 |
|
Charting Congreso's innovation with design and social media by Adam Hymans, Manager of Marketing & New Media In a recent Fast Company Magazine article, British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye, recalls the shocked expressions of Washington, D.C. Public Library officials as he entered the room for an interview. Adjaye submitted the winning proposal to redesign two inner-city library branches by the end of 2010. The library officials’ disbelief was understandable—David, after all, was surely accustomed to projects with more cachet: Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art, The Moscow School of Management, and something closer to home—the $500 million dollar National Museum of African-American History and Culture on the National Mall. This creative heavyweight responded to their surprise with a rhetorical question: “High design does not normally go into these communities, but why shouldn't it?”
Like Adjaye, Congreso continuously innovates from “a vision informed by heritage”—a thirty-year legacy of service that evolved to address the special needs of the Latino community. During the 2009 fiscal year, we began to dedicate that same caliber of creative thought to our visual communication, digital engagement efforts, and creative industry programs.
Communication in a large, culturally-based, direct service organization can prove challenging. We mined the power of design and technology for solutions. Internal and external creative talent helped to familiarize the region with the diverse faces of those affected by our work. We used design and social media to rally staff around our internal brand promise, while devoting monthly time and energy to educate new employees about its importance. Last March, we celebrated community investors at our annual gala—thanking them for their support of our journey toward innovation by taking them on a creative journey to Colombia’s famous Feria de las Flores or “flower festival.”
Visual problem-solving found its way onto the whiteboards of many Congreso conference rooms last year. We wanted the world to be as excited about our holistic theory of change as we were. Visual thinking allowed us to convey a central truth about our service models—that they were as elegantly simple as they were comprehensive. The coming fiscal year will find us “thinking outside of the pie chart,” taking advantage of “information graphics,” to visualize data in more powerful ways.
In 2009, our commitment to creativity extended beyond the realm of communications and into programming. We partnered with an offset and promotional printing company to revive our Futuros Dinamicos program. Part socially-conscious business, part work readiness program, the company is operated entirely by out-of-school youth. As several economists point to the rapid growth of the creative economy worldwide, we hoped that our support for creativity would provide youth with a pathway to rewarding careers.
The end of the fiscal year marked the beginning of Congreso’s adventures in interactive design and social media. As a large organization with confidentiality and legal obligations, we decided to tread carefully but courageously. We are learning to balance thoughtful discussions about protocol with organic conversation; bandwidth concerns with a steady influx of content. In the end, organizational participation in social media will always be a “get your hands dirty” endeavor. As we move further into this sphere, only our creativity will limit the kind of digital space we create for discussion and collaboration—how we listen and engage.
Here are five significant ways in which your organization can cultivate a greater creative and social media presence:
Foster environments that incubate creative thought across specializations Part of creativity is the act of risk-taking and play to solve problems. Paradoxically, an organization needs to create safe space that allows people to feel comfortable taking risks, a playful environment to solve serious problems. In the absence of immediate pressures of hierarchy, self-conscious fear of ridicule, the traditionally structured agenda, the subconscious mind is free to make valuable connections between disparate pieces of information and generate new ideas. This can take the form of time and space set aside where individuals from across departments are given a particular problem and tools to relieve stress and spark free-form association (e.g paper, markers, games, clay, films, etc.). Have you ever had the most fruitful discussion and strategy session at a dinner party? The participants in this space allow themselves to relax and entertain ideas that might even seem to border on the outrageous. Editing and selection of ideas can take place in another space. This free-form creative space then allows a much broader and stronger range of ideas from which to choose.
|
Invest in design Design is visual problem solving. Organizations have a range of messages that are simple and complex, subtle and obvious. The role of design is to interpret and translate these messages to be received emotionally, conceptually, and even physiologically. Investing in design is making a decision to amplify your message and create a call to action in the noisy marketplace of ideas. This commitment can be made externally, by finding a good creative firm that is willing to work with your resource base or can be made internally, by investing in internal staff for creative direction. An organization can decide between internal and external investment or both, depending on resource base, workload, proximity of the creative person to your brand, and convenience. The most important thing is to invest, and actively manage the evolution of the organization’s visual brand identity over time. Pay closer attention to the creative industry For those organizations with a commitment to creating industry pipelines, make a case to include the creative industry in those plans. Advertising, for example, is a versatile field that encourages a young person to develop a broad range of skills to be applied anywhere: critical and creative thinking, writing, research, cultural analysis, design, technology, etc. The creative industry generates significant income potential and business, non-profits, regions, and individuals will always look to the industry to add value.
Help your stakeholders understand that social media is not a generational fad Social media is a full communications form that has taken its place among esteemed predecessors—one-to-one conversation and mass media. Social media has served as a communication form of preference and necessity in the global business and political arena. Social media provided us a window into the recent turmoil in Iran when few others could. One cannot dismiss social media as a “Generation Y obsession.” Increasing evidence suggests that over 60% of those involved in social media are between the ages of 35 and 49. Of particular interest for Congreso, Latinos are the fastest growing participants in social media. As this communications form embeds itself even deeper into our cultural psyches, it is crucial for all of us to participate in that space. Create a plan for social media engagement but remember that Web 2.0 is still largely about Human 1.0 A panel at a recent Latinos in Social Media (LatISM) Conference noted that Web 2.0 (social media, interactive technology) is still largely about Human 1.0: fundamental elements of human relationships remain the same, even if those elements are brought together in different ways or at different speeds. It is important to create a strategy for social media engagement—creating goals, adding value with content, measuring ROI, managing risk—and there are several resources to help you do this. Arguably the most important part of this strategy should be to define your voice, a very human voice, and engage it in active conversation. A “Talking head” is as ineffective in the social media space as in the physical, perhaps even more so.
Creativity and social media requires committed investment. Some might question whether such an investment should be made for direct human service organizations like Congreso. As we continue to believe, after more than 30 years, that our community deserves the best, David Adjaye can best answer for us: “why shouldn’t it?” Luminous: A starchitect-in-the-making brings his love of light--and a social conscience--to London, Moscow, and the National Mall in D. C. Chu, Jeff. C. 2009. Fast Company Magazine. http://www.fastcompany.com/design/2009/featured-story-david-adjaye#mod-header-content-david-adjaye |