Alison Byrne Fields joined DDB in January 2008 to lead the Washington DC office and the Issues & Advocacy practice. She comes to DDB from Ogilvy Public Relations where she was a Vice President and Senior Strategist for 360° Digital Influence, developing online word of mouth strategies for the agency’s social marketing, consumer marketing, technology and public affairs clients. Alison began her time at Ogilvy in the Social Marketing practice, leading the agency’s work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Prior to joining Ogilvy, Alison worked as an independent strategic communications consultant, building a client roster that included the Kaiser Family Foundation; AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families; Business Women’s Initiative against HIV/AIDS; National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; Carnegie Corporation of New York; National Endowment for Democracy; James B. Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy; Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; YouthNoise; PAX; Surdna Foundation; and the Youth Vote Coalition.
Prior to starting her own business, Alison was the Creative Director and Chief Strategist for Rock the Vote, where she was responsible for producing the organization’s award-winning youth-targeted campaigns, integrating television, radio, print, interactive and grassroots strategies. Alison was also the organization’s national spokesperson. Before joining the staff of Rock the Vote, Alison was the Program Director for the ISM Diversity Education Project, which partners with colleges and universities to develop diversity education courses that utilize video production as an experiential educational tool.
Alison received her Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where she focused on international HIV/AIDS policy with a specific emphasis on public/private sector partnerships. For her thesis, Alison worked with the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS to develop a strategic plan for the development of the Global Media AIDS Initiative, which aims to mobilize major international media companies to dedicate resources to fighting the pandemic. Alison received her B.A. in Media Studies from Hampshire College.
Alison has served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Youth Vote Coalition, the California Secretary of State's Voter Outreach Advisory Committee and as an advisor to Women Count, the League of Young Voters and WGBH’s Zoom. She has conducted trainings for young political leaders in Mexico and Cambodia through her work with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and, in 2000, Alison was a faculty member for the Salzburg Seminar in Austria, lecturing on “Popular Culture as a Tool for Social and Political Change.”
Alison has authored numerous publications on youth political participation, including “Are You Talking to Me?: A Guide to Reaching Young Voters” for Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, which was distributed to delegates at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2004. Additional titles include “The Power of the Internet to Engage a Generation”, published by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Omidyar Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Surdna Foundation and Time Warner Foundation in 2004; “Dancing all the Way to City Hall” in How to Get Stupid White Men out of Office (Softskull Press, 2004); and “The Youth Challenge: Participating in Democracy”, a Carnegie Corporation of New York Challenge Paper.
Alison is a frequent speaker on the topics of the use of social media in politics and advocacy and, since December 2004, has published her own blog, We’ll Know When We Get There. In addition to digital advocacy, Alison writes about social media more broadly, politics, corporate social responsibility, popular culture and current events.
I've grown more willing to tell clients that they can't expect to generate positive word of mouth about their brand or product or issue if it, well, sucks. I mean, there will word of mouth (actually, there probably already is), but it will essentially be warnings to their friends, family members and co-workers to stay the hell away.
But there's more to it, says Seth Godin (in this post from way back in May).
Smart but simple; the kind of post that, if this was a slapstick comedy, would compel me to smack myself in the forehead — the universal signal for "duh."
Alison Byrne Fields
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I got a call a few hours ago from my client at Equality California, letting me know the good news that the California Supreme Court had lifted the ban on gay marriage. He asked me if he could read a passage to me from the Court's decision and I, of course, said yes, recognizing the tremendous joy in his voice for his well-fought victory.
“In light of the fundamental nature of the substantive rights embodied in the right to marry — and their central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society — the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation.”
Alison Byrne Fields
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Hillary sent me an email a couple of weeks ago about a new survey from BlogHer and Compass Partners. The press release said that women are so committed to reading and writing their blogs that they are not willing to give them up -- even if it meant giving up booze, Blackberries and chocolate.
In addition to booze, Blackberries and chocolate, I'm a fan of BlogHer (hope to make it to the conference this year), in part, because they have created a successful business model that also manages to provide women with a sense of community and the empowerment that comes from building an audience and making money (through blog ads) from your writing.
Alison Byrne Fields
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Disclaimer #1: This is not an endorsement of Barack Obama. This IS an endorsement of the power of social media and its impact on reversing the trend of young political disengagement.
Disclaimer #2: I'm a lazy blogger. I already posted this on my personal blog.
There's an editorial from Catherine Rampell in Sunday's Washington Post that says the efforts of nonpartisan youth voter engagement groups like Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself have, year after year, been a failure and that "the junior Senator from Illinois" (aka Barack Obama) has been the force we have all been waiting for to get young people to the polls.
Alison Byrne Fields
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I am in the middle of a memo for a client, pulling together ideas for how they can improve the way they are using their Web site as a fundraising tool. As someone who has been working in the issues space for more than a decade, the question of how do you get people to care -- and to take action -- has been persistent and, often, pretty difficult to answer. The "of course they should care" disease is something that afflicts many of us in this space. If you're putting countless hours -- as well as your blood, sweat and tears -- into an issue, it's tough to admit that the vast majority of the population either doesn't care or, gasp, doesn't even know you exist.
Alison Byrne Fields
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I'm trying to catch up on all the stuff that I have tagged in my del.icio.us account over the past month. (I'm alisonbf, what's your screen name?) I have very strict "rules" about making sure that I include something in the notes section so people know why it is that I saved the link in the first place, so I need to go back and do that.
(In addition to helping my addled brain remember, it's earned me "fans," so I think it's worth the effort.)
Anyway, I finally got around to checking out the 2008 Digital Future report from the Center for -- you guessed it -- the Digital Future, which is something I tagged way back in January. If you're not familiar with this annual report, it's going on seven years now and it's a longitudinal study that looks at "broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and, now, social networking."
One of the hottest findings in this year's report, which looks at social networking for the first time, is that while only 15 percent of folks are using social networks, 94 percent of those people say that they rely on the Internet as a source of information about social causes AND, 75 percent say that they have joined online communities that have been formed around social issues.
So, if we can just tap into that 15 percent, can we change the world?
Alison Byrne Fields
I'm a prolific blogger, but you wouldn't know it by the fact that I have now been with DDB since January 2 and this is the first time I am posting.
But I have posted 20 times since that day on my personal blog.
I'll be posting here about the things that inspire me. As the leader of our Issues & Advocacy group, that might be a great advocacy campaign. As a social media junkie, it might be about trends in social media that excite me -- or make me batty. It might be a post about an inspiring person or it might be about an inspiring cause.
If you see something that inspires you, I hope you'll be willing to share with me as well.
Thanks for stopping by.
Alison Byrne Fields
