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Change.org to launch new ‘decision-maker tool’ aimed at brands and decision makers

Benjamin Joffe-Walt

Benjamin Joffe-Walt

High-profile petition website Change.org is to launch a “decision maker tool” in Australia in 2014  to stop it from being a “one way street” by allowing businesses and politicians to engage directly with petitioners, Mumbrella can reveal.

The site rose to prominence in Australia in 2011 with a backlash against Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O over comments made by Sandilands about a News Corp journalist which led to brands withdrawing ads from the show. It was also at the centre of the 2o12 storm around Radio 2GB host Alan Jones and has also led consumer backlashes against the likes of the NRL and chocolatiers Lindt and Ferrero.

The new functionality will allow the subjects of petitions to respond directly on the page to a petition, establish a verified profile and aggregate all their petitions, to show that they are being responsive.

“Right now we would acknowledge that it is an extremely frustrating experience to be targeted for a petition by Change.org – it is a one way street and unnecessarily so,” said Benjamin Joffe-Walt, vice president of communications for Change.org, who is currently visiting Australia.

“Change.org has been incredibly successful at giving ordinary people a megaphone to demand change of those in power but what we are trying to do now is go the next step and develop a set of headphones for politicians and businesses to better hear what the public are saying and the tools to help them respond.”

Joffe-Walt said Change.org was currently trialling the product with a number of senior US politicians at the moment such as former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

“Often decision makers have really smart, engaging and informative responses. Sometimes petitions are not warranted or based on ignorance, sometimes they are warranted and the decision maker agrees with it but they have no way to say ‘you are right and I agree with you’ or ‘I disagree with you and here’s why’,” said Joffe-Walt.

“For brands they are being petitioned anyway and the question is do they want that interaction to be antagonistic and one way or collaborative and engaging in a way that shows they are being responsive.

“Regardless of what they have to say but from the perspective of the user it is incredibly empowering to get a response at all. For decision-makers it is quite beneficial to give a reply because it shows they are responsive.

“It allows a company or politician to issue their response and it is on a separate and permanent page. From that perspective it separates signal from noise. Companies often receive thousands of messages and many of these social media or email messages are not optimised for decision makers to get a birds eye view of what really matters,” he added.

Change.org’s Melbourne office said the tool would be available to Australian brands in March/April of 2014. “We are looking at rolling it out in the first quarter or early in the second quarter of next year,” said Tony Robertson, Change.org Australia’s communications director.

“We will be targeting both politicians and companies with this tool and there have already been informal discussions with some companies about the idea and generally we get a pretty warm response,” he said.

“Many companies realise they are going to be petitioned and they are just looking for a way to manage it better.”

Nic Christensen 

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