Yesterday I witnessed one very beautiful (and emotional) thing, and the other was an observation on how things spread. The first was Jamie Oliver’s acceptance speech for the TED prize, which was live streamed by CNN.com. Over the past seven years, Jamie Oliver has made the improvement of the average child’s diet, and tackling obesity, in the UK and America - through a healthier school diet, to teaching parents on how to cook healthier options for their children – a personal crusade of his. If you’ve followed his journey these past few years, you would agree that it’s been one heck of a battle, often involving failure, investing his personal finances and getting picked on by the British press (I ffing hate the British press sometimes). Through and through, it’s been quite a slog for Jamie, and he outright deserves that TED prize and more. If he lacked anything last night, he made up for it in sheer passion and emotion. I recommend taking the 20 minutes out of your morning, evening or afternoon to watch it and share it with others.
After watching the presentation and listening to his TED Prize wish, “I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity”, the floor was opened up to the audience for remarks and ideas on how to help. What I noticed over the next few minutes amazed me, and would have made Mark Earl’s, writer of the book Herd: how to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature proud. A few people spoke up and offered their services, money and help for free to Jamie. Then, like popcorn, it just began to spread. Person after person came forward with an offer to help. Even after the live feed ended, people continued to express their desire to help / offer their services to Jamie. Peter Merholz's tweet after the live feed ended, accurately depicted this for me when he said "Jamie Oliver's TED Prize is the first I've felt viscerally moved to support. Now to figure out how to act". There is something that helps things spread, and it isn't what we traditionally think it is in marketing (otherwise, we would be far more effective at it then we actually are). I think what we saw last night was an excellent example of how this happens, and it's amazing when it does so for a good cause.
To help out with Jamie’s cause, TED have set-up info here http://www.tedprize.org/jamie-oliver/.
