Pepsi Refresh For The Gulf Is An Epic Fail, And He...

Houston We Have An Error

Let me start by saying this is a rare, but necessary rant stemming from the launch Monday of Pepsi’s Refresh Everything for the Gulf contest, to which I have a project in the running. The contest launched Monday on an unstable platform, lacking key functionality, changing the URLs given to entrants to share after it was launched and without updates to any of the entrants about why the site was unstable, when it would be up and running and why it only worked periodically those crucial first 48 hours.

Interested? Read on. It gets better.

Ok, so Pepsi decides to do something cool this year. They launch the Refresh Everything project. They have $1.3 million to give away in grants every month to projects ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. Voters receive 10 votes they can use daily. After the oil spill, they announce a special contest awarding $1.3 million just to the Gulf. I have, frankly, been torn about the contest from the start. On one hand it’s money to organizations and individuals with good ideas. On the other hand, it promotes this “popular kid in high school” mentality for nonprofits where they have to focus on asking people to vote for them (a simple action requiring nothing monetary) and then the person feels like they’ve helped, but if the organization doesn’t win they spent time and resources on something with a zero return. This is a serious problem for organizations with already thin resources and an industry-wide problem that has been written about extensively, but I won’t touch on here. This is focused on the debacle of the Refresh for the Gulf campaign.

Let’s talk about what went wrong.

1) Launch was disorganized. This is PEPSI mind you. As an proposed project, no one was told at what time the contest was going live (8AM EST? 3PM PST). In fact when I filled out the form, I did get a confirmation screen but no email and no correspondence at all the past month. I assumed my project was accepted but couldn’t be sure. The site only said that voting would launch 8/2, not what time. I saw some projects start promoting in the morning, before it launched telling people to get ready. By my accounts, it went live around 10AM. I was given this extension to use in promoting the site: http://refresheverything.com/votenow (I chose the votenow when I filled out the form, most people put their organization’s name) and then on the live page, this was the shortcode: http://pep.si/cwPSej.

2) Site was unstable the first 48 hours. Everyone who knows about these contests knows that you have to get ahead early. Since one of their pulldown menus is “Current Leaders” projects want to get their fans voting from the very second the flood gates open to get their votes up. This means that marketing strategies are done in advance of the launch if you’re good and know what’s up. For me, this was built into the second series of Gulf Coast Benefits happening on August 25th. When we were building this second series of benefits, there were three calls to action: Attend, Donate or Vote. 100% of this effort is volunteered time from experts in the cause space who agreed to push out the Gulf Coast Benefit shortcode once it was live and use in their own blog posts and across the web. The site worked fine the first few hours, then this happened:

Live Screenshot From URL Pepsi Refresh Provided http://refresheverything.com/votenow

Uhm, sorry? I looked around at other projects I was supporting and some worked, some didn’t I tried the full URL and the shortcode given to me by Pepsi. Same error. A few hours later, everything seemed fine again and so we all thought it was a slight glitch.

We were wrong.

By Tuesday morning, the links we were given were rendered useless by that error page. Let me tell you what I had done in the meantime and where I had put those wrong links:

• Changed my email signature on my three emails inboxes
• Created customized away messages for all three acconts
• Updated my status on the 4 Facebook accounts I’m admininstrator on
• Updated my Facebook profiles
• Updated my Twitter profile
• Updated all three Gchat status messages and my Skype status update
• Voted for 10 projects and left a comment with a link to my project
• Left comments for 10 other projects supporting them and leaving a link to my project
• Emailed 145 of my closest and most high profile friends with a plea for their help with the links
• Written 3 blog posts
• Posted a link to my weekly newsletter going to thousands.
• Posted 50+ direct messages to friends asking for a retweet about my campaign
• Gchated with 10 friends asking them to support my campaign.

(This doesn’t even take into account the personal support I’ve given the campaign, the blog posts I’ve written encouraging people to submit ideas and support the initiative – all of which is frankly, now an embarrassment).
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Introducing Answer With Action...

I have an exciting announcement to make! My marketing and strategy consulting website is now live. It’s been a long dream of mine. Answer With Action started as a boutique networking group in Los Angeles for socially conscious young professionals offering volunteer events and networking opportunities with my good friends Alexa Brandt and Joey Soto. Putting action to our ideas about how to get people more involved with cause inspired us. This new direction is really exciting for Answer With Action and the sky is the limit, but I wouldn’t be here today with those two amazing ladies and I’ll never forget that. So there you go! Answer With Action.

Please welcome me in introducing Answer With Action to the world! Contact me about getting started on your big ideas at sloane (at) answerwithaction.com.

What is Answer With Action?
ANSWER WITH ACTION is about taking big ideas and making them happen. Answer With Action is about inspiring you to take your small business, company or nonprofit to the next level. Answer With Action is about combining online tools with offline engagement and creating a robust conversation about you, your brand, your services, your products, and your events.

Answer With Action is a New Orleans-based integrated marketing, digital media and public relations consultancy. Create campaigns and events that have an immediate impact on your business and learn how building relationships online using new strategies and tools can transform the way you communicate with customers, vendors and donors. Answer With Action creates opportunities for you to learn, adopt and implement new media into your existing business. Answer With Action will help you build cause marketing campaigns to broaden your audience and create more depth and sincere story-telling into your current strategy. We provide short and long-term engagements with clients including website reviews, training sessions, webinars, and speaking opportunities to help your business go to the next level by understanding how your content is consumed and make it accessible to your target audience.
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First Quarter Review: Acknowledgments and Influenc...

When I think back on the beginning of 2010 years from now, I will remember it as a whirlwind. How else can I ever explain moving to a new city, diving into new projects and clients, entering my first contest (EVER) and then winning and finding myself in Switzerland days later for the World Economic Forum then jumping back to New Orleans for festivities already described?

Through it all, my main and most important constant has been the amazing Taylor Davidson and Carl Nelson. Without these two NOLAlicious wouldn’t have happened, would not have grown and I would be experiencing this new city without them – an idea so preposterous I can’t even imagine it.

It’s not just their spirit, it’s their ability to launch new projects, take ideas and make them happen and be tremendous friends.

The influences I’ve had this quarter are many. The Young Global Leaders I met at Davos moved and shook me, and the opportunity to connect with incredible individuals at talks I’ve given this Spring including at Rise Austin and SXSW. But if I had to pick two, it would be Taylor and Carl.

And (selfishly) I want them to stay in New Orleans as long as possible, which means they need support for their projects. Let me share…

Narratively: Taylor’s a true photographer. In high school he wrapped his own film, shot it and then developed it himself. As a photographer he’s shot landscapes and weddings, creative series and had public shows and self-published a book. As a lover of photography, he knows cameras and how to promote photography and has written extensively about how to make money as a photographer, the future of the stock photo industry and where the industry is going. In addition to photograhy, he now offers his services as consulting to share experience and wisdom for other aspiring and established photographers and also online strategy and marketing for brands. His approach is analytical yet thoughtful and I recommend hiring him in any capacity you can.

The Dancing Nomad: Carl is an amazing dancer, to be sure, but the fact that he can teach dance makes his contribution to both New Orleans and the dance community that much stronger. Classes in Lindy Hop and Charleston can be had out of his Shiny Step Studios and he consults to other dancers and dance studios about how to navigate the social web and find a space online to promote their business and services. You can sometimes find him busking on Royal Street in the French Quarter on the weekends or at The Orange Couch in the Marigny. I completely recommend taking one of his classes or hiring him for online services.

Here’s to many more experiences with both of them and to more reflections and posts about those who move and inspire me in the months and years to come.

First Quarter Review: Top Posts...

Starting in April, I think I’ll summarize my top posts from the past month, but as part of the series of posts reviewing the first quarter (and promise to myself to be reflect and commemorate more), here are my favorite 11 posts (so far) from 2010.

• Three Exciting Announcements: This is the post where I announced NOLAlicious (now at it’s 15th edition and growing rapidly), my contract work with FSC Interactive on the Ochsner Health System social media strategy team and my segment on LPTV for social entrepreneurship. In 3 months, these 3 projects are among my favorite.
• Dear Future Me: Of all the future me’s I write, this one by far is my favorite. It was also a big step to share it, and I felt really brave for putting this foot forward and challenging myself to be more open and honest.
• Crisis Camp New Orleans: After the earthquake in Haiti, I knew I had to get involved. I looked around and asked friends and after about 72 hours heard about Crisis Camp. Since I was (and still am) new to New Orleans, I knew I needed to enlist someone to help make a local event like this a success and finding a great partner to do that was wonderful. Putting on Camps are a lot of work with a lot of reward and it was truly amazing the spirit of the people who came out that day to help create technology tools to help emergency response teams in Haiti.
• I’m the new MySpace Wall Street Journal Citizen Journalist for Davos! What is there even to say? I truly was overwhelmed and amazed by the response I go from friends all over the place who voted for me, supported me, sent me notes of encouragement. It was an opportunity of a lifetime and I can’t even being to describe the way that attending Davos changed my life and my perspective on the world. My biggest wish is to attend again, it was remarkable and huge thank you again to everyone for your support in helping make this dream come true.
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First Quarter Review: Changes and Upgrades To The ...

This is the first of three posts reviewing the first quarter.

Life goes by fast and I’ve found if you don’t stop and smell the roses, well, it passes fast and it’s hard to look back and remember things. Remark on them. Tell those you care about how much those moments COUNT for something.

A friend of mine told me of an exercise where she takes the printout of her calendar and at the end of each month writes on the back what she is most proud of, who she is happy she connect with or who impacted her the most that month and then looks forward to the next month.

I’ve been wanting to do that for every month of 2010, which of course didn’t happen. It was a whirlwind and instead of fighting the wind, I succumbed to it. I was wrapped up and twisted into post-Davos, Superbowl, local election, Mardi Gras mayhem, trips to Los Angeles and SXSW and wouldn’t you know, a truly terrific cold and cough that once I recovered from, I was staring down the face of mountains of work. The work I love! It just leaves little time to post, to write, to share.

No matter. I can go back and recount what happened a few weeks ago, a few months ago. I’m no less busy now, but sometimes you just have to force yourself to MAKE time. This is me making time.

So looking back on the first three months of this year, I’ve decided to break the posts into three parts:
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Meet Me In New Orleans...

Since I’ve moved to New Orleans the most magical thing has happened…I’ve had visitors nonstop. Sometimes they’ve been friends coming to town to see me, sometimes they’ve been here for a conference or a wedding or work, but regardless of WHY they were here, they reached out to say something like, “Hey Sloane, I’m coming to New Orleans and I’d love to get together with you.” Somewhere in that simple outreach, I’ve had some of the best and most thought-provoking conversations of 2010.

I wanted to say thank you to those out-of-towners not only for your friendship but also for the stimulating conversation, the opportunity to have really quality one-on-one time with you talking about life, business, politics, life dreams and everything in between. Since my blog is an extension of me, I wanted to have a blog post that I could update with my visitors so I can look back at the end of 2010 and my one-year anniversary in New Orleans and reflect on those who have crossed my path during their own travels to this town I’ve come to love so much.

Talking about New Orleans to visitors, showing people around, highlighting my favorite nooks and crannies and exploring new ones reminds me of all of the reasons I moved to New Orleans and keep me fresh, excited and inspired. In all honesty I don’t have time to meet with everyone who connects or reaches out to me, there is only so much time in the day. But I try, I certainly always try to be a sounding board and to answer questions about New Orleans and its culture, food, people, history and future to be best of my ability and with the same enthusiasm every time. And when I’m out of town myself, I always have NOLAlicious to pass along. That’s a start to a good New Orleans experience! The rest, like much of life, is up to you.

I’ve created a Twitter List for all these visitors (those on Twitter at least) that you can follow!

Drumroll please:

April:
Wedding season! Great night on the town with my NYC buddy, Michael Gruen, talking about venture funding, creating opportunity, living remotely and wandering through some of my favorite spots including Marigny Brasserie, d.b.a., and the piano bar at Pat O’Briens.

Best friend and partner-in-crime visit from the one and only Casey Stone. My former roommate in Los Angeles who herself has gone through a transformation this past year from working as a Hollywood studio web-publicist to living in Portsmouth, NH working as a social media consultant plus sandwich-maker (!) and I loved every minute with her. Every minute. I miss my good girlfriends from Los Angeles maybe more than I miss anything else about any other chapter of my life and time with Casey was very much needed.
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Growing Pains...

When I was a kid, I would wake up in the middle of the night crying with terrible cramps in my calves. My mom would come into my room and say, “Sweetie, they’re just growing pains. Everyone gets them. It means you’re growing up!”

That’s how I feel now.

Much of it I’m chalking up to “3-month transition blues.” 3 months into a new city, new work responsibilities, new relationships with friends. It’s like a speed bump where everything is going along at the speed of light and then !WHAM! it feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Much of it I’m chalking up to putting stakes down and letting go of my vagabond lifestyle. It’s not so fun sorting through receipts, going from point A, to point B, back to point A at night, feeling dragged down by the day-to-day of life. Much of it I know shall pass. Like all bumps in the road do because after 30 years of life, I know myself well enough to know that these lows happen but they’re few and far between and that usually, on most given Sundays, I’m upbeat, chipper and ready to take on the world.

But for the part that I’m not chalking up, I’m worried. I’m scared. I’m frightened and I feel captive by my own decisions. I spent most of last year thinking BIG. Like how do I really impact the world and leave it better than I found it. You could see that through my time in New Orleans, Kiva Fellowship, Cause It’s My Birthday campaign and musings here on The Causemopolitan. I felt bigger, stronger and more in charge than ever. The reality of every day life feels like a cold shower shocking my system into routine and daily life and it’s hard to keep that eye on the prize. And hard to think so big that it shakes you to your very bones.
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Living In Los Angeles...

“I know what you mean,” she says. “I lived in New York City for such a long time and when I go back I miss it more intensely than when I’m here thinking about it. That’s the way life is.”

“I just find myself crying randomly at stop lights or while on a run at how absolutely comfortable I feel, at how many memories come washing back over me, about how much of my life happened here.” I say, “It still feels like home. I remember all the shortcuts, I’ve randomly run into people at half the places I go.”

“All of that doesn’t go away because you’ve moved away. Who knows? You’ll always have friends and professional relationships and ties here. You’ll always have a reason to visit. Life might bring you back here, you just never know and the amazing thing about you is that you know that. You allow yourself to stay open to the experience.”

The wisdom of friends…

Walking along the bluffs of Palisades Park in Santa Monica overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the breeze and the sun mixing together like sand and suntan lotion on a summer day, my heart feels just about to burst as I talk with one of my closest friends who I’ve missed so terribly since I left LA in December, 2008.

Everything about Los Angeles comes flooding back to me. When I first arrived in the fall of 2003, October 16th to be exact, I was in love and felt like LA was this place where opportunity grew on trees and you could make your own path and create your own existence. I felt like anything was possible and moving into a one bedroom apartment two blocks from the beach in Venice, my (then) boyfriend and I were struggling to figure out what to do with our lives, what our mission was. We both felt like we had a greater calling, something spectacular beckoning us, we just weren’t sure what it was.

After my five exceptional years in Los Angeles, I still felt that way. That hope and excitement for the future. I created a full, rich and deep life. Not just the friends that crossed my path, or the rocks I overturned discovering and defining a city on my own terms but in my understanding of who I was in a city that would just as likely chew you up and spit you out as it would embrace you and call your name. It’s not an easy place to live, LA challenges you. The traffic alone is enough to send some people running back to where they came from.
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The Causemopolitan’s First Birthday!...

Please join me in wishing a very happy first birthday to The Causemopolitan. A year ago, all I knew was that it was time. Blogging for others always had its merits, using social networks and microblogging sites connected me with people, but I wanted a space to call my own. I had all these thoughts and ideas and things I wanted to share about the future of philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, what it meant to build cause into your life and stories about experiences I was going through.

I had owned The Causemopolitan’s domain name for awhile, and with the help and support of friends, I got her up and running in a just a few days.

The Causemopolitan was born with the post, It’s About Time, and in a lot of ways, I was reborn. Over the past year, I’ve come to be known by some as The Causemopolitan, and as a name takes on meaning of its own, having that moniker reminds me daily about the kind of person I want to be in the world. I have never wanted to change my name, the way a friend from middle school Katie is now known as Cate. I never knew nicknames as Sloane was never short for anything the way Jennifer becomes Jenn. A few close friends have terms of endearment that I got by, but nothing in my life could have prepared me for what it would be like to take on another name. The Causemopolitan has taken me quite by surprise. A wonderful, full of life, amazing surprise.

I know that blogs are like post-it notes on a gigantic wall, but that my little post-it just means the world to me.

I’ve thought a lot about how I want to celebrate the one-year anniversary and birthday of my blog. Who I want to thank, how I want to spend the next year, but as the past few days have gone by I’ve realized I want to just most sincerely say thank you. Thank you to everyone for reading, for reaching out in the comments, contacting me, saying hi, making donations to my campaigns, asking me to participate in panels, at conferences, involve and include me in the midst of what was at times, a turbulent and tumultuous and at other times a serendipitous and miraculous 2009. Through the clouds and smoke and the uncertainty of what was around the next bend, I always found solace in writing a blog post and putting myself out there, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot.

Here’s to another dynamic year of growth, both for The Causemopolitan blog and for me.

Ever yours,
Sloane

Related Posts:
Introduction To Yours Truly: Meet Sloane Berrent
5 Tips On How To Rawk SXSW Music
I Need Your Help

I’m Staying, Just Can’t Stay Here...

So it goes. My first three months after moving to New Orleans (3 already really?!) have gone by and my current furnished sublet is coming to a close at the end of February. It’s been the perfect spot in the Lower Garden District, a cute little creole apartment of an artist and art curator. Walking distance to a few bars, restaurants and coffee shops. Walking distance to the CBD (Central Business District) and French Quarter and Uptown. Has a small home office I can work out of. Has a balcony I can walk out onto in the mornings with my tea look towards the Mississippi River. It’s been comfortable and felt like home about an hour after moving in.

The terms of the sublet were through February and as Mardi Gras was coming to a close, I knew the time was coming to look for another place. I’ve been looking at Craigslist, but I find much more in life with targeted asks to friends. So I have an email going out to friends and I’ll utilize my blog and social networks to find a new place in the next 7 days.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

• 1 bedroom furnished apartment
• 3-6 month lease or sublet
• Starting March 1st
• Rent between $700-1000

I’m more flexible this time on location because I know it’s harder to find a furnished place than unfurnished, but I’m still just a few months off from being able to afford and have the time to bring my stuff from storage in California and Pennsylvania.

Location might be French Quarter, Uptown or Mid-City. It’s really more about the vibe of the place than the location. It would be nice to be near a park or running trail and have a nice neighborhood to walk around in with a few local spots nearby. And safety is a concern so I have to keep that in mind as well.

About me, for potential landlords…
My personal blog (here duh)
Website
Twitter (daily digest of what I’m up to)
Facebook

Thanks for any apartment/housing leads in New Orleans or e-introductions to friends. My email is sloane@thecausemopolitan.com

Round two of New Orleans on the way,
Sloane

P.S. I already know of one person looking for a new place in New Orleans too. I’m happy to share places that get sent to me so if you’re looking too, just let me know and I’ll forward places along to you too.

Related posts:
Who Dat Nation Takes Over
Dear Future Me
Using Your Birthday For Good