by Jacqueline Koch | Jan 4, 2019 |
By Jacqueline Koch, Founder, Boost! Collective
Remember the adage: it’s a marathon, not a sprint
2018 was a year of many firsts. Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge claimed the most startling first in the world of sports. He shattered the world marathon record in Berlin: 26.2 miles in two hours, one minute and 39 seconds. Yet tragically, in the same time that Kipchoge raced to the finish, malaria claimed the lives of 61 children worldwide.
As we spring into 2019, will this be the year we collectively break the tragic record that marks an ongoing—yet preventable—global health tragedy?
Given recent funding trends, it’s hard to say.
And here’s why: Imagine if Kipchoge was within a few feet from the finish line,
and abruptly stopped, turned around and started walking in the other direction.
Perhaps he gave into fatigue or simply lost interest. What if he figured that
having run most of the race was good enough, just as he was poised to claim his
extraordinary victory?
It’s unthinkable. But this is what is
happening with malaria today. We are at a critical tipping point and within
reach of eliminating an ancient scourge that claims the lives of approximately 445,000
people a year, 70 percent of whom are children under 5.
Now let’s get back again to Kipchoge, his race, and claiming a new world record. We can compare it to our significant advances in combatting malaria, through control and prevention and access to diagnosis and treatment, and through innovative drugs, vaccines, mosquito control products, and diagnostic tools. For every dollar we invest in malaria, there is a $36 return in increased productivity. In 2016 there were 21 million fewer malaria cases than in 2010. From 2007 to 2017, malaria deaths were cut by more than half. But global funding has stalled, and as a result, our advances have also stalled. Quite simply, we are putting the valuable and hard-won gains we’ve achieved at risk. This akin to Kipchoge racing toward the finish line, then turning around and walking away.
When I launched Boost! Collective, my goal was to continue to advance positive impact in global health. Working with the J. C. Flowers Foundation, we had the opportunity to tell the compelling story of “going the last mile” — the most difficult and important mile of them all.to eliminate malaria in southern Africa. By partnering with community faith leaders, the Foundation is pushing deep into the most remote and low-resource settings in the world and ensuring effective interventions acceptable and accessible to all.
As with the J.C. Flowers Foundation, we are convinced that we can eliminate malaria for good. It requires robust funding. It demands creative partnerships and collaboration. And we know that the most important stories—and the most valuable insights for viable solutions—come from the communities and their leaders who are on the front line of the fight. And the fight against malaria is ours to win as long as we intend to reach the finish line. Together, we can reach the last mile, for saving lives is a precious victory.
Boost! Collective Works:
When the Foundation brought a delegation of Anglican bishops from Southern Africa to the US and the UK to meet with policy leaders, Boost! Collective worked both sides of the Atlantic to connect with media — from the FT, AllAfrica.com and more—as well as thought leaders from Harvard Divinity School, Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and Chatham House to tell the story.
by Jacqueline Koch | Nov 23, 2017 |
“WE THE PEOPLE: ARE GREATER THAN FEAR.” Artist Shephard Fairey adapted a photo by Ridwan Adhami to create a triptych of the post-Trump era.
By Jacqueline Koch, Co-Founder, Partner – Boost! Collective
We’ve hit the one-year mark since the 2016 election. The 2017 election results offer a glimmer of hope. Last month at the 2017 Seattle Interactive Conference, National Geographic photographer Aaron Huey, founder of the Amplifier Foundation, recounted his shift from a traditional media platform to art. He outlined the role of artists as storytellers in major cultural movements and the power of language as a unifier between “red” and “blue.”
It’s a compelling premise: Art as a tremendous story-accelerant in fueling a cultural or social justice movement. Yet the photojournalist in me buckled. Art? What about the power of images and photo documentary work?
Here is where I’m coming from. When I picked up a camera for a career path, it was with the conviction that images have the power to change the world. Look at the giants of photojournalism who shaped our understanding of history—from Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith and Eddie Adams to James Nachtwey, Nick Ut and Mary Ellen Mark, just to name a few. They told important stories that had yet to be told. They connected us with the rich and layered world we live in.
But then the world changed in ways we couldn’t anticipate. The internet, royalty free images, a withered the media industry, Facebook, Instagram and the ubiquitous iPhone. Today, everyone is a photographer, a citizen journalist, a blogger. Some of the most iconic images of our time are snapshots from a smartphone or point-and-shoot. Think Abu Graib. To survive, many photojournalists I know, myself included, had to reinvent themselves, be it in academia, new media, PR or other related pursuits.
A few lucky ones soldier on. But then there are outliers. Take Aaron Huey, who pivoted in an unexpected and highly innovative direction, redefining the power of images through a heady combination of photos, art and language.
Without a doubt, National Geographic is a great gig. But Huey was looking for a more robust platform for advocacy journalism, which is ever more essential in the Trump era.
“Art is the light in these very dark times,” Huey stated.
Trump had yet to announce his presidential aspirations in 2014, when Huey launched the Amplifier Foundation, an “art machine for social change.” It was the next level for an expanding portfolio of documentary work of the Lakota on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, TED talks and a series of interactive multi-media collaborations, including a National Geographic-supported community storytelling project. It built on previous collaborations with artist activists, Shepard Fairey, renowned for his Obama “HOPE” posters, which went viral in 2008 and Ernesto Yerena, creator of Hecho Con Ganas.
A triptych for the Trump era
Fast forward to Trump’s unexpected election win. Journalism just wasn’t enough to do the advocacy work, Huey explained. He and Fairey joined forces again to launch a simple-but-brilliant guerrilla fundraising and art distribution movement.
“Today we are in a very different moment, one that requires new images that reject the hate, fear, and open racism that were normalized during the 2016 presidential campaign,” reads the “We the People” Kickstarter intro.
Armed with a mighty series of compelling illustrations, each by recognized artist activists, Amplifier threw an artistic collaboration into high gear. The goal: To sidestep restrictions on signs and banners—and free speech?—on Inauguration Day. It was an overwhelming success. A jaw-dropping 22,840 backers raised a whopping $1,365,105 to fund “a hack” that would distribute the images on a massive scale. Full-page ads ran in major publications providing marchers with posters to take into the streets, hang in windows or paste on walls.
Today these iconic illustrations are the triptych for the post-Trump era. Three compelling images—a Latina, an African American and a Muslim woman—by photographers Arlene Majorado, Delphine Diallo, and Ridwan Adhami, respectively. Each is rendered with Fairey’s trademark style and reinforces a singular statement that unites all Americans: We the People.
Untouchable language in the American narrative
And it’s here that Huey’s story takes another interesting turn. It starts with a question we should all be asking ourselves. “What do you say when the world’s attention is focused on one place,” Huey asked, “…when the whole world is watching?”
The American narrative has been highjacked, Huey continued. How do we get it back on track? Huey gathered thought leaders, students, journalists, heads of leading foundation and poets to create “language labs.” Through these brainstorming sessions, they identified “untouchable language.” It is language that cannot be violated, that is a unifier and that is neither “red” nor “blue.” This paired “We the People” with three basic tenets: We are greater than fear. We defend dignity. We protect each other.
“Art as advocacy. It’s beautifully simple, but really hard to do well,” Huey noted. But art, like some of the most the memorable photographs documenting history, has undeniable power,
“… to represent change, to move change and to assist us in how we walk in the world,” he added.
We’ve hit the one-year mark since the 2016 election. And the world continues to change in unexpected ways. Despite an assault on the media, fake news, Russian interference in the election and #MeToo, the 2017 election results offer a glimmer of hope. They also give me a renewed appreciation for Huey’s approach. In translating powerful images into art, buttressed by simple statements, demanding that we stand by our fundamental values, is it possible we might return to them?
We the People, We the Future
“I don’t have faith in the grownups,” Huey joked. So with backing from Stanford University, Amplifier developed an educational webinar program to bring art in the classroom—engaging more than 2,000 teachers to date—and fostering dialogue around civics, climate change and cross-cultural understanding.
Amplifier has set sights on the future by betting on school children. Yet in the Trump era, there is still a corporate elephant in the room, and Huey wants to tackle it too. Can big business learn how to be a good corporate citizen from art-driven advocacy?
Huey explained that social innovation can also take place in a corporate environment through simple but intentional steps. “Define what you believe in and create a compass,” he said, noting that the success of We the People Kickstarter campaign was founded in “people-power” and was catalyzed by words they believed in.
“If we believe these words, this is our compass,” he said. “Within every company, let there be a compass.”
by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 3, 2017 |
By Jacqueline Koch
Translating the story of our time starts with a single word
Sun and smoke! If you weren’t from the Emerald City, you’d think this was the big draw for this weekend’s Hempfest. If you are from the Emerald City, then you know better. Sun and smoke became our terrifying daily weather forecast for the first half of August.
As wildfires raged in British Columbia, Canada, and smoke poured over the border, this summer our usually Emerald City took on a peculiar, apocalyptic, “Hello Beijing!” look. In a painful twist of coincidence—or is it irony?—Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” As they say, “timing is everything” and as the film drew movie goers across the country, we Seattleites bear witness from our beautiful Pacific Northwest perch: all the warnings issued in Gore’s first film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” (2006) are coming to pass.
“The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences,” Gore stated in the film.
Now 11 years down the road, Seattle made international headlines as a reference point to the reality of climate change. And make no mistake, climate change is the defining story of our era. Look to The Guardian —The Biggest Story in the World— and National Geographic, “The biggest story of our time.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Most people (40-80%) think that climate change will harm Americans, (LEFT) but few (20-50%) think it will happen to them (RIGHT).
Climate change believers and doubters
So as we are choking on billows of wildfire smoke, why do clouds of doubt and denial continue to gather, swirl and muddy public opinion? Last spring, The New York Times offered a colorful set of data maps to illustrate the different views, conversations and questions surrounding climate change.
Why do most people think that climate change will harm Americans, but at the same time, they don’t think it will impact them personally? Everybody talks about the weather. But the climate? It turns out, it is not discussed everywhere.
What leads to this gap in understanding? Disinformation campaigns? Special interests? Fake news? We can spend a lot of time debating the great disconnect in the public understanding of climate change – yet let’s remember that 97 percent of climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.
Boost! Collective is founded on the power of storytelling, so we ask the question: Where did we go wrong in telling the climate change story, one of existential importance to us all?
A theory of climate change
Perhaps it all starts with a word: “theory.” Climate science is often couched in terms of “a theory.” (Note the danger quotes!). The public and the scientific community, including academics, researchers, scholars, each have their interpretation. And the resulting lack of alignment has pitted a mere hunch or guess—as the general public would more likely define theory—against how scientists apply the word, as a body of well-substantiated facts, repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.
In a number of easy-to-understand graphics offered by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we begin to grasp the breadth of diverging public perceptions about climate change, and, perhaps begin to understand how to address gaps in public understanding. We must take into account that “climate change communication is shaped by our different experiences, mental and cultural models, and underlying values and world views.”
But it still sounds like one Phd talking to another. Roughly translated: It’s time to understand our audience. Or audiences. And let’s adapt the message to ensure that they truly understand that change is real, climate change is happening.
Developing a shared language
So as a veil of unbreathable air descended on our fair city, forcing children and the elderly to stay inside, it’s high time to truly adopt a shared language. We must invest in, elevate and make the academic firepower that brings us these important insights accessible to all. So how do we harness these voices to ignite smarter policy and public understanding?
“Academics need to start playing a more prominent role in society instead of largely remaining observers who write about the world from within ivory towers and publish their findings in journals hidden behind expensive digital paywalls,” stated Savo Heleta, manager, Internationalization at Home and Research, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
At the heart of his recent article—Academics can change the world – if they stop talking only to their peers—he points to the ways in which academics can push their valuable research and insights into the mainstream conversation. With the help of university and government incentives and training that embeds “the art of explaining complex concepts to a lay audience,” they can dramatically expand their role in a broader dialogue.
It’s an exciting trend for our time—lose the big words, the jargon and tell us a story instead. The climate change story is real, and really scary. We all have much to gain, now more than ever, should academics take the important step to translate their work for a broader audience.
If they don’t, we will only continue to wade deeper into Gore’s “period of consequences.”
Stay tuned for our next installment, exploring how women voices—as mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, community leaders and public intellectuals—are shaping the climate change conversation.
Boost! Collective is actively involved in the conversation of issues that matter: equality and social justice, environment, wilderness preservation, homelessness, healthcare, global health and development and technology and education, among others. This is the first in a series of blogs that will address the ways in which we include all voices in these conversations, and to make them rich, layered and comprehensive so as to realize meaningful, positive social change.
by Jacqueline Koch | Sep 12, 2017 |
By Janinne Brunyee
At Boost! Collective, we are committed to the art of storytelling. Why? Because we believe that an engaging story energizes your audience to act. It drives results by providing meaning and purpose to the work of your organization. Our goal, and a mission we take with great commitment, is to combine the key ideas that communicate value with a compelling story to create a truly unique message that will rise above the noise and endure.
Is storytelling simply the latest marketing cliche?
For many marketing teams, storytelling is simply a buzzword. While the idea of storytelling is almost universally appealing and easy to understand, it is not always clear how to implement it within an organizational setting. That is because it doesn’t matter how complex or convoluted an organization and its products/services may be, there is always a human story to be told. In organizational settings, storytelling is always human-centered.
Stories help move your organization forward because they are personal, authentic and compelling. The key to persuading people is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is to tell a compelling story.
What is the return on storytelling?
The return on storytelling is: Did you make a connection? Did people find it valuable enough to share? Did they remember your message? The potential return becomes particular interesting when you consider that stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. When data and story are used together, audiences are moved both emotionally and intellectually.
To get the creative juices flowing, we put together a tiny book that explains why and how your team take take advantage of this invaluable tool to drive deep and authentic engagement with your audiences.
by Jacqueline Koch | May 16, 2017 |
By Janinne Brunyee
While listening to the speakers pitching their startups at the first ever Seattle Female Founders Alliance Founders Showcase last week, I had an important realization: I was much more captivated by the pitches that were framed by the speaker’s personal story. It wasn’t that these speakers had a better business idea or go-to-market strategy. It was just that I found myself leaning in a bit more, paying closer attention and emotionally investing in their success.
And that reminded me why I co-founded a firm that is committed to the art of storytelling. Each presenter had a specific call-to-action in mind: find an investor, attract high talent employees, drive sign-ups. The speakers I connected with understood what they needed to do to inspire action: unite an idea with an emotion. And the best way to do that is to tell a compelling story.
Here are a few of the stories told by female startup founders to a captive audience at The Riveter, the new co-working space in Capitol hill built by women, for women.
Give in Kind
The unexpected and unfathomable loss of a child was the seed that grew into Give in Kind. Founder and CEO, Laura Malcolm said even though she and her husband were living far away from their families and close friends, the outpouring of help was almost overwhelming. “The challenge was that because they didn’t live locally, our loved ones didn’t know that there were thousands of services near us that could give us exactly what we needed.” Instead, she said, they sent flowers and money – to the value of $8,000 – when what the couple really needed was house cleaning, childcare and meals.
Malcolm pointed out that whether it’s a cancer diagnosis or a sick child in hospital – everyone is touched at some point by personal hardship. That’s when Give in Kind comes in.
“We are working to make it easy to do everything that matters,” she said. “Give in Kind is a single solution platform that lets people lend a hand from anywhere.” The company calls it “crowd-caring.”
By partnering with service providers like Cleanify.com, Uber, Rover.com and Blue Apron, users can send the help that’s needed where it is needed. They can also set up registries of the items and services that will have the most impact.
Genneve
As a woman of “a certain age” Jill Angelo is on a mission to start a movement that will affect half the population: helping women navigate the big M: menopause. ‘Menopause is not often spoken about and when it is, it has a negative connotation,” said Angelo. “As a woman on my own perimenopausal journey, I realized that I have a passion for women’s health and development,” she said.
Research revealed that menopause can be life-changing for women who also happen to have a lot of spending power. “One in three women experience unpleasant effects and they are willing to spend $25B a year to get relief.”
Angelo looked at the solutions and providers that are typically available to women heading into menopause and midlife. “Typically, you go to a OBGYN. But, more OBGYN’s are retiring than are graduating,” she said. As a result, women in menopause are turning to other providers including nutritionists, physical therapists, urologists, endocrinologists etc. Angelo also found that most of the online resources were dated.
So, she decided to step up to create Genneve.com, a digital platform for women heading into menopause and midlife.
“It’s time to bring transparency to the market. We are disrupting the traditional word of mouth women use the build their network by connecting women directly with providers, community, content and products.”
Invio
In 1999 when everyone was worried about Y2K, Cassie Wallender first met Dema Poppa. Fast forward to 2015, Cassie was a senior manager of Product Design at IMS Health and Demo was running medical trials at Redmond-based Olympus. “Dema told me that this mainly involved collecting data and that he was frustrated by the quality of the data collection process,” said Wallender.
Why? The data was collected on site by doctors before being transcribed into a database for the trial. Then the data had to be verified by monitors to ensure that it was transcribed accurately. All this data was stored in large three-ringed binders.
Wallender says that each clinical trial required that monitors had to travel to each site every 3 to 4 weeks – resulting in thousands of trips. The problem was that even with third party verification, transcription errors were still happening. The pair discovered that each year, $6.8B is wasted on this process.
The breaking point came when the FDA changed its regulations to allow a new verification process. Wallender and Poppa decided to seize the opportunity to build the tool that Dema wished he had when he was running clinical trials – a tool that would finally eliminate all those three-ring binders.
Invio is a cloud-based platform for remote source document verification which reduces travel requirements by 70% and increases the verification process by 95%. “With Invio, the verification process goes from two months to two hours,” she said.
Boost! Collective is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We work collaboratively to discover, write and tell powerful stories that drive authentic engagement.
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