and change our society, and for giving a voice to those who have been disenfranchised, whose voices previously would never have been heard.

Podcasts like Serial and Undisclosed, and the numerous others following the case of Adnan Syed have helped raise awareness of the countless number of people who may be wrongfully in jail, as well as shedding light on issues in how we police this country, and how the criminal justice system works, which has been in the news constantly. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a social media awareness and fundraising campaign last year is being credited for what could be a major breakthrough in research.

We live in an age where so much information is at our fingertips, and even a single individual has so much power to tap into our networks and use this groundswell to bring to light such important issues in society, and that's really the true power of the groundswell.

Bernie Sanders, the Groundswell Candidate

Outside of school and work, my big passions revolve around law and politics. For my social media monitoring project I wanted to look at a presidential candidate.  Specifically, I decided to look at the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, which begs the question: Who is Bernie Sanders?

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is currently serving as one of the two senators from the state of Vermont. He is a self described democratic socialist who caucuses with the Democrat party.  According to his campaign site, which is located at https://berniesanders.com, his major stances on the policy issues include addressing income inequality, getting money out of politics, equal rights for all, immigration reform, higher education reform, and military reform focusing on increased medical services for veterans.

Candidates in Mainstream Media

Presidential campaigns don't take place in a vacuum, and the best point of comparison for any campaign is the other candidates. Using Google Trends, we can compare the overall search interest during the past year of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. 

As you can see from the graph, Bernie Sanders is doing fairly well and competing closely with Hillary Clinton who is his biggest competitor for the Democratic candidacy, but both are massively overshadowed by the massive media sensation that is the Donald Trump campaign. Let's look at some other analytics focusing on the Bernie Sanders 2016 Presidential Campaign.

What you can see from these analytics found on socialmention is that while Bernie Sanders doesn't historically have a huge range of influence, and has an average chance of being mentioned, amongst those who follow him there's a massively passionate group.  One interesting mention of note goes back to the August 7th GOP Presidential Debate, where Senator Sanders livetweeted the debate, and had the most retweeted tweet of the entire debate with:

It's over. Not one word about economic inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt. That's why the Rs are so out of touch.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2015

 Sanders has proven that he understands Twitter, or at least someone within his campaign does, with the campaign slogan/hashtag "#feelthebern" being a rallying cry for supporters on twitter, and according to meltwater icerocket at the time of writing this is averaging 13.8 posts per minute on twitter while "Bernie Sanders" is averaging 66 mentions a minute.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is definitely here to stay, and with the first Democrat debate coming up, it's highly likely that Sander's mentions and social media presence and buzz are going to skyrocket.  It will be interesting to see what the debate does for his campaign.

Twitter Q&A Disasters

Last week, presidential candidate Donald Trump took to twitter to host a question and answer session under the hashtag #AskTrump, which had some pretty predictable results.  While Trump only answered a few of the nicer questions he was asked, the backlash towards him and his campaign far outweighed those positive questions, however he did provide some video answers to questions.  

.@EliseChristine #asktrump pic.twitter.com/KV1NPNYJTC

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2015

If you want to see some of the more hostile questions posed to Mr. Trump during the Q&A session check out the twitter feed here or the article by US Weekly Magazine here or the Wired Article here.  

As someone who used to watch WWE wrestling on a regular basis, my personal favorite was this one. 

@realDonaldTrump @TwitterNYC Did it hurt when @steveaustinBSR gave you the ole Stone Cold Stunner? #AskTrump pic.twitter.com/eetvV8NWTA

— Austin Hunt (@AustinHunt) September 21, 2015

Although, all the people asking about Trump's notoriously bad hairstyles were pretty funny too.

So, what went wrong here? Well, as important as it is to engage your audience on social media, it's just as important to understand the mood of your audience before you do so.  Take for example, the case of British Gas who in October 2013, took to twitter for their own Q&A under the hashtag #AskBG after raising their prices by nearly 10% just in time for winter.  This in a pretty predictable fashion failed pretty badly.  If you want to see some of the best responses, check out the article by The Guardian which is located here.

Another failed Twitter Q&A was run by JP Morgan, which went so badly that it was canceled before it even started. Not only was it canceled before it started, it went so badly that someone decided to have actor Stacy Keach do a dramatic reading of some of the tweets. You can read an article on the fiasco here

So, what is the takeaway from all of this? While engaging your audience via social media is a great tool that can greatly boost your brand, it is of utmost importance that you know how your audience will react, and avoid opening yourself up for questioning right after you do something that just might tick everyone off.