What Santa Claus can teach brands about creating social movements

GUEST POST: Brains On Fire book review (with a Christmas touch!) by David Scott (@dascottonline)

As your grandparents, children and Oxfam Unwrapped emails will tell you, Christmas is a time for giving.

We give, sometimes because we have to, but often because we want to. We like the feeling that we’ve helped others, and it’s a creed the Brains on Fire team obviously lives by.

Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell and Geno Church have written a book that gives and gives and gives.

It gives ideas of how to engage sustainable word-of-mouth social movements for business or action group. It gives the blueprint for how this can be achieved, and the real world case studies of where it’s been successful.

Hell, it even gave me hope that the ideas I was thrashing around in my honors thesis on social movements all those years ago (back when a tweet was something only birds did) were not as hare-brained as I thought.

Giving is a great enabler – yet another theme from Brains that comes through loud and clear – so it would be remiss of me if I didn’t give something more back to you, dear reader, about the book.

Without further ado, here are the Brains team’s 10 lessons for social movement success, with an appropriate Christmas theme.

1. Movements aren’t about a product conversation, they’re a passion conversation.  “Passion is contagious” write Phillips, Cordell and Church.  “How do you fit into people’s lives and make it better?”  A visit from the jolly obese man in red is a yearly wish for most children.  It drives them to prove that they’ve been nice, not naughty, and to wish for all the gifts the world can provide.  They are passionate, and share that energy with their friends and family.  As if Santa doesn’t make our lives bette
2. Movements start with the first conversation.  How many of us have left out some brandy and a cookie for the bearded wonder at Christmas, alongside a handwritten note of request along the lines of “I’d love a Playstation, but please don’t let your reindeer eat mums petunias.”  And how many times did we wake as children and find the cookies all gone with nary a few crumbs left, and a nicely wrapped shape under the tree?!  Oh how we laughed and breathlessly recounted it to our family and friends all day!  “Like that first conversation…stories are important to customers as it allows them to place themselves in the story”, say Phillips et al.  Christmas provides a compelling story for everyone.
3. Movements have inspirational leadership.  Well this is a no brainer (see what I did there?).  Be it a religious leader or cultural figurehead, all of us has someone to turn to at Christmas time for a rationale and belief.  “Most people trust the opinions of people just like themselves” is the main reason.  Well, Jesus came from a family of carpenters and Santa is a man who runs a B2C company in the arctic.  Yep, sounds like my kind of everyday people.
4. Movements have a barrier for entry.  You can’t get presents if you’ve been bad all year, everyone knows that.  If you’ve got an Italian background like me you’ve even got the threat of a delivery of coal from befana hanging over your head; pretty scary if you grew up near Hazelwood Power Station. “It must be give and take” conclude the Brains trust.
5. Movements empower people with knowledge.  Everyone knows the basic story of Christmas but no one knows the whole story.  Extra bits and pieces are shared, family to family, and through that a shared experience of Christmas takes hold.  “Knowledge can create a bond and provide common ground. And sharing it is vital to igniting a movement.”
6. Movements have shared ownership.  Engage the customer is the key here.  Do you think we’d still worship Santa if he kept bringing oversized knickers and odd coloured socks each year?  Hell no! He brings us iPads, Wired subscriptions and iTunes gift cards.  “Don’t start with the customer “in mind”, but actually with the customer. Anything that comes straight from their mouths is pretty damn hard to refute.” So that’s why Christmas wishlists are so successful!
7. Movements have powerful identities. Even setting aside the fact that Australians are, as one of the Irish uncles of a co-worker once put it, hilariously in love with decorating our homes with fake snow in the middle of summer.  But we identify with that snow.  It’s as Christmas as plum pudding, fairy lights and tinsel.  Says Brains “We are the collections of beliefs and values we are passionate about, and passionate people wear their beliefs on their sleeves.”
8. Movements live both online and offline.  “A real relationship is about personal investment and sacrifice” say the Brains writers.  Giving at Christmas nearly always has a degree of personal investment – what does this gift say about me? – and sometimes a degree of sacrifice.  If anything, the festive season allows us to foster better relationships than what we would otherwise be unable to do at other times in the year.  That we can do it both in the real and virtual world is a (often understated) given.
9. Movements make advocates feel like rockstars.  How damn cool does it look like being a Christmas elf?  Or an angel?  Or a reindeer?  Surrounded by toys all day, the ability to fly, or even only having to work one night a year…these are a few of my favourite things!  While we can never be any of those things, we can be made to feel part of the story, the ‘centre of the universe’ experience that most customers crave.  “It’s not about how they fit into your marketing plan but rather how you fit into their lives.”
10. Movements get results.  Obviously Christmas gets it done, because we all keep coming back for more year on year.  I’ll leave it to the Brains authors to sum it up.  “Movements move people to action.  Movements transform companies.  Movements change lives.”

So if you’re in the market for a social business book to give to a friend or colleague this year, I can’t recommend Brains On Fire enough.

It occasionally suffers from the same issues as most business books – repetitive and too formulaic in parts – but the simple lesson-style layout, the engaging writing style and compelling real-world stories elevate it way above book end fodder.

Merry Give-mas!

<<< David Scott follows lots of interesting folks and tries to reciprocate on @dascottonline.  He’s trying to blog regularly about what it means to be a mid-20s white dude getting married next year at http://twoweeksonedate.wordpress.com