Ok, I am kinda lovin’ Jay Smooth right now.
Success means that we move further towards the ideals. Victories are only evidence that progress is possible, and that we are moving further towards those ideals.
So measuring success is acknowledging the victories along the way, and realizing there is no end.
MIAMI — When Sarah Silverman told young Jews to get their lazy rotund rear ends to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Senator Barack Obama, one question loomed: Would they go?
This weekend was the first big test, a kickoff for the so-called Great Schlep, and so far, momentum has been building with the pace of a nice brisket. Though about seven million people have watched Ms. Silverman’s four-minute Web video explaining why “visiting your grandparents could change the world,” the schlep remains mostly virtual.
Mik Moore, 34, co-director of Jewish Council for Education and Research, the nonprofit group behind the project, said 100 people visited Florida this weekend to convince older Jewish voters that Mr. Obama should be president, while about 100 more visited relatives in other swing states.
Declaring it “a really good start,” Mr. Moore said he hoped that dozens more would officially schlep before Election Day.
read more:
Laugh at a Campaign Pitch? Sure. Visit the Grandparents? Not So Much. – NYTimes.com
After reading this, I wonder if artists or activists have been unwittingly influenced/inspired by some of these token, ineffective campaigns? If the culture is openly celebrating these supposed victories, one might believe they are actually effective.
Recently while browsing the Web I came across UrbanDictionary.com, which is sort of a wiki of contemporary slang. I found some of the newer words listed there amusing, like “hobosexual” (the opposite of metrosexual; someone who cares little about their looks), “consumerican,” (“a particularly American brand of consumerism”), and “wikidemia” (“an academic work passed off as scholarly yet researched entirely on Wikipedia”).
Then I came across a word that put me into a more thoughtful zone: “slacktivism.”
“Slacktivism” (alternative spelling “slactivism”) is a fusion of the words “slacker” and “activism,” and UrbanDicationary.com defines it as “the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.” It refers to ersatz acts that people perform that they have somehow come to believe are full of meaning, like slapping a magnetic ribbon on your car to “support the troops,” wearing a colored rubber wristband to “fight cancer,” or refusing to buy gasoline on a certain day to protest high gas prices, instead of, say, actually changing your lifestyle to use less gas.
According to UrbanDictionary.com’s definition, slacktivism pertains only to individual behavior, but shortly after I grasped the meaning of the word, I started to see that slacktivism is really much bigger than that. I started to see that corporations perpetrate large-scale, organized slacktivism as a public relations strategy to subtly derail social movements aimed at creating beneficial change.
So what form does corporate-sponsored slacktivism take, and how can people recognize it? The best way to describe it is to give some examples. Continue reading
Q: Of the various projects the Anti-Advertising Agency has been involved in, which ones do you think have been most successful?
A: I don’t really know for sure. To know we would have to do what is done in any marketing campaign, which is an impartial evaluation — surveys, testing, etc. And we don’t have the budget for that. I can track some things empirically, like web hits, and I can hang out near where projects are installed and gauge reactions.
But then, what is success? Our goal is rather tough to measure — to cause the public to re-examine advertising and the role it plays in public space. But I think we reach that goal with anyone who spends more than a moment looking at our work. It’s some measure of success if they look at it at all. And if they do, how much do they take away? This is what I dwell on when I think of “success.”
The image I often have in my head is of the Trans-Theoretical (Stages of Change) model. I won’t go into it too much, but basically the idea is that everyone has to move through certain steps to change their behaviors — and you can’t skip steps. For example, you can’t adopt a new behavior without first being aware that there is an alternative to what you are currently doing. Once you are aware, you need information on how to change that behavior. Once you have the information, you need motivation to start. Those that have adopted the behavior need support in maintaining it. And on and on.
So part of the measure of success for me is not just how many people saw this, but did I move them along on a step? Did this piece really make a difference in this person’s life? Did it have a profound effect on their thinking? Did it change their perspective on the world? Will it change their behavior in the future?
It’s an incredibly unforgiving way of measuring success, especially for an artist, but keeping it in mind from the beginning makes for more effective work.
To answer your question in a less philosophical way, the Light Criticism project was by far the most successful in terms of numbers. Tens of thousands of people saw that video in a matter of a week. Easily over 100,000 saw it in the first 2 weeks. It seemed to resonate — people understood the concept of advertising as blight, and we provided more info on illegal advertising. I got emails and comments so I know that people moved along those steps in their thinking because I have this first-hand evidence. It still gets the most traffic to our site.
As far as the shopdropping workshops go, it’s a more in-depth exchange. There are conversations and interactions and participation! More than that, there is an experience. People actually go out into the world as individuals and leave their mark. As small as it is, it’s an empowering experience — one most people haven’t had. They do more than see the work, nod and say, “Yes, I like this. I agree. This feels true to me.” They go out and take action. Some do this for the first time. We hope this removes some barriers that would prevent them from doing it again, and again, and again….
Web analytics allow you to track how many people are visiting your site, what sites they are coming from, what words they use to search when finding your site, and more. Without knowing who is looking at your site, you can know what they are looking at, for how long, in what order, they city they are in, and more.
##Google Analytics##
Google Analytics is the big one.
##Clicky##
Free analytics tool that allows you to make the numbers available to anyone.
##Other Indicators##
- youtube, vimeo, etc views
- delicious bookmarks
- internetfamo.us – Evan, James, and Jamie’s tool to track multiple indicators including delicious bookmarks, flickr, etc.
Blackmailing (not really) store owners by offering to bring tons of motivated customers if they will do the most to make their store energy efficient. Documented very well – including dollar amounts.
Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.