Here is my tweet submission for the #UprisingGiveaway by Strawberry Frog’s Scott Goodson:
Movements surge like tides. / Failure is to force or fake. / Surf the social waves! #CulturalMovements #Uprisinggiveaway #haiku @ScottFrog
— leesean hepnova (@leesean) March 19, 2012
The challenge was to define and comment on cultural movements in a tweet. Given the brevity of the medium, I opted for the haiku form to help give me some constraints, and for the LOLZ. Also, traditional Japanese haiku is more than just the 5-7-5 syllable structure, as the poetic form often references nature. I decided to play with the metaphor of waves to describe the nature of cultural movements.
The idea of “surfing” upon the power of an ocean/cultural wave, rather than trying to control or force it parallels Goodson’s advice to marketers in BusinessWorld:
- Instead of controlling the message, marketers must learn to relinquish control and let the movement do what it will with that message.
- Companies must learn to stop talking about themselves and join in a conversation that is about anything but their products.
