Dodo Birds are Not Extinct

Tell her to look up
The night sky twinkles for her
Write love on her arm

Leon Choo

Aspiring poet, script writer and teacher who happens to also be the best friend featured quite often in my blog.

It’s okay to have a flu or a diarrhea. It’s painful to have cancer because cancer patients need to overcome a physical condition in addition to dealing with emotional trauma. All that holds true, for sure. I have great respect especially for cancer patients who exalt the human spirit by showing the world in their personal battles how beautiful and tenacious the human spirit can be.

But, at the same time, for many people worldwide, depression still connotes incapability, weakness and self-absorption. Sadly, many remain unaware that depression is actually not very different from other physical conditions because depression likewise involves irregularities in human body processes.

This is an abstract from depression.com (the one-stop online resource for depression):

“Many things can trigger debilitating depression. Feelings of depression are caused by a chemical change that affects how the brain functions.

A normally functioning brain is a giant messaging system that controls everything from your heartbeat, to walking, to your emotions. The brain is made up of billions of nerve cells called neurons. These neurons send and receive messages from the rest of your body, using brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.

These brain chemicals—in varying amounts—are responsible for our emotional state. Depression happens when these chemical messages aren’t delivered correctly between brain cells, disrupting communication.

Think of a telephone: if your phone has a weak signal, you may not hear the person on the other end. Their communication is muted or unclear.

The good news is that there are many forms of treatment that can help you cope with depression, including medications that can strengthen weak signals by raising the levels of certain neurotransmitters, or by improving the neurons’ ability to process signals. This ensures that the brain’s vital messages are delivered—loud and clear.”

To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. Do watch the video below on what TWLOHA stands for.

TWLOHA’s founder, Jamie Tworkowski, has even recently been nominated for the Good Woodie of the Year award, which recognizes artists whose commitment to a social cause has effected the greatest change this year.

On being nominated for the award (below), Jamie shares about how he had initially thought that it was an award for non-profit organizations but was so shocked to realize that he had been nominated alongside stars like John Legend and Wyclef Jean!

Branding-wise, To Write Love on Her Arms sheds light on some important truths.

What amazed me most about the whole movement was the effective use of social media channels like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, among others. TWLOHA is a marketing and branding phenomenon. To spread the word, TWLOHA had a widget made (look to the left of this post) which bloggers can embed on their blogs. Every click on the widget by a blog’s readers generates donations for TWLOHA from a sponsor (in the case of my blog, Coffee-mate). TWLOHA’s Facebook page currently boasts of 233, 285 fans and TWLOHA’s Twitter has 49,440 followers!

Not only did TWLOHA ensure that its digital campaign had “push” mechanisms (e.g. the widget and Youtube videos) that fans could share with others to get the word out, it also ensured there were “pull mechanisms” in the form of regularly shared content on Facebook and Twitter that resonated with the audience and made the audience want to remain part of the TWLOHA Facebook and Twitter groups. In other words, the digital campaign entailed “stickiness” and “shareability” in geek terms.

Most of all, in the larger picture of branding, the success of this movement shows us two things:

1. Successful branding these days is no longer just about the message that the organization is conveying to the world about itself. More importantly, a powerful brand (with the advent of social media channels) has become on the one hand, about engaging communities emotionally such that they are motivated to rave about your brand and on the other hand, about empowering your brand’s fans with shareable content that they can share with others to pull others into the fan base.
2. An impactful brand needs to be authentic and sincere. Another reason behind TWLOHA’s success as a movement and “brand” was that it was about people like you and me, who truly believed in its cause, spreading an authentic, passionate and sincere message. In this day and age, when information spreads like lightning, green-washing can be detected a mile away. So, if a brand wants to be effective, it needs to ensure first that it is going to truly “walk the talk”.

Before I end off, though, I have to share with you the vision of To Write on Her Arms with Love, as beautifully articulated by TWLOHA themselves:

“The vision is that we actually believe these things…

You were created to love and be loved.  You were meant to live life in relationship with other people, to know and be known. You need to know that your story is important and that you’re part of a bigger story.  You need to know that your life matters.

We live in a difficult world, a broken world.  My friend Byron is very smart – he says that life is hard for most people most of the time.  We believe that everyone can relate to pain, that all of us live with questions, and all of us get stuck in moments.  You need to know that you’re not alone in the places you feel stuck.

We all wake to the human condition.  We wake to mystery and beauty but also to tragedy and loss.  Millions of people live with problems of pain.  Millions of homes are filled with questions – moments and seasons and cycles that come as thieves and aim to stay.  We know that pain is very real.  It is our privilege to suggest that hope is real, and that help is real.

You need to know that rescue is possible, that freedom is possible, that God is still in the business of redemption.  We’re seeing it happen.  We’re seeing lives change as people get the help they need.  People sitting across from a counselor for the first time.  People stepping into treatment.  In desperate moments, people calling a suicide hotline.  We know that the first step to recovery is the hardest to take.  We want to say here that it’s worth it, that your life is worth fighting for, that it’s possible to change.

Beyond treatment, we believe that community is essential, that people need other people, that we were never meant to do life alone.

The vision is that community and hope and help would replace secrets and silence.

The vision is people putting down guns and blades and bottles.

The vision is that we can reduce the suicide rate in America and around the world.

The vision is that we would learn what it means to love our friends, and that we would love ourselves enough to get the help we need.

The vision is better endings.  The vision is the restoration of broken families and broken relationships.  The vision is people finding life, finding freedom, finding love.  The vision is graduation, a Super Bowl, a wedding, a child, a sunrise.  The vision is people becoming incredible parents, people breaking cycles, making change.

The vision is the possibility that your best days are ahead.

The vision is the possibility that we’re more loved than we’ll ever know.

The vision is hope, and hope is real.

You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story.”

Support this movement today – Simply click on the widget on my page and for each click, Coffee-mate will donate to TWLOHA, to bring hope to someone who desperately needs a reason to believe again.

For more on the campaign, visit the TWLOHA blog.