Chris Abraham » Family

Overheard in New York Doesn’t Suck

Chris Abraham — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:47:11 +0000

This Overheard in New York submission is particularly brilliant and is a completely soap operatic in only seven lines:

Mom: Say you’re sorry to Billy.
Tiny girl: But I’m not sorry!
Mom: Katy, you apologize right now!
Tiny girl: But you said lying was bad!
Mom: And hitting is bad too! Now say you’re sorry!
Tiny girl: I hit him with a stick because he sucks. And he still sucks, so I’m not sorry.
Mom: You hit him with a stick? (grabs Katy and storms over to father on picnic blanket)
Tiny girl, over her mother’s shoulder: I’m not sorry, Billy!
–Central Park

Via Billy Decides to Stop Sucking

Messaging the less educated, less affluent, more multi-cultural online

Chris Abraham — Sat, 07 May 2011 23:27:50 +0000

A new Nielsen report: The New Digital American Family: Understanding family dynamics, media and purchasing behavior trends is out. Very interesting, via Dick Stroud and What is happening to American households?:

The family household is becoming less homogeneous, less educated and less affluent target audience.By the mid-2030s, the share of households with children is expected to decline further to between 25-30%. The family household is not going to look like it does today due to the ferocious projected growth of multi-cultural households.
Nielsen projections suggest that the majority of families with children will be multi-cultural before the end of this decade. Fewer than half will be native-born, non-Hispanic white. Families with children already register more than 40% multi-cultural. The proportion is even higher at 47% among those families with a head of household age 33 or younger and soars to 61% for the lowest income families.

This is important to me because people who are less homogeneous, less educated, less affluent, and less likely to use English at home will probably further continue to use the Internet as their lingua franca rather than a shared, educated English literacy.

No judgement here, actually, because I come from Hawaii and our linqua franca is Pidgin English, a patois of Hawaiian, English, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Filipino, and others into a shared tongue.

What I care about it how best to engage with this new community and how they communicate, how they engage, in what language, at what Flesch Reading Ease rating (and is the scale even relevant any more?), and also what will eventually matter to this less educated, less affluent, multi-culti online community?

Do you have any insight into this? Do you have a plan?

Via Marketing Conversation

Keep Your Social Media Private With Flink12

Chris Abraham — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:40:06 +0000

When I started in social media, it was safely ensconced behind the authentication walls of ArtsWire, The Meta Network (TMN.com), The Well, and Howard Rheingold‘s Branstorms. Even within the relative safety of these “use your own name” walled gardens, there were even places more private. For example, I worked through all of my feelings about my father’s passing on the men-only, by-invitation, conference on TMN called Fire. I also talked about dating, love, love lost, pain, and all of that other good stuff. As I have been learning from CiviliNation, cyber-bullying and online abuse and attacks are too prevalent — even on Facebook.

Flink12 is handling the situation by crating “a fun, easy to use social network that would allow for real sharing of personal information with the people you actually care about” and “provide, without a doubt, the most secure way of sharing your private life on a much more meaningful level.” A little more like my experiences with the Fire conference all those years ago.

Here’s a post from over on my corporate blog by Phillip Rhoades about our client Flink12, Staying Social In Social Media While Keeping Your Privacy With Flink12:

Abraham Harrison’s client, Flink12, is the way to stay social but still keep your privacy. There are many social networking platforms available today to share your public self. But where do you go to privately and safely share your personal, day-to-day thoughts and experiences? Flink12 was created as a safe and secure way to share your private life. It is playful, safe, extremely private and easy to use. A unique way of sharing and communicating, Flink12 allows you to share your life in a meaningful way with the people you know and care about the most.
What is a Flink? A Flink is a group of twelve cows. Flink12 allows you to create individual groups of twelve people or Flinks for your friends, family, or coworkers. These Flinks allow you to communicate in a discreet way, sharing professional information with coworkers and personal information with friends and family. These groups of twelve are ideal for sharing different information for different types of relationships.
“Privacy first” is the highest priority at Flink12. This approach ensures that your personal information will remain completely secure. With no privacy settings to manage, your information is automatically safe. Personal information will not indexed on the web by search engines. You decide when, where and how much of your life you want to share and with whom. As it says on the Flink12 website:
Our “Privacy first” approach ensures that your personal information will remain private. Your information will not be indexed on the web by search engines. We designed Flink12 at its roots to be “udderly” private. Users have complete control.
Flink12 is totally accessible on the go as well:

Head on over to Flink12 and sign up for a free account. I’d love to hear what you think of it.

In Praise of Sweetness and Loveliness in Film

Chris Abraham — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:39:39 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and Grace is Gone are two films I have recently caught unintentionally that I consider to be both sweet films and lovely films. Sometimes human, other times sad, but all-in-all, very sweet and lovely.

I don’t know where these movies make it into my pantheon of film but there is surely a spot for them in my life. Why do I like them and why was I pinned through each of them? Well, I have softened after years after being trained up as a postmodernist who attacks every film with the mallet of deconstruction in the form of gender, race, class, intent, messaging, subtext, and the dumbing-down of cinema and entertainment.

Yes, I was surely insufferable. Now I see some very fine space for simple tales of love and family. I see space for tales that have the mission of role-modeling how people should behave and how people should love and how families should treat each-other, even if they’re not families of blood but families none-the-less. So, yes, I can recommend these films.

They’re both sad and uplifting and much easier to watch than the masterful but highly intentionally dense and artfully-sculpted Wings of Desire, a film that I will need to watch again before I go on about it here.

Thank You Springtime Fresh Air Fund Bloggers

Chris Abraham — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:03:03 +0000

Thanks so much to everyone who blogged and Twittered about the Fresh Air Fund in the last two months, May and June. All-together, the Fresh Air Fund and Abraham Harrison has been blessed with at least 286 earned-media mentions. We appreciate your support, your words, your time, and your attention. We are much obliged.

Thank You Snuggle Crème Bloggers

Chris Abraham — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:49:38 +0000

On behalf of all of us at Abraham Harrison, Lowe New York, and Snuggle, I just wanted to thank all the bloggers who have blogged about Snuggle Crème fabric softener in the last month or so. There were a bunch of tweets as well, but we have been able to find over 173 blog posts. We are beholden to your time, energy, interest, and your earned coverage. Thank you!

Fresh Air Fund Raiser Fundraising Drive

Chris Abraham — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:26:42 +0000

I just donated $100 to the Fresh Air Fund right now on Facebook Causes because a donation of $91 provides a child nutritious, balanced meals for an entire week. Currently, the Fresh Air Fund is doing a plegde fundraising drive over the next two weeks to raise $2,000.

If you can give $24, that would provide a child with swimming lessons for an entire week. A gift of $55 funds a warm and supporting camp counselor for one full day. And a donation of $91 provides a child nutritious, balanced meals for an entire week.

So, please join me towards raising $2,000 because $1,600 is the exact amount it takes to send a child to camp plus a little extra for good measure! Won’t you please join me in donating to this fundraising pledge drive?

Raise $2,000 to help inner-city children have a Fresh Air Summer!
Right now, thousands of inner-city children are counting the days until summer begins. They know that a memorable experience awaits them at one of five Fresh Air camps or with a volunteer host family!
We want to help send as many needy children as possible on the experience of a lifetime this summer…
If you can give $24, that would provide a child with swimming lessons for an entire week. A gift of $55 funds a warm and supporting camp counselor for one full day. And a donation of $91 provides a child nutritious, balanced meals for an entire week.
Whatever you can give will be deeply appreciated.
Your gift today will help us say “yes” to as many deserving children as possible. So please be as generous as you can.
Thanks!

Spring Thank You to the Fresh Air Fund Bloggers

Chris Abraham — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:40:19 +0000

Thank you again, Fresh Air Fund bloggers and Twitterers, for all the support you have shown the Fresh Air Fund and us, Abraham Harrison, in support of finding both camp counselors and host families for this summer season, 2009! We are so grateful for your support and look forward to working with you in the future! Here’s everyone — and if we missed you, please let me know!

America Returning to Western Liberal Civilization

Chris Abraham — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:44:27 +0000

According to MSNBC, Obama to rescind Bush abortion rule, which is just the very beginning of undoing all of the laws and regulations America passed while it was a reactionary theocracy. It is hypocritical to want business to enjoy a free market while micromanaging women’s bodies and reproductive rights as spelled out by law.

President Barack Obama wants to rescind a Bush administration rule that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions.
[...]
The Bush administration instituted the rule in its last days, and it was quickly challenged in federal court by several states and medical organizations. As a candidate, President Barack Obama criticized the regulation and campaign aides promised that if elected, he would review it.
[...]
Federal law has long forbidden discrimination against health care professionals who refuse to perform abortions or provide referrals for them on religious or moral grounds. The Obama administration supports those laws, said the HHS official.
[...]
The Bush administration’s rule adds a requirement that institutions that get federal money certify their compliance with laws protecting the rights of moral objectors. It was intended to block the flow of federal funds to hospitals and other institutions that ignore those rights.
[...]
But the Obama administration was concerned that the Bush regulation could also be used to refuse birth control, family planning services and counseling for vaccines and transfusions.

Lee Hopkins on Email Marketing in Digital PR

Chris Abraham — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:40:31 +0000

When I realized that I could download the OPML file from the Power 150 site and then hack it around into a contact list of over 900 of the top advertising, marketing, PR, and SEO bloggers on the planet, I did so.

Ever since, I have been scheduling calls with all of the folks I have been admiring on a daily basis. Two days ago I spent an hour on the horn with Lee Hopkins, “one of Australia’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment,” who is, in fact, one of the World’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment. We had a great chat — and amazing talk!

At the end, Lee asked me if he could blog the conversation and I jumped at the opportunity and late last night Lee published Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world? which is not only the most complete description of what we at Abraham Harrison LLC do on a daily basis but it is said in a better, more comprehensive, way than I could even conceive of doing myself. Here it is, in full. Be sure to visit (and subscribe to) Better Communication Results, Lee Hopkin’s blog.

Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world?
G’day – thanks for returning!

I just finished a fantastic conversation with Chris Abraham, the President and COO of AbrahamHarrison.
If you’ve been around the internet for a while, especially in the ‘marcoms’ (marketing communications) space, you would certainly have heard of Chris; if not of the man himself then certainly of one of his marketing and outreach programs.
Chris is one of those select few online marketers who’s text doesn’t read like a traditional online direct mail piece – you know, with LOTS OF CAPITALS and heaps of bold text and yellow highlighting and italics and
bullet
points
a-
plenty
and testimonials by the kazillion…
I could point you to a zillion of those sites – which is not to say that the style of marketing they use is not successful; it is, otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it. But you know as soon as you see the huge, bold, bright red and often in CAPS headline what to expect for the rest of the (very) long toilet roll of a page.
Chris takes a much softer approach, always has done, and it seems to work for him and his style of copywriting.
Video, the radio star and plain ol’ bandwagon idjuts
With the advent of Web2.0/Social Media there were many ill-informed and just plain ‘bandwagon’ pundits who hailed the death of traditional communication tools such as email, web1.0 sites and – gasp – newspaper, magazine, radio and television.
Much as television didn’t kill radio as force it to rethink its place and find its niche, so too with Social Media. Every new technology platform or societal change brings with it a change in how all that came before it must view themselves and continue to offer relevancy.
Radio didn’t die, newspapers haven’t been killed off, I can still pick up plenty of magazines that appeal to all demographics and both genders from my local newsagent, and email hasn’t disappeared off the radar (if my bulging inbox every morning is anything to go by).
So it was fantastic to finally chat with someone who, like me, believes that email is STILL a fundamental part of the marketing toolkit.
In talking with Chris today, he was genuinely flattered that a fellow copywriter would find his material engaging; I thought it was brilliant reading and his deployment strategies for his clients brilliantly executed.
You see, Chris, like me, believes that email won’t go away, but WILL have to change in order to survive in the new communication landscape. Our shared view is that it will have to evolve in a couple of ways:
Shorter emails will be the best way of getting people’s attention
Long-form emails are best saved for newsletters; trying to ‘sell’ via email will become even harder to excel at.
If you’ve ever received one of Chris’ emails, you will be stunned by several things:
They are short – only 2-3 paragraphs
They link off to a SMNR (Social Media News Release) that gives a far more in-depth level of information (and all the material you might need to help you spread the word or get involved)
If you email Chris or anyone of his team back you WILL get a response, usually within 24 hours (Chris says they try to get back within the hour, but time zones can sometime defeat them)
The emails ‘read’ like they were written by a human being, not by a ‘PR’ flack or a ex-journalist hack; they aren’t full of ‘me, me, me’ stuff telling you how wonderful I (the company) am, but neither do they ‘strip-tease tantalise’ you so that when you do click on the link you end up feeling cheated
You get the very real feeling that there’s someone real at the end of the email.
Here’s an example (taken from my post about the Fresh Air Fund):
Hello again, Lee
On Sunday I asked if you would kindly help me spread the word about 200 inner-city children I have yet to place with host families in August. I apologize for following up so soon, but time is of the essence and you know how funny email can be. To make things simple, everything is collected into an online resource page http://freshair.smnr.us
This appeal comes straight from the top, so please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Yours sincerely,
Sara
–
Sara Wilson
Fresh Air Fund
sara@freshair.org
www.freshair.org
Sara is a real person, not a ‘fake’ character. I sent her an email yesterday, wondering if her ears were burning, because Chris and I were talking about her:
G’day Sara,
Just finished the phone call with Chris — oh boy! Were your ears burning? They should have been!!!
Kindests,
Lee
From: Sara Wilson [mailto:swilson@abrahamharrison.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 24 February 2009 2:02 AM
To: Lee@leehopkins.com
Subject: Re: Fellow Power 150 blogger
Hello Lee,
Just a quick note to re-confirm that Chris will be calling you at 10 am, your time, tomorrow (Tuesday).
No need to reply unless something has come up on your end, otherwise he will speak to you in about 7.5 hours!
Best,
Sara
In reply, Sara said,
Lee,
And I thought it was just hot where I was last night …
It’s very kind of you to mention it, thanks. Chris is a great guy to work for, and generous with compliments, but it’s always nice to know that someone appreciates you, isn’t it?
Cheers,
Sara
Controversy
Because Chris and his team start any campaign with an email-based blogger outreach, some of the ‘holier than thou’ social media purists occasionally give him ‘stick’, or snicker behind his back and call him a ‘spammer’. Not true – the team are very hot on ensuring only a good taste remains in the mouth of any blogger they contact, and of only offering bloggers something of actual value to the blogger.
Which is a behaviour totally unlike the hapless, clueless and insulting PR flacks who regularly show up on The Bad Pitch Blog and who attempt to fill my inbox with material about electronics, or sanitary napkins, or (ahem) extension kits, or pharmaceuticals shipped from Canada. Thank goodness I have SpamArrest to filter them out before they hit my inbox!
Chris and his team have painstakingly built up a list of nearly 35,000 bloggers across several different demographics and topic areas of interest. Visiting their blogs, they harvest their email address. They then politely email them once to offer them something of interest – if the blogger likes it, they very often blog about it; it they don’t then they don’t. What is fascinating is the response rate Chris gets for his clients.
Word of mouth and gossip-sharing amongst internet marketers has the average rate of sales of anything (be it a blog post or an ebook or a ‘course you cannot live without’) as around 0.01-0.05% from an initial mailing, with the follow-up mailings increasing that to, perhaps, 1.0-2.0%…
Chris and his team regularly get a takeup in the order of 5%, which is phenomenal. In addition, once you start developing an email relationship with anyone in their team (as I have with Sara Wilson) then all future mailings will receive much more attention than would otherwise be the case. A case in point is my own, later, post on the illegal cluster bombing being carried out in South Ossetia and The Survivor Corps run by activist and author of the very powerful book, I Will Not Be Broken, Jerry White. It is only because Sara had taken the time to develop a relationship with me over previous months that I read and responded to the material from Jerry White. Without that relationship I would never have bothered with a topic outside of my normal areas of interest.
It is the classic ‘relationship marketing’ that Social Media Marketing pundits claim to aim for but rarely achieve.
Goodness, if I could have a dollar for every new ‘expert’ that’s popped up in the Social Media space I would retire a very rich trillionaire (and at the same time wondering how you could be a trillionaire and not be very rich – I guess if you were living in Zimbabwe you wouldn’t be…).
You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘leading social networking and social media marketing experts’ who have suddenly come out of the woodwork and set up communities in places like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, etc. Curiously, I’ve never heard of these folks before. Most of them don’t even have blogs, or if they do those blogs have only been around for less than a year. Curious, hey?
But Chris, on the other hand, has been around for a long time, has figured out what works and what doesn’t, and as evidence offers the following case studies:
Energy Bill 2007 Case Study
Financial Services Reputation Defense Case Study
Firebrand TV Case Study
Fresh Air Fund Case Study
International Medical Corps Case Study
Movie Producer Reputation Defense Case Study
Snapple Antioxidant Water Case Study
Survivor Corps Book Promotion Case Study
If you want to see the sort of posts that are associated with Chris’ kind of blogger PR pitch outreach, here are some examples:
Thank You Operation Survivor Bloggers
Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!
Thank You Again Survivor Corps Bloggers
Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers
Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers
Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers
Thank You Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Bloggers!
The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach
Happy Thanksgiving from Abraham Harrison
Here are some examples of client SMNRs from Chris and his team that I especially like:
http://anamigo.smnr.us
http://freshair.smnr.us
http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us
http://survivorcorps.smnr.us
http://iwillnotbebroken.smnr.us
http://internationalmedicalcorps.smnr.us
So what???
The whole point of this post is NOT to fawn at the feet of someone who clearly knows what he is doing.
The whole point IS to let you know that you don’t need to throw out your baby with the bathwater:
Don’t jump on the Social Media bandwagon without educated advice
Don’t take advice from a pimply 17 year old fresh out of high school
Don’t take advice from a less-pimply 23 year old fresh out of university
Don’t ditch all of your understanding of how ‘people’ and networks work
Don’t take advice from someone who doesn’t even blog themselves, or Twitter, or Facebook… (see my post about Social Media Gurus)
Don’t take advice from someone who has been blogging less than 24 months
Instead:
Download Todd Defren’s absolutely superb ‘Brink’ guide to Social Media and Richard Meyer’s great presentation, ‘Social Media : What you’re afraid to admit you didn’t know’ (he also has a great pharma and biotech-focused pdf presentation). Download and read Trevor Cook’s and my ‘Social Media Report’.
Talk to someone who actually knows what they are doing – in Australia that means folks like Stephen Collins, Laurel Papworth, Trevor Cook, Darren Rowse, Gavin Heaton and, humbly, yours truly. If WE can’t help you, we can certainly put you in touch with someone who can. Unlike the USA, where there seems to be a spirit of “You’ll prize my rolodex out of my frozen dead fingers!”, there is no fierce spirit of competition here in Australia – we have ‘co-opertition’ wherein we all help each other out if the ‘fit’ seems better for the client.
Stick to reading the seasoned ‘pros’ of the online marketing and/or business communication space: you cannot go wrong if you start at folks like any of the above, or Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Mitch Joel, Joe Jaffe , Laura Fitton and Chris Abraham himself; see who they link to. Follow your nose from them – all the way along the path you will be reading ‘the good oil’ as we say here in Australia
Examine Chris’ examples above and see for yourself how simple but effective your online marketing can be if you do it with the right intention – of helping out the blogger, not flogging stuff for your client. Get the relationship right and you will flog stuff for your client anyway, trust me!
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Currently listening to ‘Next’ by The Necks from the album ‘Next’. Superb jazz funk from one of Australia’s great cult bands.