Volunteers in St. Petersburg, Florida took part in the I Love Arctic Day of Action April 20, 2013 by creating a human heart on the beach.

I Love Arctic was the biggest global mobilisation plan for Greenpeace, with 20 offices representing 30 countries co-creating events with their volunteer networks to host massive on-the-ground protests April 20, 2013. The digital-grassroots campaign extended into the day of the event, when supporters uploaded photos live to Twitter and Instagram. The idea was that the momentum created by the posts would strengthen the message Greenpeace was sending to the governing body for the Arctic, the Arctic Council.

The Challenge

Merging digital engagement strategies with the offline mobilisation efforts proved to be an exciting frontier, say both the online manager, Cassady Sharp, and the offline strategist, Mary Nicol.

Focused around the single day of action, the newly formed team worked to engage volunteers in either hosting an event or attending one.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen us come together as an organization across countries and across niches to collaborate on a campaign,” Mary says, calling the campaign an “audacious goal.”

The goal was to mobilise effort around creating a global sanctuary in the Arctic, free from any form of extraction.

An audacious goal, to be sure, given the “powerful minds” that would need to be changed and the challenge of accessing the Arctic Council and its various state departments.

“We targeted a lot of players,” Mary says, pointing to a wide range, from oil companies to the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

“The main thing is we focused on not being able to do it on our own through grassroots engagement,” says Mary. Admitting that Greenpeace’s offline engagement was particularly successful with one-on-one communications, Mary says this campaign clearly called for a “global mobilisation” that would leverage the support of volunteers more actively engaged in online activities.

Enter the digital team, who had organized itself into an online advocacy team for blogs, websites, social media, e-mail delivery and petitions, but had little engagement with the grassroots campaign management.

Getting Started

Before the first brainstorming session, the strategists held a competition on the popular blogging platform Tumblr. They invited 12 staff to post pieces of campaigns that have been most inspiring.

“The idea was to get more people working with us,” Mary says. “People posted ideas of things that work well, things that reflect what’s cool, what’s inspiring.”

Then the team used that momentum to think collaboratively around the global day of action for the Arctic.

Choosing Tactics

Before this collaboration, a traditional grassroots campaign focussed efforts on volunteers known to Greenpeace; the digital team also had a list of known volunteers, although communication systems to each group were different. Marrying the two was the ultimate goal of the U.S. team going into this campaign.

“We knew that when people would come to our website and say they wanted to volunteer, they’d fill out the information and receive an e-mail auto response. Then they’d get a downloadable toolkit when a campaign came up, and that was it. We often never heard back from them,” Mary says.

For this campaign, the digital team chose a different tactic, one that was visually appealing with the use of two buttons, and offered an option.

Once they hooked a volunteer into a host stream, grassroots campaign organizers layered in the specialties that they are best at — phone calls each week to committed volunteers, group conference calls with campaign leaders, chats with other campaigners, for example.

Mary says there was a lot of learning in the collaboration. The on- and offline teams shared  documents, understanding, time lines, work packages and responsibilities. The challenge, and something the team hopes to better next time ‘round, was ensuring clear communication between all the strategists from the get-go, she adds, mentioning that having the right people in the room for all strategy conversations proved to be crucial.

Digital Weigh-in

From the standpoint of the digital players, the campaign goal to mobilise 200 events across the U.S. was equally intimidating.

I Love Arctic website included a dual-ask.

They’d had fortunate results from e-mail campaigns dedicated to direct interested volunteers to a sign-up page or online petition, but engaging people in an on-the-ground day of action was something new, Cassady says.

Also new: a mixed-message tactic, where the call to action is two-pronged, offering choice to potential volunteers, in this case, either host and event, or attend one.

“We toiled with that – usually we have just one ask,” Cassady says. “This was a little different. Our web page had two big buttons, one for hosting an event, and the other to find an event to attend.”

In the end, while there were more than 60 events on U.S. soil April 20, and while the mobilisation effort fell short of the highest hopes, both Mary and Cassady agree it provided valuable learning for the future.

“I felt like we learned that we should have been focused more on getting people out to something, rather than asking them to either attend or host an event,” Cassady says.

The Digital Process

Digitally, the campaign ran with a website starting March 5. The home page linked to the “ask” which offered the two options.

The main campaign page was viewed nearly 43,000 times and an average time spent on the page was six minutes, four minutes longer than the site-wide average. The page included a live Twitter feed around the hash-tag #ILoveArctic, with an auto generated tweet sent to John Kerry.

While 500 people clicked on the “Host an event” button, a much smaller number pulled the trigger on that “ask.”

On the other hand, the “Find an Event” page was visited roughly 6,000 times and, “surprisingly enough, a big chunk of that came from organic search traffic,” Cassady says. Organic search traffic might include anyone searching for a volunteer opportunity with Greenpeace, for example.

“It was interesting for this campaign people spent longer on the home page, poking around at information and possibly enjoying the live Twitter feed,” she says.

“It was surprising to me that most of the time we can count on e-mails to our list being pretty successful in getting people to sign up, but this time people came to us not from email, but via generic Arctic or Greenpeace search terms.”

Day of Action

18 senior citizen activists in Portland Oregon, including Linda Zenicanin, front, show their love for the Arctic during the Day of Action April 20, 2013.

On- and offline collaboration was particularly effective on the day of action, when the live posts to Instagram and Twitter proved to engage teams in a wide variety of locations.

“A cool thing happened,” Mary says. “When we were looking at photos after the events and seeing who had participated, there were lots of new people, people we hadn’t seen before on the ground.”

Even during the event itself, as organizers watched the live blogging, they remarked on the number of new people that seemed to be involved. One of the people they hadn’t met yet was Linda Zenicanin in Portland, Oregon.

She didn’t fit the stereotype for a Greenpeace volunteer; she isn’t young and she has a physical disability.

“One of our team blogged about that, and Linda, herself, replied, saying how pleased she was to be involved. That generated energy around the event,” Mary says. “Had we not had collaboration with the digital team that would not have happened.”

New learning

In the end, the teams grew a new understanding of one another’s strengths, reasoning and strategy, Cassady says.

“That was really encouraging. We took something that was a tricky thing to do, difficult to sell people on, and mobilised an effort around it.”

Building on the strength of the communication between the grassroots and online teams from the I Love Arctic campaign, Greenpeace plans more mobilisation this summer using similar collaboration.

Cassady says she’s looking forward to more communication with her grassroots colleagues, particularly in explaining what dedicated grassroots volunteers think of as the most “cool” tactics.

The U.S. campaign team delivered a photo album to Secretary of State John Kerry following the event. An album was also delivered to the Arctic Council in May.

“We can certainly learn from the more qualitative data that grassroots get,” she says.

Following the day of action, the team collaborated on a photographic display which they presented to Kerry’s office. The presentation was made by a group of volunteers clad in polyester cheer-leading outfits, and the series of events leading up to, and during the presentation were tweeted visually to engage the online audience.

Across the globe on April 20 more than 17,000 people in 280 cities spanning 38 countries came together to speak out on behalf of the Arctic. They made human banners in the shape of hearts to spell “I Love Arctic”. Photos of the events were presented to the Arctic Council May 15 in Kiruna, Sweden.

Stay Connected: Cassady Sharp: @cassadyblair  IPS Arctic Council: @ArcticPeoples

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“We are not as sophisticated as some of the larger organizations such as Greenpeace,” says program director Alex Miller. “For us, it’s about meeting people in their worlds and showing them how their worlds intersect with politics, and then convincing them that political activity is not just possible, regardless of age, but also effective.”

Washington Bus engages youth on the ground through events like the Capitol Hill Block Party, which builds online engagement.

Yet over the past year, Washington Bus has found regular and consistent spikes in its e-mail open rates and click through rates. In fact, Alex estimates e-mail open rates are up by about 25 per cent on average since last year.

The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmark study seems to suggest this is an anomaly: an analysis of 1.6 billion e-mails send to 45 million subscribers showed e-mail open rates have stayed the same, a 13 per cent open rate for fundraising e-mails and 14 per cent for advocacy e-mails. Click-through rates declined in 2012 by an average of 22 per cent.

“Regularly, we see increases (of e-mail open rates) upward of six per cent over last year,” he says. “With spikes that are also occurring more regularly, the average open rate is up significantly,” says Alex, adding click-through rates have increased consistently with e-mail open rates.

This is good news for the Washington-based mobilisation organization that aims to increase community engagement from high school students to young adults, but it’s a bit of a sidebar to their regular work, Alex says.

Instead of trying to turn youth onto politics, the Bus philosophy meets the people in their own arenas. They turn the questions inside out until young people realize that in order to keep the food-bank shelves where they volunteer stocked, and its doors open, they need to become involved at a level other than serving soup.

If there’s one thing Washington Bus members are good at, it’s connecting on the ground, in communities. They admit it usually looks like a party or celebration of some kind — hundreds of students, for example, gathering annually to for the Capitol Hill Block Party.

While many advocacy organizations are intentionally focusing on digital engagement opportunities and then managing the flip to offline engagement, Alex says it’s ironic that the Bus is finding their offline engagement is driving their e-mail-open rate success.

Over the past year, one of the intentional and common-sense strategies the Bus used was to wring out its e-mail list.

“There were a lot of high-school students on the list, and we know high-school students rarely check their inboxes,” he says.

They cleaned up their list, and then went on the hunt for addresses of people who were more likely to engage through e-mail. They found that was people who they’d already connected with on the ground through their offline work and are interested in politics.

Beyond that, Washington Bus staff accidentally noticed a trend: when they switched up authors of e-mails, the open rates spiked.

E-mail open rates for youth aged 15 to 35 are bucking the trend, say Washington Bus organizers who have seen better-than-average results.

“People are curious,” Alex says.

They also like pictures, he adds.

“People care about people. Pictures of faces, e-mails about new fellows, new staff, new people seem to correlate with a spike in e-mail open rates,” he says.

Probably the biggest factor in the rise in Washington Bus e-mail open rates, Alex says, stems right from the core philosophy the Bus movement has adopted: providing something of interest, even if it has nothing to do with what might be the obvious reason for the e-mail.

Alex says he was shocked to find that when he added a link to an Easter egg this spring, the e-mail moved more people to click the link than usual.

“It was just something extra, something unrelated to the real reason for the e-mail,” he adds. “People find that engaging and entertaining, and it makes a connection for them apart from the main reason for the e-mail.”

It is similar to what Washington Bus organizers do in an offline engagement. They gather people for one cause, and then use a game or another fun activity to engage them in an intersection point between their passion — be it music, or art, or something else — and the potential for civic engagement in decision-making organizations.

Alex says he thinks there are several reasons for the spike in e-mail open rates, not the least being the use of e-mail to giveaway tickets to events and parties.

“You have to stand out in the crowd somehow. Many of these people are very politically engaged, and get tons of tons of e-mail. We want to make sure there’s value in the e-mail,” he says.

Asking people for something regularly is not going to be successful, he says.

“We have the philosophy that all the things that would annoy you about a person in real life will equally annoy you about a person on the Internet.”

“Keep it light, fun , short, sweet, irreverent, and provide just enough information to intrigue the reader,” he says.

The Washington Bus plans to do more of the same going forward. Right now, one of the items Alex is considering is how often to send e-mails. The Bus sends less frequently than some other organization, just one e-mail every week or two.

If you are interested in more information about the Bus movement across the nation, get in contact with Alex, alex(at)washingtonbus.org.

This is the first in a MobLab series exploring how to increase e-mail opens and response rates. The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmark study, found an overall decline in e-mail response rates in 2012.

Stay Connected: @WashingtonBus

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That was the case for Johnny when running one of 38 Degrees’ fastest growing campaigns ever, its Save our Forests campaign in 2011.

It was members of 38 Degrees, a 850,000 people-powered campaigning organization, who voted in favor of creating a Save our Forests campaign. The campaign successfully mounted a 500,000 strong movement calling on the United Kingdom government to not sell the country’s forests.

According to Johnny, what made the campaign effective was the acknowledgement that people wanted to take part. The 38 Degrees team found creative ways to involve them.

More than 500,000 people signed the “Save Our Forests” petition and 100,000 people e-mailed or called their MPs urging them to stop the forest sell-off.

38 Degrees asked members to fund a people-powered YouGov poll, which found that 84 per cent of the public wanted the forests kept in public hands.

Building on this momentum, 38 Degrees members chipped in nearly £60,000 ($91,670 U.S.) to pay for ads in national newspapers to highlight that 84 per cent of the British public opposed the forest sale.

The campaign was growing at an unprecedented rate and the 38 Degrees team of three knew they couldn’t manage it alone. So they began encouraging people who were really involved to set up their own local groups. More than 30 groups cropped up.

“That meant we had local groups all over the country putting up posters, talking to the press and holding rallies,” says Johnny.

“I think that was how we won, being relaxed enough and realistic enough to know the members created this movement and our job was to help steer it and direct it but to let it run wild and not try and hold it back.

“That’s what excites me about supporter-led campaigning. If you can enable those movements, a lot of awesome stuff can happen.”

Johnny’s latest work focuses on the untapped potential for mobile mobilisation.

After leaving 38 Degrees, Johnny began researching the success of other supporter-led campaign organizations like Moveon.org, Avaaz, and GetUp! Not only were these groups present only North America, Europe and Australasia, none of them had figured out the mobile Internet.

“That’s a big problem because the emerging world only owns basic smart phones,” says Johnny.

Johnny became fascinated by the potential for supporter-led campaigning in the emerging world with improved technology.

“I’m pretty convinced that Internet-driven campaigning is going to become a global phenomenon,” he says.

It’s this passion that landed him his current role at Change.org, where he’s tasked with the goal of innovating Change.org’s technology to empower as many people as possible around the world.

It’s seeing people harness the power of personal story to drive change on issues they care about that has Johnny predicting the role of professional campaigners driving professional campaigns will evolve.

“If you can get professional campaigners supporting campaigns and advising them that’s when we start to see huge, small-scale change across the world,” says Johnny.

Johnny points to examples like the No More Page 3 campaign in the U.K. started by actress and writer Lucy-Anne Holmes. Lucy-Anne, who has no professional campaigning experience, has been able to galvanize 100,000 people to sign her petition. Most recently Girlguiding U.K., which has 530,000 members, issued a statement, which supports the campaign calling for “No More Page 3.”

Rupert Murdoch himself hinted several months ago that he may scrap the feature. He was responding to a tweet asking him to scrap page three, which was first published in 1970.

He tweeted: “page three so last century! You maybe right, don’t know but considering. Perhaps halfway house with glamorous fashionistas.”

Johnny’s most recently helped launch Campaign Bootcamp, a five-day residential course for young people who want to run more effective campaigns.

Johnny was one of five guests attending Greenpeace’s Digital Mobilisation Skillshare in February.

Stay Connected: @j_chatterton

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Child abuse billboard contains ‘secret message’ not visible to adults

Via Gawker.com

To try and do more than simply raise awareness of child abuse, the international nonprofit Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk (ANAR) recently joined forces with the ad agency Grey Group Spain to create a public service announcement that both draws attention to the problem, and may actually make a difference.

Using a technology known as lenticular printing, Grey Group designed an ad that contains a “secret message” that is only visible from the POV of children (~4’4″). (Submitted by Katie Flynn-Jambeck)

Stop Coca Cola from curbing Australia’s Cash for Containers program

#cokefail

Beverage producers led by Coca-Cola have stopped effective government action across Australia to introduce a 10c refundable bottle levy. To drum up support for a national ‘Cash for Containers’ recycling scheme, Greenpeace Australia is running a successful campaign that’s collected 70,000 petition signatures, and compelled 10,000 peopel to e-mail their local MPs.

Soccer video sends powerful deforestation message to Brazilians

Via pinterest.com/darrenbarefoot/remarkables/

To show that every four minutes an area equivalent to a football field is deforested in Brazil, WWF-Brazil in partnership with the agency Grey 141 launched an unusual tactic aimed at football fans. During the rerun of a football game of Brazilian women on TV Bandeirantes, the  the color of the lawn and game field gradually changed from green to brown.

At the end of the game, viewers received the following message: “Every four minutes a football field is cleared in Brazil. Visit the site (wwf.org.br) to learn how to help. After the game, access to the website increased 73%. People are more aware of the problem of deforestation. And Brazil won on and off the field.

Unicef’s Little Bet on Pinterest

Via bethkanter.org

While not a new campaign, we still love this creative approach to Pinterest. Created by UNICEF, the fictional Pinterest profile of Ami Musa features the less-than-luxurious desires of the 13-year-old girl from Sierra Leone. On a board called “Really want these,” Musa has pinned an image of hands holding plain rice, a rusty faucet and running water.

Read Beth Kanter’s blog as she interviews Unicef’s head of digital engagement Laila Takeh to learn more about their cost-effective experiment to raise awareness using Pinterest.

What’s Missing?

Have a people-powered campaign you’re tracking that should be here? Use and follow #CampaignSpot to share creative mobilisation campaigns.

Genetically modified (GM) food is banned in Hungary but many of the country’s food producers aren’t transparent regarding their supply chains. As a result, imported ingredients used in Hungarian food and beverages could contain genetically modified organisms (GMO) without consumers knowing.

Wanting companies to launder their supply chains, Greenpeace Hungary spent seven months contacting companies and asking them to make a public statement that their products were GMO free.

The answers were developed into a free consumer food guide that was shared offline and available online and for download. Products with a green label were safe. Red products were questionable, and implied the company didn’t respond to Greenpeace’s multiple queries.

In order for the consumer guide to truly pressure companies to clean up their supply chains, Greenpeace Hungary knew it would need to reach as many Hungarian consumers as possible.

That’s where testing and a unique Facebook approach would come in.

Test Multiple Landing Pages

Using the software Unbounce, digital campaigner Tomas Kovacs created two landing pages promoting the new Greenpeace GMO free consumer guide. People were invited to download the consumer guide  once they entered their e-mails.

The e-mail ask would allow Greenpeace an opportunity to communicate directly with people interested in the issue of GMO, and provide updates when companies agreed to work with Greenpeace, and publicly ensure their products were GMO free.

Page A had a lengthy explanation about the threats GMO food pose to people’s health as well as the planet.

Page B was simpler, sharing the new consumer guide without explaining the risks of GMO food.

The simpler landing page resulted in 20 per cent higher downloads of the consumer guide.

“I see testing as absolutely essential, “says Tomas, who first read about the benefit of Unbounce in a blog post, and decided to try it out.

He adds Greenpeace Hungary conducted many other tests, but this was the most significant finding.

While Unbounce is a simple site to use, the results are based on statistical significance, which can be difficult to determine depending on the sample size and results.

In the case above,  the testing software stated the 20 per cent difference was statistically significant.

One Facebook Post

While most campaigns create a number of Facebook posts and images to promote their issue, Tomas says the GMO campaign chose the opposite strategy.

Greenpeace Hungary would develop only one post, continually promoting the post to aggregate the number of likes, shares and comments in one place.

“It’s a lean model. One Facebook post, and push it as far as you can,” says Tomas, adding the approach allows the companies to see the full reach and scale of the guide.

“You can have huge numbers in terms of reach and activity on that post. Also, it’s easier to manage.”

The Facebook post was optimized to spread; It was big, a square 800 by 800 pixel image with bright, engaging colors. The image included a shortened url to the consumer guide twice, as well as an arrow to click here to access the guide, and a hashtag. It was also maximized to share.

“These small things can make a huge difference,” says Tomas on the time spent creating the Facebook image.

The Facebook post was promoted for three weeks: initially through Greenpeace’s Facebook page, then as a promoted post to Greenpeace Hungary fans and special interest groups.

Once more than 1,000 people had liked, shared or commented on the image, Tomas upgraded the post to a sponsored story, which shared the image with friends of people who liked the image.

Tomas says sponsored stories are an effective way to share your campaign.

“It’s very strong if people learn of a campaign through someone they know. It isn’t viewed as an advertisement,” he says.

“Most people view (a post) as important if thousands of people before them also viewed it as important.”

Within three weeks, the Facebook post had 9,000 likes, 627 comments and 11,327 shares, with shares being the most valued type of engagement on Facebook.

“Those big numbers are scary to the companies because they see something has 10,000 shares, and they are mentioned there not in the best way,” adds Tomas.

The high number of shares can in part be attributed to Greenpeace’s thank you page, which let people know the guide would arrive shortly in their inbox. In the meantime, they were  encouraged to share the FB post so it could reach the hands of more caring consumers.

The Facebook post would drive 30,000 views to the Greenpeace GMO Free Consumer Guide download page. This equals three quarters of all views to the campaign website.

The overall cost of promoting the Facebook post for three weeks was €1,800 ($2,358 U.S.)

GMO-Free Victory

The consumer guide’s soaring popularity resulted in a rapid about-face by companies. One of the largest beer companies in Hungary committed to studying its supply chain to ensure it was GMO free after seeing large numbers of consumers downloading and liking the guide.

Within two weeks, a total of six companies that had previously refused to co-operate with Greenpeace Hungary agreed to open up their supply chains.

In total, 10 companies have agreed to study their supply chains to confirm their products are GMO free, and other companies are still contacting Greenpeace.

With each victory, Greenpeace Hungary sends an updated e-mail to consumers who continue to subscribe after downloading the guide — there was a clear option to unsubscribe in the initial e-mail — letting them know about the company’s new commitment.

The online version of the guide is also updated to reflect Hungarian companies’ co-operation. The only glitch in this model is if a person chose to download the guide and unsubscribe from Greenpeace e-mails, they would not learn about the company’s policy change.

Key Takeaways:

• Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) principle – Almost embarrassingly simple things can work better than expected. No need to over-explain or over-design.

• Always Test – Test multiple landing pages and designs to discover the highest uptake. Testing of elements and designs should be done as much as possible, including for Facebook.

• Unique value proposition – Before creating the site, Greenpeace Hungary paid plenty of attention to the would-be headline and supporting text. They found good examples to discuss and experimented with text options. They pushed themselves to explain what the guide was for and why a visitor would want the guide in clear, simple language. The resulting few lines were solid and worth the extra effort.

• Designate a “face of the campaign” – Greenpeace Hungary used a personal communications strategy, designating one campaigner to appear at the press conference, sign e-mails to supporters, and reply to Facebook comments.

• One Facebook post -This allows comments, likes and shares to accumulate, demonstrating the public’s collective heft. Greenpeace Hungary admits it’s not easy to find one promotable piece but that’s the ideal case. One super hit for people to focus on is better than 10 ordinary posts.

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At Home Campaign

indiegogo.com/projects/at-home-campaign

The @Home_campaign features a documentary and game to share first-person stories of homelessness across the U.S. and helps people explore the challenges of homelessness in a group game.

How “Dreamers” Changed The Immigration Debate

buzzfeed.com

The language and realities of the immigration debate in the U.S. have changed dramatically in the past year. Some of that change has been driven by an unexpected new force in the debate: The increasingly public emergence of undocumented people, led by tech-savvy, social media-oriented “Dreamers.”

I Love the Arctic Global Day of Action

#ILoveArctic

On April 20, 2013, more than 10,000 people came together all across the globe to take a stand for the Arctic. Organizers hosted human banners in the shape of a heart, spelling out ‘I Love Arctic,’ in more than 280 cities in 38 countries from Chile to New Zealand and from Norway to South Africa. It’s the largest manifestation for Arctic protection in history.

Tax Evaders Game Shines Light on Corporate Greed

taxevaders.net

Warning, corporate tax evaders are attacking our planet! Make them pay their fair share! Derived from “Space Invaders,” The Citizen Engagement Lab developed a new game called “Tax Evaders” to take out the corporate alien spaceships evading taxes they should be paying. Try to zap those aliens . . . . .

What’s Missing?

Have a people-powered campaign you’re tracking that should be here? Use and follow #CampaignSpot to share creative mobilisation campaigns.

Thousands of people created a human chain in Paris March 9 to protest France's expanding investment into nuclear energy

Conversations with small anti-nuclear associations in France months before the peaceful protest inspired networks of coalitions to spring up, says event organizer Gregory Loison.

“The most important step was the creation of a project team,” he says that was able to spark these initial conversations with 25 local groups.

The original team then took on the role of motivating those group co-ordinators to share the information about the event in which thousands were mobilised to peacefully protest against the French policy on investment into nuclear energy.

The original team did this through more conversation both in person and via conference calls, and, eventually, by sharing a most unique engagement tool — an invitation to the public to make an origami crane.

The crane is a Japanese symbol, and the story goes that if one makes 1,000 cranes, a wish will come true,” Loison says.

Greenpeace volunteers engaged online and offline support by asking people to make paper cranes, a Japanese symbol for wishes-come-true.

The wish, of course, was to stop government investment into nuclear energy. The French government is often accused of over-investing in nuclear projects.

The paper crane initiative gave on-the-ground volunteers something to use to engage the public, Loison adds.

“It helped motivate the troops,” he says.

Alongside offline conversation, connections, communication, and cranes, the French Greenpeace team created allure among the online community with a Facebook page entitled “Stop Nuke.”

The page was campaign specific before being launched about three weeks later on the main Greenpeace France page, thus extending the invitation to engage to the whole Greenpeace France online community.

A third Facebook tool was created on the main Greenpeace page to engage even wider support. This one focused on the origami cranes made at the Greenpeace France office.

Other online activists in Paris were part of an outreach a week before the event. That invitation also went to all supporters and donors in and around Paris.

Greenpeace volunteers scheduled the event itself to coincide with the second anniversary of the Japanese Fukushima explosions.  In the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami March 11, 2011, a series of equipment failures and nuclear meltdowns caused the release of significant amounts of radioactive material.

It is considered the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, and the plant continues to have radioactive leaks, even as recently as this month. Up to 160,000 people are still unable to return to their homes following the initial disaster.

The World Nuclear Association lists France as the world’s largest net exporter of electricity, three-quarters of which is derived from nuclear energy. In fact, one of France’s major exports is nuclear equipment such as reactors and France is currently building its first Generation III reactor.

Even as recently as April 13, the French consortium Areva announced it would be sending several tons of MOX, a compound that has up to 10 per cent radioactive plutonium to Takahama on the Korean peninsula.

Volunteers hung a chain of Japanese paper cranes on the Ministère de l'Économie, des Finances et de l'Industrie in Paris March 9 as a way of drawing attention to their wish for a halt to the French investment in nuclear power.

The day of the Greenpeace France event, at least 4,000 people (police confirm 4,000 protestors, while organizers say as many as 20,000 may have been in attendance) formed a human circle around the buildings in Paris that promote nuclear power: the Assemblée nationale  and the Senat, the Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie, the seats of EDF, Areva and banks.

Greenpeace also attached 1,000 origami cranes to the Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie, in a symbolic gesture toward a wish for a world free of nuclear power.

Organizers live-tweeted the event, updated Facebook in real time, and published pictures under @greenpeacefr on Twitter. As well, local and international media picked up the event.

The co-creation of this event through the management of both online and offline volunteers, activists and other interested members of the public ensured its success, Loison says.

“Of course there was a lot of collaboration between online and offline,” he adds.

Mobilisation Takeaways:

•  Establish a project team to engage in coalition building

• Identify key organizations to manage offline information flow

• Keep the energy high by
— Finding and sharing unique engagement tools
— Continued conversation
— Finding opportunities to tie campaign into current events

• Specifically manage online information flow

•  Engage online communities through social media repeatedly before the event, and live during the event

More information about the project is available (in French) on the Greenpeace France site.

Stay Connected: @greenpeacefr

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How Greenpeace France got 13,000 to thank nuclear activists online and offline (VIDEO)

Do you have an innovation in mobilisation or people-powered campaigns? Share it with Mob Lab by contacting MobLab@greenpeace.org.

As the first big project of the Vol Lab, the Latin American regional skillshare started as an idea to bring together the volunteer-coordinators of Brasil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico. Intelligent evolution led to a mobilisation skillshare; bringing together volunteer coordinators, digital mobilisers, action coordinators and fundraisers from all four countries and the virtual office of Colombia. If you like – the three disciplines of mobilisations + friends.

If I’ve learnt one thing from working across different cultures and offices, it is that what one office thinks is impossible, is considered normal in another. Especially when it comes to how much trust Greenpeace places, and how much autonomy we give volunteers, activists and digital supporters. I’d argue for more but…

… sometimes you have to dig deep. In a workshop about local campaigning, Sergio led with ‘volunteers are not permitted to make local campaigns’ – and then tells the story of a local forest campaign. Where after being initially refused permission to develop a campaign- the volunteers pulled together the research, the project plan, the arguments and the opportunities. To then return to the office, and to convince Greenpeace Chile to not only to adopt the ‘local’ campaign, but to win it.

As an international organisation Greenpeace campaign staff are used to working together to develop campaign plans and strategies combining the talent of different offices. Bringing together the organisational specialists in volunteering, digital and actions from across Latin America was more of a risk and to date unique.

While online to offline, and offline to online mobilisations start to unite digital mobilisers and volunteer coordinators (1), actions staff have acknowledged the disconnect between traditional mobilisations – perhaps to shut down a coal fired power station and the move to new mobilisation structures and departments – to empower 100′s of thousands of people to take action.

Risks pay off as actions coordinators throw their ideas and passion into workshops ala ‘volunteer policies for Latin America’ or ‘online training for staff and volunteers’ – illustrating the common language of mobilising people, independent of the tools, and the shorter term objectives – the Comms Director of Greenpeace Brasil described us thus – digital mobilisation, actions and volunteering are the filling in the sandwich of campaigns and fundraising.

Dani and Flor’s ladder of engagement, or appropriately the Mexcian pyramid of engagement was a star attraction. Sometimes I imagine the path of supporters and volunteers to be more like that of a pool with a deep and shallow end – our role being somewhat of a life ring, or a swimming coach. The thinking is strong no matter what the shape. i.e. that we should plan the steps to deepen the relationship.

And after 3 days of workshops, presentations and the stress of international video conferencing a huge shout out to the Brasilian team who helped make it happen, and especially to Paula. 3 months into her role as the volunteering manager – having escaped our friends at 350.org, she’s not only managing a large, complex, evolving team, but hosting a regional event while literally hours away from launching the big new campaign to save the Amazon. Paula, you deserve a break – sorry you’ve going to get one…

As the skillshare closed, and the Volunteering Lab found time for the hot debrief by the pool (the charm of cheap out of season resorts). It struck me that the disciplines of mobilisation cut across not only organisational divides, but national and even language barriers. You can facilitate in a language you don’t speak, if you know the themes and can follow the flow. Also by pool the Andino team dangle their feet in the water having arrived at 2.30am on the Monday they deserved a break. Not so much relaxing, waiting for their flights as designing the next workshop online training for staff and volunteers in Argentina.

So to the Greenpeacers of Latin America, you work too hard, perhaps I should have taken up the offer of Samba classes and it was a privilege to meet you and I am very glad to speak the same language– not Spanish, Portugese, English or Thai – but that of mobilisation.

Richard
Bangkok

(1) Or network developers / field organisers / public enagement campaigners {delete as applicable}
(2) Agendas, workshops, notes and more available for Greenpeace staff on Greenet (work in progress)
(3) Follow the @VolunteeringLab on Twitter or visit Greenpeace volunteers around the world on Facebook

Pirates of the Caribbean actress Naomie Harris wore a dress to the Oscars made to the highest environmental standards possible.

The Detox campaign has mobilised thousands of people to rethink commitments to major clothing brands and to challenge them to eliminate  hazardous chemicals from their supply chains. Since July 2011, the campaign has secured public commitments from 15 brands, including G-Star Raw, Nike, Adidas, and Levi’s.

That kind of success is due, in part, to a targeted campaign that uses values-based segmentation (VBS) to identify underlying values in segments of the population.

The Detox campaign identified the underlying values motivating the fashion industry leaders, and targeted its campaign to them, in content and in style.

VBS wasn’t something Greenpeace had used much in the past, but VBS project lead Amrekha Sharma says there was a clear need to consider new approaches.

“I understand that when the Detox campaign was about to launch, there was a lot of anxiety internally because people thought it might be too different. The campaign looked very different to the ‘typical’ Greenpeace campaign, and they may have thought this is not what Greenpeace does — fashion, catwalks and models,” she says.

As of today, 15 fashion leaders have committed to “detox” their supply chains in response to the growing international campaign.

“It has been quite successful so far, and it proved to us, you have to try, you have to risk,” Amrekha says.

VBS refers to a model that aims to understand what makes people tick. It recognizes human beings are motivated by their emotions. It is based on three decades of research that shows strength in this way of thinking.

The model with which Greenpeace is experimenting comes from Cultural Dynamics Strategy and Marketing in the United Kingdom. The model is made up of three main groups they call Pioneers, Prospectors and Settlers, which further breaks down into 12 Values Modes.

Greenpeace decided to take a hard look at motivational values after the perceived failure of the COP 15 climate negotiations. Even though hundreds of thousands of people were engaged, Greenpeace and its allies were unable secure what they wanted: a fair, ambitious and binding deal at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

“It was the recognition that we needed to get better at engaging a wider base of people,” Amrekha, who was hired to co-ordinate the VBS experiment following that conference, says.

“We realised that we were appealing to the same people all the time, and while it appeared to be a sizable number of people, that didn’t make a dent in the negotiations.

“We got a  mandate of our executive directors to get better at engaging a wider base of supporters, striking outside our ‘traditional’ supporter base. And that’s where deliberately working with people’s values comes in” she adds.

Greenpeace is digging into the values of key national populations, using surveys designed to elicit valuable insights that can be used to shape targeted campaigns.

One of the first pieces of actionable intelligence Greenpeace discovered was that women of a certain Values Mode under 44 in the U.S. and in other countries are interested in the Save the Arctic campaign. That was a pleasant surprise to Greenpeace, Amrekha says.

“I think the Arctic campaign appeals to people of different values, for different reasons. Some feel saving the Arctic from resource exploitation is simply the right, ethical thing to do. Some may see the enormous support behind it  from all kinds of figures, and feel something big is going on, something they want to be a part of.”

When the Save the Arctic campaign began, the idea was to gather one million signatures within one year.

Save the Arctic had one million signatures within six weeks, and continues to grow, in part, Amrekha says because the team was looking at  what might resonate with potential audiences’ values.

VBS is now being looked at with increasing curiosity by other campaigns and Amrekha says she’s been happily surprised with the pockets of interest developing around the tool of VBS.

“I didn’t realize the reach of the work and how it is pollinating across other issue areas, initiatives and departments,” she says, adding that a new approach needs to cross-pollinate, so that everyone’s speaking the same language, in order to be successful. She says she’s watching that process unfold in front of her.

The other surprising thing, Amrekha says, is the resistance VBS has faced. While there is less now after some successes and familiarity, there are still critics.

She says even though there is evidence that VBS can improve campaign success, there is fear of change even in a progressive organization like Greenpeace, but she believes “this is normal and healthy and welcome, even necessary.”

“The idea is to use the tools we have in ways that work for us. I want to know the concerns, and what isn’t working too,” she says.

“It’s here. The approach is a tool available to us, and we have some very exciting, practical ways of moving forward.”

The Mobilization Lab plans to tell more stories about targeted campaigns based on research under the VBS model. Watch for new articles coming soon.

Stay Connected: @amrekha

Related Posts from the Web:
Values Segmentation Drives Successful Campaigns, says Greenpeace

Communicating sustainability: lessons from public health

Do you have an innovation in mobilisation and people-powered campaigns? Share it with Mob Lab by contacting moblab@greenpeace.org.

This is the true tale about how a highly-motivated, environmentally-minded rebel force was able to help one of the world’s most recognizable brands turn from the Dark Side of greenhouse gas emissions to a more enlightened path of planetary well-being.

A [not very] long time ago, in [this particular] galaxy . . .

It is a time of emissions enlightenment! The European Union (EU) has voiced a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and recognizes that establishing new emissions standards for the continent’s many automobiles is an imperative.

To triumph, leadership of the many homeworlds that constitute the EU know they must make an ally of the powerful European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) if they hope to establish standards that will slash insidious emissions.

Winning over the ACEA is critical because it wields powerful influence over the government of one of the strongest auto manufacturing realms — Germany.

The key to winning over the ACEA means making an ally of its most influential member, a renowned automobile company that occupies more than a quarter of the seats within the ACEA: Volkswagen (VW).

An Appealing Ask

VW represented an intriguing target for Greenpeace. It wasn’t about going after a petroleum company, which is arguably easier to set up as the quintessential malicious corporate edifice.

This campaign would require approaching and influencing one of the world’s most recognizable brands, and one that has cultivated a progressive, environmentally engaged image at that.

That provided campaigners with a strong hook however. They could craft messaging that urged, above all, that VW to simply live up to its rhetoric.

But even with that seemingly benign positioning, the messaging would need to be delivered with utmost attention to tone as well as content. Greenpeace wouldn’t want to alienate VW, but they couldn’t risk boring people to death either.

As luck (or The Force) would have it, VW had already set the tone with an indelible pop culture reference that made its most powerful impact during the Super Bowl.

Viewers everywhere laughed at the diminutive Darth Vader marvelling at his own powers to blink the lights on dad’s VW. The company wasn’t afraid of pop culture references, so why not simply explore and heighten the very frame of reference they established?

What would work?

A call to the company’s conscience urging them not to give in to . . . The Dark Side.

Squeeze your Org for Ideas

To get VW to jump ship and join the rebellion, Greenpeace first sought counsel from outside the organization. Campaign planners met with many agencies, explaining that, according to head of mobilisation at Greenpeace United Kingdom James Sadri, they had “the mother of all corporate targets — the VW account — can you help us?”

James and his team made it clear that the effort shouldn’t be about demonizing VW or attacking them as an ominous corporate entity.

“This effort had to be about a larger idea, a greater good,” James explained. “We wanted to start a conversation that would discuss positive change, even redemption on a personal as well as corporate level.”

The ad agencies fell short of appealing to the higher call. That’s when Greenpeace U.K. corralled a mass office brainstorm. It was a filmmaker working with Greenpeace who suggested the campaign play off the already massively popular Superbowl ad.

It was a reminder for James that while Greenpeace often seeks out ad and creative agencies, the organization has plenty of talented staff and partners worth squeezing for ideas.

With that thematic angle of attack in place, the decision to meet VW on its own Star Wars themed ground gained real internal traction.

Rebel Alliance Attacks

To convey the point without alienating either VW or the audience, the campaign needed to stay as lighthearted yet culturally recognizable as the initial VW Super Bowl ad. The core content became a two-part video that shows the VW Death Star plotting to destroy the planet. Volkswagen’s de facto spokesperson, a pintsized Sith lord, squares off with heroes of the Rebel Alliance, including kid-form versions of Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, Princess Leia and a Jedi Knight.

The video ends with a message about VW’s opposition to cutting CO2 emissions from cars, and engages people with one simple ask: join the rebellion and turn VW away from the Dark Side.

Once members of the Rebel Alliance, supporters would get to see the second film and conclusion of the Darth Vader and Rebel Alliance stand-off.

A Galaxy of Mobilisation Tactics

After signing on to the manifesto at VWdarkside.com calling on Volkswagen to ensure its cars meet strong CO2 reductions targets, people are asked to help build the movement. James describes the simple ask giving way to a complex suite of actions where users could rack up points based on their activity.

The model was a direct copy of Greenpeace Mediterranean’s How Big is Yours? Campaign, where people were asked to grow their virtual fish to a healthy size by enlisting their friends and networks to sign the petition.

Like How Big is Yours, The VW Darkside site made learning about a serious issue entertaining. There was ‘ask Yoda to explain the Rebellion,’ in Yoda speak, and a full page focus describing how the Light Side of the Force is clean, green and renewable while the Dark Side is accelerating the rush for dead, dirty energy.

Then there was the allure of Jedi Training,  a game rewarding people for campaigning. Users start as a ‘Youngling,’ and can progress to be a ‘Baby Ewok,’ eventually working their way towards Jedi hood. At every stage of the game, Jedi are encouraged to share the campaign with their networks for additional points. The competitive gaming element would prove essential in driving traffic; nearly 80% came through referring sites, mainly Facebook and Orkut.

In order to create the right tone and feel to effectively engage supporters in the campaign, James says the team immersed themselves in the concepts, and “had fun with it.”

It worked. The day the campaign launched, 130,000 viewed the film and 400,000 people visited VWDarkside.com. The video instantly went viral, becoming the most shared ‘ad’ worldwide.

Thirty per cent of the people who signed the manifesto also took part in Jedi training, increasing the reach of the message among their social networks. Hugh Mouser, EU Powershift Digital & Mobilisation Co-ordinator for VW Darkside, says the large numbers were instrumental in giving the movement power.

Every signature added to the rebel manifesto was sent to the Martin Winterkorn,  chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen, which gave them a real-time sense of the public’s growing opposition.

In total, 526,000 people would sign the rebel manifesto calling on Volkswagen to make their cars more efficient.

Nimble Digital Mobilisation Team

Even though the VW campaign’s mobilisation team was spread across countries and time zones, the group of three including James Sadri, Clemence Lerondeau from Greenpeace France,  and Benjamin Borgerding from Greenpeace Germany, were able to collaborate and create first-class interactivity and gaming elements that engaged thousands of people. James says part of the digital team’s success was they had plenty of freedom to experiment, as the digital work wasn’t viewed as important as the campaign film, for example.

The team built a game system from scratch using the open-source web application framework Ruby on Rails. One of the advantages to using Ruby on Rails is apps can be instantly deployed on Heroku. Heroku allows users to run any web or background process with any web framework or worker type and get direct, granular control over the app’s workloads. On Heroku, users can also create testing, staging, and production versions of their app and deploy to and between them instantly.

James says making the decision to use a separate system from the Greenpeace content management system can be difficult as in order to make something sustainable over time it needs to be built through existing processes. However, the VW team needed a quick turnaround while having full control of the platform and close contact with the developer, which Ruby on Rails and Heroku provided.

This system would facilitate the VW campaign deployment across 14 different languages and mobile platforms.

The online mobilisation team also left space to plan digital elements after the campaign’s launch as it’s often difficult to predict how people will respond. This enabled the team to play off real-time campaign energy, creating new tactics like a social media hijack using a Facebook Slicer, video competition, and a live Twitter map for the EU day of action ( all featured below).

“We kept asking ourselves, ‘Ok, what are we going to do next?’” says James, adding the group spent a weekend together brainstorming ideas.

The digital mobilisation attracted attention with a Volkswagen staff member contacting Greenpeace in confidence to let them know how influential the campaign was. VW communications staff were giving hourly updates on social media activity to the VW head office when the VW Darkside campaign launched.

In comparision, Volkswagen staff needed to sign off on tweets and Facebook posts two weeks in advance. James says this gave Greenpeace an advantage, engaging the public in a personal way as opposed to Volkswagen, which from a public’s perspective stayed silent on the issue during the campaign.

“I think it’s important to underline the fact that that those very processes (like a two-week sign off) are what make corporations slow and sluggish and non-human,” says James.

Successes and Shortcomings

The VW victory is the result of two years of experimenting with new and old mobilisation tactics. Here’s a run-down of some of the most powerful tools and learnings from the VW campaign:

Conspicuous Launch Combine with Strong Social Media

The VWDarkside campaign was launched at Old Street, the centre of the U.K. digital marketing world. Featuring 65 people on the ground, four giant billboards and 15 imposing stormtroopers clad in white armour, the launch ensured both ‘Stormtrooper’ and ‘Old Street’ were two terms that were trending globally on Twitter, pushing the campaign to audiences who wouldn’t have otherwise seen it.

As a result, the campaign team encourages others to consider a launch strategy that incorporates social media focused on a key audience that can spread the message.

The Opt-In Quandary

When Greenpeace launched vwdarkside.com, some offices wanted the ‘opt-in to updates’ checkbox on the signup form to be pre-checked, others said it’s against their national law, for others it wasn’t clear. This fueled more than a bit of internal debate about the best design approach, and even brought forth the suggestion of excluding the opt-in box altogether.

Leaving the opt-in box unchecked proved to be the best option, but the reality was that the campaign lost communication with almost 70 per cent of its signups immediately. Out of nearly 500,000 Jedi, that’s a sizeable amount of prospective influence left unrealized.

In comparison, when Greenpeace launched its film competition (featured below) it tested not telling people that their phone number was optional in the sign-up form. They found that around 70% entered their phone number when it didn’t say it was optional (even though it was), but that dropped to around 15% when Greenpeace made the option explicit.

Many organizations — like Avaaz —don’t include opt-in boxes at all and just explicitly say that by signing up you consent to being sent information. In light of the VW experience, James would recommend this option.

The Email Nurture Campaign

Greenpeace national office capacity had a profound effect on e-mail outreach. Depending on available resources, some Jedi received as many as 18 emails; others had less than three reach their in-boxes.

A big reason for the falloff in email frequency was an erroneous presumption that offices would simply clone, and if necessary translate emails, and then send them out to their Jedi. In reality, it takes a fair amount of time to setup a mass email, particularly when there is a related email action attached. One remedy would be to dedicate someone to co-ordinating international communications, including supporting unique needs of different offices and driving comparable campaigns.

Declining Email Readership

As is typical of multi-touch email efforts, there was a general downward trend in open- and and click-through rates over the campaign’s six months.

In the U.K. office, for example, average open and click-through rates were 37% and 9% respectively, essentially a bit higher than the office’s other campaigns, which averaged 30% and 8%.

Facebook Slicer Showdown

Greenpeace U.K. developed a tool for splitting images into 9 smaller ones which, when uploaded in order, would make a larger picture on VW’s Facebook page. It proved an effective, attention-getting way to insert a provocative visual at the top of the page — so much so that VW changed is Facebook page policy soon after.

The tool is still around (with the code) for other campaigns to use.

Live European Action Map

For the campaign’s European-wide day of action in September, 2011, GP U.K. created a live-action map to which a visitor could send a geolocated Tweet, or add a message from their computer. The challenge was tying this into the locations where volunteers were covering VW cars at dealerships.

It all worked off a complex matrix of Twitter hashtags. It was an exciting way of displaying the action content, if a little buggy. The internal consensus is the map would work very well in support of Greenpeace live action work.

Prepare for Zealous Fans

The Jedi training was a huge success in driving traffic to the site, but there were a few lessons we learned:

People cheat.

Campaign leadership tried to thwart cheaters, but people proved to be incredibly creative in finding ways to work around the system. In the end the team found a long-lasting solution but don’t underestimate what people will do!

Games make people passionate.

As expected of any passionate fan base, Star Wars afficionados can operate on a spectrum from enthusiastic to zealous to obsessive. Sometimes, harnessing that kind of loyalty works well, but it can be a blessing and a curse. There were plenty of instances where a raging teenager or cultish fan took it upon his or herself to hijack Facebook posts.

Supporter services will be dealing with lots of gamers.

The supporter services team received numerous inquiries in lots of languages about people’s Jedi pages and their t-shirts. Make sure your colleagues are happy with this element of a campaign before launch.

Film Removal Opportunity?

No doubt that the main campaign film was a huge driver of the initial momentum Greenpeace had in the campaign as the most shared ‘ad’ on the internet:

Unfortunately, when YouTube pulled the plug on the film it was being shared by close to 100k people on Facebook, which meant in all of those news feeds the film would have just been blank. The campaign didn’t take full advantage of that censorship to spur people to more action.

For example, Greenpeace could have suggested the Dark Side was using Jedi mind tricks to suppress the  film but in the end chose a messy compromise and missed this opportunity.  In hindsight, answering quickly, or simply asking viewers who they think took down the video could have capitalized on the campaign takedown while further building momentum against Volkswagen.

Despite this, the film has been uploaded in many places making it impossible to know how many times it’s been viewed. Two million plus views is considered a conservative estimate.

Film director: Jack Price

Filmmakers Join Rebellion

Greenpeace challenged filmmakers from around the world to help expose the real VW. The competition received 82 submissions, some very high quality. And while well done, none went viral.

Nevertheless, 62,000 people visited the film competition site and 16,000 people voted.

Fulfill Your Destiny

The VW committment to ensure its cars meet strong CO2 reductions targets on March 6 stems directly from the campaign’s ability to engage the public on the issue. On an international level the VW campaign engaged more than a half-million people — and via non-traditional channels.

“It’s fantastic to see that people power can shift one of the world’s super powers into a new brand position,” says Hugh. “It’s a brilliant example of a coherent campaign within an organization, and an amazing movement that took off based on a really strong concept and some exciting campaign tactics.”

James agrees. He says it’s important to note that the campaign’s success hinged on the combination of a strong theory of change (brand damage to the image-conscious Volkswagen) and smart, interactive game elements to engage people.

“It was very clear that you’ve got one of the world’s biggest advertisers who are very vulnerable on their brand. Therefore, getting more people to expose what they’re doing is going to make them very nervous,” says James.

“The central logic was strong, therefore all of the interactivity on top of that amplifies it but it doesn’t replace it.”

VW has now publicly agreed to live up to its promises to be the world’s greenest car company, setting an example for the rest of the industry.

The campaign to make car manufacturers raise their efficiency targets continues at the EU level.

For more, watch this video of a talk James Sadri recently gave at the 2013 eCampaigning Forum:

- By Jay Ferrari and the MobLab team