Popular Campaigns

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Submitted by Mike D. on Thu, 06/14/2007 - 14:58.

It's interesting to me to see the diversity of campaigns we get on YouChoose and those that attract the most attention and supporters.  While we expected this when we launched YouChoose.net, I actually expected most of the campaigns to be focused on social, political or environmental issues.  I didn't expect the strong interest we received for entertainment issues.  Today, our top campaign is entertainment related: "Save Jericho".

The Save Jericho campaign was tremendous and demonstrated, without a doubt, the power of grass-roots activism through use of the Internet.  Thousands of fans gathered online, signing petitions, getting information they needed to write or call the people they needed to influence to get Jericho back on the air.  They were successful.  Perhaps for the first time in television history a cancelled show was brought back entirely due to fan support.  It's renewed for seven episodes next season.  What will be interesting now is whether those same fans can bring other fans into their fold, ensuring the sufficient success of the show to allow it to continue into subsequent seasons.

Another, non-entertainment, campaign that was highly successful, was the "Yahoo! Plan B" campaign launched on YouChoose.net by Eric Jackson.  Eric gets all the credit for this campaign's success.  He was untiring in his pursuit for change in Yahoo!'s strategic direction and received tremendous press coverage for his campaign.  I saw him with the "Money Honey" Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many other publications.  When I first asked a friend about Eric's campaign, an expert he consulted said that Eric was going about it all wrong: he didn't have the clout and experience to affect a company's decisions.  Large institutional investors could effect change, but not a lowly individual investor like Eric.  Boy, did Eric prove him wrong. Eric activated grass-roots support to effect change - not his individual status or clout.  Essentially the "Save Jericho" approach applied to shareholder activism.  It was a great example of an 'expert' looking at the way things used to be done and missing the importance of the NEW way things could get done.