Empowering the People — There’s an App for That

Imagine how the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina would have been different, if people who lived in the area were able to use their phones to share real-time images, videos and other content that was instantly reported on a map? The government, non-profits and NGOs involved in the cleanup would have had a much clearer picture of the whole story — with the help of the people it affected directly – and planned recovery efforts accordingly.

Our client Trimble Outdoors (part of Trimble Navigation) this week launched a free app that’s allowing people who live and work in the Gulf Coast be a part of aiding in the BP oil spill clean up. Map The Spill, a free app for Android, Blackberry and iPhone, is barely out the gate and already thousands of journalists, volunteers, government workers and everyday people have downloaded this app and are using the website, www.mapthespill.org. Map the Spill brings new meaning to the term “citizen journalist,” and may possibly change the way in which disasters are responded to.

And here’s a little PR lesson (because this is a PR blog). When we sat around the table with Trimble Outdoors to decide how to promote this we didn’t get stars in our eyes and focus on how to get The Today Show to cover launch. No, we thought about the people who are really going to use this – the journalists and volunteers in the Gulf Coast. Trimble Outdoors tackled the latter and got the Nature Conservancy on board. We tackled the former and have a smattering of journalists and bloggers all along the coast using Map the Spill to aide in their reporting. The result has been an abundance of informative and really powerful content that is being shared on mapthespill.org with millions of people. Talk about freedom of information.

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