Starting an online business is easy, but growing and succeeding in the online world is a different story. That’s why you must ensure that you’re doing the right things from the start! Kate Erickson, the creator, engager, and implementer at EO Fire visited my show, “Magnificent Time” to take you…
By Cristi Hegranes, Founder & Executive Director
It was the fall of my sophomore year in high school. And I had made up my mind.
In the wee hours of the morning, in my 90210-poster-adorned room, I decided to commit the ultimate act of quiet rebellion.
Letter by letter, I was going to redesign my handwriting.
With a notebook and a jar of colorful pens in front of me, I made the first bold decision: it would be all caps.
I was done with cursive and the conformity of dotting i’s and crossing t’s.
My decisions got progressively bolder as the night went on.
I put curves where sharp lines once met. I curly cued ends and joined them to meet beginnings, a nod to the cursive of yesterday.
I spent many hours that night tracing out every detail of my new style. I practiced diligently over the next few weeks. On tests and hand-written essays, I focused on training my hand to conform to this new way.
I still use those letters today, more than 20 years later. It is my own personal typeface.
Recently, I’ve come to appreciate this story about my teenage self. I think it gives insightful detail and important context about the person I would become.
For the last 10 years my brother and handful of others have been suggesting that I start a blog. A transparent account of what it’s like to grow this organization. A humorous telling of how we handle bumps in the road and how we charge at full speed through our most formidable obstacles.
A great idea, I agreed. But it never happened.
And for good reason. For many of the last 10 years I have been doing the job of at least 10 people. Steadily growing the organization on a shoe string was no easy feat. So blogging about it too felt like a chore that was always last on my to do list.
Today, things are different. For one, I have built the staff of my dreams. Editors, trainers and reporters around the globe work hard everyday to increase the quantity and quality of the news we produce. And perhaps more importantly, now, I have something to say.
Over the last 10 years a quiet movement has been building here. A young journalist’s dream has come to life. A fledgling nonprofit with an initial $37,000 budget is now a 10-year veteran with a still-lean but growing budget of more than $1.3 million.
But it’s more than that.
I believe that GPI is journalism’s utopia. A place where we don’t take advertising or dollars that seek to influence our content. A media outlet that has excused itself from the 24-hour news cycle so the clock is not our boss. An editorial team that collectively prizes accuracy above all else. And a body of reporters who understand the value of humanity in storytelling.
We have developed our own style here. One that presents the least-covered regions of the world with detailed rigor that places fact and story together in profound ways that help people understand this world a bit better. And one that infuses each article with context — social, historical, political, linguistic, cultural context that our reporters have natural access to because they are not foreigners, they live in the communities that they cover.
The reporters and editors of Global Press Journal have rebelled against the status quo in today’s media that puts ratings before reality and acts as though the public is just a mass of grateful idiots unable to discern fact from fiction.
So, it is time we invited you behind the curtain.
I will take you inside seemingly inane entries in our style guide and our unrivaled factchecking process. I will talk about funding and feuds and I will probably blather on about geography. I will say the f-word and I will work hard to write my dog into as many posts as I can.
But most of all I will make you understand why GPI has become a force blazing a new way forward for global journalism. I will let you into our quiet rebellion and I’ll show you our unique and beautiful typeface that is changing the world.
The post Welcome to TypeFace appeared first on Global Press Institute.
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What if you had the perfect excuse to watch the UEFA Champions League without your girlfriend? Watch the video to the end and find out. That’s the idea in Heineken’s latest ad stunt for soccer fans. One week before the UEFA Champions League Final in Milan, Heineken targeted a handful of guys out at dinner in São Paulo with their girlfriends. When the guys opened the menus, they were met with a surprising message:
Would you like to be free to watch the UEFA Champions League Final at a Heineken party? Gift your lady a weekend at this spa…
Creative Credits:
Advertising Agency: Publicis, Brazil
Creative directors: Hugo Rodrigues, Kevin Zung, Alexandre Vilela
Art Directors: Henrique Mattos, Cícero Souza, Guto Kono
Copywriters: Pedro Lazera, Mariana Albuquerque, Samuel Normando
Account management: Danilo Ken, Daniel Batista, Marina Roge
Planners: Eduardo Lorenzi, Alexandra Varassin, Rafael Fiorito, Leonardo Andrade
Social strategist: Tiago Martinez
Media: Gracieli Beraldi, Giuliana Barletta, Nicolas Lana
Production: Tato Bono, Dani Toda
Production Firm: Hungry Man
Film director: Caio Rubini, Fabio Pinheiro
Managing Partner: Alex Mehedff
Executive Producer: Rodrigo Castello, Renata Corrêa
Line Producer: Mariana Marinho
Photograph Director: Felipe Meneghel
Production team: Hungry Man
Post Production Supervisor: Rodrigo Oliveira
Post Productiona: Efecktor
Fitter: Thiago Ceruti
Color Granding: Psycho N’Look
Audio Production firm: Jamute
GPI HQ —Since the beginning, my goal has been the same: create a training-to-employment program that enables women in developing media markets to become the storytellers of record in some of the least-covered parts of the world.
That mission has long been communicated to funders, training recruits and staff in terms of “our three E’s.”
Educate, employ, empower.
GPI offers a training program that prepares local women to become ethical, investigative, feature journalists. In a 24-module curriculum they learn everything from ethics and interviewing techniques to photojournalism and safety and security protocols. (Educate.)
After completing the training, we offer 100 percent of our graduates employment, working as professional reporters for Global Press Journal, the award-winning publication of GPI. (Employ.)
Over the last 10 years we’ve opened 41 independent news bureaus and trained more than 150 women. We pay strong, living wages to all of our reporters to produce high-quality feature journalism from remote parts of the globe, offering greater access to information for local and global audiences.
It’s a system that has worked well.
A majority of our journalists also report extraordinary life changes – earning a living wage in a profession of literate leadership has propelled some of our reporters to win awards, earn greater respect in their homes and communities, improve basic life circumstances, even testify before their governments and attend international gatherings as experts. (One even ran for parliament.)
In our most recent annual report, 88 percent of our journalists reported being better able to care for themselves and their families thanks to their employment here. (More on the annual report next week.) What’s more, I am often the fortunate recipient of email messages from my team of global reporters that say things like, “We’ve moved to a safer part of town.”
“I got my son back.”
“My babies will have a wonderful Christmas this year.”
Or, “My husband and I are equals now.”
I used to think of these statements as evidence of GPI making good on its third E, empowerment.
But I’ve changed my mind.
And everything you just read was a long preamble to a simple decision to remove the word empower from Global Press Institute’s mission.
By definition empowerment is something given. And I used to believe that empowerment was something GPI offered, something that naturally followed successful training and long-term employment. But the truth is, the women of GPI have not been given empowerment. Those who have found it here, claimed it for themselves through hard work and tenacious commitment to a principled practice of journalism.
Of course, I do believe that journalism is an empowering profession. At GPI, it demands rigor and precision. Humanity. Dignity. Ethics.
Our particular brand of journalism is extra challenging, with its additional layers of local and global relevance, our lofty code of ethics and our commitment to accuracy at all costs (and time tables.)
So in fairness, I should add that there are reporters who don’t make it here. Just a month ago, for example, a promising trainee in India confessed that our standards of rigor were too much for her. The length of time it took to produce a story was oppressive, she said. She preferred to seek work in local media where her stories weren’t subject to scruitinous fact checks and quality-control processes. And she’s not the only one.
Then, we must consider the multitude of realities that our team of reporters, across 26 countries, exisit within.
Some reporters are proflific in publication, while others produce just four or six stories per year. Some really hustle and some just scrape by. Some have six children. Some have none. Some live in conflict zones. Some have family money. Some are victims of domestic violence. Some have higher education. And for many, local circumstances outweigh any positive gain that GPI brings.
So how can GPI promise empowerment?
It can’t.
So, last week, after 10 years, I deleted the word “empower” from our mission statement.
I announced the change in a year-end memo to my global team.
“The three E’s of our mission are probably well known to you by now – Educate. Employ. Empower. The first two remain my commitment to you. But the third E, is up to you. I hope that you find empowerment here. I hope you feel empowered to tell exceptional stories. I hope you feel empowered to be leaders and to earn money. I hope you understand that this a truly limitless opportunity. But I no longer feel that that the third E is mine to give. Rather, it is yours to take.”
To my surprise, reporters and editors applauded the change.
“Empowerment is subjective,” Aliya Bashir, a long-time GPJ senior reporter from Indian-administered Kashmir wrote in an email.
Over the years, Aliya has produced some of our best stories. She’s also been outspoken when our editorial process has become inefficient or when we needed to staff up to keep up with editorial demand. I trust her opinion and I trust that she’ll tell me the truth. So when I asked her to expand on her opinion about GPI deleting the word “empower” from its mission she told me she was a big fan of the change.
“Empowerment is meaningful and special for us in so many different ways — economically, freedom of expression, growth, learning, decision-making power, being truthful, working on dream projects and much more,” she wrote. “In a nutshell, GPI is a powerful tool through which we liberate ourselves from being dependent on others to chase our dreams.”
Whoa.
“Reporters are given each and every skill and resource that they need to tell those exceptional stories,” she continued. “So I sincerely believe that we are active participants in our own empowerment.”
Responses from other team members were equally strong.
“It was not appropriate to consider education and employment at the same level as empowerment,” wrote Ivonne Jeannot Laens of GPJ Argentina. Ivonne started as a trainee in 2012, and fast became the country coordinator for GPJ Argentina before joining the GPI training staff for the Americas. “The empowerment is the goal. And to meet that goal one needs what is given from the outside and also what comes from inside. We can only offer the tools for the women of GPI to empower themselves.”
And perhaps my favorite response came from Noella Nyirabihogo, a senior reporter and country coordinator from GPJ Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I know that with GPI my kids will go to a nice school. I know that they will eat well. I know that one day I will get my own house. And above all I know that one day I will be known as one of the most intelligent journalists in DRC, one who wrote life-changing articles,” she wrote. “But I am the only one who can achieve all of those goals. GPI gave me a field but I’m the one to cultivate it.”
So, just like that, I’m out of the empowerment business. But, I guess I was never really in it.
The act of offering an opportunity is not a promise of empowerment, I know that now.
In some ways, I regret t
he years when I assumed empowerment was part of the GPI package. But I am grateful to be surrounded by so many people who use the incredible opportunity that is GPI to tell brave stories, to speak truth to power, to invest in their own livelihoods and in their communities.
Most of all, I am proud to employ more than 100 women who don’t need an empowerment handout.
The post Blog: Disempowered. appeared first on Global Press Institute.
‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ Cliché, but true. In fact, it’s a cliché because it’s true. A battle between pictures and words is like one between Mike Tyson and Tiny Tim: the picture throws the bigger punch. Consider the following:
Marketers and brand owners, take note. Humans are extremely visual: we think largely in images, not words. What consumers and employees can’t actually see, or at the very least mentally envision, is most likely going to be lost on them. In ambiguous situations, most communication is non-verbal. Every day, we find ourselves in situations where the other party’s words and body language strike us as either opaque or conflicting. In those cases, what do we do? We rely more on non-verbal clues to evaluate the emotional state of the person speaking. Here are the exact statistics:
For anyone who wants to ‘get back to basics’, remember that nothing is more basic than non-verbal communication. Human beings have existed for over 500,000 years, but we’ve had the benefit of language for less than a quarter of that time. Moreover, because the rational and sensory parts of the brain aren’t adjacent neighbors, we’re not very good at verbally describing the details our senses detect. Ironically, that’s true despite the fact that our gut-level perceptions are largely shaped by sensory impressions.
Emotions Color Perceptions And Inhibit Change
We perceive matters in ways that emotionally protect our habits and biases.
The processing of ‘facts’ is, in essence, as much about the processing of one’s emotions as it is the processing of whatever external dynamics a person happens to be experiencing.
For instance, how do we ‘choose’ which brands to notice? Well, the first step in the perceptual process is that of screening, which often occurs subconsciously. We tend to screen out the unfamiliar (since paying attention to unfamiliar stimuli requires effort). Instead, we prefer to focus on what we already know and can relate to more easily.
Yes, at times people will analyze the ‘facts’ vigorously, but emotions are more basic and more dominant. Remember: we feel before we think, and those reactions are subconscious, immediate and inescapable. That’s why our reactions are often hard to verbalize. Our language skills reside in the rational brain, which may not even get invoked, because automatic reactions are primarily emotional in nature. As the psychologist Robert Zajonc notes, to say ‘I decided in favor of X’ often means nothing more nor less than ‘I liked X’ – and that’s good enough.
Why is instinctive preference good enough? The reason is that emotional judgements tend to be irrevocable. In terms of our basic emotional reactions, we’re never wrong about what we like or dislike. Zajonc notes, the factual reality of ‘The cat is black’ pales in contrast to the more intimate emotional reality of ‘I don’t like black cats.’
What’s the last stage in the sequence of perception? It’s retrieval, which is mediated by our emotions yet again. We tend to store and recall more readily those experiences that fit most comfortably into our existing mental frameworks. Therefore, memory is driven by preferences rooted in being at ease with our choice. Consumers and employees alike often defend their choices or actions based on details they previously deemed rationally irrelevant. Why? The explanation is that emotions are self-justifying and, therefore, emotional reactions can become totally separated from content.
Therefore, remember that what we’ve already seen will predispose us to what we can see the next time around because of our emotional investment in what’s familiar to us. While a company may believe it has a technically or functionally superior offer, consumers’ evaluations are in essence emotionally based. Objectivity doesn’t exist, because everything gets filtered and colored by emotional responses. The bottom line is that there’s almost always more commercial gain to be made by going with, rather than against, what people have already emotionally internalized and accepted.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Dan Hill, excerpted from his book, Emotionomics, with permission from Kogan Page publishing.
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The post We Are Hiring appeared first on Global Press Institute.
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The 2016 NBA Draft is coming to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on June 23, and the league is celebrating with the launch of “Draft 16,” the latest installment in the ongoing “This Is Why We Play” campaign. “Draft 16” debuted during Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
The new spot captures the journey of 2015 Draft picks including the Timberwolves’ Karl-Anthony Towns, New York Knicks’ Kristaps Porzingis, Philadelphia 76ers’ Jahlil Okafor, and others and centers on the village of unsung heroes—the families, friends, coaches, and others—who’ve helped these budding superstars achieve their dreams. From driveway hoops to youth basketball league courts, it’s a powerful reminder that, when we make it, we don’t make it alone.
Creative Credits:
Brand/Client: NBA
Campaign Title: This Is Why We Play
Spot Title: Draft 16
First Air Date: June 10
Agency: Translation
Chief Executive Officer: Steve Stoute
Chief Creative Officer: John Norman
Chief Strategy Officer: John Greene
Group Creative Director: Matthew McFerrin
Group Creative Director: Achilles Li
Senior Creative, Copywriter: Katie Edmondson
Senior Creative, Art Direction: Katie Yoder
Director of Broadcast Production: Miriam Franklin
Content Producer: Kristen Cooler
Account Team: Stanley Lumax, Agustina Marcos, Craig Mitchell
Senior Project Manager: Matt DeSimone
Editor: Fafu Pfafflin
Telecine/Conform Company: Company Three
Colorist: Rob Sciarratta
Audio Post: Heard City
Mixer: Mike Vitacco
Executive Producer: Gloria Pitagorsky
Producer: Sasha Awn
Music: “When My Time Comes”
Artist: Dawes
Footage Search & License: Visual Catch
*reSET is the only Connecticut organization to receive the U.S. Small Business Administration for the Growth Accelerator Competition Award, announced by President Obama on August 4th, 2015.
