E-marketing saves mother’s life
by Helen Ji
E-marketing saves mother’s life
An Oakville professor was reduced to tears after learning the course she teaches helped a former student save his mother’s life.
Oakville’s Lisa Violo has taught an online marketing and social media course at York University four years.
The course teaches students about the power of social media and the ability to use sites like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to promote a business, raise money for a charity or even market a person’s own job skills.
In the past, Violo said she has received letters from former students thanking her for helping them get a job or launch a business, but early this year, she was overwhelmed after receiving an e-mail from former student Michael Andrade in which he thanked her for giving him the skills to find his mother, Lucy Andrade, 61, a new liver.
“I read it to my husband and we both cried briefly because we were so happy for him,” said Violo.
“I was just so proud of him because he had to take the concepts he learned in class and apply them. I appreciated him telling me my course helped him, but it was really him who had to take what he learned to save his mother’s life, which must have been really emotional.”
Andrade, a fourth-year York University student who had taken Violo’s e-marketing class in the fall 2010-2011 term, said his mother had been diagnosed with liver disease about a decade ago, but had taken a turn for the worse in September.
“My mom’s health deteriorated to the point where she needed a liver transplant and she needed one fast,” said Andrade in the e-mail to Violo.
“She would get progressively worse by the day and was in an extreme amount of pain. She lost a ton of weight, her eyes and skin were very yellow, she’d have nose bleeds that lasted up to six hours or more, among other issues.”
Andrade said the problem with finding a liver donor is that he or she needed to have the same rare blood type as his mother’s.
She was on a transfer list, however, she was told the wait time would be about two years — time she did not have.
Various family members were screened as partial liver donors, but even those deemed compatible were disqualified based on secondary screening tests.
“So, extremely worried about my mother’s health, I knew I had to depend on the generosity of someone our family didn’t know. To be able to reach those people, and get the message out there that my mom needed a liver, I used websites that I learned about in your (Violo’s) e-marketing class, specifically Tumblr,” said Andrade.
“I first started out on Facebook. I had a profile picture with my mom and I along with a green ribbon (for organ donation) and my mother’s story. I received a lot of responses from friends, who were all very concerned and willing to spread the word, but no one offering to donate. I decided I needed to reach a wider audience instead of just my friends, so I made a Tumblr site that would tell my mother’s story and would be viewable to absolutely anyone that came across it.”
Andrade said he used Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and other social media to draw people to his Tumblr account.
He said Toronto Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia and a few other celebrities retweeted the link to the Tumblr account on their own Twitter accounts, which made his mother’s story spread like wildfire.
“I got a ton of responses from people I had never even met in my life who wanted information packages on liver transplants and were considering donating,” said Andrade.
“It was absolutely amazing and blew me away, considering what I was asking for.”
On Nov. 28, Andrade’s mother underwent transplant surgery after receiving a liver donation from one of the people who had seen her story online.
“She looks and feels absolutely amazing right now,” said Andrade of his mother.
“It’s truly incredible to see. She could barely do anything without the assistance of others during those few months, but now she is a completely new person, which is so amazing to see.”
Andrade went on to say that had he not learned about Tumblr or the power of e-marketing from Violo’s e-marketing class this story might be hugely, and sadly, different.
While she may have provided the skills and the knowledge, Violo said she is very impressed with Andrade’s application of the lessons she taught him stating she never conceived of e-marketing being used in this way.
“I have certainly heard of social media being used for fundraising for charities and for political purposes, but I have never heard of anyone using it to find an anonymous live donor for an organ transplant,” said Violo.
Violo said she has already talked about Andrade’s experience in her class this semester using his story as an example of exactly what social media can do with the right imagination behind it.