BeeP Blog

If Kennedy could put a man on the moon in 10 years, we can transition our energy dependence off of coal and oil.

Last night at a private home in Menlo Park I had a chance to meet Congressman Inslee, one of the few voices brave enough to champion clean energy and the benefits of a clean energy economy . Inslee’s book, Apollo’s Fire, calls for a Kennedy-scale goal for our energy challenge.  Just as Kennedy challenged the country to put a man on the moon in 10 years, he thinks we can and must address a nationwide transition to a clean energy economy.

Congressman Inslee is a rare breed- a well-intended politician trying to fight the good fight. He thinks he can win the Governor’s seat, and I hope he’s right. I don’t hear anyone else sticking their neck out for energy alternatives on the same scale. Plus we had a Switzer Foundation Fellow, Holmes Hummel, working with his group on energy policy, and she’s one of the best policy analysts i know on energy. OK, she’s the ONLY one i know…but God is she smart. See her in action: http://www.govenergy.com/2010/Workshop/Presentations/HolmesHummel.aspx

You can be a BayLEAF too.

Ran into our friend, Cal Cars founder Felix Kramer, who told me about others of our kind: Nissan Leaf owners (I guess we are called BayLeafs’).  I carpooled down with my pal Holly Kauffman-an extraordinary environmental advocate, world-changer, and fellow-mom. Fellow or wanna-be BayLeafs can check out this little clique at: http://www.sfbayleafs.org/

Ever wonder where the utility vendors go to meet buyers? DistribuTECH is the nerdy show for all shapes and sizes selling anything to utilities, from million $$ line-crawling robots that replace dangerous human helicopter repairs, to CODA Energy offering utility storage solutions. Every January they gather, and this year San Antonio, Texas was where it all went down. Blue Practice helped host a customer marketing council for Silver Spring Networks. Our client CODA Energy had the CODA all-electric sedan at their booth, and announced their impressive new venture. Silver Spring had a super cool Google earth flyover that let us zip around and “visit” the near real time deployment of smart meters and what can be learned from the meters. I could not take my eyes off the demo–seriously! Here’s proof:

This week seemed like a good opportunity to take some pause and look at the brouhaha over SOPA. Not since the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (a battle won by the entertainment industry) have I noticed an outpouring of concern over freedom of the web (domestically, anyway) as over the past few weeks with the SOPA/PIPA legislation.  From a communications perspective, the SOPA/PIPA debate has been hugely interesting, and points to new vs. old approaches to PR, the importance of audience connection, and how essential it is to find the right message.

At the crux of it all on the entertainment side, as the Wall Street Journal recently described, was the messaging problem on behalf of the entertainment industry – something admitted to even by the lobbyists themselves.  Why? Maybe in part because the RIAA and MPAA relied on a message of American jobs; and how this put American innovation at risk – a message that, as it turns out, didn’t pull the public heartstrings or extend so far as to draw sympathy to those with a reputation for squeezing profits from artists and suing single moms millions for filesharing.

The original SOPA ad:

Over the last two years, the RIAA and MPAA have had their sights on something like this, putting millions into traditional beltway PR: lobbyists, press releases, status quo, looking to Internet control as a jobs issue, some wedge to give better copyright control.

The entertainment industry put $279.5 million into beltway lobbying- piddly compared with the Silicon Valley crowd, who put in $29.3m over the same period.  For all that effort they may have courted their D.C. influencers, but that support didn’t help against a surging public outcry.

What took them years to build up, the web-based grassroots movement fought against in a matter of days with an outpouring of information and opinion on the same medium that they defended – through YouTube videos, Net celebrities, and email campaigns.  Instead of “jobs”, the opposition spoke of liberty, freedom of expression, and even a concern for the security of the Internet itself.  These messages are both universal and extremely personal – ones in which nearly everyone has some stake.

As a result, 13 million people participated in the protest on the 18th. 50,000 websites went dark. Congress received 3 million emails concerning SOPA and the loss of Internet freedoms.  A tremendous outpouring of support that ultimately helped break the momentum behind the bill.

Rather than an acknowledgement of their miscalculation, the industry complained that that they lacked a big enough mouthpiece and couldn’t control the communications cycle (a spooky complaint coming from the incumbent owners of broadcast media and distribution, one that sounds an awful lot like a push for censorship).

The next battle is already heating up, and I’ll be watching to see whether ACTA supporters recalculate, or pursue PR as usual.