FIR Interview: Crowdsourcing Content for the VFW Foundation’s “Return the Favor” V-Wall

Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Foundation Acting Director John G. Lowe and Fleishman-Hillard digital strategist Justin Goldsborough join FIR co-host Shel Holtz to discuss the V-Wall campaign, described by Fleishman President and CEO Dave Senay as “an interactive page of videos, pictures, texts and tweets—all focused on expressing gratitude to our troops and veterans. What makes this solution unique is that the information on the site (was) crowdsourced.” The campaign was part of the “Return the Favor” campaign.

image

Get this podcast:

About our Conversation Partners

imageJohn G. Lowe Lowe was appointed Acting Director of VFW Foundation on September 2010 previously serving as the Deputy Director from October 2008.  Prior to joining the staff at National Headquarters he served as the State Adjutant/Quartermaster for the Department of California since 2000. 

John served in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne Division from 1982 to 1985. Following his discharge, he began a career as an accountant. He has more than 20 years experience in accounting, budgeting, financial reporting and administrating computer network and database systems. From 1990-1996 he served as the staff accountant for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and from 1997-2000 he served as the staff accountant and network administrator for the San Diego Symphony.

In 1989, he joined the VFW and has served in Post, District, State and National positions. He is a graduate of the University of San Francisco where he earned a bachelor of Public Administration degree in 2005.

imageJustin Goldsborough joined Fleishman-Hillard Kansas City, where he specializes in digital strategy and education, in 2009. Before that, he was at Sprint for two years where he managed the company’s employee social network, Sprint Space, and led efforts to improve customer outreach via social media, specifically Twitter. He is in his fifth year on the Kansas City IABC board and is serving as president for the 2010 board year. Justin is a huge Bon Jovi fan and once won third place in a karaoke contest at Chicago’s John Barleycorn’s with a rousing rendition of Livin’ on a Prayer. He’s also a diehard Kansas City Royals fan, so go easy when talking baseball.

After the interview, Justin sent along some additional information:

Hallmark is another client of ours that has had a lot of success recently with their recordable storybook product. One of the more common stories we’ve heard about the product is that military families will buy it and send it over to their loved ones overseas so he/she can record the story and then a child or a family member can still hear that loved one read to him/her while they are away. Once Hallmark identified this military affinity to the product, they made a significant donation of Recordable Storybooks to the VFW Foundation to give to military families.
 
At FH, we also worked with Hallmark to take several of these Recordable Storybook to the Hallmark Celebritree event in Los Angeles at Brooke Burke’s house (Dancing With the Stars host). Several of the celebrities who attended the event signed the books and they are now up for auction on the Modern Mom community, with all proceeds going to the VFW Foundation. The auction goes through Dec. 3 and can be found here.

You can follow Justin on Twitter at @jgoldsborough and read his blog, Justin Case You Were Wondering.

FIR on Friendfeed
Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

Posted by shel on 12/02 at 08:43 AM

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #576: December 6, 2010

Previous entry: FIR Cut: Smartphones to ring up 28% of holiday shopping

<< Back to main