#WokeWhite
“Thinking laterally is the key to creating a new group, a new focus that brings different people together who may not normally come together and to create gestures that surprise and delight”
Anna Dean. Social Media Guru. Digital Rockstar. Good Friend.
You know when you meet people online and work with them, doing incredibly crazy shit and never meet them until after the job is done?
Well, that’s how we met Anna Dean. She was the brainchild behind the social strategy of What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Equal Pay and the Green Party campaigns and hired us to help as a Twitter vampire many moons back.
Today, the bro Anton Steel and the whanau from the BOP Film Trust, in association with Digital Basecamp and DNA, hosted a workshop where Anna Dean talked about her experiences with social media. Over the course of 3 hours, the korero from how things were done in traditional social media compared with how things are done now. The 3 most interested ng points I heard today were:
1. Think Laterally
If you have a project or campaign and don’t have any money to promote, then you better have time. If you have neither, then you better think laterally. This might mean bringing new groups together or approaching the same issue from a different angle. Necessity requires innovation sometimes, so always think wide first before narrowing down and moving sideways. Anna’s examples were working with AirNZ and DOC when promoting Wilderpeople, and partnering with the Wellington Council and Airport for Shadows. She stepped outside of traditional media promotion and sought creative partnerships instead.
2. Leveraged Networks
After you recruit your FFF (Friends and Family First), who else night you be able to contact and find common ground with?
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By accessing the networks of others, your message has that ability to spread beyond the 4 immediate walls and start reaching out toward the 4 winds.
That idea of ‘each one, reach one’ resonates deeply, then sharing and collaborating that fragment or teaser or trailer. It can take a long time creating a loyal tribe, but once you have that trust, reaching new networks can be fun and easy. Now what do you want them to do – what is your Call to Action and how can they now be involved? That’s the idea of a leveraged network.
3. Pakeha Guilt
I did not even think that Pakeha felt guilty but after today, I have learned something new. It was recommended that one of our projects think about appealing to people with compassion for indigenous kaupapa and that we start trying to wake the whites in Aotearoa. Which led to #WokeWhites. Which quickly turned into a market I had not even heard of (Pakeha mums who spend all of their time raising kids, balancing work and life yet feel guilty about the planet and really want to something positive for their community).
Mums who feel guilty.
I looked around the room and lots of heads were nodding. So then, the term #WokeWhites (which was coined from a Pakeha wahine) took a life all of its own.
All 3 ideas had me take notice as the social media landscape is changing thanks to the big corporates and mobile availability but also because our time and attention is being battled for more and more each day (Anna said the average online and media person sees at least 2000 posts a day!!)
There were a few ideas from today’s workshop that came up, which will be uploaded once I have time (example: Strategy for Branded Content; the role of Superfans; and Digital Tactics for Campaigns).
Nga mihi nui ki a Anna raua ko Anton and mean Digital Basecamp, mean.
