How Free Explains Israel’s Flotilla FAIL
The organizers of the “Free Gaza” flotilla spent almost nothing on their campaign. The government of Israel poured millions into its botched raid on the ships — and now is in a worse position than when the flotilla launched. How did it happen? Part of the problem is that the Israeli government never bothered to read Wired.
Israeli commandos may not have known that members of the Free Gaza flotilla were carrying knives, guns and metal bars. But they should have known that many in the incoming flotilla were armed with cameras, cellphones, blogs and Twitter accounts. For a country so technologically advanced, and with such acute public diplomacy challenges, to fail so miserably at preparing a communications offensive over new media is a failure of strategic proportions.
...
How much money did it cost the organizers of the Free Gaza flotilla to get their message out across the world? Answer: Almost nothing. Turkish TV placed a camera on one of the flotilla ships and kept it on all the time to livestream events on the boat, while constantly placing activists in front of the camera to speak about their cause. The costs of a camera, some other technical equipment, and hosting of a website are negligible.
...
How much did it cost the activists on some of the flotilla ships to tweet updates, messages and video from the boats? Answer: Nothing. It’s free. All they had to do was put a # sign before the word “flotilla,” or “freedomflotilla” and everyone that follows them on Twitter automatically sees it, and can re-tweet and reply to the original message if they so wish. In the days leading up to the Free Gaza raid, #Flotilla, #Gazaflotilla, and #Freedomflotilla rose dramatically in Twitter’s popularity ranks. Now, with the added element of violence and death, and the increased media attention to the story, these Twitter trends are only spiking further.
-
Wired:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/how-free-explains-israels-flotilla-fiasco/There's far too much good analysis in this article to post, but be sure to read to the end for the $-to-# comparison. :thumbsup: And if you haven't read Chris Anderson's book,
Free, it's definitely worth a look if you're interested in the changing media landscape.
Here's an example of free (or extremely low-cost), effective PR in action:
http://www.youtube.com/v/NFXq48VXhCI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US