219 replies to this topic

[Aegist]

27 May - 2 June : The world will be introduced to the concept of longevity, and healthy lifespan extension.

It will be done by simply having every available member of ImmInst subscribing to this thread, following this thread, participating in this thread, and achieving the goals of this thread so that between those dates every single member who has participated will be mobilised to post between 10 and 20 flyers in very public places in their local area. Inexpensive, easy, effective.



It is late February. I am arbitrarily designating 1 month to discussion time, 1 month to flyer design, and 1 month to movement organisation. 3 months maximum. The date I am picking then is the week from 27 May 2007 - 2 June 2007. In that week I intend to have every single member of ImmInst who is functionally capable of doing so, to have printed themselves a number of "Awareness Raising Flyers" and to then post these flyers to strategic points in their local city, suburb, town, village, workplace, university, bus stop and any other place they can get to.

In the designated time we need to sort out:
1. What do we want the flyers to say?
2. Who has design skills and will design a range of templates for us to use for the flyers?
3. Do we want a landing page? Imminst is a great site, but I am sure I am not the only person who has gone to www.imminst.org and thought "What am I supposed to do?"
4. What is the ultimate goal of this excellent source of publicity, and potentially huge and rapid growth of Imminst?


In the first stage I expect us to simply sort out why this is a great idea, and why we are going to do it, and what we are going to get out of it. We need to figure out how to broach this topic in a carpet manner without offsiding people. I have many ideas about this, and I will explain them as the thread progresses.

The second stage, flyer Design will be closely linked to the first stage as we try to put our concepts and goals into high impact, non-confrontational PR phrases. We need a good graphic designer, and as important as the graphics are, it will be the words that will be the hardest part. We need to inspire people to a high state of interest so that they will remember that they want to visit the website URL when they get to a computer. That landing page must then have an impact on them so that they really want to support our movement.

The third stage will simply be organising exactly who will be partaking in this exercise, where in the world they live, and how many they are going to post. As I said in the beginning of this post, I want EVERY IMMINST MEMBER to participate. I want the world to notice and remark!

If you are at all interested in lifespan extension, then you should Subscribe to this topic, participate in it, and without a doubt participate in the final task.

[Aegist]

I think the objective of this activity should be to simply carpet promote the fact that science is improving quality of health, and that with more support this can improve drastically in the coming years. I don't think the word immortality should be used anywhere on the flyers. i think we need to keep things in the real world, and appeal to the problems people actually face in their day to day lives.

I think the focus should be on the advancements science has made with regards to curing diseases and helping the healing process. And from that the point should be raised that the underlying commonality between every major disease is age. Instead of fighting each affect, by tackling the core problem, rapid advances could be made.

In summary the flyer should attract people by addressing the diseases we all know and hate, implicate the absolute relationship between aging and the increased incidence of those diseases, and motivate people to investigate how they can make a difference by supporting our movement as we fight for more funding, more attention, and more appreciation of what is possible and the lives that can be saved and improved.

Still Embryonic, but I am thinking about it, and i would love someone to participate their own ideas.

---------------

Secondly, I am quite certain we need a landing page. I'll make it myself if no one else is interested....

[Mind]

Would the flyers promote Imminst, MF, other life extension orgs?

[Live Forever]

This whole idea sounds pretty neat.

1 suggestion: As few words as possible. I have seen some studies on the response rate of different kinds of mailouts, and overwhelmingly the less text that appears on the mailout, the higher the response rate. People don't want to see a bunch of stuff, they want one simple thing that is easy to remember. (especially if it is a flyer and they have to remember it till they get back to their computer)

[Aegist]

Well the flyers will be designed with little tear off tags with a URL on it, so they don't have to remember the URL, they only need to rememeber that they are *interested* in actually going to that URL.

But good point LF.

Mind: the idea was originally spawned from the discussion about ImmInst numbers and full member conversions and what we could do with more members and the like. So one of the primary goals is to increase the ImmInst membership numbers, both basic members, and Full members. However I think of ImmInst as simply the community Hub of immortalism/sensism/elongationism/emmortalism. ImmInst is where I think everyone interested in lfiespan extension should come to talk and plan and organise how we can achieve this goal. But ImmInst is not the be all and end all. (not that it acts like it is at all). And so this is one of the reasons why i think a landing page would be good.

The flyer would link to the landing page, a very simple URL, ideally I would want "www.longerlife.com" or something like that, but everything like that is being squatted on. Although I now realise www.longerlife.info would be acceptable. Anyway, people go to this simple URL and find a quick blurb about health, scientific advancement, what we think is possible, and what we want to see happen.

Then that page should simply act as a portal, a signpost: Go here (imminst) for community, chat, and idea development. Go here (SENS) for scientific information on progress, go here (longevity meme) for news on lifespan extension... etc

[Live Forever]

What format are you thinking, Aegist? Like a one page .pdf file?

[Aegist]

precisely. Probably even an A5 size, so we get two flyers per A4 print out. This is particularly easy if we do keep it super short and sweet.

A crazy one just came to mind:
---------------------------------------------
Pick the problem you would like to solve:
"My parents are getting old and are going to die soon"
or
"I wish I could live long enough to really enjoy my grandchildren"

For more information, see www.ageingaffectsusall.com
-------------------------------------------------

for example.

And btw, this is the second thing I really want everyone to be coming up with here, i want to get lots and lots of mud thrown at the wall with regards to creating a highly effective flyer.

[eternaltraveler]

should have some information to get people interested enough.

I think the best way to get this idea of yours moving Aegist is to design and initial flyer and post it here. And then we can modify it as needed.

It's tough to get past step 1. Once we have a final product we can PM all imminst members to participate (and hopefully many do)

[Aegist]

I will do it, but just for the people who don't know what i am talking about. I want to have someone who is good with design design the real flyer, and I want to make a number of different ones. At this point I just want to get ideas for what SHOULD be put on it. Its an open canvas. We can try humour, we can try in your face, we can try sorrow, we can try 'science says...', we can try personal....

And with each of those options, we can have single sentence flyers, a couple of sentence flyers, or headline flyers with a paragraph or two of explanation. Flyers which list facts. Flyers which are very-nonspecific.

Maybe I will try to create one of each of those combinations just to give you all an idea of the boundaries we have to work within (and therefore an idea of the scale of options we have.). We need to figure out which one best represents who we are, what we want to achieve, and what will work the best.

[Lazarus Long]

I think the best way to get this idea of yours moving Aegist is to design and initial flyer and post it here. And then we can modify it as needed.

Agreed but I would like to see it as a down-loadable PDF or DOC that can be further localized for dates, contacts, meetings and special events etc. It might be real handy to have a few of these on hand long before the conference and then those that are volunteering to distribute can pick that up as a task once we need to promote the conference too.

It would be nice to have a few model types that could be selected from to help University groups organize local clubs that perhaps sponsor discussions and other organizational ideas, papers, contests, newsletters etc..

[Live Forever]

I am telling you that the less info the better. If they want information they can go to the website for more info. Too much verbage will decrease the response rate.

The person I heard talking about the mass mailing thing was Stephen Levitt (the economist of Freakonomics fame; I am a bit of an economics junkie). He had a friend who did a study with mass mailings for a business model which required people to show up to a meeting. (it was a student travel thing, not that that matters) He started out with a newsletter type thing, and then changed it to only 2 pages: the response rate jumped dramatically. He then edited it down to one page, and the response rate went up again. Then, he made it a half page and the response rate went up again, and then he just changed it to be a title in big letters that enticed the people to come to the meeting. He began with less than a 10% response rate (it was very targeted to students on campuses though, this isn't the usual response rate for mass mailings) and went up to over 50% just by cutting all the verbage.

People don't want to read through a bunch of stuff. Something as simple as "Want to live longer?" would grab people's attention, I would think more than a lot of text that no one wants to stand there and read.



(Of course, given enough time and resources you could test this out, setting up different websites you promoted in different ways and then track the response rate to different approaches, tweaking ask you go to optimize your message. This is beyond the scope of this project, of course, I am just thinking out loud.)

[Lazarus Long]

I am telling you that the less info the better. If they want information they can go to the website for more info. Too much verbage will decrease the response rate.

I am not talking about a flyer covered in text as much as visuals and the ability to insert text blocks based on the intended purpose. More like the flyers used to promote campus movies and other events. This would always include a general link to this site but also occasionally a specific topical thread.

[zoolander]

Here a culture jamming type promtion

We make Red stickers the say "Aging" and have immint.org underneith the word aging.

We then stick these color matched red stickers onto to STOP signs in the neighbourhood.

The finally product will read

STOP
Aging
Imminst.org

[zoolander]

I have done this before except with stickers that say "Hammer time", "Collaborate and listen" and so on.......

[zoolander]

NOTE: We already have a poster translated into Japanese. Speak to Kent 23

[Aegist]

This idea came from that very issue Laz. Ben asked in the Australian forum whether there were any flyers he could use to promote the site around uni, and the only flyers I could find were the couple in the sticked thread in this section (the resources thread), but they were really really uninspiring.

As soon as we have a flyer to post, i will start a new 'flyer' thread and that can be an ongoing project. As far as I am concerned everyone and anyone should be able to design their own one and add it to the thread.

And by following this plan outlined in this thread through, I don't mean to discourage the use of flyers now or for anything else. Definitely use them. But I think if we do this well enough, the world might actually notice the fact that every city on earth just got plastered with flyers saying that we can start fighting for longer healthier lives. We might generate some press.

[Aegist]

Here a culture jamming type promtion

We make Red stickers the say "Aging" and have immint.org underneith the word aging.

We then stick these color matched red stickers onto to STOP signs in the neighbourhood.

The finally product will read

STOP
Aging
Imminst.org

Very cute idea, but who will remember the URL, and who will be inspired to actually come here?

Not to say don't do it, I really like the idea, but it won't produce much for the cost of producing those stickers.

[Live Forever]

Here a culture jamming type promtion

We make Red stickers the say "Aging" and have immint.org underneith the word aging.

We then stick these color matched red stickers onto to STOP signs in the neighbourhood.

The finally product will read

STOP
Aging
Imminst.org

Kind of like the ink stamping of currency idea that was discussed awhile back. I like it. [wis]

[zoolander]

well ask yourself, when have you seen a poster without alot of information and thought, what is that website.

STOP aging! Come on. People will be curious.

[Aegist]

Again, I'm not saying not to do it, but the distinct advantage of flyers is that they are placed where people can read them (stop signs are something you drive past), and they have little strips which you tear off and take home with you.

In both of these scenarios people are outside and without access to computers. The flyer allows that person to go home and at some future point remember that they have the strip and go find it (or stumble acros it and be reminded that they were interested) and hence be prompted to go to the website.

The sticker version is just a curiosity generator. It will generate curiosity...but will convert very little of that curiosity into results.

Secondly, stickers need to be 'produced'. Flyers can be printed from any printer anywhere.

OMG

OMG brilliance.

We get everyone to film their postings. We get everyone submit the film from their flyer postings, and we make a collage of the weeks worth of flyer postings and put it on youtube.

Ok, had to get that out as soon as i thought of it. That will drum up even more interest in the phenomenon. Immortality week.

Anyway, if you are still keep to do the sticker idea, start a new thread on it.

[Aegist]

Here is my very first rough draft proof of concept flyer.

No graphics in it, nor even any colour, and it is only one of about 100 different angles we could take on broaching the topic. I think everyone should take this first draft and play around with the text on it and see if you can make a higher impact, more impressive, or more memorable flyer from the words you use.

The graphics and the look of the flyer can be tackled seperately (and remember we are looking for anyone with graphic skill in this regard who wants to play with the flyer design).



For all flyer design submissions, please post your document here: http://www.imminst.o...42&t=14732&st=0

Attached Files

•  ImmInstFlyer1.doc   28KB   43 downloads

Edited by Aegist, 23 February 2007 - 05:53 AM.

[Live Forever]

Here is one I did (used Aegist's as a template)

Attached Files

•  ImmInstFlyer2.doc   346.5KB   46 downloads

[Aegist]

Also, Jay, we need a landing page. Two reasons, 1, so that random people off the steet who will be seeing this flyer will be lead into our world incremental step by incremental step and 2. So that we can track the direct results of the flyers. A hit counter for that one page would be important, and it would certainly want to track all of the relevent details, like where they came from etc. And while we may want landing pages for other promotions, we should certainly keep only the flyers directing people to this particular landing page, and ALL of the flyers we make and post should all point to this page.

So I suggest hosting this page at www.imminst.org/fly or /land or something which is a simple word (so as to not make the URL any harder for someone to type in). Probably /age would be best considering they have to type it in, so it would want to look like it was a specifically relevent page that they should certainly type in the whole address.

(if we wanted to make things complicated, we could have a different landing page for each type of flyer we make, and thus we could track the relative success of each design...with limited capability)

Which raises another point: What are we going to have on this landing page? I have many ideas, but this is something else which needs to be designed. Visitors to this page have just followed a very vague few lines from a streetpole somewhere, what needs to be said next to maintain their curiosity, but really grab their interest in the prospect of increasing their healthy lifespan?

I'll look into doing this too, but would be more than happy for others to suggest resources, or even do it yourselves too if you feel so inspired!

[caston]

Wouldn't the stop sign idea bring imminst into legal murky water?

[zoolander]

Nice work guys.

I think we need to do our best not have the flyers come accross as commercial. You know, like so sort of infomercial.

we need to consider the shape of the actual flyer. If we deliver the flyer as a simple portrait A4 sitting on a wall it may not get peoples attention.

options:

1. Cutting an A3 sheet down the center to produce a long vertically rectangular or even horizontally rectangular.

2. Something that go beyond the normal borders. For example, like the girls head in
this flyer. We could have someone swinging a large mallet/hammer, which extends beyond the border. The hammer of course will be just about to smash a clock of some sort.

These are just a few design options that we should explore.

So, IMO, we need to work on the following.

1. The initial attraction. What will make the person look at the flyer. In most situations an unusual design or striking graphic will bring someone in closer.
2. Once the reader has noticed and is looking at the flyer, I think we need to catch there interest will some strong science or an impressive statistic. Think about the effect an ad for cancer awareness has when it says....."1 in 3 people will die of cancer"
3. Accessability. The information needs to be accessible toa large majority of the readers. Our mission, the web URL and so on.....

[zoolander]

Wouldn't the stop sign idea bring imminst into legal murky water?

It most likely would. Unless you made a pre-made sticker that was a stop sign with another sticker on it.

You could stick this in areas where stenciling and grafitti are accepted

[Live Forever]

It most likely would. Unless you made a pre-made sticker that was a stop sign with another sticker on it.

You could stick this in areas where stenciling and grafitti are accepted

We need to get some good ImmInst graffiti artists on the payroll.

[Aegist]

Here is one I did (used Aegist's as a template)

great work LF! I think we should start a new thread for all of the flyer attempts, then in one months time, vote for the best ones....

Post your design here: http://www.imminst.o...42&t=14732&st=0

[zoolander]

We need to get some good ImmInst graffiti artists on the payroll.

No. I think we need some culture jammers. Culture jamming is a great way to slap people out of their formed views. For example, most people think that the will live and then die.

[zoolander]

Let's sell men's underwear for people over 60 years old that says "60 and still going" on the front near the crotch. The female version can be printed on the other side .

Or t-shirts that say, "My gradfather can kick your grandfathers arse! STOP AGEING!"

We've all heard the term S.N.A.G that generally stands for Sensitive New Age Guy. What about S.N.A.G, Smart Non-Aging Geriatric/Guy.

You get the idea......

Now, flyers.......