New Media Strategies CEO Pete Synder writes how the most multi-faceted and extensive word-of-mouth campaign was not a product of marketers, but bloggers.
As Hurricane Wilma continues to batter Florida, let's look at how bloggers helped save the day after Katrina and Rita.
Hurricane Katrina breached weaknesses in the levees of New Orleans and uncovered gaping holes in the safety and response systems at every level of government. Authorities foundered. Bureaucracies broke down.
But when the people of the Gulf Coast needed a hero, who came to the rescue? Everyday Americans. Neighbor-helping-neighbor. And when most citizens couldn't get accurate information from their local, state and federal governments -- not to mention much of the media -- who came to the rescue? Those same people, online -- called bloggers.
It would be many days before governments began to establish even rudimentary forms of temporary infrastructure, but citizen bloggers almost immediately began chronicling the damage, plugging the gaps in the system and getting information into the hands of their neighbors and to the rest of the world in ways no one could have expected.
Not only did many bloggers go shoulder-to-shoulder with journalists to show the real face of the disaster in real time, but they also collectively put into place an informal but effective web infrastructure -- one that helped connect and locate displaced people, find and move critical supplies, and raise funds for aid and recovery.
Bloggers from around the country -- and around the world -- took up the task once again when, on the heels of Katrina, Hurricane Rita pounded ashore astride the Louisiana-Texas border. With Gulf Coast residents already sensitized by Katrina and more responsive to warnings, bloggers instead focused on aiding efforts to move coast-dwellers out of harm's way quickly, and then reporting on damage after the event.
Importantly for marketers, Katrina and Rita have provided us with the most striking evidence to-date that blogs constitute something far greater than a collection of individual voices. The blogosphere is far greater than the sum of its parts. Numbering over 18.5 million at last count, individual blogs have the ability to behave more like the cells of a much larger organism -- self-aware and with a nervous system that responds to its environment. And in this case, monster storms named Katrina and Rita were its environment.
Cracking through information blackouts and breaking news
Bloggers performed admirably in the wake of both hurricanes. But Katrina -- in terms of its size, devastation and toll on human life -- was by far the more ferocious storm. And it was in the wake of Katrina that bloggers dramatically broke new ground by launching an immediate and inventive response to a nationally debilitating disaster.
In the hours and days after the storm, while bureaucracies slowly recovered from their shock and struggled to assess the damage on a macro level, bloggers instantly began documenting Katrina on a micro level. With unbelievable speed, bloggers began to disseminate eyewitness accounts of the disaster, post camera-phone photos and pass vital information in and out of the disaster zone and around the globe.
Blogs emerged as an important reality check. As bureaucrats told us one story, readers of blogs saw with their own eyes a far different tale. And this time it was not just intrepid TV reporters telling the story but real people posting powerful first-hand reports and photos -- telling their own personal stories and not just a reporter's dispatch.
Ultimately, the power of the reports resonated. In the days after Katrina, any lingering doubts about the legitimacy of user-generated media were swept away as bloggers used the speed and ubiquity of the internet to keep the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama connected to the rest of the world.
As would soon become clear, bloggers served as the foundation for one of the most multi-faceted and extensive word-of-mouth campaigns in U.S. history.
Helping hands multiplied
Soon after the disaster, Katrina bloggers had begun to expand far beyond mere citizen journalists into spontaneous online activists that attacked the consequences of Katrina on many fronts.
Bloggers tuned into specifics long before the authorities did. Bloggers helped educate their readers on the dire situation of stranded and evacuated victims, and on the specific needs of displaced citizens and their communities. As bureaucracies fumbled to regroup, bloggers began to disseminate much needed practical information -- a function they later repeated after Hurricane Rita.
After Katrina, some bloggers completely repurposed their blogs to address the disaster -- tailoring blogs to meet the needs of residents of St. Charles Parish, Baton Rouge, La., or Jackson, Miss., for example, or to address the requirements of university communities like Tulane and LSU.
And with the instantaneous viral speed any marketer would envy, bloggers -- with very little guidance -- began pointing their readers toward fundraising entities ranging from the American Red Cross to Feed the Children to the Humane Society. Some bloggers launched their own separate fundraising initiatives.
The influx of web-generated aid -- financial and otherwise -- has been phenomenal and immediate. Web-based fundraising numbers for the hurricane victims have been staggering by any standard, breaking all online fundraising records and eclipsing the level of donations brought in through traditional telethons and phone banks.
Innovative techniques to find the missing
Organizations also harnessed the blogosphere in the wake of the hurricanes.
Innovative word-of-mouth marketers over the last few years have been fine-tuning their ability to use the natural power of blogs to provide sophisticated word-of-mouth campaigns. One of them, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), successfully used that power to speed rescue efforts amid the aftermath of storms.
As the winds of Katrina subsided, NCMEC arrived quickly on the scene. While authorities still floundered, the U.S. Department of Justice formally asked NCMEC to step in to aid in the search for the 4,595 children and 11,843 adults missing in the hurricane.
NCMEC, which has long used innovative direct marketing tactics and techniques in its search for missing children, sprang into action on a number of fronts. In addition to furnishing traditional resources -- a phone hotline, equipment, and on-the-ground assistance and coordination -- NCMEC also launched a sophisticated online word-of-mouth campaign to reach out to online community leaders and bloggers throughout the internet.
As a result, NCMEC's website, www.missingkids.com, which typically receives one million hits per day, within days was receiving 10 million to 20 million hits a day across 220 countries. By using these innovative tactics, as well as traditional ones, October 3rd, NCMEC had resolved 4,144 missing person cases related to both disasters.
Real results, invaluable lessons
The blogosphere without doubt is an extremely powerful media environment -- a fact that this storm has driven home. But why did blogs, more than other media, spontaneously emerge to play such a prominent role in these disasters, particularly in the wake of Katrina?
Part of the answer may be that blogs, by their very nature, are extremely flexible, with an uncanny ability to respond quickly and morph to address a purpose. Another part of the answer may lie in the granularity of the blogosphere -- in its ability to carry information fast and informally to meet the specific needs and interests of users.
These characteristics make blogs extremely effective in general, and allowed bloggers to exert a profound influence in the case of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But they are only mechanical considerations.
In fact, there is a more basic -- and important -- answer. And that is that a compelling message - and a noble purpose -- succeeded in engaging a large contingent of bloggers to address the same issues at the same time.
And marketers everywhere should find a lesson in that.
Pete Snyder is founder and CEO of New Media Strategies, an online market intelligence and word-of-mouth marketing company based in Arlington, Virginia. Read full bio.