Vanquishing Super Heroes One Illustration at a Time

In an ongoing battle of one-upmanship, each post on The Superest website features a one-panel illustration of a super hero.

The hook? Two illustrators take turns, and the power of each new super hero must cancel the power of the previous character. The Superest is based on an offline game created by Andy Havens called, “My Team, Your Team.”

Wholly Exclusivity Batman!

In spite of a growing fan base, The Superest is for the most part just animator/designer Matthew Sutter and illustrator/designer Kevin Cornell. It represents a highly creative use of online social conventions, allowing many to share and comment on an experience typically enjoyed by individuals in solitude.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Unlike Coudal Partner’s popular Layer Tennis, Sutter and Cornell seem content to war on for the pure fun and camaraderie of the experience.

“We built The Superest because we just wanted a place to play this game against each other. People seem to enjoy watching, and we’re thankful for that; but turning this site into a user-content focused site pretty much sucks the joy out of it for us, because we go from being two artists having fun, to being site administrators and moderators.”

-Kevin Cornell

Luckily, The Superest creators set out to have some fun and we’re all invited.

Stay Tuned

Tomorrow Kevin Cornell answers 9-1/2 questions about The Superest site and his life as a creative illustrator.

Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 Little Known Brainstorm Facts Joellyn Should Be Let In On

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“If this isn’t a true definition of community,
I don’t know what is.”

-Bobbie Davis, Family Friend

The Scenario

Nineteen year old Michael Treinen is in the fight of his life. Suffering a relapse of Acute Myeloid Leukemia, he needs a $500,000 bone marrow transplant, but his $1M lifetime insurance limit has been exhausted.

With only a few days to raise money to cover the costs, the Treinan family turned to email, asking friends and family to donate $20 within three days and forward the email to 20 friends. By day 2, several people at Brainstorm had received the plea from the nearby community; some from up to 4 different sources.

More than Enough

The message quickly spread beyond the immediate community and donations came in from across the country. By day 3 the family had raised $175,000. By 3pm day 4, $355,000. By 7pm that day, over $400,000. And by day 5, the deadline, they had raised over $700,000. Today, a week later, the count is $856,000.

The media’s coverage of the grassroots campaign resulted in a state insurance program approving an expedited high-risk insurance policy that would cover 60 percent of the transplant cost.

More than Money

Social networking delivered something else, too. At last count Michael Treinen’s Caring Bridge blog showed 169,670 visits and 3,677 people had left messages via the guestbook. What better encouragement to lift Michael’s spirits?

More than Email

Success in social networking is inspired, launched and sustained by the trusted connections between people. The Treinen’s email pleas were sent from friend to friend; had they been sent from strangers or generated by faceless scripts, the Michael Treinen story wouldn’t have happened.

Whether you make widgets or offer something more philanthropic, social networking demands transparency and an ongoing investment in others. Then, when the time calls for it, your friends—and even people you don’t know—may respond when called upon.

Anticipate More

Under the circumstances, the Treinens couldn’t have dreamed of, much less considered what to do should they exceed their expectations. It’s being placed in a trust fund to cover Michael’s future medical needs and they’ve said any overage will be donated to charity.

The lesson being, be prepared and model outcomes to scale in proportion to the potential explosive power of online social campaigns.

[ Image: Kazze ]

Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 [Leap Year] Best uses for an Extra Day in the Year

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Joseph Jaffe’s Join the Conversation

If you’re a brand marketer
or have a brand, or a market to reach,
read this book.

A Marketing Dialog

The foundation of Join the Conversation, How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership is author Joseph Jaffe’s distinction between communication and conversation. He describes communication as one-way and carefully controlled in its implementation, while conversation is organic, non-linear, unpredictable, and not initiated by any one person or organization.

Key Moments

As collective online conversations begin to spill into conversations offline, the book addresses the opportunities presented to brand marketers engaged in conversation with groups Jaffe identifies as producers, prosumers and consumers.

He presents many examples of what we here at Brainstorm refer to as key social media moments—moments when companies have either seized an opportunity or been seized by it.

If you’re not present at a key moment,
you can’t exploit that moment,
but it may exploit you.

Helpful Advice

The book provides a number of guidelines to consider when adopting conversational engagement over mere communication: The need to embrace consumer-generated content, the importance of honesty, an emphasis on product quality and service excellence—coupled with a balanced sense of transparency, as well as the benefits of partnering with today’s consumer, paired with cautionary advice.

About the Author

Joseph Jaffe, author of Join the Conversation and Life After the 30-Second Spot, is president and chief interrupter at new marketing company, Crayon. He’s a noted consultant and blogger and hosts Coffee with Crayon Thursdays at 9am EST on Crayonville Island in Second Life. This review is part of his UNM2PNM project.

Join In

Although it may take purists a while to get used to the conversational writing style, regardless of whether or not you’re already engaged in conversation, Join the Conversation is a read worth talking about.