When Marketing Gets Personal

Wall Crusher

This evening, as I checked my social feed for news from friends and family, I saw a GoFundMe for someone near and dear. It's to help pay for the medical bills for my niece and goddaughter, a high school senior who is undergoing an operation to take out thyroid cancer. You can see it for yourself here, and by all means, feel free to add to the fund or share it.

It's a simple page, for what we all are hoping is a simple procedure, because while life is rarely fair, it's more than a little obscene to have to deal with any form of cancer at age 17. Especially when you have always played by the rules and taken advantage of your opportunities, through diligent schoolwork, athletics, activities and more.

As scary as something like this is, I have every confidence in my niece, and on some level, I'm not surprised to see her take this step to deal with the situation head on. In any equation where there is a wall between this kid and a goal, it's a bad day to be the wall. You are, on every level, putting your money on a winner with this campaign.

I knew about the surgery, of course. The GoFundMe is another matter. My family tends to be pretty private folks, and incredibly hard-working. But where this goes beyond just using my platform to publicize a good cause is to note how, once more, technology is changing the world in a million small and powerful ways.

There is, honestly, nothing to stop anyone in the world with Web access from directly impacting someone's life in a small but potent way, through acts like funding a medical procedure. We spend so much time noting the horrible moments of the Web -- shameful comments and behavior, timewaste content and addiction enablement, social media use by evil actors, malware and fraud and so on -- that it's really easy to forget how much good can be done.

That's the nature of communication without filters, and peer to peer conversation. A power that can be used for great good.

Oh, and one final point? I didn't coach her on anything involved with this. Seems to be entirely her idea, and her execution, and as a consultant, I think she nailed it. Pitch is short, sweet, and to the point -- and keeps everything in its proper perspective and tone.

Nice work, Em. Now, go kick cancer's ass.

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