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This week I participated in the Beyond Cause Marketing Summit, presented by causeShift.

The premise:

“Let’s face it – cause marketing isn’t getting the job done. For all the money and attention raised, not enough is being done to address the major challenges facing society today. It’s time to shift our thinking and approach.

Rather than rehash past campaigns, Beyond Cause Marketing will build on the success of last year’s run by gathering leading cause marketing practitioners from corporations, charities, and agencies together with disruptors and innovators from other disciplines to challenge the commonly held assumptions of cause marketing. This diverse group of leaders will create new frameworks and approaches for how companies, charities, and government can better engage and encourage the public to solve social issues.”

Scott Henderson and his team (Amy Mai Bertelsen  and Brian Reich) led us through one-one-one discussions and collaboration sessions, expanding the horizon. It was a very special morning and

Here are a few tweets from the morning, just to give you a few insights the group gathered:

  • @sloane: People want us to build a bonfire but give us 2 sticks, a match and it’s really cold & wet outside.
  • @sd913: Get out of your comfort zone and try things out!
  • @CaseyB: @stmhoward says we need more cause intelligence – be a listener that distills true meaning.
  • @sd913: Stop measuring: 1. Reach 2. Size 3. Awareness/Impressions
  • @sonarc: data/=insight. more data/=more insight, more likely = confusion. Telling a story based on data? priceless
  • @sd913: Social is about finding expertise rapidly. Bringing teams together. Organizing ppl in a rapid fashion to take action
  • @sattler360: Lots of small actions can add up quickly. Time to change ‘go big or go home’ to ‘go small lots of times?
  • @TeshiShell: We need to start treating social as an ecosystem instead of individual tools, says @calebbarlow of IBM
  • @mktg4good: @brianreich – stop what you’re doing, simplify your purpose into an 8 word sentence, communicate it, see what happens

It’s just the beginning of a journey.

My biggest takeaway is that we just need to get started. Yes, we have major economic problems and I’m big fan of being aware of the macro-economic issues and challenges, building a better world in the spirit of Umair Haque’s The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business. But we have to make sure to start the work now, in the spirit of Seth Godin’s premise of Linchpin.

Changing the world can be as simple (and brilliant) as finding a new use for a bottle of water.

Low-cost, high-impact, life-changing.

Rock on.