The power of social media can be as simple as a color. In the first week of January Facebook users were inundated with woman posting colors as their status. At first it was confusing to some and to others rather amusing, but the purpose was to ultimately provide awareness. By noon on January 8th Google Trends reported the search string “color status on Facebook” had reached number 11. Eventually, as many of us have come to learn, the reporting of the color was to advocate for breast cancer awareness.
A unique tactic for getting many involved, but for what? Did everyone who participated really raise awareness or just eyebrows? Have foundations such as the Susan G. Komen seen increases in website hits, information downloads, and/or contributions to their foundation for research? All that was posted was a color, not any further information. In addition, there was no follow through a day or two later, but as the topic became newsworthy a few breast cancer awareness organizations jumped on board to take advantage of the rainbow report.
The viral approach lacked to do more, when it could – most found out why the color was posted but not what to do with their posting or how it was to translate into actionable and quantifiable gestures (for benefit or gain).
It’s like dying an egg to make it more aesthetically pleasing when a person doesn’t eat eggs. Making the egg a different color doesn’t give the person who dislikes eggs the desire to consume them. It might make them look at the egg in a different light, share the egg with someone else because the egg is interesting, or they may find it more appealing, but it doesn’t mean it will translate into the purchase of eggs, eating of eggs, or anything else egg-worthy.
Pantone Ponderings
Perhaps there are latent effects here that have not been accounted for and maybe continued recall after the fact from media coverage and other Facebook statuses poking fun at it was a catalyst to eventually getting folks to take action on their awareness. Again, how many people have and how much was gained – for research and the person who took action (or didn’t)?
Also, given how often we update our statuses, how many of us just “vaguely” recall doing that “color thing” and/or have mentally timestamped this as something that happened “quite a bit of time ago?”
2 Responses
March 1st, 2010 at 10:20 pm
The color tactic may have lacked follow through but it did bring new awareness to an old subject. The pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, the red dress for heart disease, the surgeon general’s statement on a pack of cigarettes are all examples of educational initiatives that quickly get overlooked. We become immune to the message so sometimes it is good to “shake up the audience” with a new initiative. There are some initiatives that we do not want to forget why they are there: to save lives!
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:41 am
Marilyn thanks for the response. Agreed on the initiatives need shook up and how we just get use to those symbols meaning something. McLuhan was quoted so many years ago saying “the medium is the message” and I think this circumstance is a fitting situation. There is also a bit of desensitization that can and does go on such as the examples you have cited. However we were given a more associative message with the ribbons, warnings, etc. This brings a question of cart before horse, only because there was not attempt to make it associative for anyone. And in addition this was an attempt at a viral campaign. It is probably a fair example of how viral campaigns have a “expiration date” on them in our minds and if we want to maximize something like this then we need to be given new communications that tie in with the campaign and help build full awareness. Though this is more communications and communications theory at play there are some possible implications from a learning persective as well. Thank you for contributing your thoughtful insights!
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