Digital Word of Mouth in Action, Take 1

Here’s a great example of both the behavior and the message that we should be focusing our efforts on encouraging. My friend Ari sent a personal recommendation to his buddy email list this week: Watch The 11th Hour, a movie about global warming.

Ari’s a serious environmentalist, he’s developing one Philadelphia’s most environmentally conscious buildings, creating a positive example for the city — but he’s not a policy or science geek like most Water Words readers. I have bolded the phrases in his message that jumped out at me:

fyi…. saw the movie The 11th Hour this evening…. you should see it if you haven’t already. similar to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth but more broad based, bigger picture, somewhat analogous to Quinn’s message. the movie ( http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/) packs in a lot without striking too much fear. the style is similar to What the Bleep (individual interview clips from variety of people), from folks like stephen hawking, lester brown, paul hawken. 90% of the movie spent on how badly we’ve screwed up our world (and our place in it), the last 10% on the necessity to act now and that we perhaps have a chance to save our species from doom. (….the Earth has all the time in the world [to repair and rebound from imbalance], the human species does not)

American citizens are losing faith in the news media and dialing back on much of it they consume. As these trends continue, digital-word-of-mouth efforts like this will become increasingly important for all of us. That’s why I spend so much time trying to deconstruct this behavior, hoping to uncover tips for how nature protection and pollution control experts can encourage more of it.

We are entering an era where public opinion will be shaped by Ari and others like him who send messages to their friends and family, who pass them on to their friends and family via email, instant messenger, YouTube videos, blogs, and other personal digital channels. And in this new era, the influence of TV talking heads and newspaper pundits will be seriously diminished.

Also note that when communicating this way, Ari felt obliged to point out that there’s a lot more empowering content in this film than in Inconvenient Truth: Content that hits on themes like make difference, what you can do, and working together. Ari has not lost sight of the fact that everyday citizens need this encouragement to get involved.

Thanks for the note, Ari. And as for the rest of you, go see 11th Hour. I know I will.

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