This is a place to discuss Chris Macrae's Million Person Web idea.

To receive automatic email notifications of when posts are made here -- to which you can reply via email -- click on the "subscribe" button in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Edited by author 09-01-2002 09:35 AM
John Moore asked whether we shouldn't target sectors rather than all global companies.

I think from the point of view of what we are asking consumers to sign up for it should be all global corporates over a certain size who don't have sufficient responsibility communications budgets (as proxy for commitment, focus , deep concern they have for a humanitsarian issue they share and network around te globe) . It gets too complicated to start getting consumer petitions by sector , nor is my disgust with any one sector, it is with the big guys eg the 51 globals who together make up the top league of 100 economic superpowers of whuch the other 49 are nations. I was trying to design a catalytic mechanism which would start shifting the mindset of the global brander from:
all mass media to involving people in intelligent use of net

and from all image to getting involved with a real world responsibility

from we as a company are a separate target to we as a global leader need to form collaborations with governments , NGOs, activists networks, and even some of our industry competitors to resolve this desperate human need (people who compete on a product should not be competitors on an environmental risk or deseperat cause, except in as far as one takes the lead for the whole lot to collaborate on)

250 million dollars ad per year was a rough guess at where this top 100 (ie 51 corporate) cut-off is though I wouldnt be surprised if someone come back with the numbers and says the top 51 mainly spend over 500 million dollars

You could always remind consumers who pledged to make special targets by sector in calendar waves or whatever, but I think sector identification for the overall thing is a needless complication to the simplicity of the 1 Million People Web 2002

Please note the generality of the pledge is a different issue from providing links to people who are working on particular global responsibilty infrastructures and how these should match by indutsry. For example regarding water for the poor world, we have the EU Water Angels initiative at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item...format=%o%20%B%20%Y

Edited by author 10-01-2004 09:26 PM
The Million People Web 2002 emerging from http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm

I look forward to developing a site that can do justice to this movement which has spread to most continents within first 72 hours of gestation. My trouble is I can't keep up with registrations by hand. The reference number we are using for the project challenge of million people pledging is KM15/30K (the 15th of 30000 active projects for humanity we hope one day to compile as the greatest use of the net- a forecast for a networked world's priorities (to be do-able by and essential for global hamrony by 2005) made by my father in 1984 when at The Economist.

More on the issue raised as to whether the primary mission is framed as boycott (we will consume less with you unless you are responsible) or encouragement (we will consume more with you if you prove responsibility)

On reflection I strongly retain the view that the simplest public pledge (to viralise) should be "we'll try to consume less of you"

This does not prevent us from trying to develop positive forms of engagement with corporates. For example, I could imagine this sort of approach. If we get over 500,000 people, we start preparing our list of global companies who qualify for exclusion. We write to their CEOs inviting them to send a delegate to a conference which discusses the whys and provides emergent social models of experiments people are trying out. I can imagine that properly handled this could be a conference which would lead Responsibility as a competitive advantage into new areas of excellence and advocacy, as well as distinguishing those companies who at least tried to listen to the conversation to those who were careless. This fits part of a pattern of lots of other research going on around our Transparency Community at http://www.valuetrue.com and which for example I have spent most of the last 2 years researching and networing into an open source community which seeks to link with everyone who wishes to turn the tide on the low-water market that corporate accountability has reached in recent times and that all institutions (global corporate. government, NGOs ) have reached assuming we all agree that as of today Poor World Gaps are greater than ever and tearing us all apart form the ideal of a one networked world whose sand-glass of opportunity is emptying terrifyingly fast imo

If we could set up a worldwide patrons panel, who would be your ideal people? For me the centre of my admiration as a Responsibility strategist is Don Tapscott http://www.digital4sight.com/lne.php ; for an activist who wants to see big business climb back from Enronesque hells Marjorie Kelly is central to my way of thinking http://www.business-ethics.com/thenext.htm

It would be interesting to represent opposite sides of the world - who are the equivalent people who spend all of their time on these issues near you?

Thanks, David, for setting up this discussion space.

I still want to argue for tighter focus. I personally don't have a lot of faith in the power of a generalised attack on a group of companies. I don't think it will capture popular imagination and I don't think it will work.

Systemically, I think we should try and identify one point of maximum leverage. Or at least high leverage since we may not be able to be sure what maximum would be.

People respond to brands and I seem them respond to campaigns that target specific brands.. Shell, Esso and Nike all come to mind.

I think they will respond to a specific idea expressed in threepenny words - like tackling third world water problems. A generalised aim of tackling lots of issues is - I think - less likely to capture imagination.

Just imagine if we target one company and apply the force of a million people pledge. It will feel lonely and it will want to shift. Think of the publicity impact if it does. And then there is nothing to stop us mailing pledgees and announcing a new pledge site for a new company and a cause.

I think David's suggestion of identifying a sector is an interesting variation and preferable to just saying all these companies. Or maybe we go Chris's route but identify just the three biggest spenders - even though I personally would just go for one.

Edited by author 09-01-2002 10:03 AM
Guided Tour : How The Web We'll Win
W:: W :: W

The Million People Web 2002 emerging from http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm


I am sorry John but as I see it you are wording things wrongly - the pledge of The Million People Web is not a generalised attack. It is both a very personal question and an aspiration to change the whole system of how all large organisations collaborate, in resolving the world's biggest needs, in ways that a networking age can do but broadcasting could not.

At a personal level, this extends down to whichever global brand is the biggest celebrity in the eyes of you or you or you. And then to ask me or me or me, did I really want this company to have such a celebrity perception in my mind because it spent 250 million dollars each year advertising that at me? Might I not have felt warmed more as a responsible person if it spent 90% on its celebrity status and 10% on starting collaborations that were focused on making the world a better place in ways I could have played a part and united more and more people, companies, governments, activists, people at the grassroots in one webbed effort? We are all united by the same global brandscape whichever one happens to be that which has spent the most to be in your mind.

Equally, I would have no way of justifying why we chose one company to single out. The nature of the most desperate problems is beyond the resolution of any single company; that is why we must pledge for and to all global companies and the evolution of the system they all use to make us feel good about them and ourselves.

I would like to remind you of the introduction of what the web is for according to Weinberger, because it is the relevant context for framing The Million People Web (2002):

 What is the Web for? And why do we care so much? Why has this simple technology sent a lightning bolt through our culture? It goes far beyond the Web's over-hyped economic impact: 500 million of us aren't there because we want a better "shopping experience." The Web, a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are - and is undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings about what it means to be human in the real world.

The context I have in mind is a global world which is now opinion led at the top by a league of 100 economic greatest powers of which:
51 are global corporates whose only conversationwith us is about their granhd images

49 who are governments who are mainly inward looking (except when they are hostile) and whose leaders (if we were to look around at the average Clinton or Bush) carry their own flags a long way ahead of sustainable (long-term) global responsibilities.

The idea of The Million People Web was intentionally aimed in the collaborative midst of thse 100 superpowers and how we could all actively web around them with global and local networks. If you have a plot with another mission by all means go detail what the first starting step is for that but please don't dilute the idea The Million People Web is constituted for in these times when the muddles going on in the world terrify me, and I would like all global corporates to have an additional response to lets sing some more ad jingles, each propagated by hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign tunes. The time has come to catalyse a second way of promoting what matters most in the world, and 10% towards that along with 90% sing-song seems like a democratic way to ask for the networked world to see what new human energies we can inspire.

Now if someone has another vision of how poor world gaps are going to be narrowed other than by the mother of all collaboration systems sponsored by organisations and empowered by people who network and have deep humanitarian care -example concept EU Water Angels at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item...format=%o%20%B%20%Y then please share your vision...

I'm finding myself torn by Chris and John's messages.

I view the targeting idea purely as a political/practical idea. What would work better, generalizing or particularizing? I see merit in targeting a few industries initially as a way of making them feel the pressure faster and as a way of gaining notice quickly, I also like the idea of having a general program for allowing *any* company that does the good deed to place a sticker on their ads saying that they have done so.

But from Chris' latest message, I think he may be aiming at something that I didn't glom on to earlier (which is my fault). Chris, do you view the signers of the pledge as as continuing political force, organized in a center-less webby way? I haven't been viewing them that way but rather as a mass of people who influences behavior by sheer numbers.

Now, I'm torn by those two possibilities also because signing a pledge is a lot easier than joining a semi-political group.

FWIW, at the moment I'd lean towards: Announcing the campaign as a general one but also announcing that we're focusing on 2 industries first. And I'd prefer *anything* that makes it easier for the campaign to succeed in the short term on the grounds that long term change can grow from the short term success. But I am not confident in my beliefs about either of these points.

Edited by author 09-01-2002 11:38 AM
Guided Tour : How The Web We'll Win
W:: W :: W

The Million People Web 2002 emerging from http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm


David I think all of these things (including some specific projects I've been planning for a year specifically, and 18 since our futures group started debating webbed societies) cascade into each other but only if you find the smallest but common-most perturbation of the system to start with.

Signing up consumers generally -we want responsibility collaboration as well as image from all global companies with a future - doesnt stop more targeted lobbying of particular sectors; BUT signing up consumers narrowly kills the permission to develop web models of collaboration for every responsibility.

Most of our specific collaboration projects like EU Water Angels require grassroots consumers as well as corporations. Many of the Million will have patched together their own local sub-webs, whether or not we tried to organise because socially that's how peer to peer viral pledging builds. Also the more inclusive we are of all industries, the more existing responsibility groups can join in filtered by ones that have economic as well as social models - it is completely possible to design win-win between economic productivities and social responsibilities. We just need the opinion spaces for letting that webbing and multiplying. In fact, we also need to appeal to the responsible humanitarian middle ground not the deep issue extremists that already campaign against specific industries.

The perturbation I seek is the smallest one that lets the net integrate into the mass model of marketing but in a way in which the net grows to the percentage of the whole it deserves. If you keep mass marketing of image and web marketing of responsibitity and human causes separate ; of course the net will never get a look in for 2 reasons. The mass starts with 100% of the budget. The economics of global marketing would be as profitably bust at start up if you seperated the net from the mass as it is socially deprivational keeping the mass separated from the web.