Media Strategies: DIY, Crowdsource, Mobilize

Projects: Arduino, Patreon, Pokemon Go

DIY:

Arduino has in the last decade given the power of robotics and practical coding to create a wide variety or projects and inventions into the hands of average people. A single starter Arduino kit casts roughly 60 dollars, making it largely accessible and inexpensive.

Arduino homepage: https://www.arduino.cc/

The creator of Arduino speaking about his creation: https://www.ted.com/talks/massimo_banzi_how_arduino_is_open_sourcing_imagination?language=en#t-896

Crowdsource:

Artists, writers, and other creatives have always struggled to making a living off their passions in a system and society with a mindset that their work isn’t worth a dime. Often times, for writers especially, some of the only ways to make a living is to sign up with a company in Hollywood or a big name publisher and hope you do well. But when you do this you start to lose creative freedom, suddenly the things you create are beholden to what executive want or don’t want. Enter, Patreon. Patreon, named after the Patron system of the arts from centuries ago, is a website for creators to set up a donations page for their audience to give money directly to them in exchange for them continuing their work. Patreon gives a strong platform for creators to go to their audience directly for support and avoid looming corporate middle men.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/

Example of a creator’s Patreon page (One of my Favorites): https://www.patreon.com/onceandfuturenerd/posts

Mobilize:

Does anyone here remember the Michelle Obama campaign to get kids outside? Pokemon Go managed to do that in seconds. Pokemon GO, a simple app game about walking around the real world and using AR technology to catch pokemon took the world by storm in the summer of 2016 and started a real phenomenon. Kids, teens, and adults all with a connection to the Pokemon series went out in droves to play. Pokestops, or landmarks placed by the game to get more pokeballs to catch pokemon became hang outs where people who would probably have never met met and talked amicably about, well, pokemon. While Pokemon Go dipped sharply in popularity after two months due to lack of features to support the unexpectedly large fandom it has since expanded and still has a very large and connected following. Due to Pokemon Go’s creative merger of real life activity and the wildly popular series it managed to get people who were typically shut-ins out and about and making friends that still last to this day.

Pokemon Go: https://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/