Now & Next: Future of Engagement

Annual
Report
100+ thinkers and planners within
MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring
projects on social data, crowdsourcing,
storytelling and citizenship on the
MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every
week, we pick up one project and curate
the conversations around it — on the
MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but
also on the broader social web — into
a weekly insights report. Every quarter,
we compile these insights, along with
original research and insights from the
MSLGROUP global network, into the
People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine.
We have synthesized the insights from
our year-long endeavor throughout 2012
to provide foresights for business leaders
and changemakers — in the ten-part
People’s Insights Annual Report titled
Now & Next: Ten Frontiers for the Future
of Engagement.
People’s Insights
In 2013, we continue to track inspiring
projects at the intersection of social data,
crowdsourcing and storytelling, with a
focus on projects that are shaping the
Future of Citizenship.
Do subscribe to receive our weekly
insights reports, quarterly magazines, and
annual reports, and do share your tips and
comments with us at @PeoplesLab on
Twitter.
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weekly report
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People’s Insights
Annual Report

Foreword
by Olivier Fleurot
04
Introduction
by Pascal Beucler
05
#1. Crowdfunding
10 52
#6. Social
Curation
#2. Behavior Change
Games 17 62
#7. Transmedia
Storytelling
#3. Collaborative Social
Innovation 24 69
#8. Collective
Intelligence
#9. Social Live
Experiences 77
#4. Grassroots Change
Movements 32
#10. Collaborative
Consumption 8544
#5. Co-creation
Communities
Executive Summary
by Gaurav Mishra and Nidhi Makhija
07
Inside
Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engagement

Annual
Report
Olivier Fleurot,
Chief Executive Officer,
MSLGROUP
Faced with the huge transformations
created by the digital and social revolution,
all businesses and organizations need
to rethink how to engage with their
stakeholders. We aim to be our clients
most trusted advisors in this fast-changing
and increasingly complex world, by
helping them navigate it and create unique
value in it.
For this to happen, we first need to
demonstrate a deep understanding of the
new dynamics at work in the conversation
economy and articulate a compelling
vision for the future of engagement. I
believe that you’ll find that our report on
the future of engagement does both.
I hope that you will enjoy reading this
report and share your own thoughts with
us, so that, together, we can really reinvent
the future of engagement.
Throughout 2012, more than a hundred
of our planners have been tracking
and monitoring new and inspiring web
platforms and brand programs in the areas
of social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling
and citizenship, under the leadership of
Pascal Beucler, our Chief Strategy Officer.
We are delighted to share with you the
results of this massive undertaking, our
Now & Next: Future of Engagement
report. It highlights what we think are
the ten most important frontiers that
will define the future of engagement for
marketers and entrepreneurs.
As I mentioned during the recent Investor
Day organized by Publicis Groupe in
London, we, at MSLGROUP, are dedicated
to inventing the future of communication
and engagement. In this report, we
recognize that “the future is already here,
it is just not very evenly distributed” (as
William Gibson said), and showcase the
web platforms and brand programs that
point to the future, so that we might co-
create it with our clients.
Foreword

5
Pascal Beucler,
Senior Vice-President & Chief Strategy Officer,
MSLGROUP
Our Now & Next: Future of Engagement report identifies the ten most important frontiers that
will define the future of engagement in our Social Age: Crowdfunding, Behavior Change Games,
Collaborative Social Innovation, Grassroots Change Movements, Co-creation Communities, Social
Curation, Transmedia Storytelling, Collective Intelligence, Social Live Experiences and Collaborative
Consumption.
As trusted advisers to our clients around the globe, we’re committed to helping them navigate the
complexity of today and prepare themselves for the even higher complexity of tomorrow.
To do this well, we need to live in two modes at all times: the now and the next. We need to acknowledge
the trends that are already here and we need to anticipate the groundswells that are on the horizon.
Introduction
The future doesn’t fit in the containers or mindset of the past.

Annual
Report
In short, we need to find a way to synthesize
powerful insights into valuable foresights.
Our approach is to crowdsource the web
platforms and brand programs in the areas of
social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and
citizenship that are pointing to the future of
engagement, find the interconnections between
them, identify the patterns they form, then
extrapolate these patterns into the future. Over
more than a year, we have studied hundreds
of web platforms and brand programs and
synthesized them into the ten frontiers for the
future of engagement.
Here are the most important patterns we see
across these ten frontiers:
• It’s a People’s World: Entrepreneurs
and changemakers, not organizations and
corporations, are creating the future of
engagement (crowdfunding, collaborative
consumption). The consequence is that
organizations must learn best practices from
entrepreneurs and changemakers, and adapt
them to their own engagement efforts.
• It’s a Purpose-led World: Engagement is
increasingly being ignited by a shared purpose
and a sense of citizenship (grassroots change
movements, collaborative social innovation).
There’s an urgent need for organizations to
collaboratively redefine what they stand for
and design purpose-inspired platforms and
programs.
• It’s a Boundless World: Engagement is
increasingly unbound by channel. Media
organizations are often in the forefront
of digital media innovation (transmedia
storytelling, social curation, social live
experiences). Corporations must follow their
lead and create platforms and programs that
are truly unbound by channel.
• It’s a Social World: The shared purpose
that fuels engagement is often a societal
purpose – like sustainability, wellness and
learning – (crowdfunding, grassroots change
movements, collaborative social innovation),
but also self-interest and self-improvement
(behavior change games, collaborative
consumption). Corporations need to tap into
both these motivations.
• It’s a Complex World: While entrepreneurs,
changemakers and media organizations
are creating long term platforms,
corporations often limit themselves
to creating short-term programs that
are easier to fit into the framework of
a campaign. Corporations must learn
the skills and mindset needed to
create long-term platforms.
• It’s a Demanding World: Media
organizations and corporations are
beginning to acquire innovative
startups to engage people in more
meaningful ways (behavior change
games, collective intelligence,
collaborative consumption).
Corporations will increasingly need to
behave like venture capitalists, with a
portfolio of investments in the future.
• It’s a Fragmented World:
Entrepreneurs are creating
specialized software solutions to help
organizations engage people using
specific tools, in specific verticals.
Such engagement solutions will
become even more niche, even as
bigger players try to position their
engagement solutions as more
integrated.
• It’s a Global World: The platforms
and programs that point to the future
of engagement are originating not
only in the US, but from all over the
world, including Europe, Asia and Latin
America, with the Nordics contributing
a disproportionate share of path-
breaking projects.
Welcome to our brave new world!
It’s not an easy world to navigate, but it’s
a Darwinian one, in which competition
is open to all, and where the best will
dominate.
Finally, I would like to express my
gratitude to all our planners around the
globe who have shared their insights on
the MSLGROUP Insights Network, with
a very special mention for our
colleagues Gaurav Mishra and Nidhi
Makhija, who have synthesized these
insights into foresights.

7
We are delighted to share our report titled Now &
Next: Future of Engagement.
The report highlights the ten most important
frontiers that will define the future of engagement
for marketers, entrepreneurs and changemakers:
Crowdfunding, Behavior Change Games,
Collaborative Social Innovation, Grassroots
Change Movements, Co-creation Communities,
Social Curation, Transmedia Storytelling,
Collective Intelligence, Social Live Experiences
and Collaborative Consumption.
#1. Crowdfunding: inspiring people to
collectively fund projects they are passionate
about and help bring them to life.
#2. Behavior Change Games: using game
design technique and the power of
communities to motivate people to achieve
challenging tasks in the real world.
#3. Collaborative Social Innovation:
synthesizing community contributions to co-
create innovative and sustainable solutions
around a shared purpose.
#4. Grassroots Change Movements: inspiring
people to act as change agents in a way
that their actions can be aggregated or
coordinated, leading to significant impact and
meaningful change.
#5. Co-creation Communities: synthesizing
community contributions to create new
artifacts including books, movies, music, art,
software, products and solutions.
#6. Social Curation: aggregating, organizing
and sharing content created by others to add
context, narrative and meaning to it.
#7. Transmedia Storytelling: sharing
interlocking parts of a storyworlds on
different media channels to create an
immersive experience and drive participation,
action and loyalty.
Nidhi Makhija,
Manager - Insights,
MSLGROUP
Gaurav Mishra,
Asia VP of Insights, Innovation & Social,
MSLGROUP
Executive Summary
Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engagement

Annual
Report
#8. Collective Intelligence: synthesizing search,
social and sensor data streams into insights
about our behaviors in relation to relevant
others to guide smarter actions.
#9. Social Live Experiences: blending
technology, community and location to
create immersive experiences that blur the
boundaries between online and offline.
#10. Collaborative Consumption: Using
technology and community to enable people
to share, sell, rent, swap, barter and gift
spaces, products, services and experiences.
Synthesizing Insights into
Foresights
Throughout 2012, 100+ planners on MSLGROUP’s
Insights Network have been tracking inspiring web
platforms and brand programs at the intersection
of social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and
citizenship.
Every week, we picked up one project and curated
the conversations around it — on the MSLGROUP
Insights Network itself but also on the broader
social web — into a weekly insights report.
Every quarter, we compiled these insights, along
with original research and insights from the
MSLGROUP global network, into the People’s
Insights Quarterly Magazine.
Now, we have synthesized the insights from
our year-long endeavor in future scanning as
foresights into the future of engagement, in the
form of this report.
We believe, like William Gibson that, “the future is
already here; it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
So, innovative web platforms in the areas of social
data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and citizenship
point towards interesting possibilities for brands
programs that leverage similar models to engage
people. In turn, the web platforms and brands
programs of today give us clues to the future of
engagement tomorrow.
In our individual reports on the ten frontiers that
will define the future of engagement, we start by
describing why they are important and how they
work; we then examine web platforms and brand
programs that point to the future (that is already
here); then finish by identifying some of the
most important features of that future, with our
recommendations on how to benefit from them.
Synthesizing Insights into Foresights
We have not only synthesized insights from
hundreds of web platforms and brand programs
into the ten frontiers for the future of engagement,
but also identified the most important patterns
that cut across these ten frontiers:
1. Inspiration from Everyone
People -- citizens and consumers, changemakers
and entrepreneurs, artists and hackers –
are creating the future of engagement, not
organizations and corporations. So, organizations
can learn best practices from entrepreneurs
and changemakers and adapt them in their own
engagement efforts.
Consider collaborative consumption, where
corporations (like automobile manufacturers) are
trying to adapt their product-centric ownership-
driven business models to compete with the
service-centric access-driven startups (like car-
sharing and ride-sharing services) that are creating
the sharing economy.
2. Shared Purpose and Self-Improvement
Source: egorick on Flickr
Source: camdiluv on Flickr
The shared purpose that fuels engagement is either a
sense of citizenship, or a desire for self-improvement.
Sustainability, wellness and learning are the
three most powerful areas not only for grassroots
change movements and collaborative social
innovation, but also for behavior change games.

9
These areas don’t only have the best alignment
between societal impact and financial impact,
but also the strongest linkage between personal
actions and a community multiplier effect.
Corporations need to tap into both these
motivations, design purpose-inspired platforms
and programs, and leverage networked
technologies to engage people.
3. Brands as Media Platforms
Source: triplefivedrew on Flickr
Media organizations are far from dead; instead,
they are almost always in the forefront of
digital media innovation, especially in areas like
transmedia storytelling, social curation and social
live experiences, often in partnership with social
networking platforms.
While corporations have aspirations to become
owned media platforms, they often limit
themselves to creating short-term programs that fit
more easily into the tried and tested framework of a
campaign (with the exception of Nike with Nike+).
If corporations wish to catch up with social
networking startups and media organizations, they
must learn the skills and mindset needed to create
long-term platforms.
4. Corporations as Venture Capitalists
creating niche social platforms to connect people in
innovative ways and specialized software solutions,
often in specific verticals, to help organizations
engage people with in more meaningful ways.
Media organizations and corporations are
beginning to partner with, invest in and acquire
innovative startups in order to future-proof their
engagement strategy. This is most visible in
areas like behavior change games, collaborative
social innovation, collective intelligence and
collaborative consumption.
Corporations will increasingly need to behave like
venture capitalists, with a portfolio of investments,
with short-term, medium-term and long-term
technology horizons.
5. Inspiration from Everywhere
Source: werkunz on Flickr
The platforms and programs that point to the
future of engagement are originating not only
in the US, but from all over the world, including
Europe, Asia and Latin America, with the Nordics
contributing a disproportionate share of path-
breaking projects.
This means that US-based organizations must
plan to not only replicate their US engagement
strategy in other markets, but also learn from
innovations in other markets.
In particular, European markets are taking the
lead in areas like collaborative consumption and
social live experiences, which need dense urban
centers to be successful. In addition, big emerging
markets like China, India and Brazil are producing
innovations that are often amongst the best
examples in their categories anywhere in the world.
As you read our reports on each of the ten frontiers,
do consider how your organization might benefit
from them, using the lens of these five important
patterns. We hope that our report will both provide
inspiration and guide action, as you continue your
journey to create the future of engagement.
Source: gsfc on Flickr
Even as the large social platforms like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Sina and Tencent are
consolidating their strength, entrepreneurs are

11
What is Crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding involves people coming together
to collectively fund projects they are passionate
about and help bring them to life. Crowdfunding
has been used to support a wide variety of
projects, including disaster relief, citizen
journalism, political campaigns, startups, art
(music, movies and books), game development,
scientific research and causes. In return, funders
receive a reward, which might include a product,
a customized experience, equity or simply
recognition, depending on the type of project.
Microlending platforms like Kiva (video), peer-to-
peer lending platforms like Prosper and micro-
donation platforms like DonorsChoose (video) can
be considered to be predecessors to crowdfunding
platforms. However, crowdfunding in its present
form can be traced to the inception of platforms
like indiegogo (video) in 2008 and Kickstarter
(video) in 2009, both of which connect people
to creative projects in need of funds. It entered
mainstream consciousness in 2012, when several
projects on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding
platforms raised more than $1 million each – and
up to $10 million – in funding. These include
technology gadgets like e-paper watch Pebble; a
music record and tour by Amanda Palmer; gaming
projects like gaming console Ouya; and even a
community center in Glyncoch, Wales.
The success of such crowdfunding projects
shows that people are willing to offer financial
support to people and projects they believe
in, and has created a new model for artists and
entrepreneurs to fund their projects.
Source: p22earl on Flickr
How Does Crowdfunding Work?
On most crowdfunding platforms, a creator
(an individual or a group) pitches a project to
the community and asks for small amounts of
funding. Then, the creator and the community
promote the project on the crowdfunding
platform, on the social web, and in mainstream
media, to gather support for the project, and
help it reach the funding goal within a specified
duration.
Successful creators often have a clear plan for
completing their project and a public history of
successfully completing similar projects, backed
up by links to project website and personal social
network profiles. By launching the crowdfunding
project in public, creators back up their projects
with their reputations.
Most backers support crowdfunding projects
based on trust, to help their friends or public
figures they have long admired create something
meaningful. Others are inspired by the newness
of the idea or the rewards promised by the
project, such as backstage passes for a concert or
being included in a film’s credits. Yet others are
attracted to the idea of co-creating the project, by
having insider access to updates and the ability to
contribute their own ideas to it.
Crowdfunding platforms offer creators more
than just money. They also help creators test
their ideas in public, build a strong community
that supports them and spreads the word, and
gain visibility on the platform itself, on social
networks, blogs and sometimes even newspapers
and television.
People and brands put
their money where
their mouse is.

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View the full infographic at intuit.com
View the full infographic at pleasefund.us
View the full infographic at intuit.com
As Stephan Angoulvant, design director at texting
printing company Lumi, shared:
“For us, Kickstarter has been a powerful tool to
connect with a community passionate about
our work, to help us collect critical insight, and
to provide a time line that helps us organize our
activities as we grow our project.”
Platforms offer one of two funding models: ‘all or
nothing’ in which the creator only gets the funds
if the project reaches the funding goal, and ‘keep
it all’ in which the creator gets whatever amount
the project has raised, irrespective of whether
it has met the funding goal. Over time, three
distinct models of crowdfunding have emerged,
focused on donations, lending and investments.
As crowdfunding becomes mainstream, we are
beginning to see niche crowdfunding platforms
targeting specific geographies, funding models
and types of projects. Pozible (video), Zeczec
and WeFund focus on diverse projects in
Australia, Taiwan and the U.K. respectively.
ArtistShare (video) focuses on music projects,
CrowdRise (video) and Razoo (video) on non-
profits, LoudSauce (video) on meaningful ads,
GiveForward (video) on patients, GoFundMe
(video) on personal projects, SpaceHive (video)
on public spaces, Credibles (video) on food
businesses, and Crowdfunder (video) and
CrowdCube (video) on startups.
Crowdfunding for Brands
Several brands have used crowdfunding
principles in their programs to connect their fans
with worthy projects and non-profits (targeting
backers), and to encourage fans to start their own
projects and catalyze positive change (targeting
creators).
In the most popular model, brands ask their
employees, customers or fans to vote for eligible
non-profits to receive philanthropic grants. Many
brands also enable the community members to
directly back the non-profits by volunteering or
donating money. Several brands have launched
recurring programs that follow this model,
which include Chase Community Giving (video),
American Express Members Project (video), and
Starbucks Vote.Give.Grow.
In another popular model, brands ask their fans to
act as changemakers by creating their own projects
and gathering support from their networks to
qualify for funding. Not only do these projects
receive funding, but also visibility from the brand
and its community members, and support from
the brand and its employees to realize and scale
the idea. Branded programs that follow this
model include the Pepsi Refresh Project (video),
Benetton’s Unemployee of the Year (video) and
Mahindra Group’s Spark the Rise (video).
Both of these types of crowdfunding programs
tap into the same dynamics as the crowdfunding
platforms. Brands provide change makers and
non-profits the opportunity to connect with a larger
community, and offer their fans a range of projects
that match their passions. Changemakers and
non-profits activate their networks to support the
Crowdfunding

13
projects, and keep backers engaged with updates
on progress during the fundraising period. The
brand provides credibility and visibility, beyond
funding. Finally, brands rely on the wisdom of
crowds to identify projects to fund, and fans feel
affinity not only for their favorite projects, but also
for the brand for creating the platform to support
them.
Crowdfunding case studies
Throughout the year, we have tracked the
conversations around a number of crowdfunding
platforms and branded crowdfunding programs
in our weekly insights reports and quarterly
magazines; here are a few highlights.
Crowdfunding platform: Kickstarter
Read the full case study on our blog or on
Slideshare
Source: kickstarter.com
Kickstarter is the largest U.S. crowdfunding
platform, empowering artists and engineers to
raise funds from individuals.
Mike Bulajewski, a user experience designer,
described Kickstarter as:
“A place where artists and engineers can connect
with the people in direct peer-to-peer relationships
who aren’t just buying entertainment, they’re
helping make dreams a reality.”
Kickstarter focuses on funding of creative
projects and fills a gap that was created by the
slow economy and budget slashes. As journalist
James Reed observed in the music industry:
“As the music industry’s financial resources
continue to crumble, more independent
musicians are turning to fans to directly finance
work that might not otherwise get done.”
This need has helped fuel the growth and
success of Kickstarter. Journalist Patricia Cohen
noted:
“[Kickstarter] recently boasted that it expected
to raise $150 million in contributions in 2012.
By comparison, the National Endowment for the
Arts, noted Yancey Strickler, one of Kickstarter’s
founders, has a budget of $146 million.”
Kickstarter follows the ‘all or nothing’
funding model, in which only projects that
have successfully met their funding goals –
approximately 43% of all Kickstarter projects
– receive funds. Kickstarter believes this model
“protects everyone involved,” as projects with
insufficient budgets are less likely to succeed.
Since 2009, Kickstarter has helped raise more
than $250 million for more than 24,000 projects.
Crowdfunding platform: LoudSauce
Slideshare
Source: loudsauce.com
LoudSauce is a crowdfunding platform that funds
advertising for social good.
The platform offers people a unique opportunity
to broadcast messages that can help society. As
social activist Jeremy Williams commented:
“Most of us can’t afford a billboard. But if we got
together with like-minded people and each
chipped in a bit, perhaps we could use just a small
part of the advertising network for something
positive.”
This opportunity helps non-profits and
organizations reach larger crowds and create
larger networks of like-minded people. Blogger
Beth Buczynski observed:
“Most of these [social media] outlets require
people to “opt in” to receive updates and invites.
This means that for the most part, organizations
with the ability to catalyze social and environmental
change end up preaching to the choir.”

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Source: mybanktracker.com
Source: unhate.benetton.com/unemployee-of-the-year
“Way to go, Chase- it is refreshing to see a “big
faceless corporation” making things right. Thanks
for looking out for the little guys!”
However, the need to campaign for votes and
compete with other charities has led to much
debate amongst non-profits about the return on
investment of participating in such programs. As
consultant Carrie Hirmer commented:
“For us, being in one of these contest-type
grants has been a wonderful thing so far. It may
not work as well for some organizations. It has
helped increase awareness of the need for our
project and has served as a door-opener, so to
speak, for relationships that will last long after
the contest ends.”
This type of program also requires constant
campaign management and proactive
communication with audiences. B.L. Ochman,
a consultant and contributor to AdAge.com,
who has written about this program at length,
considers Chase Community Giving to be:
“a model of what — and what not — to do in a
corporate philanthropy campaign.”
Branded crowdfunding program: Benetton
Unemployee of the Year
Slideshare
In 2012 Benetton’s Unemployee of the Year
gave €500,000 to 100 projects to celebrate
young people’s ingenuity, creativity, and ability
to create new ways of addressing the problem of
unemployment.
While the platform may not have an immediate
impact on traditional media buying and
advertising, it is finding support from both
consumers and advertisers. As advertiser Michael
Caissie commented:
“I work in advertising and my goal is to make a
more human way of communication and this
concept of ideas coming from the public is almost
to me revolutionary.”
Branded crowdfunding program: Chase
Community Giving
Slideshare
Since 2009, Chase Community Giving has
donated more than $28 million to more than 500
charities by asking its employees and customers
to first nominate eligible charities, then asking
its 3.8 million fans on Facebook to vote for their
favorite charities.
The four-year program has contributed much
learning to Chase’s internal giving strategy.
As Samantha Smith, journalist at NY Times
said:
“JPMorgan Chase’s goal with the above
contribution is to continuously engage
communities that care and are knowledgeable
on change in the JPMorgan Chase Foundation’s
giving strategy.”
The program has also helped spread the word
about Chase’s philanthropic efforts and shape
people’s opinion about the brand. As Julie Brown
commented on Facebook:
Crowdfunding

15
Source: votegivegrow.com/
Source: sparktherise.com
Involving customers also complemented
Starbucks’ contribution to non-profits. As
Starbucks customer Suzanne C commented:
“This seems like a good way for SB to not only
donate funds to a non-profit but to also raise
awareness for the non-profits that are out there!”
In return, customers feel a sense of pride for
contributing to worthy causes and a sense of
affinity for Starbucks for making it happen. As
Starbucks customer Sarah commented:
“Feels good to patronize a company that is
philanthropically minded.”
Branded crowdfunding program:
Mahindra Spark the Rise
Slideshare
In 2012 and 2013, Mahindra Group is giving grants
of $1 million to 96 ideas and projects that can
drive positive change in India under its Spark the
Rise program. Mahindra also connects change
makers with each other and mentors, to help
create an ecosystem for social innovation
in India.
While Benetton is famous for highlighting social
issues in its advertising, this campaign marks
the brand’s first effort to support these issues
financially. As Stuart Elliott, columnist at
NY Times wrote:
“For almost as long, critics have dismissed the
[Benetton] ads as exploitative because they do
not offer solutions to the problems or assistance
to the causes that could use financial help. Now,
however, Benetton is going to put some money
where its mouth is.”
Youth unemployment is a cause that has a large
passionate following globally, and the program
has inspired widespread coverage of the issue
and participation from 42,266 unemployed
young people. As NYTimes reader DJ
noted:
“Every little bit helps when you have no job
at all."
The €5,000 grants and the relevance of
the cause will help Benetton build a deeper
relationship with the youth market. As Adweek
blogger Tim Nudd wrote:
“They may be less provocative than last year’s,
but perhaps they’ll make a more lasting difference
in the lives of the target market.”
Branded crowdfunding program:
Starbucks Vote.Give.Grow
Slideshare
In 2012, Starbucks Vote.Give.Grow gave $4
million to 124 local non-profit organizations
based on votes from My Starbucks Rewards card-
members.
The program created an opportunity for
Starbucks to involve brand loyalists in its
corporate purpose. As social do-gooder Tara
Nami commented:
“One of the focus areas of the Starbucks
Foundation is helping the communities in which
they operate, and during the month of April… we,
the people, get to help them decide where and to
whom it goes to in our very own communities.”

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We also expect some niche crowdfunding
platforms to focus on connecting brands with
creators and backers. Projeggt (video) in Spain is
trying to promote a model where brands sponsor
projects in return for custom rewards from
creators.
Already, we are seeing examples of brands,
organizations and celebrities supporting projects
on crowdfunding platforms. For instance, Mozilla
Firefox is offering matching grants at Crowdrise.
Some brands will go further and create their
own crowdfunding platforms, and ask their
community members to fund projects and
non-profits on a matching grant basis, not only
through virtual actions such as voting.
However, as branded crowdfunding programs
become mainstream, and their novelty wears off,
we expect that they will become more focused,
with a stronger alignment between the brand’s
purpose and the type of projects or non-profits it
funds.
The program is a demonstration of Mahindra
Group’s commitment to its corporate philosophy
‘Rise.’ Ad veteran Ramesh Narayan commented:
“Mahindra is making a statement it is
committed to helping India, and backing it with
action. [Spark the Rise] is an eloquent statement
of its positioning, unlike a mere advertising
campaign that says the company is committed
to some cause or the other.”
The initiative taps into the passions of the Indian
crowds, as former ad-man Lakshmipathy Bhat
pointed out:
“The ‘rallying cry’ of Rise and the call to action
of ‘Spark the Rise’ couldn’t have come at a better
time – there are heroes emerging from every walk
of life and being egged on by the general public.”
As consumers evolve in the digital age, it is
important for brands to be seen as authentic and
socially responsible. Narayan commented:
“As consumers get younger and more aware,
these will be increasingly important critical
factors affecting choice."
The Future of Crowdfunding
In the near future, we expect equity-based
crowdfunding platforms to become a popular
way to fund startups across the world, as financial
regulation is modified to allow allocation of
equity against crowdfunding. Such models
already work in markets like the UK.
We also expect consolidation amongst the larger
crowdfunding platforms, as large crowdfunding
platforms like Kickstarter and indiegogo become
truly global through organic growth, acquisitions
and partnerships. For instance, indiegogo is
already investing in supporting projects by
creators from across the world and building a
strong global network of partners, and Kickstarter
has already expanded to the UK.
In parallel, we expect even more niche
crowdfunding platforms that focus on an under-
served segment or geography, as white label
crowdfunding software like Launcht, Hayduke,
Invested In, CrowdForce and Catarse become
more powerful.
Crowdfunding

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What are Behavior Change
Games?
Behavior Change Games use game design
elements and the power of communities to
motivate people to achieve challenging tasks
in the real world. Behavior change games have
been used to enable people to lead a healthy
and sustainable lifestyle, recover from illness and
injury, manage time and money, learn new skills,
and engage with political and social causes.
The rise of behavior change games can be
tracked to three changes in how people play
games. First, social games on Facebook have
widened the appeal of games beyond the video
gaming niche of kids and young adults. For
instance, Zynga’s Farmville (video) had more
than 83 million monthly active users at its peak.
Second, marketers, entrepreneurs and change
makers have adapted game design principles
in contexts other than entertainment, to design
marketing and loyalty programs, social networks
and training software, and serious games for
social impact. For instance, location-based
social network Foursquare (video), which uses
gamification to make “checking-in” more fun,
crossed 25 million users in September 2012.
And, third, the explosion in personal, social
and location data has led to the popularity
of the quantified self movement, enabling
Source: nanpalmero on flickr
people to track and change their behaviors. For
instance, 10 million people use personal finance
management service Mint.com (video) to track
over $80 billion in credit and debit transactions
and almost $1 trillion in loans and assets.
Behavior change games use the power of
games, networks and data to help people
create meaningful change. In 2012, a number
of niche behavior change games emerged
across a diverse range of topics. Quentiq
(video), FitBit (video), Nexercise (video), Health
rageous (video), Hotseat, Jawbone UP (video),
Striiv (video) and Zamzee (video) help people
track their workouts and activity automatically.
Fitocracy, Super Better (video), Habitual,
SlimKicker, Hubbub (video), HealthMonth,
Mindbloom (video), Healthy Heroes (video) and
Goalpost help people become healthier and
develop good habits. Practically Green, Recycle
Bank (video) and OPower (video) help people
adopt a greener lifestyle and save electricity. Mint
(video) and Pay off (video) help people manage
their finances and debt. Urgent Evoke (video) and
World Without Oil (video) educate people about
social issues and encourage them to contribute
to solutions. Code Academy and DuoLingo
(video) help people master a programming
language, or learn French. Epic Win (video) and
The Email Game (video) help people increase
their productivity and complete tasks or clear
their email inbox. Finally, Goodify (video), Keas
(video), Shape Up and Youtopia (video) are
focused on organizations and schools, and
help them motivate employees and students to
volunteer or get fit.
Some of these behavior change games have also
created social impact at scale. Shape Up has
helped 700,000 people lose 1 million pounds,
PayOff has helped members pay off $41 million
of debt, and OPower has helped people reduce
energy consumption by 1.6 billion kilowatt hours
and save $179 million on electricity bills.
People use the power
of games, networks and
data to change their
behavior
Behaviour
Change Games

19
Source: latddotcom on flickr
Click to watch: Jane McGonigal at TED 2010
Source: hyerdashery on flickr
The success of behavior change games shows
that people can change deeply entrenched
behaviors and form lasting good habits, if they
are able to break up big challenges into small
goals, receive feedback on their progress, and tap
into their networks for support.
This is not surprising. Game researcher Jane
Mc Gonigal, who is also the author of Reality is
Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How
They Can Change the World explains why such
games work:
“Gamers spend on average 80% of their time
failing in game worlds, but instead of giving up,
they stick with the difficult challenge and use the
feedback of the game to get better. With some
effort, we can learn to apply this resilience to the
real-world challenges we face.”
How do Behavior Change Games
work?
Most behavior change games include four game
design mechanisms: setting goals and missions,
tracking progress, receiving incentives, and
receiving support.
The first step in most behavior change games
involves setting a goal and missions, quests or
challenges to achieve the goal. Players have
missions assigned to them, choose from a set
of pre-configured missions, or create their own
missions. Missions range in difficulty, and new
players are encouraged to start with easier
missions before proceeding to more difficult
ones. On Mint (video) and Payoff (video), typical
goals include paying off a credit card debt or
buying a house, while on Fitocracy and Super
Better (video) typical missions include eating
healthier or working out.
Most behavior change games track progress
by asking players to complete virtual tasks
(Urgent Evoke (video), World Without Oil
(video), Code Academy and DuoLingo (video))
or self-report on their progress (Recycle Bank
(video), Fitocracy and Super Better (video)),
while some automatically track data through
sensors and feeds (Quentiq (video), Nexercise
(video), Zamzee (video), OPower (video), Mint
(video) and Payoff (video)). Most games use

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points, rankings, levels and leader boards to help
players measure their progress and compare
their performance to friends, similar others, and
other players. For instance, OPower compares
players’ energy consumption to that of their
neighbors and Mint compares peoples’ spending
habits across categories such as coffee, phone
bills and gas. These benchmarks help players re-
evaluate their missions and encourage a healthy
sense of competition, both to beat their own best
performance and that of their friends.
Players receive incentives when they accomplish
tasks such as completing their profile, inviting
friends, sharing their progress, or achieving a
milestone. Incentives range from rewards like
points, virtual goods and unlocked content;
recognition through badges, levels, titles and
special privileges; and in some cases real-life
prizes including cash prizes (Payoff.com) and
holidays packages (Recycle Bank). Incentives
are effective in attracting first-time players,
helping them get started and creating fun and
excitement. After they are hooked and begin to
successfully complete missions, players receive
the ultimate incentive to keep playing – they
see a change in their behavior and experience a
sense of pride and self-empowerment.
Most behavior games are intrinsically social
in nature. They encourage players to share
their performance with their social networks
and connect them to other people who have
struggled with or overcome similar challenges.
These communities of friends and like-minded
strangers offer players support, encouragement,
advice and, when needed, a good dose of peer
pressure. In some games, friends have specific
roles to play; for instance, in Super Better, players
invite allies to create special missions for them,
while in Urgent Evoke, players give power votes
and act as mentors for others.
Behavior change games work best when they
are designed with wonder, playfulness and
storytelling at their core. In spite of the hype
around gamification and the success of white
label gamification solutions like Badgeville
(video), Bunchball (video), and BigDoor, it’s not
enough to just add community or game elements
to boring tasks.
Game researcher Nicole Lazzaro explains
why we play games:
“Wonder, one of the strongest emotions of game
design, rivets player attention and unleashes
powerful neurochemicals that facilitate learning.
At the heart of every intellectual pursuit, at the
root of nearly all engagement, wonder keeps
players coming back.”
Game researcher Raph Koster argues in his book
Theory of Fun for Game Design that games and
stories have a complimentary role:
“Games tend to be experiential teaching;
stories teach vicariously. Games are good at
objectification; stories are good at empathy.
Games tend to quantize, reduce, and classify;
stories tend to blur, deepen, and make subtle
distinctions. Games are external – they are
about people’s actions; stories are internal –
they are about people’s emotions and thoughts.”
Behavior Change Games for Brands
Brands are beginning to create their own behavior
change games, as marketing campaigns, smart
phone or social apps and even sensor-enabled
products, to help people change their behavior in
an area that is aligned with the brand purpose.
Several brands are adding game elements
or even creating social games to deepen
engagement with their grassroots change
movement campaigns. These are typically short
term contests, tied to marketing campaigns or
important events, with prizes for participation.
For example, MTV created the MTV Fantasy
Election (video) to educate and engage young
voters around the 2012 U.S. elections. Players
created teams of politicians and gained or lost
points based on their team’s performance on
five criteria — civility, transparency, honesty,
engagement and public opinion — calculated by
using data from social networks and non-partisan
civil society organizations.
Other brands are creating smart phone or social
network applications that enable consumers
to sign up for challenges, self-report on their
progress, and get the support of their friends to
stay fit. For example, GE has created a series of
social apps including HealthyShare (video) andFit
Friendzy (video) as part of its Healthy magination
(video) initiative to help players stay fit.
Finally, sports and fitness brands are creating
sensor-enabled products and creating games
and communities around them to enable people
to automatically track their personal data and
use it to change their behaviors. Nike with Nike+
has been an early leader in creating a behavior
change game ecosystem, including the Nike+
community, Nike+ iPhone and Android apps
(video) and several Nike+ products including the
Nike FuelBand (video). Since 2006, Nike has
Behaviour
Change Games

21
motivated its community of 7 million people to
achieve 13 million daily fitness goals, run 733
million miles, and burn 27 billion calories. Now,
Adidas is trying to replicate its success with
miCoach (video).
Behavior Change Games case
studies
conversations around a number of behavior
change platforms and branded behavior change
programs in our weekly insights reports and
quarterly magazines; here are a few highlights.
Web platform: SuperBetter
Slideshare
Source: superbetter.com
Source: fantasyelection.mtv.com
Launched in 2012, Super Better is a super-hero
themed online game that helps people improve
their resilience, meet their health goals, recover
from illness or injury, and have fun along the way.
The game packages everyday occurrences into
elements of a super-hero story and offers a
new perspective to solving daily challenges. For
instance, obstacles are ‘bad guys’ or ‘villains’ that
need to be defeated in order to win. As one player
commented:
“The very idea has changed the way I approach
work – as a challenge to defeat and earn my
reward (pride).”
As part of the story, players choose personas
for themselves. Personas can be based on real
or fictional heroes and help motivate players
to achieve goals they previously considered
impossible. As SuperBetter player Courtney
Sloan commented:
“The gaming aspect allowed me to step away
from myself and do things not because I wanted
to, but because my hero self would not take no for
an answer. She had the willpower, so would I.”
To educate and engage 18-29 year olds around
the 2012 U.S. elections, MTV launched Fantasy
Election – a game in which players create teams
of politicians and gain or lose points based on
the politicians’ real-life behavior. For instance,
politicians received points for engaging with
their constituency on social networks or in a town
hall, and lost points for inaccurate statements
and uncivil advertising. Players who selected
SuperBetter relies on the power of its community
to help motivate people. Players are encouraged
to invite family and friends, or other members
of the SuperBetter community, to become their
“allies.” Allies keep players motivated with words
of encouragement and by creating new quests for
them. Alex Goldman reflected:
“I suppose this is a bit of a no-brainer, but I was
shocked at how motivating it was to have other
people designing quests for me. The quests
I created for myself seemed so pedestrian by
comparison."
As success stories begin to emerge, acupuncture
student Jason Lay commented:
“I see healthcare professionals of different
strokes being very interested in SuperBetter.
The potential for hands-off delivery and training
of health-promoting habits and attitudes is
tremendous using this gaming model.”
SuperBetter has over 100,000 members and
people have used the game to meet health
challenges ranging from sleeping disorders,
obesity and self-confidence issues, and even
to meet ‘life challenges’ such as completing a
novel.
Branded program: MTV Fantasy Election
Slideshare

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“good” politicians scored more points, climbed
the leader board and increased their chances of
winning prizes.
TIME journalist Keith Wagstaff noted:
“The idea is that while Millennials might not
venture to a host of dry political sites to keep track
of which politicians are disclosing funding sources
and making false claims, they might pay attention
if their Fantasy Election team loses points —
especially if those points can lead to prizes like a
trip for four to the Video Music Awards.”
MTV offered a total of 3,022 prizes ranging from
$5 gift cards to an all expense paid trip for four to
the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards to keep people
engaged during the two month campaign.
The game also gives political issues a much
needed layer of fun. As blogger Gary Henkle
noted:
“Fantasy Election ‘12 can definitely be used as
a tool by student activists to bring their
disengaged friends on board. For any friend who
says “I want to be more involved, but I don’t know
how this works,” this game makes discovery of the
political process more fun than a didactic civics
lesson, and as mentioned brings awareness in
less time.”
MTV Fantasy Election replaces MTV’s 20-
year “Choose or Lose” election slogan with a
campaign more suited for today’s youth. As Keith
Wagstaff said:
“The days of simply prompting young people
to vote from a rock concert are over; twenty-
somethings expect everything to be online — and
that includes political engagement.”
Branded product Nike FuelBand
Slideshare
Source: nike.com
In 2012, Nike introduced the Nike Fuel Band – a
wearable product that measures people’s daily
activities and work outs in a virtual metric called
NikeFuel. People can view their performance
data on their smart phones or the Nike+ website
and can compare results and NikeFuel earned
with friends and members of the 7 million strong
Nike+ community.
Nike targets the “everyday athlete” with the
FuelBand. As journalist Jessica Stanley observed:
“Just Do It’ is one of the best positioning
statements in the world, but customers started to
change. Don’t just say it, help us.”
The FuelBand does this by re-positioning
everyday activities and chores as a sport,
measuring people’s daily activities and rewarding
them for doing more. The concept of instant
feedback immediately appealed to self-trackers,
like Jenna Wortham, who commented:
“From the moment I wrapped the band around
my wrist, I was enamored with the idea of a
device that could help me collect data about my
habits and behavior, so that I could try to improve
them.”
Ever present on the wrists of the owner, the
FuelBand displays the amount of NikeFuel
earned for the day, and motivates people to meet
their daily goal.
MSLGROUP’s Gaurav Mishra talks about how the
NikeFuel band has helped him become more
active:
“I am a big believer in breaking down a large
challenge into small challenges and ticking
them off in public. I remember that the year I
first bought a Nike+ shoe was the year I ran most
regularly. The instant feedback and the sense of
progress were almost addictive. Then, I lost the
sensor, and lost my stride. I bought a NikeFuel
band a few weeks back and I have seen my activity
levels go up significantly since then. Instead of
taking a taxi, I walk 3+ km to work, both ways,
and I am planning to buy a bike for the weekends.
I even created a goal on Nike Plus to finish 2012
active.”
Another FuelBand user Alyson Shontell wrote:
“The mix of guilt and competition the
FuelBand makes you feel pushes you to make
healthier decisions.”
The Nike FuelBand is the latest addition to Nike’s
suite of fitness tracking products, all of which
Behaviour
Change Games

23
incorporate some elements of games, networks
and data to help people achieve their fitness
goals.
The Future of Behavior Change
Games
We believe that we are only beginning to
understand the potential of behavior change
games to create meaningful change for
individuals, communities and the world, and
also their many risks. In the future, behavior
change games that tap into the power of games,
networks and data will become pervasive
across business, civil society and government
organizations and permeate all aspects of
society.
Game designer Jesse Schell, who is the author
of the classic The Art of Game Design: A Book of
Lenses, predicts in his visions of game pocalypse
talk:
“Games and real life are reaching out to each
other with such force that we might come to
a condition of “gamepocalypse—-where every
second of your life you’re playing a game in
some way.”
Click to watch: Jesse Schell’s Visions of Gamepocalypse talk
at The Long Now Foundation
Click to watch: Zappos + SuperBetter
We expect the gamification enterprise solutions
ecosystem to mature, and new startups to
focus on niches like governance and public
services, health and wellness, environment and
sustainability, and education and learning. For
instance, UBoost offers gamification solutions
tailored for education and health.
We expect behavior change games to also
become more focused on specific demographics,
diseases or habits, to create customized
experiences and close-knit communities. For
instance, Goalpost has created a 12-week game
to help people quit smoking and Zamzee (video)
focuses on helping teens become more active.
Specifically, we expect healthcare and insurance
companies to work with governments to explore
behavior change games as cost-effective ways to
manage, treat and prevent long-term illness such
as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
As Dustin DiTommaso, VP of Experience Design
at Mad*Pow, said:
“Each year, billions of dollars are spent to move
our behaviors in a healthier direction to avert
crisis such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular
disease and other costly and painful afflictions.
Leveraging the motivational dynamics of game
play to energize and sustain people through
behavior change is a challenging yet profound
solution.”
We expect to see a new generation of innovative
sensor-based gadgets designed to track data and
trigger behavior change in niche areas. Products
like the Withings blood pressure monitor, FitBit
Aria Wi-Fi scale (video), MyZeo sleep manager
(video) and Changers solar charger (video) are
early examples of this trend.
We expect brands to create their own behavior
change game ecosystems, like Nike did with Nike
Plus, or acquire innovative startups that integrate
the power of game, network and data, like Intuit
did with Mint (video). Other brands will sponsor
third party behavior change games and make
them available for employees and associates like
Aetna did with Mindbloom Life Game (video).
We also expect more brands to partner with
games to create dedicated versions for their
employees, like Zappos did with SuperBetter.
Zappos was a development partner with
of SuperBetter from the game's inception,
and Zappos employees were the first to use
SuperBetter to achieve their health goals.
Finally, we expect more start ups like Goodify
(video), Keas (video), Shape Up and Youtopia
(video) to offer solutions for companies to inspire
employees and engage them around health and
wellness, and social service, and we expect these
startups to specialize around narrow niches.

25
What is Collaborative Social
Innovation?
Source: thinkpublic on Flickr
Organizations and people
co-design innovative and
sustainable solutions to
create shared value.
Click to watch: OpenIDEO by IDEO
Collaborative social innovation initiatives involve
businesses, governments, non-profits and
change makers coming together to co-create
innovative and sustainable solutions around a
shared purpose. Such initiatives typically focus
on the areas that have the highest potential to
create shared value: environment, energy and
sustainability; health, wellness and nutrition;
education, learning and capability building; and
governance, public services and public spaces.
Change makers are typically rewarded with
prize money, recognition, funding or support;
organizations find solutions to important
challenges; and society at large benefits from the
innovative solutions.
The rise of collaborative social innovation
can be attributed to three broad trends. First,
businesses, governments and non-profits are
realizing the importance of multi-stakeholder
social innovation solutions that create shared
value, especially in the context of engaging
Gen Ys. Second, organizations like the XPrize
Foundation, which have a long history of
creating “large-scale, high-profile, incentivized
prize competitions” to solve problems that
are important for society, are learning how to
reach new groups of innovators from across the
world, thanks to the internet. Third, networks
like TED, PopTech, Echoing Green, Ashoka and
StartingBloc are connecting young change
makers and showcasing their work, through
conferences, challenges and fellowships,
inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.
As a result, we are seeing a number of platforms
focusing on different aspects of collaborative
social innovation.
Open IDEO (video) by design and innovation
consultancy IDEO has partnered with businesses,
governments, and non-profits to create a series
of collaborative social innovation challenges.
ChallengePost, MindMixer (video), Ashoka
Change makers (video) and One Billion Minds are
other third-party collaborative social innovation
platforms which enable organizations to create
challenges for the public. ChallengePost focuses
on open government challenges and MindMixer
encourages civic engagement, while Ashoka
Change makers and One Billion Minds feature
a wide range of social innovation challenges.
Other platforms, like MIT Center for Collective
Intelligence’s Climate CoLab project, are focused
on a single topic, like climate change.

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Click to watch: Ashoka Change makers
Source: grafixer on Flickr
How does Collaborative Social
Innovation work?
Open government is another important area
for collaborative social innovation. In the US,
Challenge.gov, which is built on Challenge
Post, has created a series of open government
challenges for federal, state and local agencies,
while Data.gov encourages developers to build
applications using its public data sets and
showcases the best applications. In parallel,
organizations like Sunlight Foundation and Code
for America are helping create the ecosystem
to enable collaborative social innovation.
In the UK, SparkCentral is a government
collaborative social innovation platform that
aims to “build partnerships across the public,
private and voluntary sectors to deliver more for
less.” In Finland, Open Ministry is a legislation
crowdsourcing platform that enables Finnish
citizens to propose new laws to the parliament.
Some of these collaborative social innovation
platforms have had significant impact. For
instance, Ashoka Change makers has channeled
$600 million in funding to more than 10,000
social innovators, through more than 50
challenges, with the help of more than 500,000
community members.
The success of collaborative social innovation
initiatives shows that organizations and people
are capable of co-creating innovative solutions to
complex problems, and has created a new model Collaborative social innovation platforms are
typically a hybrid of three models: innovation
challenges, innovation ecosystems, and open
data platforms.
Most online collaborative social innovation
initiatives follow a contest model in which an
organization posts a challenge on a platform
and invites individuals, groups of individuals or
other organizations to submit innovations. These
innovations can be at any stage of completion,
ranging from ideas or sketches to full-blown
business proposals to products, services or
technologies that already exist at a smaller scale.
Some platforms include a structured design
thinking approach with inspiration, concepting,
evaluation and collaboration phases (OpenIDEO),
while others break up the challenge into what,
where and who elements (Climate CoLab). Some
platforms match community members with
challenges based on interest (ChallengePost)
while other motivate community members by
using game mechanics like a design quotient
score (OpenIDEO).
for change makers to showcase their innovations,
for governments and foundations to find
solutions to societal issues and for businesses to
realize sustainable growth.
Like MIT’s Thomas W. Malone says:
“We want to create more intelligent
organizations, more intelligent businesses,
more intelligent governments, more intelligent
societies. As all the people and computers on our
planet get more and more closely connected, it’s
becoming increasingly useful to think of all the
people and computers on the planet as a kind of
global brain.”
Collaborative
Social Innovation

27
Click to watch: GE Ecomagination Challenge
Other social innovation challenges don’t have
a direct impact on the company’s business,
but do strengthen the company’s reputation
by strengthening its association with social
innovation. In many such initiatives, companies
partner with educational institutions or non-
profit organizations and target students and
young innovators. Dell Social Innovation
Challenge (video), HP Social Innovation Relay,
Citi Innovation Challenge, Sony Open Planet
Ideas (video#!), Toyota Ideas for Good (video),
Samsung Solve for Tomorrow (video),
Intel Innovators (video),Sygenta Thought
for Food Challenge (video, McKinsey Social
Innovation Video Contest and Dell Go Green
Challenge (on MSLGROUP’s People’s Lab
crowdsourcing platform) are good examples.
Some companies commit to long-term social
innovation challenge platforms, with the
intention of creating an ecosystem to connect
change makers and build capabilities. For
Innovations are judged either quantitatively
according to a set of scoring criteria or
qualitatively by a panel of judges typically made
up of experts, specialists and members of the
funding committee. In some cases, community
members must vote on ideas to increase their
chances of appearing before the judges. Winning
innovators are rewarded with either cash prizes
(ChallengePost, Ashoka Change makers) or
with recognition and satisfaction that they have
helped contribute to social good (OpenIDEO,
Open Ministry).
Some of these innovation challenge platforms
are designed primarily as destination
communities (OpenIDEO, One Billion Minds),
while others offer white label options to enable
organizations to create their own standalone
challenge platforms (ChallengePost, MindMixer).
For some platforms, like Ashoka Change makers,
the innovation challenges are a small part of the
overall innovation ecosystem, which includes
community, capability building and funding.
For other platforms, like Data.gov, the innovation
challenges serve the purpose of connecting
government agencies who can share public data
with change makers and developers who can
build applications on top of this data to improve
how these agencies deliver public services.
In essence, all collaborative social innovation
platforms are designed around four dynamics:
connect, catalyze, crystallize, and celebrate.
First, platforms need to connect stakeholders
so that they have a context to engage with the
organization and with each other. Then, platforms
need to catalyze interactions so that new ideas
and projects can emerge organically. Next,
platforms need to synthesize these ideas into
solutions that benefit from and build upon the
best ideas. Finally, platforms need to celebrate
the most powerful or popular ideas, actions and
stories by highlighting them.
Collaborative Social Innovation for Brands
Just like third-party collaborative social
innovation platforms, branded collaborative
social innovation platforms are typically a
hybrid of three models: innovation challenges,
innovation ecosystems, and open data platforms.
The most popular model for brands is innovation
challenges, or contests to crowdsource social
innovation solutions. Several brands have
launched social innovation challenges, both as
part of their citizenship strategy, to fund, inspire
and connect social innovators (Mahindra Spark
the Rise, Dell Social Innovation Challenge)
and also as part of their business strategy, to
co-create innovative and sustainable solutions
that create shared value (GE Ecomagination
Challenge, GE Healthymagination Challenge
(video)).
Social innovation challenges that are part of a
company’s business strategy usually benefit
the change-maker or innovator, the business
itself and society at large. In such programs, the
brand is usually looking to invest in or acquire the
innovation, or promote it by supporting it with its
business scale. For instance, since the launch
of the GE Ecomagination Challenge (video) to
find innovations in energy and sustainability, GE
has committed $134 million to 22 investments
and commercial partnerships, granted $1.1
million in seed funding to early stage companies
and entrepreneurs, and acquired one of the
businesses that entered the challenge.

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Collaborative Social Innovation Case
Studies
conversations around a number of behavior
change platforms and branded behavior change
programs in our weekly insights reports and
quarterly magazines; here are a few highlights.
Web platform: Open Ministry
Source: avoinministerio.fi
In March 2012, the Finland Citizens’ Initiative
Act went into effect, giving citizens the right to
propose legislation to the Finnish Parliament,
provided 50,000 citizens of voting age support
the idea within six months. To facilitate this, a
group of non-profit entrepreneurs launched web
platform Open Ministry through which citizens
can propose and vote on new legislature online.
Several banks and telecom providers have
supported this platform by providing free access
to their verification APIs.
Journalist Susan Fourtané welcomed the move:
“Today, companies are crowdsourcing
everything from designs of cars to marketing
slogans. Why shouldn’t governments follow
suit?”
Indeed, people too are interested in collaborating
over legislature. Joonas Pekkanen, founder of
Open Ministry, wrote:
“Citizens have begun to call for a more open,
transparent and participatory western democracy
in place of the old rigid system.”
instance, both Mahindra Spark the Rise (video)
and Pepsi Refresh Project (video) ran for two
years and created significant impact. We have
covered both these initiatives in our
Future of Engagement report on Crowdfunding
as examples of crowdfunding programs focused
on creators.
Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing
Director of Mahindra Group, talked about the role
of such initiatives:
“The way companies build brands has evolved.
In version 2.0, we saw companies come in with
a larger purpose and meaning, beyond the
business. Now, we are trying to build a 21st
century corporation, by energizing people and
giving them a core purpose to be part of.”
Some of these social innovation ecosystems
take the shape of public-private partnerships
that bring together stakeholders from business,
government, academia and civil society to
institutionalize social innovation. For instance,
Walmart has created 14 Sustainable Value
Networks since 2005 to bring together diverse
stakeholders to develop solutions to fulfill
Walmart’s commitment towards renewable
energy, zero waste and sustainable products. IBM
launched the Smarter Cities Challenge (video) to
collaborate with local governments and co-fund
technology-based solutions to city-specific urban
challenges. HP launched the Catalyst Initiative to
collaborate with educators in finding innovative
solutions to enhance student literacy in STEM
subjects.
In other collaborative social innovation
initiatives, companies create open networks
to share intellectual property and know-
how, and encourage stakeholders to build
upon it. As an example, to realize its vision of
sustainable “considered design”, Nike created
the GreenXchange (video) in 2009 as an open
platform for companies and people to share
green intellectual property, processes and ideas.
Michael Dell, CEO and Chairman of Dell, sums
up the opportunity this positive multi-stakeholder
approach opens up for all of us:
“The new engine of innovation driven by
collaboration, openness, stewardship and
the power of the social web gives all of us an
opportunity to drive even more rapid,
meaningful change across global institutions.”
Collaborative
Social Innovation

29
Click to watch: Intel Innovators
In early 2012, Intel gave $300,000 to youth
innovators who presented ideas on how they
would change the world through technology, as
part of the Intel Innovators contest.
The contest helped youth innovators gain
attention not only from the industry, but also
from their close and extended networks. Pascal
Wagner, a participant in the contest, reflected on
how the experience led him to reach out to his
extended network for support and become more
vocal about his project:
“While walking around my college campus,
I had over 20 different people stop me asking me
about Wordio and the competition – most of
them had not known that I was working on this
project for the last four months.”
A unique aspect of Intel Innovators is the use
of gamification to involve people who weren’t
participating directly in the contest. Rooshabh
Doshi, member of the MSLGROUP’s Insights
Network, noted:
“Making fans who invest the most amount of
social capital on participants, ‘Top Fans’ and
allowing them to be a part of ‘The Battleground’
to award an idea $50,000, gives them an
immense feeling of belonging at the end of the
day… It’s a win-win for fans as well as
participants at the end of the day.”
Intel Innovators was a part of Intel “Innovators
of Tomorrow” branding campaign and
demonstrated the commitment of the
company to fostering innovation among young
entrepreneurs. Noah Kerner, CEO of Noise, the
agency behind the campaign, said:
“[Start ups] can raise money from funds like
GE’s 200MM Ecoimagination Challenge or
programs like Intel Innovators, which we created
in part to give young entrepreneurs access to
funding that they might not otherwise have. In
the future, there will be an increasing number of
opportunities like this so young entrepreneurs
can get more creative about how they raise
money and smarter about how much equity
they give up.”
David Meyer, a writer at GigaOm.com, attributed
the success of the initiative to Finland’s culture of
openness and history of collaboration between
citizens and the government, and noted the
global significance of the Open Ministry project:
“Nordic countries tend to have relatively close
societies where people are enthusiastic about
pitching into civic life… Tech-driven democracy
fans in other countries may not find the
environment as conducive to crowdsourced
legislation right now, but on the other hand they
just got themselves a model to study.”
In October 2012, the first citizen-proposed law, a
ban on fur farming, entered Parliament with the
support of 55,000 citizens.
Branded program: Intel Innovators
Slideshare

Annual
Report
Source: dellchallenge.org
Source: sparktherise.com
Click to watch: Dell Social Innovation Challenge
Since 2007, the Dell Social Innovation Challenge
has inspired 15,000 students from 105 countries
to share 4,500 proposals to tackle the world’s
problems and has empowered them with access
to peers, mentors and faculty members and
$450,000 in funding. Dell has also committed
to investing a further $5 million to engage more
students every year.
The Dell Social Innovation Challenge has acted
as an incubator for several promising start ups,
and has helped entrepreneurs boost their skills,
networks and marketability. Katherine Bascom,
who was part of the 2010 winning team
Shining Hope for Communities, said:
“Since we’ve won [the challenge], we’ve raised
$1.2 million from funders like Echo in Green,
Newman’s Own Foundation and several other
small family foundations. We’ve been featured
in New York Times, Vogue Magazine and Fast
Company and other media outlets.”
Suzi Sosa, a Dell employee and contributor to
Forbes BrandVoice highlighted the importance
and rise of ‘systems innovations’, a trend
emerging in the social entrepreneurship industry
as well as in the Dell Social Innovation Challenge:
“Though not always as simple or sexy as
product innovations, systems innovations are
critical for our planet. The world’s most urgent
problems remain unsolved because they are tied
to broken systems that no single product can
remedy.”
“The winners of this year’s Dell Social Innovation
Challenge created two systems innovations
that not only have the potential to impact the
lives of millions, but also reflect an important
and exciting trend for social entrepreneurship
worldwide.”
The Dell Social Innovation Challenge community
has 230,000 members. Nearly 500 employees
have participated in challenge as mentors or
judges.
Branded program: Mahindra Spark the
Rise
Slideshare
Branded program: Dell Social Innovation
Challenge
Slideshare
Collaborative
Social Innovation

31
Click to watch: Mahindra Spark the Rise
ChallengePost and MindMixer, which are focused
on social innovation and civic engagement.
Mature organizations will need to go beyond
platforms and commit to long-term public-
private partnerships that create strong multi-
stakeholder ecosystems to scale both the
engagement in such initiatives and the impact of
the innovations that result from them
(Dell Social Innovation Challenge, IBM Smarter
Cities Solutions).
Specifically, we expect educational institutions to
become more proactive in both partnering with
other organizations to co-create collaborative
social innovation initiatives targeted at students,
and find innovative ways to bring such initiatives
into the classroom (OpenIDEO University Toolkit,
Samsung Solve for Tomorrow).
Even as more corporations create branding-
driven collaborative social innovation challenges,
we expect more Fortune 500 firms to follow
GE’s example and create challenges which have
a direct business impact, by investing in the
winning innovations, or using their business clout
to scale them.
As open government data and application
programming interfaces (APIs) become that
norm, we expect many more governments
to open up civic data and invite developers
to build applications on top of them. We also
expect some non-profits and corporations to
experiment with this model and share data or
intellectual property in an open network so that
third party developers can build social innovation
applications on them.
In a TED Talk, former U.S. Deputy Chief
Technology Officer Beth Noveck said:
“If we want to see the hopeful, exciting kinds
of innovations in clean energy and education and
development, if we want to see those adopted
and scaled, we must all participate. Open up
institutions and let the nutrients flow throughout
our culture to create open institutions, a
stronger democracy, a better tomorrow.”
Finally, as organizations become better at
designing and measuring collaborative social
innovation initiatives, we will see them investing
heavily to replicate pilot innovations across
markets and scale their impact
(Walmart Sustainable Value Networks).
In 2012 and 2013, India’s Mahindra Group is
giving grants of $1 million to 96 ideas and
projects that can drive positive change in India
under its Spark the Rise program. Mahindra also
connects change makers with each other and
mentors, to help create an ecosystem for social
innovation in India.
The program is a demonstration of Mahindra
Group’s commitment to its corporate philosophy
‘Rise.’ Ad veteran Ramesh Narayan commented:
“Mahindra is making a statement it is
committed to helping India, and backing it with
action. [Spark the Rise] is an eloquent statement
of its positioning, unlike a mere advertising
campaign that says the company is committed
to some cause or the other.”
Former ad-man Lakshmipathy Bhat noted the
need for companies to embrace purpose-driven
campaigns like Spark the Rise:
“Consumers are a lot more wary of advertising
claims. They also have access to information
on the internet which allow them to form a
considered opinion about a brand and not just
depend on what the advertising says. So in a
way, companies can be ‘caught out’ if they were
to merely pay lip service to a claim… In this
context, the Mahindra Group initiative, Rise is
commendable.”
The Future of Collaborative Social
Innovation
In the near future, we expect collaborative
social innovation to become the norm both for
corporations creating innovations that create
shared value and governments and change
makers designing solutions for social good.
Even as white label open innovation platforms
like BrightIdea and People’s Lab mature,
we will see more specialized platforms like

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4. GRASSROOTS
CHANGE MOVEMENTS

33
What are Grassroots Change
Movements?
Source: untitlism on Flickr
Brands and people
act together around a
shared purpose to create
meaningful change.
Grassroots change movements involve a large
numbers of people acting as change agents,
in their own lives or in their communities, in
a way that their actions can be aggregated
or coordinated, leading to significant impact
and meaningful change. Grassroots change
movements might be catalyzed and managed
by organizations, including corporations, or they
might be sparked by an event and spontaneously
spread through the initiative of volunteers. Many
grassroots change movements are political and
focus on issues like human rights, freedom of
expression and economic equality. Now, many
organizations are applying a similar approach
to catalyze behavior change and create shared
value in the areas of environment, energy and
sustainability; health, wellness and nutrition;
education, learning and capability building; and
happiness, kindness and human potential.
Grassroots change movements have moved into
the mainstream due to four important dynamics.
First, people have new types of power: to access
information, connect with each other, express
their opinions, and change the course of public
debate. Second, people don’t trust organizations;
in fact, trust in all organizations is at an all-time
low across the world, and people believe that
they themselves can drive real change, not
governments or corporations. Third, people
are searching for meaningful connections with
communities around a shared purpose; they
expect organizations to enable such connections,
and are willing to reward organizations who do.
Finally, the scale of social networks (Facebook
has one billion members globally), the ease of
one-click sharing via Facebook Likes and Twitter
Retweets, and the virality of popularity-driven
activity streams have made it easy for people,
especially Gen Y, to participate in and help spread
such movements.
Unilever CEO Paul Polman succinctly summed
up the power of social movements and their
importance for corporations:
“If [social media activists] can bring down the
Egyptian regime in a few weeks, they can bring
us down in nanoseconds.”
We have seen a number of grassroots
change movements, in which social media has
played an important role. Arab Spring,
Occupy Wall Street (video), India Against
Corruption, Spain’s 15-M (video) and Mexico’s
Yo Soy 132 (video) focused on economic
equality and political regime change. Kony2012
(video) and Free Pussy Riot (video) focused on
human rights in Uganda and Russia. WWF’s
Earth Hour (video) and 350 (video) focus on
climate change. It Gets Better (video) and All
Out (video) focus on LGBT issues. Bono’s ONE
(video) and RED (video) fight poverty and AIDS in
Africa. Movember (video) rallies people around
men’s health, Adbusters’ Buy Nothing Day
(video) promotes anti-consumerism, Free Hugs
Campaign (video) encourages human kindness
and Startup Weekend supports entrepreneurship.

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We have also seen an ecosystem of dedicated
platforms and products to support such
movements. Change.org (video), Avaaz.org
(video), Care2 (video) and Causes (video) are
amongst the leading platforms for changemakers
to start and support petitions, raise and donate
funds, recruit and volunteer, and create and share
content, each with several million members.
Edward Norton’s Crowdrise (video) partners with
celebrities to raise funds for non-profits. eBay
co-founder Jeff Skoll’sParticipant Media and
Take Part use socially conscious movies like An
Inconvenient Truth, Contagion and Food Inc to
promote social actions. Agencies like Blue State
Digital, Purpose and GoodCorps exclusively
focus on creating social movements, while
organizations like New Organizing Institute
help build capabilities for grassroots organizers.
Finally, changemakers use platforms like Meetup,
UStream and Kickstarter (video) to organize
events, livestream video or raise funds.
Click to watch: 350
Click to watch: Participant Media/ Take Part
Click to watch: Movember – Fundraising Tips
Some grassroots change movements have
achieved significant impact. The Arab Spring
movement led to a series of regime changes
across the Middle East. The Occupy movement
and Take the Square movements have spread
to over 100 cities in the United States and over
1500 cities globally. 1.1 million people worldwide
registered for the Movember movement in 2012
and raised $135 million for men’s health.
The success of such grassroots change
movements shows that people have the desire
and the tools to participate and act to drive
change around a shared purpose they are
passionate about.
How Do Grassroots Change
Movements Work?
Grassroots change movements typically involve
four change drivers: a shared purpose to inspire
people, an ongoing platform to organize people,
a series of interconnected programs to energize
people, and stories to spark participation and
action.
Almost all grassroots change movements have
a strong shared purpose. Often, the purpose is
to oppose a harmful practice, prevent a negative
outcome, or fight to protect something, but
movements focused on positive outcomes also
work (Free Hugs Campaign (video)). Often,
movements are initiated by an individual, a
small group, or an organization, and then carried
forward by volunteers and supporters.
Many movement organizers provide ‘how-to’
guides to show supporters how to get involved
(Earth Hour (video), It Gets Better (video)). The
best movements create a ladder of engagement
for supporters, to first get them involved with
simple actions like signing petitions, voting for
causes, or sharing content; then get them more
engaged by asking them to share personal
stories, donate money, buy merchandise, or
volunteer time; and finally convert them into
partners by inspiring them to recruit supporters,
raise funds, or organize local events. Some
movement platforms also use gamification
features, like points and leaderboards, to move
supporters up the ladder of engagement.
(Movember (video)).
Grassroots
Change Movements

35
Click to watch: All Out
Click to watch: Earth Hour I Will If You Will
Click to watch: Free Hugs Campaign
Even writer Evgeny Morozov, who rails against
“slacktivism” in his book Net Delusion recognizes
the value of this approach:
“Create diverse, distinctive, and non-trivial
tasks; your supporters can do more than just
click “send to all” button” all day. Facebook
could actually be a boon for those organizing
a campaign; they just need to figure out a way
in which to capitalize on identity aspiration of
“slacktivists” by giving them interesting and
meaningful tasks that could then be evaluated.”
If a movement becomes successful, the original
leaders find ways to spread the movement
across the world, while maintaining its original
spirit (Adbusters/ Occupy). Many movement
organizers also create guides to help volunteers
organize local chapters or events
(How to Occupy, Earth Hour, 350, Startup
Weekend). Some organizers create interactive
maps, so that supporters can easily find local
chapters (Earth Hour, 350, Take the Square).
Movement platforms can be designed to have
ongoing engagement, like an online community
or a physical space, or periodical engagement,
like an annual event or an annual contest
(Movember, Earth Hour). The most successful
movements keep supporters engaged through
a series of interconnected programs (350 2010
summary, 350 2011 summary, Kony MOVE:DC,
Kony Cover the Night) and a stream of stories,
often shared by the community members
themselves (We Are the 99%, It Gets Better).
Sometimes, these programs result in offshoot
projects that spread the movement to new
constituents or in new directions
(Occupy Network). Often, other organizations
join in a movement and create their own offshoot
projects, helping the movement grow
(Amnesty International Free Pussy Riot Map).
Many movement organizers proactively seek
the support of celebrities to gain more visibility.
Invisible Children asked supporters to email or
tweet to specific celebrities whose support could
spread their message. Earth Hour partnered
with celebrities to create the I Will If You Will
campaign.
Grassroots Change Movements
for Brands
Brands are realizing the power of grassroots
change movements and creating movement
marketing initiatives to benefit from them.
Scott Goodson, author of the movement
marketing book Uprisingsummarizes how
movement marketing works:
Finally, stories and content play a big role in
sparking a wave of sharing and participation,
which help movements go viral and achieve
results. For instance, the Kony2012 video has
received 95 millions views on YouTube and
attracted global attention to the Kony 2012
campaign. The Free Hugs Campaign video
has received 74 million views. The original
It Gets Better video has received more than 2
million views and the response videos have more
than 50 million views collectively.

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“You start by identifying a powerful idea on
the rise in culture. You then join, fuel and add
real tangible value to the idea through innovative
marketing and social media. People who share
the passion for the idea join the cause. And rally
others to get involved too. And so, a movement is
born, which smart brands can profit from.”
Brands can engage in grassroots change
movements at many levels, starting with
participating in existing movements, then
creating their own campaigns around purpose
and participation, and finally catalyzing and
committing to long-term movements.
Many brands start by participating in or partnering
with movements that resonate with their values,
and encouraging their employees to participate.
For instance, Gap (video) and Google (video)
encouraged their LGTB employees to create
videos to participate in the It Gets Better
movement. Several brands have supported the
Earth Hour and (RED) movements, and some
have played significant roles in promoting these.
For instance, Starbucks with its annual {RED)
programs (2008 video, 2009 video, 2010 video)
has raised more than $10 million for the (RED)
Global Fund.
Click to watch: Starbucks RED
Some brands create short-term campaigns
around purpose and participation, but stop short
of committing to them long enough to turn them
into movements (GE Celebrate What Works).
Sometimes, these short-term campaigns are a
part of long-term purpose-led programs
(GE Ecomagination Tag Your Green (video).
Brands that have committed to long-term
movement marketing initiatives can take three
distinct routes. They can rally people to support a
cause or raise funds for it; they can inspire people
to change their own behavior in a way that adds
up to meaningful change; and, they can create
ecosystems to support changemakers who are
creating change in their own communities.
Some brands see movement marketing as
an extension of cause marketing, and create
campaigns that rally support for a cause. Here,
brands typically partner with a non-profit and
make a donation to it, often based on sales or
community participation, but also create content
that inspires community members to pledge
support, share their own stories and spread the
word. For instance, Google Take Action (video)
rallied people to pledge their support for a free
and open web. Aircel Save Our Tigers (video)
catalyzed a public debate in India to protect
tigers. Brand crowdfunding programs, like Chase
Community Giving (video), American Express
Members Project (video), and Starbucks Vote.
Give.Grow, that ask community members to
support non-profits by volunteering or donating
money can also be included in this category.
Increasingly, brands are creating movements
marketing campaigns that focus on inspiring
people to change their own behavior, and
aggregating these actions so that they add up to
meaningful change. For instance, P&G’s Secret
Mean Stinks (video) aims to end girl-to-girl
bullying and inspire girls to gang up for good and
be nice to each other. Sometimes, these behavior
changes movements can be fun and whimsical.
For instance, Doritos in Argentina created a
movement to bring slow dancing back (video).
Some brands create an annual event to focus
their effort to bring about behavior change. For
instance, American Express’ Small Business
Saturday encourages Americans to shop at
independent stores, each year on the Saturday
following Thanksgiving (2010 video, 2011 video,
2012 video). Other brands create a series of
interconnected behavior change campaigns
around their shared purpose, or Social Heartbeat.
For instance, over the years, Starbucks has
created a series of movement marketing
campaigns in the US, which link back to its shared
purpose of being the “third place” and nurturing
community values (vote in the 2008 elections,
pledge 5 hours of volunteer time, change
local communities, bring your own tumblr,
help create jobs). Tata Tea Jaago Re in India
has created campaigns to inspired people to
register to vote, volunteer for causes and spread
positivity. MSLGROUP has helped Alpenliebe
inspire millions of young people in China to
share, appreciate and engage in everyday acts
of kindness, through a movement marketing
campaign that is now entering its third year.
Some of these behavior change movements
can also be seen as behavior change games. For
Grassroots
Change Movements

37
Source: sinuousmag.com
instance, Nike has created a series of campaigns,
increasingly around Nike Plus and Nike Fuel
(video), which use gamification features like
challenges and levels to inspire people to
become more active (Nike Global Game on
World, Nike Hong Kong Make It Count, Nike
Mexico Bid Your Sweat, Nike Global Missions).
Finally, some brands are creating long-term
platforms, with the intention of creating an
ecosystem to connect changemakers and build
capabilities. These platforms provide the tools
and the enabling ecosystem for people to act as
change agents in their own communities. Often,
these platforms ask community members to
create their own grassroots change projects and
activate their networks to get funding and scale
their projects. For instance, both Mahindra Spark
the Rise (video) and Pepsi Refresh Project (video)
created platforms to support changemakers that
created significant impact. We have covered both
these initiatives in our Future of Engagement
reports on crowdfunding and collaborative social
innovation.
In summary, brands can create a campaign
around purpose and participation, but it becomes
a movement only if people make it their own. For
movement marketing to work, the brand needs
to think of itself as a custodian of the movement,
not its owner; it needs to nurture the movement
over multiple years, but also create the space
for it to become bigger than the brand itself. If a
brand tries to control the movement, and keep
it on message, the movement is likely to be
stillborn, or die a slow death.
Grassroots Change Movements
Case Studies
conversations around a number of grassroots
change movements and branded programs in our
weekly insights reports and quarterly magazines;
here are a few highlights.
In March 2012, non-profit Invisible Children
released a 30 minute documentary that sparked
a grassroots change movement to make
indicted war criminal Joseph Kony famous and
pressurize policy makers to call for his arrest.
The documentary broke records by topping 100
million views in just six days.
Social Media strategist Calum Brannan shared his
views on why the video went viral:
“Viewers are shown ‘Share’ buttons in the first
few seconds almost subliminally, now I’m not a
psychologist, but one could hazard a guess this
helps plant that seed. This video is emotive, its
a roller-coaster of happy to sad to shock. Film
maker Russell invites the viewer to participate in
an experiment, and the use of the word ‘We’ and
‘Us’ instantly builds a sense of community and is
very personal. The end of the video provides clear
instructions on how you can help, leading with
financial ones first, then powerfully suggests
that the least you can do is ‘Share’ the video.”
People were directed to the Kony 2012 website
and given specific calls to action to spread the
word, sign a pledge, buy Kony 2012 actions kits,
donate money and send messages to lawmakers
and celebrities, including Bill Clinton, Justin
Grassroots change movement: Kony2012
Slideshare

Annual
Report
Click to watch: KONY 2012: What’s Next
Bieber and Oprah, asking them to tweet on
#StopKony and retweet other #StopKony tweets.
Many celebrities responded to these messages,
including Oprah who tweeted:
“Thanks tweeps for sending me info about
ending #LRAviolence. I am aware. Have
supported with $’s and voice and will not stop.
#KONY2012.”
The Kony2012 campaign inspired many to
think deeply and share their opinions, thereby
flooding their social network streams with KONY
2012 content and building momentum of the
movement. Science and technology writer Peter
Murray wrote:
“Not only is the video being viewed like crazy,
but people are posting their own clips and
commentary. In this new age of interactive media,
viewers are investing their own time to record
and upload their own thoughts. As I write, 278
video clips have been uploaded to the KONY 2012
YouTube video campaign. As of the 200th video,
their average length was six minutes.”
Ashraf Engineer, member of the MSLGROUP
Insights Network commented:
“For me, the root of the campaign’s success lay
in its calls-to-action. People want to be involved,
to feel that they are making a difference. It was
by giving viewers a sense of participation that the
campaign went viral. This is an important lesson
for marketers too. Involvement spells success.”
Inivisible Children, organizer of the Kony 2012
movement, continues to engage its network of
supporters with follow up programs and specific
calls to action to attend conferences and rallies,
share photos on Instagram with #move:dc,
message politicians who have not yet confirmed
their support and buy merchandise on their web
platform.
Grassroots change movement: Free Pussy
Riot
Slideshare
Supporters wearing the balaclava, the symbol of
the movement, at the Russian Consulate in New
York City, via FreePussyRiot.org
In March 2012, supporters of Russian feminist
punk-rock band and anti-Putin activist group
Pussy Riot initiated the Free Pussy Riot
movement to protest the detention of three
band members and to attract international
intervention. The remaining band members
created FreePussyRiot.org as the central
platform of the movement, where they shared
news updates and progress, including live tweets
from the court house, in multiple languages;
and directed people to fundraising campaigns
(FundRazr), online petitions (Avaaz.org,
Change.org, Causes.com) and events such as the
Global Day of Solidarity which took place in
74 cities across the world.
The organizers also recruited support from
organizations such as Amnesty International
and The Voice Project, and musicians and artists,
each of whom created programs at the grassroots
level. For instance, The Voice Project encouraged
people to buy merchandise on CafePress,
musicians and poets organized fundraising
events such as readings and benefit concerts,
rapper Peaches created a music video, Paul
McCartney tweeted his support to his 1 million
followers, Madonna wore a balaclava (the symbol
of the movement) and addressed the issue at her
concert in Moscow, and Amnesty International
urged people to write to Russian officials and
share photos of themselves wearing balaclavas.
Tom Watson, a journalist at Forbes, pointed out
that the movement went viral because it involved
niche communities who shared the same
passions:
Grassroots
Change Movements

39
Click to watch: Free Pussy Riot – The Guardian’s video
montage
Source: itgetsbetter.org
“Like the Occupy movement, it involved
a small group that magnified its attention
through other nodes: Amnesty International,
feminist bloggers, the foreign policy press, and a
vast mob of supporters on Twitter and Facebook.”
Suzanne Nossel, Executive director, Amnesty
International USA, pointed out that the balaclava
and the image of the Pussy Riot activists has also
helped the cause attract attention not only from
musicians and activists, but also the media:
“Observers have chalked up Pussy Riot’s
prominence to the group’s provocative name and
the band members’ adroit use of historical images
with a ’90s era Riot Grrl style.”
Content too played a large role in attracting
attention and keeping people motivated. For
instance, A few hours after the three women
were sentenced to three years imprisonment,
the remaining group members released a new
single, Putin Lights a Fire. This song was picked
up by The Guardian who used it to create a video
montage with multimedia from the trial and
fan protests. This in turn was published in sites
including the Huffington Post, thereby reaching a
larger audience.
Blogger Courtney Fowler noted:
“So what does Pussy Riot teach us? It indeed
has shown us what is possible in an
interconnected world. It shows us how
successfully a protest movement can employ the
internet to spread their message globally.”
Grassroots change movement:
It Gets Better Project
Slideshare
In response to a rise of gay youth bullying and
suicides in the U.S., Dan Savage and Terry Miller
created the It Gets Better Project, a purpose-
inspired movement that solicits personal stories
from LGBT adults and allies to let LGBT teens
know that life gets better.
Social media and YouTube gave the co-founders
the opportunity to reach out to supporters and
LGBT teens across the globe with their message
in real-time and without the need of seeking
approvals or spending money. In an interview with
ABC News, Dan Savage co-founder of the It Gets
Better Project said:
“It occurred to me that we can talk to these kids
now. We don’t have to wait for an invitation or
permission to reach out to them using social
media and YouTube.”
They posted their video a week after a
controversial suicide, at a time when the LGBT
community and legislators were paying attention
to the cause. As Heidi Massey, a non-profit new
media consultant said:
“The timing was perfect. It was so relevant to
what was going on.”
Since its launch in September 2010, more than
50,000 stories and messages of support have
been shared on YouTube from LGBT adults and
allies including celebrities Barack Obama, and
companies including Gap and Google. The videos
have collectively been viewed more than 50
million times.
Journalist Ivor Tossel pointed out why so many
adults connected to the concept of sharing their
story:

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