Mmmmmm peanut butter

Our friends at Hunger Task Force here in Milwaukee are encouraging people to have peanut butter drives. At the time I’m writing this, Milwaukee has stepped up in a HUUUUGE way, donating 95,156 jars. Yep. Milwaukee pretty much rocks.

We caught wind of this on Twitter, thanks to Julie Larsen other local organizers of #PBrally, an event at AJ Bombers next Monday, February 25, 5PM-8PM. So we’re collecting jars here at Jigsaw, to take to the event. Join us!

Not only is this obviously a great cause…it is also a super smart strategy for Hunger Task Force…focusing people on one simple, attainable item that is very tangible and loaded with happy associations for most people. “Oh, peanut butter? I love peanut butter. And I can do that.” Sticky…memorable. And therefore brilliant. Super smart nonprofit marketing strategy…50 thumbs up (from all of us here).

Props to Hunger Task Force in every way, for all they do, and to all those like Julie and AJ Bombers who are helping organize the community to respond. We’ll see you at #PBRally!

Last week, we helped our rock star Jigsaw OrangeAid interns launch FoodFightMKE. As always, the wonderful Milwaukee community jumped in with enthusiasm, killer dance moves, blog posts, tweets, offers of support and upcoming events, to be announced very soon. And in its first week, everyone who contributed to FoodFightMKE raised over $500 for hungry families. Way to go, everyone! Many, many thanks from all of us.

FoodFightMKE is a movement initiated by young adults dedicated to educating, engaging, energizing and inspiring local citizens to beat hunger in Milwaukee, in partnership with Hunger Task Force. Their chosen launch event? This Michael Jackson “Beat It” flash mob outside the Bradley Center. What else?

Some have asked about our ultimate goal with this project. How much as we trying to raise? To be honest, it’s a work in progress/moving target. Our initial thought was at least $10,000. But we recognize that this time of year (any time of year, really) there are so many ways to give and help that if we were able to raise $5,000 that would be a significant triumph. With your help, we’ll do all we can.

Please follow the FoodFightMKE Tumblr blog here and follow them on Twitter here.

And, if you can swing it, please text FOOD to 52000 to make a $10 donation. It’s super easy, and badly needed. Hunger Task Force is expert at making your dollars go as far as they possibly can. Every $10 donation feeds dinner to a family of four. And with half of the kids in Milwaukee living in poverty, and one in four families experiencing serious food hardship, every $10 matters in a BIG way.

Thanks for your support! We’d love to hear from you. What are you doing to help beat hunger this holiday season?

From my very first days on LiveJournal, Hi5 and MySpace, I’ve always used social networks to stay connected to the people and issue I care about. Of course, some of the platforms I use have changed and some of the people/issues I care about have somewhat changed, but the reason why I, just like everyone else, used and will keep on using these networks is to maintain relationships. Every piece of content members of my personal networks share is a small piece of their stories: from major milestones such as being accepted to the London School of Economics, getting engaged or moving to a foreign country, to more minor things such as discovering a new favorite restaurant or a new band. Social networks have always been about the multi-dimensional stories that we are allowed to experience even from thousands of kilometers away, made even easier with Facebook’s timeline.

And then brands joined all these networks and somehow every bilboard idea that didn’t get executed ended up in our news feeds: “Our new shoe collection is here.” “Check out our new shoe collection.” “Here’s our new shoe collection.” “Have you seen our new shoe collection?” with a link to the same landing page and with the same few pictures/videos used with every post for six months until the next shoe collection is released.  And then it starts all over again. Of course, the most common response to this activity is unliking/unfollowing the page/account for two reasons.

1. No one likes repetitive content. With the exception of films and books deemed masterpieces, very few of us will go to a website or buy a newspaper that has exactly the same content every day, so why bring repetitive content to Facebook, Twitter and the other social networks?
2. Our friends have set the bar high. We expect multi-dimensional stories told in unique voices with unique content every day and repetitive content doesn’t contribute to an interesting and multi-dimensional story. You make shoes and you sell them. That’s not a very appealing story that keeps us glued to our small screens waiting for the next few lines of the script.

I am well aware that brands are much less interesting than people. I am well aware that content development isn’t easy or cheap. I am well aware that to be able to tell a multi-dimensional story, a brand has to stand for something other than just making money. The reality is that most people who don’t work in this industry don’t care about any of these reasons. If a brand wants a spot in my news feed then it should stop with the billboard messaging approach to social media and start creating and curating content that is as interesting and relevant to me as the content shared by my friends.

Although the U.S Women’s soccer team lost the World Cup, they did score a victory. The final game between the United States and Japan was the most-watched soccer game for either sex, men or women, in ESPN history. Averaging an 8.6 household rating for the final game, this tournament drew strong ratings for ESPN – a network whose typical audience is predominately male. In addition, “World Cup final” was the most-searched-for-term on Google that Sunday and set a Twitter record by producing more than 7,000 tweets per second at its peak. Serious Girl Power!

Image: Caleb Hutchins

How many social interaction sites could we possibly need? Pause for effect. I realize the difference between needing and wanting is different, but honestly here, what’s going on? Now before I go pointing fingers, I’ll admit I just signed up for the new Google+ community. I think that’s the reason for this more-or-less rant. I don’t know, it just looked so dang cool. The colors, the plus symbol after Google’s perennial mark. So I guess my self-realization here was that I was taken advantage of or even victimized by… great design. Anyways, back to trying to make this blog post worth the space it takes up. My point (or maybe question) of this is when is enough…enough? When does the butter run out because we’ve spread it over too many pieces of toast? I understand the drive to perfect something. So in that sense, I guess I could justify there being this many social media sites. But if not in the name of progression, then what? Are we all really so insanely eager to share ev-r-ery-thing with ev-r-y-body on a multitude of platforms? Are we all that caring? How very kind of us. Now please, if you would tweet, share, post, blog, reblog, and like this post I’d appreciate it.