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My Future Heart Attack: The Medium and Message of Rosie O’Donnell

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in Facebook, Social Media, Twitter
August 23, 2012

I doubt I’ve ever said this out loud:  I’ve had (and ignored) chest pains. More than once.

I learned from a Mashable blog post this week that Rosie O’Donnell did too.

I’ve wondered since why Rosie’s three-word Tweet, “my heart attack,” which she also posted on Facebook, so effectively got my attention.

  1. I don’t follow Rosie.
  2. I don’t really have any affinity for Rosie or her work.
  3. Mostly, I think she’s annoying.
  4. I actually avoid Rosie.

But damn if she didn’t get my attention this week. For that, I give her credit.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Rosie, consider yourself flattered. I want to be like you.

I’d like to use social media to positively contribute to people’s lives the way she did.

Here’s my analysis. See if you agree.

  1. She created huge curiosity and urgency with three tiny words dropped on Twitter and Facebook with no fanfare or build-up.
  2. She linked me to her blog. I could not resist.
  3. She used an unusual art form, a poem, to disarm me. It sucked me in. I read it from beginning to end, several times. Had her “message” been delivered in straight prose, I believe I would have glanced at it and clicked on.

Here’s what she accomplished:

  1. She got me to identify with her.
  2. She overcame my resistance, my habitual reaction to her.
  3. She “made” me take action.
  4. She motivated others (followers, bloggers, journalists) to tell her story over and over again on their channels. (That’s how I found her Tweet.)
  5. She taught me a thing or two.
  6. I really don’t want a heart attack. But Rosie somehow made me imagine a future in which I could do what she did not do:  dial 911.

Well done. She hit the sweet spot. She mastered the medium and, as a result, I got the message.

Oddly enough, she’s crediting a different medium for saving her life:  a stupid TV commercial. Even though she didn’t call 911, she did take an aspirin.

Have you ignored chest pain? What now?

 

 

Kevin is a blogger and account manager with KimberMedia. And he’s a no slouch with WordPress. So he’s in on our website maintenance projects, too. Kevin has a long history as a project manager. He schemes, then gets things done. He’s a small business owner, an association executive, a registered lobbyist, a yoga teacher, a biologist and a word nerd. He likes to sing in the choir at church, travel, and laugh a lot. Google