#DeedADay and the Democratization of Ideas

In 1992, Mary Fisher stood up at the Republican National Convention looking very much like the daughter of a prominent Republican family (which she was), and announced on national TV that she had AIDS. It was a hugely shocking moment for the crowd and for most of America. In 1992, the very word AIDS was shared in hushed tones and considered a scourge of just gay men and Haitians. At that time I worked in television production in NYC. I alternated between my job working at Saturday Night Live and freelancing at this hot production company, Peter Wallach Enterprises. My boss at the time there had AIDS, something he never overtly confessed to me, even though we were as close as school chums and all the symptoms indicated that he had the disease. My editor at the post-production house, where we cut the short films I produced for SNL, was grey, rail thin and hacked through our late night editing sessions. He said things like, “My immune system is shot,” yet he never publicly admitted he had AIDS. In 1992, I remember watching blonde, blue-eyed Mary on TV, standing there in her prim white dress and realizing that things were going to change for the better. Mary gave a voice to the voiceless.

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press

Flash forward in my career 20-odd years later and I find myself working in an industry, social media, which does just the same. I launched a career in this field over six years ago because I was excited by the power of this new medium to bring about change. What I saw very clearly was that social media was the ultimate democratization of ideas. Anyone could speak – we all had a megaphone in our blogs, our tweets, our Facebook status updates. If an idea was good enough, strong enough, it could be seen, absorbed and passed on to others. For a person like me who had devoted a quarter of a century to working with big media, big PR and big advertising, I was infatuated with the concept that good ideas could be distributed outside of an advertising campaign and without regard to any editors fickle preferences.

Last night I witnessed that democratization of ideas with the woman who stood on a stage and inspired us so long ago. We joined forces with Mary Fisher and her team to launch the #DeedADay movement. The movement is inspired by a bracelet Mary designed called the 100 Good Deeds bracelet. It’s made by vulnerable women in Haiti, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, India, and Bali. The bracelet is strung with 100 beads and wraps around your wrist. There is a small rubber ring among the 100 beads and the idea is you wear the bracelet both as an ethical fashion statement and as a reminder to do good deeds. Every time you do a good deed — going out of your way to do something kind for others — you move the ring over until you get to 100 beads.

I met Mary last year in Haiti and talked to her (a little too enthusiastically) about the power of social media to change the world. I guess she remembered our conversation because she asked me to do something connected to the theme of New Year’s resolutions. Sharing the message of doing good deeds felt bigger than me and my firm alone, so I called a few of my friends who run major blogging social media networks. I reached out to Stacey Ferguson of Blogalicious and the b-Link Marketing Network, Ana Flores of Latina Bloggers Connect, Jyl Johnson Pattee of MomItForward, Barbara Jones of the One2One Network, Cat Lincoln of Clever Girls Collective, Nadia Jones of the Niche Parent Network, and Kelby Carr of the Type A Parent network. They all agreed to join forces with me and ask their collective networks to share the #DeedADay movement on their blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitter channels. I hate to use the word viral, but there’s no other way to describe what happened. #DeedADay is everywhere on social media. With over 40 blog posts to date (what will ultimately be 80+ posts total), 6500 social posts and 1100+ individuals who’ve participated, we’re at 50+ million impressions.

Last night we teamed up with Jyl who runs the popular Twitter chat #GNO. We began talking to women across the country about how they think about good deeds. We hit a nerve and the Twitter stream lit up. In one short hour, we generated 25 million impressions. Women talked about ethical fashion, the importance of teaching their children to do good deeds and setting good deed resolutions in 2015. At one point, even Rosie O’Donnell, who’s known as simply @Rosie on Twitter joined the conversation.

A screenshot from the #GNO #DeedADay Twitter chat - Rosie shows off her 100 Good Deeds Bracelet.

As we head in to 2015, I’m heartened to know that initiatives like doing good deeds can build momentum in social media, the democratization is alive and strong, and the fact that one women’s voice can make a difference.