POL Projects
We have been lucky enough to be involved in over 550 great projects, campaigns and ventures in more than 60 countries, and no two of them were alike. Here are a few.
Vattenfall
Vattenfall is a diversified European energy company in 11 countries with a goal of being a leader in developing environmentally sustainable energy production. As with many large multi-national and energy companies, Vattenfall had focused on energy production and not public engagement. We conducted seminars for senior management and suggested the outline elements of a strategic plan as to how the lesson of online political engagement can be applied to reaching and mobilizing the public and consumers.
The Big Idea - It is possible to radically change the public perception of a company by relentlessly focusing on ubiquitous - and sincere - online pubic engagement around the public's priorities for renewable energy.
AOL / Political SuperStore
When AOL wanted to provide its users with a "one stop shop" for information and tools about political campaigns, they turned to PoliticsOnline. We helped develop and build the first such political superstore with a wide array of how to information, resources and tools for modern campaigns. While other online services were neglecting this market, the store help establish AOL's credentials among political professionals and activist as a serious and innovative provider of tools and information - which led to increased political advertising on AOL.
The Big Idea - Use a special, targeted online offering to both generate revenue and also provide a service that builds a following among a key target group.
CropLife International
CropLife is the global federation representing the plant science industry via a network of regional and national associations in 91 countries. As a "science based" organization, they were more focused on the science rather than communicating to the public. As a result, their industry was often portrayed as producing "Frankenstein foods" and worse. We helped CropLife shift their activities to use their existing 91-country network from one of scientific cooperation to one of a global communications / online public engagement vehicle.
The Big Idea - There are often multiple "hidden uses" of existing corporate assets that can be re-deployed in different ways - at little or no cost - to achieve diverse business goals.
Bertelsmann Foundation
Bertelsmann AG is one of the world's largest media companies. Their foundation retained us to develop a broad and exhaustive global market survey and analysis of the online civic engagement market place. The original goal was to access what lessons could be learned that were applicable to building audience for traditional media companies. However, the study not only found "applicable lessons" but it also identified whole new market opportunities for their various media properties in the emerging civic participation market.
The Big Idea - New media technology is rapidly transforming the information marketplace and broad global surveys - not just narrow focus analysis - can often unexpectedly reveal new market and revenue opportunities.
Amnesty International
On behalf of Amnesty International, we developed the strategic plan and implemented the first major international to US cyber-protest. The goal of the innovative 10-day campaign was to activate global human rights activist with a petition campaign and related US based media activities to successfully "force" a variety of US elected officials to meet with a global delegation of human rights activist and VIPs. Because of the combination of: 1) constantly escalating pressure from hundreds of thousands of petitions from all over the world, 2) global media attention we directed to the local US markets and 3) the on the ground activities of local human rights activist - most of the targeted officials met with the global delegation.
The Big Idea - The simultaneous mobilization and coordination of a global activist base targeted to specific US state officials in conjunction with local media events driven by traveling delegation of global VIPs.
