Groundswell

What we can know from example of Unilever

Unilever's example to incorporate the three elements of groundswell thinking into your organization:

• Take small steps that have big impact. The Dove team initiated a series of campaigns that were revolutionary in one area - innovating on the message with the Campaign For Real Beauty, listening go of message control with The Apprentice, and rethinking distribution with the "Evolution" video. The key was that they all had measurable success metrics that were tied to key marketing goals. These primed the pump for the more innovative, more challenging campaigns that came next
• Have a vision and a plan. Transformational thinking can be maddeningly slow. Rob and Babs demonstrated tremendous patience in getting executives to take small steps forward - in all, two year passed between the launch of the Campaign For Real Beauty and the "Evolution" video. But both Rob and Baba personally had a vision of Unilever's potential with groundswell thinking, a vision that kept them going through the rough patches. You should have in your mind a tree-year outlook of where you want to take the organization - and the simplest way to do that is to describe what the relationship with your customer will feel like in the future. 
• Build leaders into the plan. It took leaders like Rob and Babs to have the guts to take Unilever all the way to the top. The Dove team was relentless in hammering on one point - the need to let go and embrace emerging media and give the consumer a voice in the brand. Rob and Babs shared this vision and backed it up with persuasive and planning skills to drive innovative marketing to another level.

The Volga river

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage basin. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Volga-Matushka (Volga-mother) in Russian literature and folklore.

The downstream of the Volga, widely believed to have been a cradle of the Proto-Indo-European civilization, was settled by Huns and other Turkic peoples in the first millennium AD, replacing Scythians. The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia). He calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains.

Subsequently, the river basin played an important role in the movements of peoples from Asia to Europe. A powerful polity of Volga Bulgaria once flourished where the Kama river joins the Volga, while Khazaria controlled the lower stretches of the river. Such Volga cities as Atil, Saqsin, or Sarai were among the largest in the medieval world. The river served as an important trade route connecting Scandinavia, Rus', and Volga Bulgaria with Khazaria and Persia.

The Volga, widened for navigation purposes with construction of huge dams during the years of Joseph Stalin's industrialization, is of great importance to inland shipping and transport in Russia: all the dams in the river have been equipped with large (double) ship locks, so that vessels of considerable dimensions can actually travel from the Caspian Sea almost to the upstream end of the river.

Connections with the Don River and the Black Sea are possible through the Volga–Don Canal. Connections with the lakes of the north (Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega), Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea are possible through the Volga–Baltic Waterway; and a liaison with Moscow has been realised by the Moscow Canal connecting the Volga and the Moskva rivers.

This infrastructure has been designed for vessels of a relatively large scale (lock dimensions of 290 x 30 meters on the Volga, slightly smaller on some of the other rivers and canals) and it spans many thousands of kilometers. A number of formerly state-run, now mostly privatized, companies operate passenger and cargo vessels on the river; Volgotanker, with over 200 petroleum tankers, is one of them.

In the later Soviet era, up to the modern times, grain and oil have been among the largest cargo exports transported on the Volga. Until recently access to the Russian waterways was granted to foreign vessels on a only very limited scale. The increasing contacts between the European Union and Russia have led to new policies with regard to the access to the Russian inland waterways. It is expected that vessels of other nations will be allowed on the Russian rivers soon.

                                                                Fishing.

By the way. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (R) and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoy some fishing on the river Volga in Russia's Astrakhan region August 16, 2011. Russia's two top leaders spent Tuesday fishing and boating on the Volga river in a rare, day-long private meeting, the Kremlin said. Medvedev and Putin went for a walk on the river bank in the Astrakhan region in southern Russia, did some spin fishing and then set off for a boat trip to take underwater pictures. Picture taken August 16, 2011.

Black sea

The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean  seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean Sea region of the Mediterranean. These waters separate eastern Europe and western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.

The Black Sea has an area of 436,400 km² (168,500 sq mi) (not including the Sea of Azov), a maximum depth of 2,212 m (7,257 ft), and a volume of 547,000 km³ (131,200 cu mi). The Black Sea forms in an east-west trending elliptical depression which lies between Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania,Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. It is constrained by the Pontic Mountains to the south, the Caucasus Mountains to the east and features a wide shelf to the northwest. The longest east-west extent is about 1,175 km.

The Black Sea has a positive water balance; that is, a net outflow of water 300 km³ per year through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea. Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a two-way hydrological exchange. The Black Sea outflow is cooler and less saline, and floats over the warm, more saline Mediterranean inflow -because of density difference due to salinity-, leading to a significant anoxic layer well below the surface waters. The Black Sea also receives river water from large Eurasian fluvial systems to the north of the Sea, of which the Don, Dnieper and Danube are the most significant.

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Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal (Russian: о́зеро Байка́л,  Ozero Baykal; IPA: [ˈozʲɪrə bəjˈkɑl]; Buryat: Байгал нуур, Mongolian: Байгал нуур, Baygal nuur, meaning "nature lake") (Байкол - in kyrgyz translates as Rich lake) is the world's oldest lake, at 25 million years (possibly older), and deepest, averaging 744.4 metres (2,442 ft).

Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water.

At 1,642 metres (5,387 ft), Lake Baikal is the deepest and among the clearest of all lakes in the world. Similar to Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed as an ancient rift valley, having the typical long crescent shape with a surface area of 31,722 km² (12,248 sq mi), less than that of Lake Superior or Lake Victoria. Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. It is also home to Buryat  tribes who reside on the eastern side of Lake Baikal, rearing goats, camels, cattle and sheep, where the regional average temperatures vary from a minimum of −19 °C (−2 °F) in winter to maximum of 14 °C (57 °F) in summer. Lake Baikal is nicknamed "Older sister of Sister Lakes (Lake Khövsgöl and Lake Baikal)"

The first European to reach the lake is said to be Kurbat Ivanov in 1643.

In the past, the Baikal was respectfully referred to by many Russians as the "Baikal Sea" (Russian: Море Байкал, More Baikal), rather than merely "Lake Baikal" (Russian: Озеро Байкал, Ozero Baikal). This usage is attested already on the late-17th century maps by Semyon Remezov. To these days, the strait between the western shore of the Lake and the Olkhon Island is called Maloye More (Малое Море), i.e. "the Little Sea".

According to 19th century traveler T. W. Atkinson, locals in the Lake Baikal Region had the tradition that Christ visited the area:

The people have a tradition in connection with this region which they implicitly believe. They say "that Christ visited this part of Asia and ascended this summit, whence he looked down on all the region around. After blessing the country to the northward, he turned towards the south, and looking across the Baikal, he waved his hand, exclaiming 'Beyond this there is nothing.'" Thus they account for the sterility of Daouria, where it is said "no corn will grow."

Lake Baikal is in a rift valley, created by the Baikal Rift Zone, where the Earth's crust pulls apart. At 636 kilometres (395 mi) long and 79 km (49 mi) wide, Lake Baikal has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake in Asia (31,722 km²/12,248 sq mi) and is the deepest lake in the world (1,642 m/5,387 ft). The bottom of the lake is 1,186.5 metres (3,893 ft) below sea level, but below this lies some 7 km (4.3 mi) of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8–11 kilometres (5.0–6.8 mi) below the surface: the deepest continental rift on Earth. In geological terms, the rift is young and active—it widens about two cm per year. The fault zone is also seismically active; there are hot springs in the area and notable earthquakes every few years. The lake is divided into three basins: North, Central, and South, with depths of about 900, 1600, and 1400 m, respectively. Fault-controlled accommodation zones rising to depths of about 300 m separate the basins. The North and Central basins are separated by Academician Ridge while the area around the Selenga Delta and the Buguldeika Saddle separates the Central and South basins. The lake drains into the Angara tributary of the Yenisei.

Its age is estimated at 25–30 million years, making it one of the most ancient lakes in geological history. It is unique among large, high-latitude lakes, in that its sediments have not been scoured by overriding continental ice sheets. U.S. and Russian studies of core sediment in the 1990s provide a detailed record of climatic variation over the past 250,000 years. Longer and deeper sediment cores are expected in the near future. Lake Baikal is furthermore the only confined fresh water lake in which direct and indirect evidence of gas hydratesexists.

Techniques for talking with the groundswell

There are lots of ways to talk with the groundswell. But for simplicity, we've narrowed them down to the ones that are the most common and most effective. Here are the four that we will explore in more detail:

• Post a viral video. Put a video online, and let people share it. 
• Engage in social networks and user-generated content sites. Creating a personality within social networking sites like MySpace is one of the simplest ways to extend your brand reach.
• Join the blogosphere. Empower your executives or staff to write blogs. Integral to this strategy is listening to and responding to other blogs in the blogosphere - and that's one way talking with blogs is different from issuing press releases.
• Create a community. Communities are a powerful way to engage with your customers and deliver value to them

Lake Turgoyak

Turgoyak (Russian: Тургояк) is a lake in Chelyabinsk Oblast, near the city of Miass, Russia. It has a surface of 2638 hectares. The water of the lake has a great transparency (from 10-17.5 m). The quality if the water is comparable to that of Lake Baikal.

A megalithic monument is found on an island in the lake (Vera island), as well as ruins of a monastery.

The lake is a popular tourist destination with resorts and holiday camps.