Sunday, March 15, 2015

It's Feeling Feasible...

In the spirit of both Tessa's and Bonnie's posts below, and in decompressing from the feasibility presentation/plans last week, I'm feeling very positive about my team and actually, pretty good about the total feasibility of at least this first phase GDF.  I had a whirlwind few days in NYC, networked a bunch at that Wagner event/tested GDF11 out on a few strangers and connected some greatly missed friends all over the city.   And to top it off I had a very cool and inspiring meeting with John at the Indiegogo offices today.   I really appreciate how accessible he is and game to brainstorm with us every step of the way.  A very evolved express-test-cycle guy.

He also looped in Alisa, who he e-introduced as more experienced with social innovation campaigns where the product and end result are slightly less certain but where social impact has huge potential like GDF11.  John gave me a lot to think about/get a move on and it was really cool that I got to have some serious face time there and see how excited they are about this campaign.

We are on the right track with the thoughts and strategy we’ve been discussing, and John added a lot of additional insights.  After the initial introductions, background experience and our first cup of coffee, we discussed a the team, some different goals, and approach we were thinking of taking.  For now putting a pin in the service dog related partner/orgs and thinking about the things I need to get done in the first month  John, and in hindsight probably Spectra Genetics, isn't sold on the need to include/prioritze service dog org potential partners in our first video.  I actually agree after thinking about it, this video will be much more effective tool to use to attract those. Though after I think some more, I wonder if it makes sense to sort of cold call some of this growing potential parters/advocates list I've been growing pinterest style.

Moving on, after all that, I really generally sort of pitched couple of different angles for our viral pitch video. I'd been having a hard time solidifying an idea/mental storyboard for it. We also are thinking that maybe there could be more than one video, tentatively we’ll shoot enough for two with Heidi between April 3-6 (depending on everyone’s schedule), hopefully have it edited/ready to post/launch the campaign the following week.

The key components of our top of the campaign page video:
-Posted under a GDF11 page on youtube (which we could post a subsequent video mid campaign)
-keep it around 1:30 min
-sort of a Bill Nye the Science Guy approach explaining GDF11 in super layman’s terms and establishing both the lab’s and the researchers credibility and telling our story of our big vision/goals
-annotations within the video with direct links to the campaign, other news stories, i.e.. “if you want to learn more about GDF11 click here”

I'm looking forward to working with Alisa too.  She's based in San Francisco but seems very enthusiastic and experienced in this kind of campaign.  I so want to hear more of her position as manager of social innovation at indiegogo (related: she is probably having an awesome time SXSW right now). Right before Alisa left, she sent this indiegogo collection of super successful social innovation campaigns.

Meanwhile, as we  gear up for the launch, we talked about some other things that need to happen/think about/decide in this month leading up:
-Decide on the campaign/product name, should include GDF11 in the name, and Healthspan in the tagline
-Set our money goal, how much do you really need to do this and provide perks and pay ourselves, etc. (John was clear not to aim high or low, just figure out that amount and shoot for it)
-Create an easily digestible infographic explaining exactly where all the funds will go, complete transparency is a major theme among the most successful campaigns
-Compile email list of all first donors and potential donors and explain the GDF11 Campaign 2.0 and get them on board/generate new interest 
-Set up and manage GDF11 Twitter/Facebook page/Youtube pages
-Get a follow up interview on CBS, maybe even have them covering us shooting our next video
-Get another PPG story with a link to the video
-Press releases with link to video to AP, tech blogs, Indiegogo Blog, etc ready to go day of launch
-there’s more but I’m going to put this all in more comprehensive schedule as soon as I’m back in the burgh on March 11.

Things that we no limits brainstormed about also potentially and might be kind of epic if we pull it off/could do if we think it’s feasible 
-Campaign Launch Event, where people donate min $10 to come on the first day of the campaign to get as many donors as possible, number of donors is key vs. amount they donate, it helps establish that credibility/hope (open to public, included in all press releases)
-Do a mass google hangout interview/reddit AMA (ask me anything) with Jon about the research 

We also discussed a number of strategies for once the campaign is live, but I’ll write those up/include them in that schedule that I’m going make later next week.  Meanwhile, while I'm working on that I've been in google spiral after reading the SSIR Dragonfly Effect, which was perfect timing as a friend just recommended I check out the growth hacking cookbook and at first skim and a lot of long google/wikipedia trails, I know what my next blog post, will be about that.

NOTE: That last paragraph especially, but really the rest of the above are basically notes to myself that I likely would not have written if we didn't get points for blog posts (sad but realistic based on past experience) and I guess I just really like this as an aspect of the class because I've wish I wrote down things more as they happened my whole life because I enjoy reading it when others do it...and I really like and find it helpful reading my older ones. Narcissist?

Anyway, since this is for the Social Innovation Incubator and I buried my question back up in beginning-What do you guys think about not prioritizing service dogs/mwds, etc,  really letting the video/early outreach warm them up them first. Obviously this notion stems from the fantasy partnership that would start because someone we know and read our first emails/engaged in our early outreach was in/mentioned it personally to someone at one of those potential advocate orgs and was like, "wouldn't it be great if this GDF11 was in our Buffalo Brand dog food? we should check this out."    Boom! 

Along those lines and to sum up: we've been discussing how maybe horses/horse feed may actually be the most likely early adopters...and then, and maybe this is maybe a question more for John, do we then want to mention a horse in the video some way? (I have got to stop pussyfooting around this script but it's so harddd)  Lastly, would horse focus be too big of a change to make in a project...I feel like not really/maybe, but what do you all think?




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