Beers for Books: A Social Media Marketing Experiment

[Gary Bremermann]

This is the home at JSMM for discussion relating to the Beers for Books concept. B4B is a fundraising idea to raise money for the local language publishing program of Room to Read www.roomtoread.org, a very well-run NPO whose focus is on childhood literacy in developing countries.

The fundamental concept is that an organizer approaches a bar/restaurant and gets the owner/manager to agree to donate 100 yen for every beer (or all drinks if they are OK with it) sold on a designated day. 100 yen buys one book for a kid in Nepal, Cambodia, Zambia, etc.

The organizer agrees to promote the event by inviting as many people as possible to drop by and have a cold one or three. The benefit to the bar is new customers, massive goodwill, and the satisfaction that they are doing something good for kids. Simple.

It is something that can be done by anyone anywhere and the intention is to use social media to help spread the idea virally. I don't own the idea, I'm just letting it float out there to see where it goes and I welcome all your support and ideas. Ready, set, go!

[Lance Shields]

Hey Gary, thanks for starting the discussion which I hope will help gather ideas for your NPO. I was wondering how you'd like this discussion to work. Would you like to gather ideas for it? Are you interested in finding people to help? Are you interested in doing it as a case study to reflect on how the social media works with it? I'm just curious what we should talk about. Also, I hope it can be useful for you.

[Gary Bremermann]

Hi Lance, I'd LOVE to find people who want to help. And of course, ideas are always welcome.

I threw it out on JSMM because I think there might be some interesting social media marketing lessons in terms of how an idea spreads via social media, what is the best platform (FB and/or Mixi and/or LinkedIn and/or Ning etc.) to create a home for keeping the flame alive, best practices (i.e. finding the right approach to spread the idea without being shrill, overbearing, annoying, etc.), how to get others to spread the idea virus without it seeming contrived, etc.

In terms of help, my biggest challenge now is to get the tools ready by Feb 26th. I've got a very rough PPT which explains the idea for an internal audience, but I need to create the following:

1) Presentation PPT--short, sweet and simple--that I'll present on the 26th and which targets potential event organizers.

2) Organizer's Manual--a step by step PPT which explains how to organize a B4B event.

3) "Pitch Deck" for potential venues--For Japan, this needs to be in Japanese, 5 pages/slides max., and clearly showing the benefit to the venue for supporting the event.

4) Poster/Flyer Template--I'm all for a one-sided B&W A5 template that is simple and easy and cheap to print. No need for anything fancy.

5) Other Digital Tools--simple HTML page, banners, etc. (lower priority)

I'll be sitting down with Andrew Shuttleworth next week Tuesday afternoon to map out a web strategy and I'm confident he'll have some great ideas. I'm most concerned about getting some nice visual identity stuff and tools done before the event. If any of you PPT masters have some time and want to help, yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

The next phase after launching on Feb 26th is the most interesting one--getting the idea out to the rest of Japan and seeing if we can find leaders/organizers who will take the initiative and organize a B4B event. The two areas I've started tapping so far are the craft beer community and the JET network. I've also talked with the Dean of a university who is supportive. If anyone has any ideas of networks in Japan outside of Tokyo, I'm all ears.

In another discussion David Shackleford mentioned JapanSoc.org and it would be cool to get bloggers talking about it if they feel it is remark-able.

Anyway, lots to do with this if there is interest. Let me know if anyone wants to help.

[terrintokyo]

Hi Gary: Thanks for doing this. I'm working on launching a project over the next 2 weeks, so things are pretty swamped, but what I can do is (especially if it happens online):

1. Help write the manual: I'm not sure what you'll need, is it something like this?: http://livingliberally.org/drinking/start
2. Spread the word to the prog politics & other groups groups I'm a part of.
3. Interview you for the Modern Media Japan podcast, which I'm working on re-launching in March.
4. Show up and drink watered down beer (any other option is dangerous!;-)
5. Drop postcards or flyers at my bookstore hangouts (Tower, ABC, Good Day)

For printing, you may already know MojoPrint: their prices seem to be pretty good.

gotta go, just wanted to let you know,


Terri

[Paul Papadimitriou]

Andrew told me about this project and I find it really great.

I can stir the pot with JapanSoc.org if necessary. Will blog about it and spread the word when time comes. We could also maybe talk about it over a podcast with Robert (yeah, Lance, we should really start that at some point).

So, if I get it right, you need to do some prep yourself first. You would need some of us for some branding (logo, website, etc.) and buzz-creation?

[Gary Bremermann]

@Terri--YES! Thanks for your offer to help. I understand you've got a full plate over the next few weeks, so no need to overextend yourself. For the organizer's manual, I'll go ahead and get something done and then have you look it over with fresh eyes to see if it makes sense for you from that perspective. Just spreading the word is great help. I'd be glad to talk about B4B on your podcast and appreciate any other promotion you can do.

@Paul--THANK YOU for your enthusiasm for the idea. I agree that timing will be important when communicating the idea and this is part of the social media marketing experiment. I think that after the event happens and blogging about it would be cool. At the event during the (very short) mic time, should I encourage attendees to blog about it?

I definitely need help with branding/website stuff. Andrew has kindly offered to help on Tuesday afternoon next week. In the meantime, I've had a volunteer artist put something together for a logo and will forward that to you via email for your feedback.

@everyone--we'll definitely need help with beer drinking on the 26th... :)

[terrintokyo]

just thought you'd be interested in this, in light of B4B:

Twitterers Worldwide Gather for Twestival

Terri

[Gary Bremermann]

Thanks for the link Terri! Some good lessons from the Twestival idea.

One thing I'm noticing about B4B that is different from a lot of these campaigns is that B4B is meant to be an ongoing/sustainable and viral thing that is not tied to any specific date like the Twestival for charity;water (Feb 12) or the Tap Project (one week in March) or Jerry Lewis' telethon Labor Day weekend (figured you'd remember that ;)) etc. B4B is meant to be a slow, steady burn rather than a short burst of flame.

Since my last post here, I continue to be amazed by the response to Beers for Books. Everything seems to be lining up smoothly and once we do the launch on Feb 26th, it will then become a matter of keeping the flame alive and spreading. We'll see how it goes.

I've got the PPT pretty much done for the presentation but am still putting together the other tools. Andrew and Paul have kindly offered to meet up with me on Tuesday afternoon to plan a web strategy and I feel like it will all come together.

Will be interesting to see how B4B can use Twitter. Might be cool to have a Twitter account for B4B that announces the events on the day they happen. i.e. "B4B tonight at Sam & Dave's in Akasaka" so that people who are thirsty might just choose to pop by on the spur of the moment. It could also be used to mark milestones, help match venues/organizers (i.e. "Pink Cow wants to host, does anybody want to organize?") etc.

I'm hoping others take the initiative in setting places up as I'd definitely go for at least one cold one to check out a new venue. This is a big city and lots of beers are served in lots of places. So many bars, so little time....

[Paul Papadimitriou]

There you have it. Tagline.

"So many bars, so many books, so little time..."
"So many books, so many beers"
"So many beers, not enough books"

LOL


Gary Bremermann said:

So many bars, so little time....

[Gary Bremermann]

Quick update. Had a great web strategy planning session yesterday with Paul P. and Andrew S. with the objective of setting up a solid online foundation for Beers for Books IF the idea takes root and spreads. We're going with an open Ning so that users can access information without having to be a member (you need to be a member to post) and Paul is kindly helping with the design.

Interest in the idea continues to grow. Just one example--without my asking, the marketing manager of a 30-outlet restaurant company offered to do a special event for B4B at one of their high-profile restaurants! I was really surprised. We're working out the details and I'll let you know how it turns out.

Paul and Andrew clued me into the use of # in Twitter and we've set up a #beers4books Twitter account so its ready when things get rolling.

In terms of other platforms, I've found Facebook to be excellent for the invitation function, so will be focusing on that to get people out to the event. We will, of course, list all B4B events on the Ning as well.

For those of you out there who use Facebook and are open to it, it would be great to connect and I can send you the FB invitation for the launch event.

Terri, you mentioned you'd have a look at the Organizer's Manual so I'm attaching it here (or at least trying to attach it). If anyone else has any feedback on it, yoroshiku.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc. please fire away.

[Gary Bremermann]

Here's a great JSMM story....

Paul Papadimitriou, who I'd never met before, found out about B4B through this Ning and pinged me with some positive words about the idea. We started a casual dialog and he offered to join a strategy meeting I had set up with Andrew Shuttleworth to plan the online foundation for B4B. 4 days later, he gave birth to this... www.beersforbooks.org . Not only am I happy with the results, it was an awesome experience to work with him. As B4B is an all-volunteer project, he did this out of the goodness of his heart and was very patient with his pain-in-the-ass "client".

IMHO, this is a great example of the power of social media to bring people together to get stuff done. We still have some tweaking to do on the site (I need to go in and add some files, organize the forums, etc.) but Paul has built a home for B4B online. Of course, Andrew has been his usual stellar self in providing insight along the way as well.

I know you're all busy people, but if you have any feedback on the Ning, fire away. More importantly, it would be great to see you out for a beer next week Thursday.

And finally, a great article on social media myths http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090218_3...

[Kiyoshi Terada]

Next week I am meeting with Portland nonprofit technology folks who are also well connected with local beer communities, so I will read this discussion board again and see if there is anything i can bring up in the meeting. I strongly believe that they will be interested in sharing the same idea here in Portland. :)

[Gary Bremermann]

Hi Kiyoshi, Great! I'm expecting 150-200 people to show up next Thursday and hopefully we'll get some good video/photos etc. so people can see how SIMPLE and FUN it is. It may be too late for your meeting, but at least we'll start providing real examples of how it works.

It would be so cool to have an event happen in Portland. Room to Read is really popular among the tech community as it was founded by an ex-Microsoft exec and he's positively leveraged his industry network to get support. Please let me know if you need anything from me.

I'll be in San Diego in late March and I'm working on doing a B4B event while I'm there. The idea virus spreads to the West Coast...

Thanks again for your interest. Will let you know how it goes on Thurs.