go small or go home

Starting this post, I can hear sirens, cow bells, jubilant cheers and howls, and a group singing O Canada like happy drunken soldiers (or athletes)… and it’s only 9:30 am on Sunday morning. I should add that it IS the last day of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics here in Vancouver and a mere few hours till the big hockey game between the US and Canada.

Given that our Go Small blog focuses on not-for-profits (social profits as I like to call them) that use social media in creative and dynamic ways, I would like to write about two not-for-profits that caught my eye during the past two weeks.

I often tell clients that social media is nothing without dynamic stuff happening at the community/street level. Just as I wouldn’t tell a not-for-profit to set up a Facebook fan page unless they had a real (and really interesting) event, rally or launch to share with supporters, I also wouldn’t tell a person to communicate their message using social media exclusively.

This can be true in more ways than one.

To give an example, quite often I find out about cool and interesting social media campaigns by picking up a flyer in a local cafe or by talking to the person next to me in the grocery store line-up. The moral of the story… using traditional and online media together can help strengthen your message, and, ultimately your reach.

While attending one of the live tapings for the Colbert Report (pronounced “rapport”) which Stephen Colbert aptly named Vancouverage of the 2010 Quadrennial Cold Weather Athletic Competition (mocking the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a strangling grip on their brand), I saw, ambling towards me, a life-sized polar bear made from recycled materials and inhabited by two people. It was accompanied by two humans in fuzzy polar bear suits sporting banners saying “Col-bear Nation.” Get it?

The Arctic bears seemed out-of-place. Not only because they weren’t in their natural habitat, but because it was eerily warm outside for a February day, the sky, a bright summer blue. Yes, it felt more like the Summer Olympics.

The group was out garnering fans for the Dogwood Initiative’s latest project SaveWinter. And what a perfect time to launch this winter-centric campaign. After all, the Winter Olympics was on, the city was battling record low temperatures, partly due to El Nino and, let’s face it, partly because of erratic weather due to climate change. The snow for the Cypress Mountain Olympic ski competitions was brought in by helicopter from hundreds of miles away. It was the warmest Olympics in history. Enough said.

SaveWinter passed out stickers urging Canadians to go to their site and sign a petition to not only save the polar bears, but to save winter. A quintessentially Canadian experience linked to hockey games on frozen ponds, ice castles, and famous Canadian ski slopes. That day, the group took hundreds of pictures for people with the polar bear, some of which made it to their SaveWinter Blog. While others I’m sure were posted by Colbert fans on Twitter, Facebook et al.

Before I end this post, I must mention Right to Play, a Canada-based, humanitarian organization that focuses on the importance of sport and play to enhance a child’s development in some of the most disadvantaged areas. During the Winter Olympics, although banned by the IOC from being in the Olympic Village (where the athletes were), they used the international event to recruit athletes to their cause. This was done mostly through media events and by interviewing star Canadian athletes such as Clara Hughes and Paul Rozen for RTPtv, their Right to Play TV channel. Filming from CBC’s downtown studio location, Right to Play invited athletes, supporters and the public to interact and share their excitement and interest for becoming involved in their cause.

Canada just won gold in hockey. Time to pull out the scotch and join the party!