Читать книгу The New Rules of Marketing and PR - David Meerman Scott, Kevin Nalty, Steve Garfield - Страница 39

The frustration of relying exclusively on the media and expensive advertising to deliver your organization’s story is long gone. Yes, mainstream media are still important, but today smart marketers craft compelling information and tell the world directly via the web. The tremendous expense of relying on advertising to convince buyers to pay attention to your organization, ideas, products, and services is yesterday’s headache.

Chip McDermott founded ZeroTrash¹ as a nonprofit organization to rid the streets and beaches of Laguna Beach, California, of trash. Population and tourism had exploded, and the city had not kept up in providing sufficient infrastructure for public trash collecting and recycling. McDermott used the web to rally the community with a grassroots movement.

“The spark of the idea was that trash was becoming commonplace on the streets and the sidewalks of Laguna Beach,” McDermott says. “We started to tackle the problem with a Facebook² page for ZeroTrash Laguna and quickly built it to hundreds of members.”

People use the ZeroTrash Facebook page to organize events and to connect local store owners with residents. Facebook was instrumental in launching the ZeroTrash First Saturday movement, where store owners and volunteers walk the city and pick up trash on the first Saturday of each month. The store owners love it because people support local stores and keep the shopping areas clean. In turn, McDermott has tapped store owners as sponsors who fund the purchase of supplies and tools like trash pickers, trash bags, T-shirts, and gloves.

Facebook serves to keep people updated about what ZeroTrash is up to. For example, on a recent First Saturday, the Laguna Beach community helped to remove another 590 pounds of trash and 375 pounds of recyclables from the streets; McDermott used the social media sites to report these totals to interested people.

After the initial success in Laguna Beach, ZeroTrash now also serves Newport Beach and Dana Point in Southern California and Chico in Northern California, and is launching in Seattle, Washington, soon. “We want people to take individual ownership of each new local ZeroTrash community,” he says. “How can they get people with a passion to take control and start in their own communities? The obvious answer is to use social media to influence people.”

There’s no doubt that getting the word out about an idea, a product, or a service is much simpler when you can rely on social media sites like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. The web allows any organization (including nonprofits like ZeroTrash, as well as companies large and small, government agencies, and schools) and any individual (including candidates for public office, artists, and even job seekers) to reach buyers directly. This power is clear to nearly everyone these days, but many executives and entrepreneurs still struggle to find the right mix of traditional advertising and direct communication with buyers.