Posted July 29th, 2008, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| New Media| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| Videos| Viral Marketing| Web 2.0
I just heard about this from the Inside Silicon Valley Podcast from The San Jose Mercury News (the site of which, sadly, has no RSS feed metadata in its html head. Get it together, people!)
Anyway, this guy apparently made a fortune as a Texas oil man. Now he’s decided to spearhead a movement toward “energy-independence.” In a nutshell, he wants to shift our use of Natural gas over to transportation and replace its 20% share of electricity production with wind power by building out the “Wind Belt” with turbines. The result, he claims, would mean consuming about 38% less foreign oil. It would also mean cleaner transportation and electricity production.
Pickens has launched a totally kick-ass, Web2-savvy campaign to recruit online “foot-soldiers,” for his movement. He has already met with the “president” and says he also plans to meet with both mainstream presidential candidates “at the same time.”
He claims that the site moved into the top-1000 most-viewed sites in under three weeks, with 2.5 million hits and about a one-tenth conversion rate (people signing up to get involved, subscribing to get updates etc)!!! (three exclamation points!!!) In addition, he’s touring around giving “town-hall” meetings all over, and spending his money on TV advertisements.
Techno-Activism? Go to PickensPlan.com and look around. What do you think? I like seeing rich-ass people putting their dollars into making positive changes in policy and public perception (if that’s what this is (I’m the first one to admit that I’m no expert on what the best route to sustainable energy is)).
Whatever you think about the plan, you have to admit that the campaign is being smartly executed. He must have a great team working for him.
This video is an overview of his “plan” (the second is one of the TV advertisements he did, which sufficiently pulls on left-wing heart strings since it has plenty of imagery of smoke pouring into the air)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpQa-ibNOKM&NR]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bOug1d20c]
4 Responses to “T. Boone Pickens’ Grassroots Campaign for U.S. Energy Plan”
JOHN LARKIN BOONE wrote on July 31st, 2008 5:04 am :
MR. T .BOONE PICKINS, I TOO HAVE MANY COMMON SENSE IDEAS. I AM IN YOUR CORNNER ! WOULD LOVE TO HAVE CONVERSATION WITH YOU,OR A REPERSINTIVE OF WHAT YOU ARE WORKING ON. IF YOU WOULD APPLY THE NEW THIN PANNEL SOLAR PANNELS TO ALL OF THE TRAILERS,THE TYPE PULLED BEHIND BIG RIGGS;AND THE ONES JUST SITTING IN WEARHOUSE PARKING LOTS,THE TRILERS BEING PULLED DOWN THE HIGHWAY,WOULD POWER UP A BATTERY SYSTEM LOCATED IN THE TRAILER BED;TO RUN IN CONJUCTION WITH A SMALLER DIESEL MOTOR IN THE TRACTOR,ABLE TO RUN A HIGH TORQURED ELECTRIC MOTOR. AS FOR ALL THE TRAILERS SITTING IN THE WEARHOUSE PARKING LOTS{THOUSANDS,&THOUSANDS] THEY WOULD DOWNLOAD INTO A POWER GRID, TO RUN THE WEARHOUSE,A SMALL TOWN,ETC, ETC!!!THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME, JOHN LARKIN BOONE
grassroots marketing wrote on August 20th, 2008 10:31 am :
Changing the dominant usage of oil into other energy alternatives sounds cool. He must be careful with the campaign
Alan Nicholson wrote on October 26th, 2008 12:03 pm :
does anyone have information on a good source for CNG installation kits?
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This woman in Austin, TX told me all about how this whole land acquisition was fraud and that she had all the papers to prove it – and that she is involved in a lawsuit. I wonder how that’s happening.