Good Stuff

Making medicine as ubiquitous as Coca Cola

I just read about this fantastic initiative. I remember thinking about this when I was in Kenya last year. You can drive for miles and miles along dusty roads to communities without even the most basic amenities, yet you are never more than a few miles from the nearest bottle of Coca Cola. It must be the most efficient distribution network on the face of the planet - so why not use it to do distribute some good?

"It's a tragic fact of life today that one in five African children die before their fifth birthday from simple causes like dehydration from diarrhea. Basic medicines could save those children's lives, yet no means has been found to make them readily available. A new grassroots project, however, aims to tap into the formidable distribution network of none other than Coca-Cola to get life-saving medicines to the children who need them.

The ColaLife project aims to distribute oral re-hydration salts and educational materials to people in developing countries through a partnership with Coca-Cola by which its distributors carry medicine in addition to soft drinks. The concept actually dates back 20 years, when its originator—Simon Berry, who was then an aid worker in Zambia—was struck by the realization that one could buy a Coke virtually anywhere on the planet, yet medicine was hard to come by. He proposed designating one compartment in every 10 Coke crates as "the life saving" compartment to transport medicines. His idea fell on deaf ears back then, but today the power of social networking is giving it new life." Specifically, Berry's ColaLife project has tapped the power of Facebook and other social networking tools to amass a group of more than 6,000 supporters, garner widespread media coverage and—at least as important—get the attention of Coca-Cola.

Berry has since met with high-ranking officials at the company, and talks are under way to push the idea further. Meanwhile, ColaLife groups have been added on Google and Flickr, and a YouTube video was created earlier this month to promote the project's submission to Google’s Project 10^100 initiative.

Currently, ColaLife is seeking an NGO to participate in the project as well. The web is facilitating social change in ways that simply weren't possible before, uniting like-minded activists and gathering support from around the globe. Will Coca-Cola jump in with both feet? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, one to watch—and learn from." Via Springwise.

New billboards for RSFS

If you live in Copenhagen or one in annd around one of Denmark's larger cities, then you've probably seen our new outdoor campaign for Rådet for Større Færdselssikkerhed. We're quite proud of it.

CSR inspired innovation

On Wednesday I was invited to talk at a conference here in Denmark for the Danish Commerce and Companies Agency, the theme being CSR inspired innovation.

I knew that some of the other speakers would be presenting very analytical information so what I tried to do was give as many tangible examples as possible were companies have used this kind of innovation in practice.

An observation one could make is that although the speakers were from very different backgrounds, there were some recurring themes:

Companies who see CSR as an opportunity rather than a responsibility seem to be benefiting from it. Companies that are ahead of the game and have managed to be assertive in this area instead of waiting for legislation or market forces change the way they do business seem to have an advantage.

Their seem to be an ocean of companies who have given CSR some very serious thought but not many of them manage to translate this into something they can use proactively.

Actually, I think we're seeing a shift. The way a company behaves in relation to it's stakeholders has become much more central part of brand communication. In many compaines and organisations the CSR department and the marketing department seem to be converging. It makes perfect sense.

As I've mentioned before here, we are seeing the emergency of a new expression which popped up again several times. Corporate Social Opportunity. I like it. Not because it's the latest buzz-word, which it undoubtably is but because it points to the fact that there's something more significant happening here.

Anyway, it's evocative and I'm going to use it whenever I can. (the more observant readers among you will notice it's appearance on my catagories list)

Long-live the CSO.

Goody goody bank wins outdoor award

Thanks to Anders for this piece of reporting from Cannes. (I'm not sure if he's actually there or not)

This poster has just won the Grand Prix in the outdoor category at the Cannes Lions festival.

In a supplementary text the agency explain:

"The World's First Solar Powered Billboard, from a bank committed to making a real difference, was designed to harness and convert the heat of the African sun into a much-needed necessity, electricity. It currently powers the kitchens of a township primary school, feeding 1100 kids and in time will completely generate the school required power needs. The idea is currently being rolled out across the country.

Apart from the obvious benefit to communities, traditional electricity use is the major cause of global warming, so imagine what a difference it could make if every marketer adopted this approach to outdoor?

Community-Empowering
World-Changing.
Planet-Saving.

The initiative will save the school R2300 a month in electricity charges. The bill board has 10 solar panels with each panel generating 135 watts of power. The power generated from the panels will be enough to boil 18.1 litres in domestic kettles continuously at any one time, which goes a long way towards the schools feeding scheme. "You can't teach a hungry child" enabling more students to receive breakfast and lunch.

The billboards batteries store enough energy to make the billboard completely self-sufficient generating sufficient electricity to light up at night."

Is it just me or does this smack a little of greenwashing?

I'm left wondering why they attached a large poster to the bottom of the solar panels? And the text just annoys me. Are they really claiming that this 'idea' that they are rolling out across the country is theirs, as if they invented solar panels?

I might just be being pedantic but wouldn't it have been better/cleverer idea if they used a giant panel as a poster instead. At least the poster would have been integrated somehow instead of just hanging underneath looking a little bolted on.

And what happens when the lights go on at night? Do the kettles stop working? (okay, now I am being a little unfair)

Don't get me wrong. It's brave and it's undoubtedly doing some good, I'm just not sure. It is really a very difficult area to be in. It raises so many questions. Maybe they would have been better off just providing the funding for the panels? What else are they doing to help? What is their CSR policy when it comes to investing ethically?

What do you think?

D&AD Branding and sustainablity seminar

I'm just on my way back from London where I attended the D&AD branding and sutainability seminar. It's always nice to pay London a flying visit as it also gives me the chance to catch up with a few old friends, which I did.

Well, over-all the seminar was interesting if a little brief. Of course they could only ever hope to skim the surface of such a complex issue give the time that was allocated to each individual speaker, yet some rather interesting stuff came up. (I think each speaker was given five minutes, which none of them stuck to).

Russell Davies pointed out some interesting examples of work from the UK which I must confess I'd already seen on his blog, which left me wondering about my own personal carbon useage having flown there. I really liked the point he made about the general confusion surrounding sustainabilty related issues, especially in terms of branding. He saw complexity as one of the biggest challenges in this area. I agree. Once you start to think about consuming ethically you stummble across these tiny moral puzzlers all the time.

Carrots for instance. Do I buy organically grown carrots even though they're produced in Spain or do I buy local non-organic carrots? Which is the lesser of the two evils?

Russell also went on to make a nice observation, well prediction really, about air travel. He pointed out that in a few years we may see casual air travel will become as unacceptable as wearing fur now is. Actually, you know what, the whole event could have been posted online which would have been a lot more environmentally friendly.

Sorry, back to the point or the lack of it to be precise. The next speaker was Juan Carlos Fernandez Espinosa from Mexico, who basically showed a lot of charity advertising (nicely executed it has to be said) but failed to make any sort of point about branding and sustainablity other than there are certain environmental groups who are getting rather good at communicating their cause in South America. I'm guessing most of the people in the room kind of knew that already, so no big insight there.

Then it was Dave Heatt of Howies turn to speak. Now this is where I must confess to being something of a Howies groupie. I love the way they effortlessly seem to be able to communicate what they beleive in and somehow make it digestable, entertaining and relevant without feeling worthy. So when Dave stood up and did his fifteen slides at 100 mph, I'd kind of heard most of it before, although to be fair, I'd imagine a lot of attendeees hadn't. One thing he did which I thought was commendble was, in his summing up encourage others to make a diffferance by quoting Dick Dasterdly. 'don't just stand there, do something'. Great. It struck me that Dave is a very charismatic and creative guy and when you see him speak, you really do get the sense that he is the living personification of the Howies brand. Anyway, I embarrassed myself afterwards and introduced myself in the hope that one day he'll come over to Denmark and do a similar session for us.

Piyush Pandey, Chairman, Ogilvy India gave us an interestng perspective from the develoing world. He made the point simply that in a market like India, the probelms are much more immidiate and personal. 'Ask a homeless man in the street whether he cares about global warming and he'll tell you he's more concernned about personal warming'.

Steve Colling of the On Earth research agency was next. His more analyitcal and factual angle on the subject was very interesting and put some meat on the bones for me. One very interesting comment he made was that as the neccessity for organisations to be have in a responsible way grows we'll see more and more 'green' brands making it less of a differentator as the market develops. I tend to share this view although I have to say we're a long way of that point yet. What I see happening at this point is it will become not so much about 'what' the brand is doing and much more about 'how' they are communicating it.

The next person up was John Grant of brandtarot. He really had a lot of interesting stuff to say. His call for a re-design of life was the most radical, relevant and inspiring part of the seminar. I agree with his sentiment that it's not a case of everyone trading in their Land Rovers for Toyota Prius'. It's about finding ways of removing the journey all together. It's not about everybody buying greener powertools, it's about removing the need to buy the tools in the first place. We can't just keep pushing the green thing on people with out delivering real substance. It is value through innovation that will drive this market long term.

So, summing up probably the world's longest blog post.

Complexity but lot's of opportunity for positive change if we're really creative.

Your name on toast

Thanks to Guerrilla Innovation for pointing to this. I'm toying with the idea of buying a slice.

Predictions for 2007

Russell Davis writes in his campaign column:

"Green and ethical issues will move to the fore for brands. Corporate social responsibilty will stop being an under-funded department and start being an area your customers care about and a potential differentiator for your business. The reality of global warming is permeating the public consciousness and will impact buying decisions. Combined with relative affluence and an over-supply of brands with few meaningful distinctions between them, poeple are bound to start making choices based on perceived ethical credentials"

You can read the entire article by clicking on the image.

I fully agree. I think we'll see the CSR and marketing departments move ever closer over time as consumers (people) start to make choices based on how a company behaves. Shouldn't the people who make descisions about the way an organisation communicates be close to the people who make descisions about how the organisation conducts itself? Maybe they should be the same people?

The celebrity face of charity

The Guardian published this interesting article written by Lord David Puttnam on celebrities and their relationships with charity.