T H E D R A G O N F L Y E F F E C T QUICK, EFFECTIVE, AND POWERFUL WAYS TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO DRIVE SOCIAL CHANGE J E N N I F E R A A K E R A N D Y S M I T H W I T H C A R L Y E A D L E R FOREWORD BY CHIP HEATH, AUTHOR OF MADE TO STICK AFTERWORD BY DAN ARIELY, AUTHOR OF PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL The Dragonfly effecT Quick, effecTive, anD Powerful ways To use social MeDia To Drive social change Jennifer aaker anDy sMiTh With Carlye adler Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.ffirs.indd 3 7/21/10 11:18 AM Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith. All rights reserved. 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Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002. Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aaker, Jennifer Lynn. The dragonfly effect : quick, effective, and powerful ways to use social media to drive social change / Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith ; with Carlye Adler. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-470-61415-0 (hardback) 1. Internet marketing—Political aspects. 2. Social media—Political aspects. 3. Internet— Social aspects. 4. Social entrepreneurship. 5. Social responsibility of business. 6. Social change. I. Smith, Andy, 1968- II. Adler, Carlye. III. Title. HF5415.1265.A25 2010 658.8'72—dc22 2010024706 Printed in the United States of America first edition HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.ffirs.indd 4 7/21/10 11:18 AM Contents Foreword by Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick and Switch ix Preface xi Introduction: Why Reading This Book Is Worth the Investment xiii The Dragonfly Body The System That Keeps It Airborne 1 Wing 1: Focus: How to Hatch a Goal That Will Make an Impact 19 Wing 2: Grab Attention: How to Stick Out in an Overcrowded, Overmessaged, Noisy World 49 Wing 3: Engage: How to Make People Connect with Your Goal 73 Wing 4: Take Action: How to Empower Others, Enable Them— and Cultivate a Movement 107 Onward and Upward You’re Flying! Now What? 143 Afterword by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality 165 Notes 173 The Dragonfly Ecosystem 191 About the Authors 201 Index 203 Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. vii Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.ftoc.indd 7 7/22/10 11:46 AM Foreword Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick and Switch E verybody feels tremendous pressure today to master social media, but most people haven’t quite figured out how to do so. Nonprofit directors are told they need a social media strategy for engaging volunteers. Journalists are en- couraged to blog, tweet, and whirl. Marketers feel they’re required to have a Facebook strategy. That’s unfair to the poor marketers— heck, Facebook doesn’t really have a Facebook strategy. People who face serious problems have a long history of grasping for a technological fix. The 8-millimeter film was going to revitalize education . . . then the IBM PC. The Internet was going to usher in an era of political transparency. And for sure, positively, the magazine industry is going to be saved by the iPad. And today everyone feels that social media tools are a solution to the problems they are facing. (Except for those who are worried that someone else will figure out how to use them first and gain an enduring competitive advantage.) So suppose you really could do something with social media. Well, The Dragonfly Effect points the way. Full disclosure: Jennifer Aaker is one of my colleagues at Stanford. Her office is two doors down. I respect her research work, and I know this book is based on a class that has won rave reviews from our students. So I’m predisposed to like this book because I know it’s based on serious research, ideas, and thought. (I don’t really know her husband and coauthor, Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. ix Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.fbetw.indd 9 7/21/10 11:13 AM x Foreword Andy, but I suspect I’d like him too. I predict that one pressing question Jennifer and Andy will face when they speak about this book is, “How did you manage to write a book with your spouse?” Perhaps for their next project they’ll consider a marriage guide.) Disclosures noted, I think you’ll like this book for the same reason our Stanford MBAs have loved Jennifer’s class. In a confusing domain, where people haven’t yet figured out how to use a new technology, Jennifer and Andy provide a simple road map to follow if you want to accomplish something with social media. The book is filled with inspiring stories. A group of friends who rallied to save the life of a friend who had leukemia, and turned a one-in-twenty-thousand chance of finding a bone mar- row donor into a virtual certainty. Two students who created a fashion business for an audience that hates fashion—guys— and managed to break even their first year and profit the second. The former nightclub promoter who, by telling riveting stories, created a movement that’s brought clean water to eight hundred thousand people. And more important, there’s a simple frame- work that highlights what these success stories have in common. If you want to accomplish something with social media, you can start here. Just turn the page. Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.fbetw.indd 10 7/21/10 11:13 AM Preface S mall actions create big change. The goal of this book is simple: to help you harness social technology to achieve a single, focused, concrete goal. In the past ten years, social networking technologies have revolutionized the way we communicate and collaborate online. Each day, over 175 million of us log on to Facebook. Each minute, twenty hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Each second, over 600 tweets are “tweeted” out onto the Web, to a worldwide audience. And these numbers are growing exponentially. If we used these avenues for social change, what kind of difference could we make? How many people could we get involved? What kind of impact could we have on an individual, a corporation—or the world? Our mission over the following pages is to show you how to harness the power of social media for social good, by blending the theory underlying social change and the applications of social media. Our approach, which we call the Dragonfly Effect, coalesces the focal points of our distinct careers—research and insights on consumer psychology and happiness (what really makes people happy as opposed to what they think makes them happy)—with the practical approaches necessary to capture these effects. Over the past several years, we have each benefited from the other’s very different perspective. (Let’s just say one of us didn’t “get” Twitter and the other doubted the place of “feelings” in organizations.) By joining forces, we have been Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. xi Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.fpref.indd 11 7/21/10 11:14 AM xii Preface able to provide individuals and corporations with insights into social technology, tools to spur the spreading of ideas, and the ability to incite infectious action. Our capacity to predict seemingly irrational responses has improved both brands and bottom lines. Most recently, our blended perspectives culminated in a course, the Power of Social Technology (PoST), at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In the class, students adopted design thinking mind-sets and creative processes with the help of an ecosystem of collaborators, including top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, investors, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. The class proved more successful and inspirational than we could have anticipated. Not only did it demonstrate that people are clamoring for ways to use social media for social good, but it confirmed our belief that there is a replicable framework that will allow them to execute their goals efficiently and effectively and to achieve meaningful change. Most of us have experienced how social technologies are changing the way people relate to each other. They allow us to connect with old friends (and make new ones), share our interests with a broad network of people, and communicate efficiently—often instantaneously. But we are only beginning to understand how these same technologies can fundamentally shift how we engage with and inspire all these networked people and empower them to participate in global movements for change. This book will tell these emerging stories and give you the tools to use social media to make an impact. Regardless of the change you seek to effect in the world— whether it is to inspire others to join your social movement, mobilize political change, or simply satisfy an individual need—consider this your playbook for moving your cause from awareness to action. Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.fpref.indd 12 7/21/10 11:14 AM Introduction Why Reading This Book Is Worth the Investment A dizzying number of people have written about the me- chanics of Facebook, Twitter, email, and YouTube, yet few have addressed one of our strongest motivations: how to leverage the power of the new social media to do some- thing that really matters. The dragonfly is the only insect able to propel itself in any direction—with tremendous speed and force—when its four wings are working in concert. This ancient, exotic, and benign creature illuminates the importance of integrated effort. It also demonstrates that small actions can create big movements. To us, what we call the Dragonfly Effect is the elegance and effica- cy of people who, through the passionate pursuit of their goals, discover that they can make a positive impact disproportionate to their resources. We have been lucky enough to learn from such people and to profile their efforts here. Most of us are inundated daily with articles, emails, videos, and blog posts. Invitations to participate in compelling social campaigns have become ubiquitous—from Avon’s Walk for Breast Cancer, to Pepsi’s Refresh campaign, to general appeals to help “save our planet.” Yet we glaze over and ignore many, if not most, of these pleas. Or perhaps we join a group, but take no real action on behalf of the cause. Anyone who has ever cre- ated a YouTube video, written a blog, or tried to get someone to join a cause on Facebook knows that simply sending out a request doesn’t guarantee results. Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. xiii Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.flast.indd 13 7/27/10 10:16 AM xiv Introduction Yet the power of social technology, when fully engaged, can be nothing short of revolutionary. Just this year, the Red Cross raised more than $40 million for Haiti relief through text message donations. The same technologies that enable us to “poke” our friends or “retweet” an interesting article are the ones that can connect and mobilize us to bring about change. So, what differentiates those who are harnessing social media for something more powerful than fun or procrastination? It is clear from our research that, in contrast to what you may think, promoting a personal goal is inherently social. To be successful, you must translate your passion into a powerful story and tell it in a way that generates “contagious energy,” so that your audience reflects on your tweet, blog post, or email, long after they leave their computers.1 By doing this, you generate participation, networking, growth, and ripple effects—forces that combine to form a movement that people feel they are a part of. Your personal goal then becomes collective. Drawing on underlying truths found in psychological research, The Dragonfly Effect provides a framework to show you how to do this. In these pages, we will teach you four key skills—Focus, Grab Attention, Engage, and Take Action— which you will use to produce your own colossal results. And we will reveal the secret to cultivating “stickiness,” so that your goal is not relegated to Internet oblivion but instead reaches an audience of people who will help propel it forward. The other reason to read this book is that it might help you become a happier person. Research on happiness makes it clear that happiness, in and of itself, is a bogus conceit. What people Copyrighted material © 2010. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint. Aaker.flast.indd 14 7/27/10 10:16 AM