All over the world, women artists are coming together to support each other and celebrate arts that are created by women. By focusing attention on the work of women artists, SWAN Day helps people imagine what the world might be like if women’s art and perspectives were fully integrated into all of our lives. We say, “Brava!” to our friends at the Fund for Women Artists for their vision and celebration.

If you are interested in participating or checking out an event, go to the Fund for Women Artist’s at http://www.womenarts.org/swan

- Sarah Massey

A Photographer’s Blog takes on credibility. Click on it.

Artists hit the streets to replace graffiti with murals in New Brunswick
My Central New Jersey.com, Mar 23, 2008

“It started Sunday as a garage door painted solid blue near the intersection of Central Avenue and Robinson Street. But by midday, thanks to the hand of Leon Rainbow, it was a vibrant mural of the mythological figure Atlas holding up a house, a clock and a car — symbolizing what Rainbow described as the pressures of everyday life. … Rainbow, 33, is the executive director of the New Jersey chapter of Albus Cavus, a nonprofit organization that uses art to improve the appearance of public spaces.”

Peter K.’s garage door with Zora

Check out more photos on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/albuscavus/sets/72157615738499227/ and a little more copy here at Albus Cav.us blog.

3/23 Update: Read Paul Krugman’s Financial Policy Despair in today’s Times. ACK!

Things are changing here in Washington. At the beginning of the year, it was a new era with a new president who promised hope. The country was jubilant and millions came (including me) to celebrate at the inauguration of President Obama. Then the banking fiasco changed the American economy and hurt working families. We still looked up to the new president and supported his economic plans.

Celebrating Obama’s Inauguration - photo by Sarah Massey

Just two months into a new administration and new Congress, the veil has been removed from our eyes to see who is really running the country. Do statesmen and women serve greedy bankers, shady lenders, and crooks or do they serve the vast majority of America’s working families who struggle to make ends meet and expect the government to protect them? Make a choice.

Today’s headlines read like a laundry list of how to be scoundrel:

1. Don’t Give Working Families a Fighting Chance to Stay in Their Homes: Plan to Let Judges Alter Loans Stalls
2. Gamble With Stock Ratings, Lose, but Then Get Rewarded, Anyway: Raters See Windfall in Bailout Program
3. Throw the Globe into an Economic Recession and Receive a Million Dollar Bonus for It: Geithner: Treasury Pushed For Bonus Loophole

The real change must come from us, the grassroots activists, and working people who say “no more business as usual” in the nation’s capital. We don’t need $250 K salaries at AIG to know how turn this economy around: Put America back to work at real jobs with healthcare and secure pensions. Let’s start with fixing the broken roads, bridges, out-of-date schools, and creating a healthcare system that works for working people. Simple.

- Sarah Massey

Today, the Massey Media team celebrates a mini-media placement success with our clients (and friends) Albus Cavus receiving a sweet write-up in the Washington Post Weekend Section. “Harlem renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston is the inspiration for work by artists from the Albus Cavus gallery on the walls of Eatonville restaurant,” says the Post in its “In Town” column. If you are looking for something to do this weekend, see Albus Cavus’s gallery art opening, “Murals to Zora” on 14th & V NW.

While it’s great to see your name in print, what’s the strategic reason of doing press work? Remember, unless you are Beyonce or Madoff, you must invest time or money (or time and money) in media relations to see results. With limited budgets, you need to be strategic. Placing your story in the press is rooted in understanding your audience and your message.

Let’s take today’s Albus Cavus placement as an example of how strategic press work can pay off. Albus Cavus is a growing non-profit with a mission to bring public art to the urban core and empower urban populations. Their audiences are urban policy decision-makers, art enthusiasts, local communities and, of course, donors and supporters. What press outlets reach these audiences? Massey Media’s answer to that question: the Washington Post. We crafted a pitch to the Post that fits their coverage and (after calls, calls, calls) the story landed in the Weekend section. The Post piece serves to validate the group’s strong presence in the DC art scene and spotlights them to the audiences they seek to engage.

Why do press relations? Because the media can reach your audiences and show them your strength.

- Sarah Massey

How vital is a news source to our communities? Most in the news industry will agree: very vital. But news companies have been forced to scale back or fold in economically dismal times. While many news companies experiencing financial hardships during the economic crisis are folding, staff at the Rocky Mountain News has shown just how important they think the news industry is by starting their own online news source, www.iwantmyrocky.com -without getting paid for it - when their paper went under after 150 years of service to its community, publishing its last edition at the end of February.

When the Rocky Mountain News went under, staff started publishing news on www.iwantmyrocky.com - for free.

On WNYC’s radio show “On the Media,” Rocky Mountain News investigative journalist Laura Frank explained:

“You know, when you’re a reporter, reporting is in your DNA, you can’t just pull the stops and quit.”

Make no mistake: This act borders on the Hollywood heroic crusade in our collective dreams. It is also extremely smart. It has become a truism that the future of the news industry is electronic. In one fell swoop, the Rocky Mountain News has not only transitioned to entirely online, they’ve done so while inheriting the readership and good will of its most die-hard readers. And they’ve done it all with a backdrop of the most sound ethic: A population needs a news source that embodies its unique zeitgeist, to be informed, to be entertained and to be an expression of who they really are. When the economy starts warming up again after this long winter, the online staff will still be there to resurrect a new version of a progressive news source serving the Rocky Mountain region.

At Massey Media, we know that freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. The staff of www.iwantmyrocky.com has come in to demonstrate that in an electronic age in which almost anyone can publish almost anything, the freedom of having a mouthpiece can be seized with a shoestring budget. They’ve demonstrated just how much they feel communities need a news source.

- Lacy MacAuley

Metro TeenAIDS came by the Affinity Lab last Thursday to talk to us about AIDS in the District and the awesome work that they do.

Too many times, I have been overwhelmed by the statistics involved in DC’s Third World-scale HIV epidemic. Still, I think it’s worth repeating a few of them. DC has the highest HIV rate of any US state or territory. In fact, our rate is ten times the national average. If DC were a country in its own right, it would be ranked between Botswana and Uganda in terms of infections. One in every twenty people in the District has HIV. That’s 5 percent, and in certain neighborhoods the rate is as high as 7 percent.

There is also a tragically high rate of youth with HIV: one in a hundred. Metro TeenAIDS provides support through testing and after-school programs. Once a client is referred to them, they help guide the client through the emotional and medical landscape that faces them: informing sexual partners, finding a doctor, getting regular medication, whether to tell the family. Often the job is a lot of logistics work, like getting teens to their doctors appointments or finding emergency housing when families kick the kids out. Metro TeenAIDS also has a program in every 7th and 10th grade class in the District about STDs, dating, and setting sexual boundaries.

Molly Singer, deputy director, says that in a weird way it’s a highlight of her day to find a new client. Not that she wants anyone to have the disease, but so many teens have HIV and aren’t diagnosed; it’s a relief to know that, when MTA finds one of the thousands infected, at least that one will be getting treatment. Without treatment, HIV can become full-blown AIDS in the space of a year.

The statistic that astonished me the most was that Washington Hospital Center has only one social worker for 900 kids with HIV. One. HIV along with a whole host of other social problems: poverty, homelessness, abuse, lack of family structure… The notion that one person could effectively help even 10 kids with HIV, let alone 900, is absurd! As a former teacher, I worked 90-hour weeks to provide education and support to 80 students, and I wasn’t alone. There is no way that any significant level of service can reach even a fraction of these kids, no matter how good the social worker is. This is the reason we need organizations like Metro TeenAIDS.

- Janaki Spickard-Keeler

In 1997, Hotmail opened the door to the newest and most explosive type of advertising: viral marketing. Hotmail decided to increase awareness of their service by adding advertisements for themselves on every outgoing email from a Hotmail user.

More than a decade later, the process of viral marketing has become one of the most innovative and fluid techniques in the industry. Everything from movies to political campaigns, music to video games have the potential to increase awareness of the cause or product virally. Marketers realized, especially within younger demographics, that people want to feel engaged by advertising instead of just shouted at through the TV.

Some groups even take it as far as to call their campaigns “alternative reality games” such as 2008’s Batman: The Dark Knight.

All of this got me thinking. What are the ingredients in a successful viral marketing campaign? From my limited knowledge of the subject here is what I came up with:

1. Primary consumers = people who are going to buy your product, see your movie, or do whatever it is you are doing, whether or not you run a campaign. These are the people who are going to gin up interest among the rest of the population.

2. Secondary consumers = These people are the new consumers you are reaching out to.

3. Marketing Bridge = The key to success seems to be finding a creative way to heavily engage the primary consumers while not going as far as to alienate the secondary consumers who are not as knowledgeable as the primaries. The bridge often manifests itself vaguely at first and is clarified throughout the course of the campaign.

With this general recipe for viral marketing, I want to turn the lens towards a relatively new, exciting non-profit called “Albus Cavus” whose goal is to create art in public spaces in order to beautify neighborhoods and foster a sense of ownership and responsibility among the people of the neighborhood.

The type of “graffiti” art events that Albus Cavus participates in could serve magnificently as a test dummy for viral marketing in this arena for a couple of reasons:

1. There is a preexisting network of artists that could be tapped into to drum up interest. This network of artists will act as primary consumers.

2. In this case, the secondary consumers would be members of the neighborhoods the events take place in, spectators, members of the press, and potential funders.

3. Albus Cavus’ marketing bridge could come in the form of something such as:

• A temporary exhibit placed in the target neighborhood weeks before the event itself.
• Small bits of art mailed to target reporters, news outlets, funders and community opinion leaders
• Anonymous postings on local blogs alerting readers of an event like a flash mob where the participants are wearing t-shirts spray painted “graffiti style”
• Anything else anyone can think of. Please feel free to post ideas in the “Comments” section.

Big corporations like Burger King and Warner Brothers have blazed a trail for a relatively cost effective way to promote their products. Now it is the job of smaller groups to harness this new power to give voice to causes that will benefit the world we live in, instead of urging consumers to watch the latest blockbuster or eat the latest fast food creation.

- Lyle Harrod

This past Monday, our beloved Affinity Lab was featured on the local news for the second time in two weeks.

As a “nurturing” “business incubator” with a business succes rate of 82%, Affinity Lab is sitting pretty in this time of economic worries. This comes as no surprise to most Lab members.

Joey Coleman, long time Affinity Lab member, summed up our collective small business philosophy when he said, “What’s a bigger risk? Yourself, when you know what you’re going to do and what your choices are, or putting all of your eggs in the basket of a corporation that tomorrow may decide ‘You know what? We need to downsize and you’re no longer on the team’.”

President Obama recently released his plan for small business and there are many provisions to help out budding entrepreneurs, including $250 million for public-private business incubators (like Affinity Lab).

So if you’re one of many having trouble finding work, consider taking matters into your own hands. In the words of Massey Media owner and principal Sarah Massey, “When you have a dream, it’s worth going for it.”

- Lyle Harrod

DC should be celebrating a snow day today. It’s 8 AM and the snow is coming down hard. The streets are not plowed, the sidewalks are covered, and the wind is creating dangerously cold conditions.

snow fall in front of my downtown DC window

According to the Washington Post, the federal government is offering “liberal leave” today. As a DC employer, we follow the government’s lead. But, the language is vague.

Washington, D.C.-area federal offices will operate today under “liberal leave” or “unscheduled leave” and delayed arrival status, meaning employees who cannot make it to work can request off, or should otherwise arrive to work no more than two hours later than normal, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

Say wha? What ever happened to just calling it a snow day and taking a day off? After fruitless google searches for “liberal leave”, I determined I must create my own meaning.

“Liberal leave” means all us liberals can take a day off!

- Sarah Massey