Haiti, McLuhan, Impulse, and Mobile Devices.

The recent tragedy in Haiti has opened my eyes to the incredible, selfless efforts of Americans scrambling to “chip in” and help. Millions of dollars have been donated to relief efforts— but what’s fascinating to me is the function of technology and social media in this situation. According to a recent article on CNN.com,   

“the most impressive part of social media's impact on Haiti has to be the charity text message campaign that has already raised more than $10 million for Haiti victim relief. Social media spread the word. Technology made it possible.”


The ease of donating via this medium (mobile phones) made it a click away to aid the efforts in Haiti. The texting campaign provides opportunity for everyone to feel as though they’ve done something to help.


So, my thoughts on the campaign: texting is second-nature to us. It’s effortless and familiar. And $10 million is an amazing contribution. These results never would have existed if the message was to “mail a monetary donation” instead of sending a text message. Even if the message suggested for people to “go online and donate,” this still takes more effort than texting.


I’m not saying people wouldn’t have donated, but I can’t help but to think deeper into this. I’m talking about the immediate gratification of tapping a button on a screen, with that screen attached to you 24/7. Convenience. Ease.


I’m going to revert to something I learned in my first COMM class at Penn State. Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “the medium is the message.” Certainly this is true, that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message—- creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. However, is it possible that the context of the medium (as WELL as the message) is even more powerful?


Let me unpack this a little more.


Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland makes a great point about contextual communication, leading me to think that McLuhan really should have said, “The context is the message.” How he puts it is this:


“B.J. Fogg, at the University of Stanford, makes the point that actually the mobile phone is ‘persuasive technologies.’ He believes the mobile phone, by being location-specific, contextual, timely and immediate, is simply the greatest persuasive technology device ever invented. Now, if we have all these tools at our disposal, we simply have to ask the question, and Thaler and Sunstein have, of how we can use these more intelligently.”


I’d say the Haiti texting campaign is using this tool pretty intelligently; however, Sutherland also makes another great point about human impulse:


“Now, marketing has done a very good job of creating opportunities for impulse buying. Yet we've never created the opportunity for impulse saving. If you did this, more people would save more. It's simply a question of changing the interface by which people make decisions. And the very nature of the decisions changes.”


The interface fundamentally determines the behavior. One institution that takes advantage of this psychology is PNC Online Banking for Gen-Y (the “Virtual Wallet”). There is an animated piggy bank on the personal banking Virtual Wallet homepage. Every time you “punch the pig,” you can indicate how much money you’d like to transfer to your savings account, and it completes the task in a half-second. It’s so satisfying to punch that pig. Impulse saving does exist.


BOTTOM LINE: Combining these thoughts together, wouldn’t it be marvelous if there was an “impulse savings” button on our mobile devices? It would most likely take the form of an app. I haven’t looked far enough into it to see if this already exists.


I pitched this idea-trail to my roommate and she even expanded on it, saying, “That would also be a great habit-kicking app. For people that tend to waste money on things. For instance, kicking a smoking habit, excessive Starbucks buying, or even impulse shopping in stores—you could just press the button every time you were about to buy something you REALLY probably don’t need. Then you could see how much money you’d save if you weren’t buying that one thing all the time.” (credit: Victoria Wolff.)


This is too genius to not already exist—I may be behind on the times. Someone take this idea and make the app.


Now that you’ve read my lengthy rant, why don’t you do this:


• SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts


• SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts


• SMS text "GIVE10" to 20222 to donate $10 to Direct Relief


Wasn’t that satisfying?

 
HQ