9 replies to this topic

[onemanwaking]

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but it appears to be the subforum most appropriate to the subject at hand. The matter I discuss has a direct bearing on any and all projects that ImmInst may be involved with. Mods, please feel free to move this to a more appropriate forum if necessary.

There is a tried and true law of economics called Pareto's Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule, which states that in much of life, 20% of your efforts will bring you 80% of your results. It was named after it's discoverer, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, and has become a driving concept behind much of business, political and technology practices today.

I believe that ImmInst.org could benefit tremendously by applying this principle to much of its activities, starting with its public awareness and VIP outreach efforts. By targeting only the 20% that will bring us 80% of the exposure we need, we can increase our chances of gaining a better foothold in the mainstream mindspace.

The question is: Who constitutes this 20%?

I propose we set up a forum (or at least a separate thread) where we can suggest, debate, and eventually reach a consensus on who our best targets are. Are they particular celebrities? Are they particular demographics? Are they governmental agencies? Grassroots organizations? Other mainstream movements?

If we spread our message too thin across too many fronts, the overall power of our message is diminished, and sadly ignored. By concentrating on the 20% that will amplify our message for us, we stand a better chance of breaking into new markets.

In the end, I believe this is a marketing challenge. And to succeed, we need to know where our marketing capacity should best be directed.

[rasnjo]

I think efficiency is important, but I'm not sure I agree completely with your assessment of the ImmInst's current efforts.

Isn't employing Paretto's principle exactly what the VIP outreach project is already doing? They focus on rich people and celebrities who can actually bring attention and funding to the field to maximize the potential outcome, and they focus on people who have in some way expressed interest in life extension or transhumanism to increase the probability of success. To me the VIP project seems like a great example of how to employ Paretto's principle, but if you have suggestions on how to improve the efficiency of the program I bet they'd love to hear about it. They're already doing a lot of discussion on who should be contacted.

If we spread our message too thin across too many fronts, the overall power of our message is diminished, and sadly ignored. By concentrating on the 20% that will amplify our message for us, we stand a better chance of breaking into new markets.

You also need to take into account the law of diminishing returns. If you focus on say late night talkshow hosts hoping they may talk about the topic, you only have to send a few messages till you will have to contact less than ideal targets and you will see a decreased efficiency. What the cause needs is attention and funding, but we don't really know who will be willing to do this apart from those who already do. It seems sensible to me to contact a diverse crowd both to get the message to as many different people as possible and to not focus on a demographics that may not be as interested as we believe. We don't know exactly what demographics are among the 20%, so we use buckshot message to target 40% and wait to see who will respond and in that way find who are useful to contact.

[onemanwaking]

We don't know exactly what demographics are among the 20%, so we use buckshot message to target 40% and wait to see who will respond and in that way find who are useful to contact.

I think this is my point. If we don't know, then much of our efforts are falling on deaf ears.

Perhaps the 'buckshot method' is the best to gauge the response out there, and if so - fantastic! The reason I ask who these targets are is that I have a multitude of ideas swimming through my head, but before I can focus, I need to know who my audience is. Can anyone here give me credible evidence to support the claim that "demographic X" shows the highest potential for adoption and further dispatching of our message? If so, then I can start to think about and develop marketing ideas specific to that demographic. If not, then the brainpower we devote to figuring out who these targets are will pay dividends many times over, as our marketing efforts will have maximum resonance.

At the same time, I understand the importance of not putting all our eggs in one basket. Our strategy could be applied on multiple fronts, but I believe we at least need to determine a hierarchy of target markets so that we don't waste time with a #15 priority while ignoring a #7 priority.

Of course, I'm pretty new to this whole thing, and I apologize if I come off like I'm making assumptions about ImmInst, it's message, or it's current efforts in promoting this message. I'm only trying to find my way around, and if I can't find the answers I'm looking for, I post the questions as they come to me.

[Vgamer1]

This is exactly the kind of strategies I'm looking for. The Internetworking team is all about marketing. We're aiming to find and appeal to like-minded individuals. I've focused my efforts on message boards and forums like imminst, scouting them out to see if there are topics that we might talk about on this forum. Other opportunities exist in social networking websites. Myspace.com has a message board, which we've posted on. We also have a fundraising drive on facebook.

But the more we can focus this effort, I think, the better. There are probably many places and methods I haven't explored, and I welcome any helpful perspective. The Internetworking team is young and it lacks a bit of direction and drive. It has few active members, but it's alive and kicking.

I don't think you'll be all too impressed with the Internetworking forum in it's current state. It need a lot of organizing and brushing up. The wiki page is just getting started, and also lacks aesthetics and organization. There's a lot of roadblocks we've faced, but we're moving in a positive direction. There are many things I'd like to see happen in the INW team, which I'd be happy to discuss with you.

[brokenportal]

The whole world is our target, but to get through to them we start with certain kinds of biologists, certain kinds of celebrities, etc… our teams work to get at 20%s, because the biologists can most easily convince the rest with their research, and by lending legitimacy to the science. Celebrities can most easily get through to the other 80 percent because they lend legitimacy to the cause.

I like the 20 80 rule, its also called parettos rule like you say, and a bunch of other things I forget right now. I think we all kind of naturally have that in mind, but its good to keep it in mind more. I read about that too and it was a great point to cross reference in my mind. I read about it in the superb book “Crowdsourcing”, and I think it was mentioned in a few others too.

There are a lot of factors to take in to account, but people use different combos that they get to adjust to their cause at hand. Another thing we work to do is find people that have the right skills and amount of time we need. We work to accommodate them and mesh to them. Then there are also things like just sheer numbers where ever we get these numbers from, be it the 20 percent, or through other methods, we slowly build toward a tipping point. So anything anybody can do helps. It reminds me of the MLK Jr quote, “If you cant run, walk, if you cant walk, crawl, but by all means move forward.”

There are other targets we reach out to also under this kind of pretense, like free thinker clubs, and transhumanist clubs. They can be refined though. The VIP team started off loose, a little like aiming at a 40% with buck shot, but we work to continue to refine it as we go. One part of this we look for is people who have mentioned “Immortality” or “cryonics” or the like in the past. We also target people who might be wishing they could do things to get back in to the media arena, and who are a little easier to get to, ie, mid range celebrities who had their fame say, 5 to 20 years ago, or current mid range vips who aren’t in the spot light. Those with a biology angle, or an open minded indicator are what we especially look for. So what we did there is target 20 percent, the vips, and then we work to target the best 20 percent of those. Keep in mind though that when your working with 20 80, you can keep going down indefinitely. We can always say, find the best 20 percent out of the 20 percent we single out, and then 20 percent of those and so on. We also target biology clubs, biochemical engineers, gerontologists, etc…

Imminst also works to buckle down on the 20% who are already in to this by harnessing the power of the google-ability of the word immortality. Most of our dedicated people have found us through key words related to what they are looking for that relate to the key word immortality. Its not the most accurate word for what we are doing, but it works wonders for key word meming to the people that are most like us.

Also, we aim for people that seem to likely have less to lose by associating with us. For example Mind works for the news and is maybe less likely to put that on the line at this time.

In short, we use and aim for the 20 80 rule, and if you want to help us refine more toward it then please by all means do because that is where we are headed.

Edited by brokenportal, 16 November 2009 - 12:36 AM.

[cribbon]

Just a quick thought on how to do it practically. Lets have a huge brainstorming thread where names are put in, and then we close that and make a poll. Just devide the total number of possible choices by 5 and that will be the maximum number of votes per person.
If you wind up with too many names, just apply the principle again.
If we wind up with too few, just apply it to the individuals who didnt make the first vote.

[onemanwaking]

Good to see people getting into this discussion!

I like Cribbon's idea for a mass brainstorming session, however I think before we start thinking of individuals we can target, we should consider cultural demographics.

Who are the groups of people who could be most positively affected by our message? For example, if I suggest Caucasian males between 16 and 25, we would have to weigh the pros and cons of pitching our ideas to this market.

Pros: they have disposable income, they are easily influenced by pop culture and media, they want to stay on the cutting edge of what's new and cool, they could act as a catalyst for broader media exposure (if they all start buying into a new 'fad', chances are the media gets on board to report it), most importantly - they may already want to live forever (if they're not Emo, that is...)

Cons: they are fickle, skeptical, seen as lazy (the Great Funemployed), things they are interested in may turn others off simply out of spite for this demographic

So, once we take a look at a number of different demographics and then consider which ones have the most potential for 'message amplification', we can then discuss what the best marketing strategies are for reaching out to them.

Again, let's look at marketing to Caucasian males, 16-25. If I were to approach a celebrity, I would consider Tony Hawk rather than George Hamilton. If I were to put together a YouTube video, I would concentrate on making it 'viral' rather than a big mainstream production. I would also consider grassroots guerrilla marketing tactics such as little stickers that we stick on fast food drive through speakers that ask "Who is Aubrey deGrey?" and nothing more. Our target will determine our approach.

Can we start a subsection somewhere so that we could begin tossing ideas around? Maybe we set it up like a tournament - start with an initial brainstorm list of every demographic we can think of and then start pitting one against another. People vote and give reasons for their choices. Eventually, certain demographics rise to the top of the heap and we can then assign a priority to the bunch of them. Once this is complete, we then do the whole tournament thing over again, this time looking at the various methods we can use to reach each target demographic. Brainstorming meets prioritization.

Whaddaya think?

[Shepard]

I don't think we need another subsection specifically for this, VIP Outreach can just as easily be Outreach and employ this type of discussion.

[Mind]

Young college aged males are the majority of people who participate at Imminst and would likely be our best outreach target. I don't want to ignore other groups but if we want the most bang for our outreach buck then this is the group we should focus on. If some women here at the forum have some ideas on how to successfully reach the female demographic please speak up.

A couple years ago one member suggested targeting Sci-Fi Cons. It is a good idea as these people are open minded and have been exposed to futurist memes. It never quite got off the ground but might be worth revisiting.

[JLL]

Given that appearances are everything, I'd put some (a lot) more effort into that.

A good graphic designer student is going to charge us what, $100 for designing a banner/poster that actually looks good. Everytime I say the flyers and stuff need to look more professional someone tells me go do a better one -- but that's not the point; I'm not saying I can do better. I'm saying there are people out there that can. And this small investment can make a big difference in how people perceive the cause. It's "oh, some kids want to live forever, that's nice" vs. "hmm, seems legit, maybe I should look into this".