Social Networking Success Story: I’m Too Young for This!

Concert pianist and motivational speaker Matthew Zachary is founder/CEO of the
I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation, the nation’s largest advocacy, research, and support organization for survivors in their 20s and 30s. Matthew uses social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn extensively to spread the word about his organization and mission.

What prompted you to establish the I’m Too Young for This! foundation?

As a young adult survivor of pediatric brain cancer who was originally diagnosed in college, I remember the horrible feelings of isolation and anger for not being treated like a 21-year old with different needs than the 6 or 60 year olds sitting next to me. Issues like dating, sexuality, fertility, employment, nutrition… even basic psychological counseling were nowhere to be found. I was a piece of meat.

Also, I had faith that, should there ever be a recurrence, advancements in medical technology would be there for me at that later date. Twelve years later, this report – Closing The Gap – was released by the NCI in the Fall of 2006 which, more or less, stated that there has been little or no progress for young adults aged 15-39 with regard to five-year remission rates, age-appropriate peer support, medical communications or clinical trial access. Meaning, if I got the same thing today that I had back then, rhetorically speaking, my prognosis is more or less identical. This is not okay. My own generation has been sorely ignored by the entire cancer continuum.

Billion dollar cancer societies and pink ribbon foundations were not paying attention to young adults affected by cancer and the existing landscape of young adult support resources were few and far between, extremely inaccessible and overwhelmingly siloed and not collaborating. It was such a niche community that there needed to be some overarching brand that defined and attached an overwhelmingly disruptive campaign to raise awareness for what we’re calling the ‘cancer under 40 movement’. This brand needed to then aggregate all of the targeted digital content resources and exploit all viral, grassroots, and social media solutions to deliver value to this orphan generation of survivors, with the goal to end isolation and improve quality of life.

How are you using social media and social networking to get the word out and connect with your audience?

We are exploiting the Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 online consumer revolution using tools that did not exist even five years ago to build “click and mortar” communities throughout the world. The brand sells itself because young adults are so starved for peer support and targeted resources there’s an instant buy-in. These services are not readily searchable online. Portals like WebMD, Yahoo!, or Google are not the best guides to gain access to trusted content.

As a result of our strategy, the word-of-mouth marketing and viral success of our brand has essentially propelled us to become one of, if not the, largest and most recognized youth culture brands in cancer advocacy. I think we are delivering unexpected value to an isolated community that is sorely lacking the resources it needs.

What is your greatest social networking success story?

There are so many to choose from, ranging from our efforts yielding the creation of friendships that will now last a lifetime, the formation of offline chapters in over 16 cities worldwide, the garnering of more media coverage than we could have anticipated (specifically, TIME Magazine Best 50 Website 2007), the partnering with major corporations such as Lifetime, Google, Novartis, and more.

I suppose if I had to choose one, it would be how one of our leadership volunteers singlehandedly organized an online petition of hundreds of thousands to keep Lifetime Television’s program Side Order of Life on the air after we partnered with them on an episode in which I guest starred.

June 15, 2008 | Filed Under Social Networking Success Stories

Comments

Leave a Reply