That’s A Wrap!
Thanks for visiting this blog, which was updated throughout the Summer of 2010 by the class participants of the Global Marketing In the Social Media Era communications course at Georgetown University.
This blog will remain live as an archive, but we’re done posting and there won’t be any new posts on this blog moving forward. Stay tuned for another summer of global thinking from students of this program starting in June of 2011.
What Matters?
A common thread I have seen throughout several speakers in today’s TED Conference is focused on “What Matters.” From business to personal, this question is prevalent.
Today’s first speaker, Rory Sutherland, identified that it is the small things that matter for business. He even suggested there be someone identified in organizations dubbed the Chief detail officer whose duty is to find the small things that can transform an everyday product/experience into something unique.
Rive said the often forgotten hour of 4 a.m. could have shaped history through a series of consequences.
Adam Sadowsky, talking about building OK Go music video ‘This too shall pass’, went on to say “the small stuff stinks,” but it is important.
But, the one who “hit the nail on the head” was Chip Conley. Looking deeply into why certain businesses could maintain success, specifically through the lows of the dot-com burst, Conley came up with a Maslow-like hierarchal business model based on happiness.
Sticking on the small things, Conley traveled to Bhutan in 1972, to delve more into his philosophy. Bhutan, a small country nestled between surging powers China and India, has awaken interest in 40 countries to look at measuring happiness versus traditional Gross National Product.
Conley summarized his presentation by saying that focusing on a habitat for happiness can be the basis for a good business model. Inspired employees + profits = success.
In today’s age of social media, amplifying your inspired employees has been a big success for many companies. Encouraging employees to talk about their work environment, products, e.g. can be the difference between a mediocre company and one that is admired and respected. By counting on your people, instead of counting on the numbers, the people can take care of the latter.
Video uploads, tweets, Facebook posts, personal blogs are all ways inspired empolyees have brought their companies to the forefront of their industries.
From my personal point-of-view, Conley is absolutely right. We need to focus more on wanting what we have rather than focusing on what we want.
Creating a 21st Century Business
Rory Sutherland, Dan Pink and Johanna Blakely are three TED speakers make us question our assumptions on what makes a successful business today.
Sweat the small stuff. According to Rory Sutherland, companies nowadays do the big stuff magnificently well, the small stuff are done magnificently badly because the people who are in charge of doing the small stuff are preoccupied. However, we should look at the things that do not cost a lot of money but has a big effect on our business. Sutherland suggest a Chief Detail Officer, ministry of details to
Use intrinsic motivation for results. According to Dan Pink, rewards narrow our focus and concentrate our mind–works for straightforward problems, clear set of rules. But not for complex problem, “if then rewards” don’t work. Providing employees autonomy, mastery and purpose is what would motivate today’s employees.
Openess and sharing fosters creativity and innovation. Johanna Blakley talked about how not having copyright protection actually improves creativity and innovation.
These ideas are great for building the 21st century business.
Sadowsky’s Metaphor for Life
Adam Sadowsky, an entrepreneur and former actor, spoke on TED TV about his experience in creating the ever-complicated contraption in the band Ok Go’s music video, “This Too Shall Pass.”
He, along with his Syyn Labs team, created the impressive Rube Goldberg Machine, which (in his words) is an “over-engineered complicated machinery designed to accomplish a simple task.” Think “Beauty and the Beast” and the wood-chopping machine that Belle’s father, Maurice, traveled through the woods to enter into the contest at the fair.
Sadowsky’s machine aimed to do a few things, with the following guidelines: No magic; Band integration; Machine action should follow song feeling; Make use of space (10k square foot warehouse); Messy; Machine starts the music, synched to the rhythm, hit specific beats, and ends precisely on time; and (most importantly) … All in one shot!
It took about 85 takes to shoot the video – only 3 of which were successful. Many things were destroyed in creating this music video (e.g., pianos, televisions, and even shoes). I especially enjoyed Sadowsky’s metaphor between the creation of this music video with LIFE LESSONS:
- Small stuff stinks – but we need to start/focus on it. I can’t count the number of times I found myself complaining or stressing about the small things in life… then quickly caught myself and focused on overall perspective and the positive.
- Planning is very important. I’m usually good about this, but usually find myself improvising and doing things very spontaneously.
- Put reliable stuff last. In the video, Sadowsky put the trivial lego toy car first, and the real car last. In life, I try to generally get the more difficult tasks out of the way earlier in the day or week so I’m not stuck stressing out by the end.
- Life can be messy. Stress. Finances. Family. Death. Life is messy just like the many things we experience within it.
- Many difficult moments in building the machine. Our lives are a series of difficult (and beautiful) moments.
- This too shall pass. One of my favorite quotes. Great to remind myself of this when going through tough times.
One final thing that Sadowsky forgot to mention is that, much like the music video, we only have one chance at life. Let’s make the most of today in our personal and professional lives! 
Inspire & Motivate Employees By Prioritizing Happiness
At the Ted Live Event, Chip Conley argued that companies should prioritize happiness over making money. Similarly, Dan Pink argued that the “if-then” system of motivating employees does not work, rather, giving them autonomy, mastery, and purpose does. And, numerous studies, such as this HP one, shows that all three of those things in some way contributes to creating a happy employee. Happiness is global so any company, entity, or organization can apply this.
TED Talks: Chip Conley discusses personal happiness
This morning’s TED Talks discussion was the best I’ve heard, yet. Chip Conley did an amazing job discussing what makes people happy by asking hard questions people often overlook during the busyness of life. How do you feel about the time you spend each day? How does your job make you feel? What is your emotional equation?
After Chip’s discussion, I began to think about how I spend my time. In a normal week, I spend most of my time at work (like most people). I also spend a significant amount of time attending class, doing homework, commuting to work and class, spending time with friends and family, and also sleeping (if I’m lucky… ha). There are only 24 hours in a day… am I spending them in a way that makes me happy?
Chip opened his discussion by painting a picture of an immigrant woman (a personal friend and employee at his hotel) who was completely happy cleaning toilets for a living. He said it wasn’t that she liked to clean toilets, but she liked helping people who were “far away from home”, just like she was when she moved to the United States. At the end of the day, her janitorial job—a job which many would discredit as describe as terrible and the worst job ever—made her happy.
How does this apply to me? In my job, am I doing something that contributes to my overall happiness, or am I doing something to merely pay the bills? When I leave work at the end of the day, do I have a sense of overall happiness and fulfillment? Of am I am just happy that the work day is finally over?
Are you truly happy in your job? For motivation and emotional insights, I would recommend you watch Chip Conley’s TED Talk discussion. In addition, I would also suggest reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion.
Dan Pink shares the his new model for workplace productivity
Dan Pink spoke at last years TED live event in London and revealed what many companies are still not focused on and why they are not as productive as they could be, the reason is essentially the misinformation of how to motivate employees to do good and productive work.
What Dan is able to pull from his science and business comparison is the obvious reality that there is no correlation between what science knows and what business does, what science knows through his candle model example which was created by scientist Karl Dunker in 1945, is that the performance rate of people fell dramatically when they were incentivized by money and other “motivators” to work. The reality is that the reward system that is currently in place is not effective at all, in fact it is the negater to successful employee work production, However companies still have the same model in place at many companies who believe offering these rewards is what will motivate employees to perform. This is not the case and Dan gives us the new business model that will contribute to effective employee work performance by giving them the following three tools:
1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose
By giving these opportunities to employees you create more of an incentive for people to care and want to do better. He gives the meaning of each and chooses to focus his “case” (as he calls it) on the first, autonomy, he gives the example of companies that allow their employees to have a level of autonomy in their work schedule and in creativity such as Google who allows employees use 20 percent of their time to be creative and out of this came Gmail and blogger – tools that are highly used now because the company was able to get past a restricted framework for how their employees work.
What Dan stresses is that companies already know this, however they feel restricted to the rule based on an old model of thinking, but the drive to do things because they matter will, “doing this will strengthen business, solve the candle problem and even change the world”
Does Copying Lead to Creativity?
Nobody could claim I am any kind of fashionista. However, the culture in the fashion world, as explained by Johanna Blakley, of copying (clothing can’t be copyrighted) has an interesting application to social media strategy. This is true for both the trend follower and the trend leader.
The idea of social media campaigns is relatively new in the history of marketing. Because of this, it is fairly easy, still, to create something unique. For trend followers, this is problematic. If you are trying to enter into social media marketing, there just aren’t all that many really successful case studies to copy. But there certainly are a few, which means that ultimately, many companies are trying to do the same kinds of things. It isn’t that surprising that companies have tried to follow in the footsteps of Old Spice by creating their own humorous personas, which varying degress of success. Cisco comes to mind as a company that tried to design a similar campaign, but came up well short.
Although there are a relatively small number of great success stories, most, if not all, social media tools have been notably used in one way or another. This means that it is no longer possible to break new ground with a social media campaign using a new tool. However, since like the fashion industry, marketing has the ability to operate in a type of Zoolander-esque “walk off” (rules described by David Bowie as first model walks, second model walks and elaborates), new campaigns can find new space by elaborating or innovating.
This is how we end up with successful campaigns like this one by Ikea, that offered free products to Facebook users that were the first to tag a product in a showroom picture posted on Ikea’s Facebook page. Facebook campaigns are no longer original, but by locating a function of Facebook to take advantage of, in a way that hadn’t been done before, Ikea found a way to be creative and innovative that paid off for them.
Much like the fashion industry, it is this kind of behavior and culture that will continue to lead to our most interesting successes in the future.
How did Adam Sadowsky Do That?
Adam Sadowsky's Rube Goldberg machine featured in OK Go's music video.
Adam Sadowsky, an American entrepreneur joined forces with Chicago-born band OK Go to create a machine that would be featured in the band’s video, “This Too Shall Pass.”
Sadowsky spoke to an audience at the TED conference about the building of this machine that has been seen by more than 50 million people on Youtube. OK Go has a history of utilizing machines in video, including treadmills, and upped the ante big time for this video. Sadowsky would create a Rube Goldberg machine with very specific guidelines. (To clarify, a Rube Goldberg machine is ” an over enginerred machine that performs a simple task.”) Sadowsky was assigned a difficult task. He was given the 10 Commandements, or list of requiriements, for the machine that would featured in the video. Among the stringent list of requirements, the machine would have to incorporate “band integration” and “action should follow song feeling.” The machine itself would start the music and finish in sync with the song’s end.
It took 85 takes before the machine-song synergy was successful. Among technical elements, Sadowsky used what he had to on many occasions, including the high heel of someone who had left her shoe in the studio. Sadowsky offers some advice. “Put reliable stuff last.” And after all of the complications, takes and retakes, he stated, “This too shall pass.”
OK Go made an appearance via in after his speech.
You can follow Sadowsky at http://twitter.com/asadowsky and view his web page at http://www.sadowsky.net.
Business infrastructures and the science behind cheating
Dan Ariely’s presentation makes us question established models in our economy. We were taught that cheating is a cost-benefit analysis. Cheaters look at the probability of being caught, what the punishment you’ll get and what benefits you get by cheating.
Experiments showed that it wasn’t that a few people cheated a lot, but a lot of people cheated a little bit. Even if the probability of being caught goes up or down, people cheat just a little bit. Plus, Ariely’s research showed that people want to do well and would only cheat up to the point when they’ll still feel good about themselves, which he calls the Personal Fudge Factor. His research showed that there are three factors that affect our Personal Fudge Factor.
- Morality – we cheat less when we are forced to think about our morality. This manifested itself when people were asked to recall the Ten Commandments. This was also reflected when people were asked to sign a honor code and cheated less.
- Money – the closer the items are to monetary form, the less people cheat. Ariely points out, it’s easier for people to take a pencil home from work than take 10 cents from the company’s petty cash.
- Part of group – people cheat more when they see people in their group cheat. People are reminded of morality when they see outsiders (people they do not relate to or are seen as opposite to them) cheat, but find it easier to cheat when they see peers (people like them) do the same.
How does this relate to business? Items we’re trading in the stock market are far removed from money by calling them stock, stock options, derivatives, etc. Our stock markets and businesses are a social environment. When people at Enron, for example see peers around them cheating, it makes it acceptable behavior. As Ariely notes, many of these intuitions are wrong in our lives. We should question our assumptions not just in our business environment, but in our schools, our government institutions and the societal infrastructures we’ve built.
It really matters…According to whom?
During the TED event, that the Georgetown University students are taking part of, Rory Sutherland and Dan Pink had similar points of views; just different takes on them. Both speakers talked about how separated the government and businesses are removed from what really matters.
Sutherland specifically spoke on how big businesses with big budgets want to solve simple problems with complex, expensive solutions; ignoring the simple, less expensive one that is in our face. The reason, according to Sutherland, for this is because the government creates solutions that they think the people want, rather than what they really want; thus them being removed from what really matters. The government and businesses are missing what really matter to people and are developing their own solutions to it.
Pink focused his speech around rewards. Saying that companies believe that rewards make people work better because they are being incentivized, when the converse is actually true. Pink had a few incentive tests performed by groups of students from MIT, London School of Economics, and a couple of top performing schools, where students were given a task to complete, each with a certain level of reward for each level of task. So there was an easy task with a simple reward, a medium level task with a medium sized incentive, and a harder task with a greater reward. As the student approached the higher level task with the higher reward, the worse the student’s performance. Pink stated that rewards work best for simple solutions where the focus is narrowed.
For the more complex problem, rewards narrow our focus so much that we can’t see the solution, because we are looking in a silo when the solution is outside of that narrow focus. Companies are removed from what really matter because they think that rewards matters most to employees in order to get them to perform better. Pink said that if employers want engagement, then self-direction is better. He suggested that companies take money off the table and be autonomous. He gave examples of Google and an Australian company that believes in this practice – google calls it 20 percent of the time and the Australian company calls it FedEx days. Both companies give their engineers a day to work on an idea that is completely irrelevant to their day-to-day duties. He went on to say that some of the best ideas have come from these autonomous days/ time that they give their employees.
For companies and governments around the world, look at what really matters. Stop thinking you know what works best without talking to the people that you are about to make decisions for; they know best. Keep solutions simple, even if you have big budgets; some of the best solutions are simple. And keep your employees creative and engaged by letting them do tasks via autonomy; your best ideas may come from these days. What do you have to lose?
Happiness As A Global Marketing Metric
At the Ted Event, an American hotelier named Chip Conley spoke about the well-known concept of “Joie de Vivre”. Conley argues that all types of leaders should apply the concept of joie de vivre by prioritizing the intangible thing called happiness over the very tangible thing like the bottom line. I happen to agree with him.
Too often businesses are only primarily focused on the bottom line and in the process of pursuing what’s going to make that bottom line the best, they forget about the happiness of the people whose lives they affect, whether those people be employees, customers, or the general public.Conley recounted the following story:
In 1987, he purchased his first hotel and there was a maid named Vivian already in employment there. Conley notice that she always seemed extremely happy with her lot in life and with her job—she had a certain joie de vivre. He wondered why someone would enjoy cleaning toilets. But, later he found that it wasn’t that Vivian enjoyed cleaning toilets—rather, she enjoyed her role in the lives of the hotel guests…what gave her inspiration and meaning (that joie de vivre)was the fact that she was taking care of people who were far away from home.
Vivian had an emotional connection to her job, to the company. This is the same joie de vivre that companies should aim to inspire within their employees and customers around the world. We are all humans and happiness is an emotion that we all seek. That is the beauty of companies aiming to inspire this intangible feeling, this joie de vivre—happiness is appreciated by everyone no matter what country you are operating in—and will be welcomed by customers and employees alike. Ultimately, this is what will keep them contributing to the bottom line as a customer or an employee.
Start counting happiness today!
The Importance of Connection and Disconnection
Connecting the Dots in Business Can Lead to Success
A poet by the name of Rives gave a TED talk on the random relevance of 4am. In his words, “4am gets a lot of bad press… it’s a time of inconveniences, mischief…. It’s a time for autopsies and for bombings.” He gives many examples of the many songs that reference 4am, Alberto GioCametti’s surrealist sculpture “The Palace at 4 in the Morning,” Bill Clinton’s work starting at 4am on inauguration day, a quote from Homer Simpson, etc. And in the midst of all of these random instances of 4am, he is able to find a connection between many of them. And no, they’re not coincidences. I personally connect with Rives in that I’m a poet myself, and I enjoyed his lyrical method of making a connection with things that would normally be disconnected.
Dan Pink, on the other spectrum, focuses on the disconnect between science and business. In his words, “Rewards by nature narrow our focus and restricts our possibility.” He goes on to say that “too many organizations are making their decisions based on assumptions that are outdated and rooted in folklore rather than science.” Ultimately, intrinsic motivation is far more effective than extrinsic motivation and therefore yields more results and strengthens businesses. I relate with Pink’s talk in that I’ve far too many times witnessed (and sometimes was guilty of) using monetary (extrinsic) motivators to force myself in accomplishing something. Using Pink’s ROWE method (Results Oriented Work Environment) – where there aren’t any schedules and meetings are optional – could help many organizations be more productive and help their employees be more satisfied.
A good communicator will take elements of both Rive’s and Pink’s talks. Finding the connections and similarities between things, and finding the disconnection and differences between things, can ultimately connect dots and help organizations run their businesses more effectively. Both methods will help communicators better their work environment, their colleagues, and ultimately – themselves.
Dan Airely on Irrational Behavior…From Micro to Macro
Duke University Professor Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely, Duke University Professor of behavioral economics spoke at the TED Conference about the topic predictable irrationality. Ariely’s fascination with irrational behavior started as a child when he was burned badly and recovered for several years in the hospital. He states, “If you spend time in hospitals, you will see many types of irrationality.”
He began to analyze how nurses took of his burn bandages. What was the right approach? Should the nurses remove the bandages slowly or fast, with high intensity? Airely explained that nurses thought that ripping the bandage quickly was the right way. Airely would try to reason with his nurses. He asked for the removal process to be slower, perhaps two hours long rather than one hour, yielding less intensity.
The nurses explained that he should not interfere with their bandage removal process. Three years after his stay in the hospital, he realized that if you have a question, one can can examine that question thoroughly and learn about the world. This study was a microcosm of a bigger social issue. The social issues were pervasive in many areas including politics, policy, healthcare, and Wall Street. Ariely used the bandage situation as an example of a microcosm of a larger issue. He asked more people what option they would choose when removing the bandage. He found that nurses were wrong, they had good intentions. He learned that “We don’t encode duration verse intensity.” Turns out, irrationality is rampant.
What is Airely’s big lesson? “We have to test intuitions. When we test, we can do better.”
Follow Dan Ariely at http://twitter.com/danariely and view his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/predictablyirrational.
Changing the World by Changing Motivation
As a one time coach and someone who has taken an interest in motivational psychology over the years, I’ve learned a thing or two about motivation. Trying to motivate by rewards and punishment is wildly ineffective. Rewards only satisfy, and when you’re satisfied you’re lazy. On the other hand, punishment does the opposite, but also has an undesired result. With each punishment, you desensitize and lead to ever-increasing intensity of consequences. I don’t know much about training a horse, but if you feed it very well after a successful race, or are forced to use the whip strongly with each loss, your horse is either going to get fat or sore, and neither fat nor sore horses are going to win a lot of races.
Dan Pink focused on this fact at TED World Conference in Oxford. In my analogy, the horse you want, is the horse that loves racing and loves to win. The same is true of your employees. If you have a company made up of people who are working simply to earn money or get to a certain job level, they likely will only be driven until they reach that threshold that they’ve defined for themselves. Once they get paid on their level of expectation, they lose their hunger for success and their performance drops. What’s more, they aren’t motivated to work outside of their duties and responsibilities, which is the kind of behavior that can lead to great successes in business.
Pink talked about an alternative solution, sometimes incorrectly labeled utopian (presumably unreachable), and offered some sound evidence to support it. Google’s 20 percent program, which allows employees to spend 20 percent of their time working on anything they would like, has resulted in the creation of nearly half of the products and services they provide each year. Obviously, Google’s employees are compensated well and operate in a highly regarded work environment, which may influence workers’ desire to achieve.
What if the material reward is removed completely? The answer is Wikipedia. Wikipedia, run and maintained by Wikipedians receiving no compensation, no real accolades, just the satisfaction in creating something. In the end, Wikipedia was able to outlast competitors like Encarta, armed with highly-paid employees, because people who contribute to Wikipedia have the intrinsic motivation that comes with knowing that they are creating something.
Of course, the problem with Dan Pink’s solution of giving workers the autonomy to succeed under their own guidance is that you have to be able to identify intrinsically motivated employees. I think ultimately, executives are nervous about taking the leap to groom a workforce filled with these ideal workers. It feels safer to reward the old-fashioned way even though it’s proven to be less successful. Hopefully more cases like Google and Wikipedia gain visibility so that these more effective business practices can gain traction.
Start Doing What it Matters
Rory Sutherland VP of Ogilvy, spoke at Ted Live event and he makes a point that I cannot stop thinking and you should start thinking about that as well “business and governments are disconnect with what matters to people.”
When an organization with power has a problem to solve they immediately start thinking that spending a big amount of money will resolve their problem and that is a big illusion because people are interest in solutions that will solve their problem not something they do not really need.
Business and Government do not need a big budget to create solutions. With no budget its possible to achieve success. We do not need more “STUFF” keep simple and to the point!
The Small Stuff Matters Most
Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy VP UK, spoke at the TED event talking about how corporations and governments, who have big budgets, like to spend it even when a small, simple solution is best. When companies try to solve simple problems, they think too large, ignoring the answer that is right in front of their face. So for those big budget companies out there, stop ignoring the small, simple solutions – listen to what people really want, not what you think they want. Save some of the money in your budget and create a simple, effective solution; sometimes the big, more expensive solution is less effective than the simple, cost-effective solution.
The Tiny Things Matter
Listening to lead speaker at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, here in London. First speaker is Ogilvy VP UK, Rory Sutherland.
Every corporation should have a Chief Detail Officer. By redesigning things to easy, simple ways can propel people and businesses forward.
Examples of small things that matter:
-Virgin Atlantic Upper Class: items most people take away are labeled “Stolen from Virgin Atlantic Upper Class.”
-Garage Elevator: YOU get to choose the musak.
The small things, those that are unique, authentic, and talkable make the BIG difference.
Taking the Notting Hill Carnival to the Next Level
During my last big Euro vacation in the Summer of 2007, my friend and I traveled two weeks to London and all over Italy. During our stay in London, my uncle (a lifetime UK resident who’s always very in tune with the best ‘happenings’ in town) took us to the annual Notting Hill Carnival – a cultural costume and entertainment extravaganza that occurs during UK’s annual Bank Holiday in late August. Having attracted up to 2 million people in the past, the Notting Hill Carnival is the second largest street festival in the world. As described on their Facebook Like page, it is “a dazzling display of both social solidarity and artistic expression.” Originating in 1966, the carnival is led by citizens of Trinidad and Tobego. Its primary mission was to raise awareness during a rough state of race relations at the time, and eventually inherited more of a Caribbean feel.
In addition to learning this history, I will never forget the vibrant colors and invigorating sounds that took over me as I stepped to the street-side and witnessed the ongoing parade during day 1 of 2. I felt so fortunate to have stumbled upon this opportunity to be a part of something so much greater than myself. The combination of the history and the excitement made me realize the importance and impact that this event had on the communities in which it occurred (Notting Hill; Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) as well as London as a whole.
Currently, the carnival does not have much of an online presence. Their Twitter page has a mere 19 followers and their Facebook site has about 6,500 fans. These are perplexing statistics seeing that the carnival attracts an average of 1 million people yearly.
Why not take the carnival further into the virtual space?
For many global and cultural enthusiasts, travel can sometimes be prevented to a certain degree by financial and time constraints. Additionally, the Notting Hill Carnival in particular isn’t quite well known (I’ve asked a few of my close friends and family if they’ve ever heard of it; 6 out of 7 of them said ‘no’). So the main goals of getting the word out through social media would be to:
1. Create awareness of the festival worldwide, giving interested audience an experience without being physically present, and
2. Increase crowd excitement and attendance (since numbers have gone down in recent years).
The caution with accomplishing the second goal is the risk of increasing violence that has also gone up in recent years. Apart from other security measures that authorities made last year, social media can also be used as a safety tool. Which brings me to a third goal:
3. Minimize violence by enabling carnival attendees to stay connected and act as safety “eyes” during the festivities.
In order to accomplish these goals, the carnival organizers need to stay consistently active online, year-round. Their current efforts seem to be dwindling, and only focusing on the actual event itself. Keeping an ongoing conversation (through videos, blogging, and even costume contests) will not only create excitement leading up to the event, but keep the event going strong long after it is over.
These steps would help the Notting Hill Carnival reach an ultimate goal of hosting a successful, safe, and popular event – not only locally, but also globally!
UK Organic foods marketplace: Proactively working to increase sales and improve reputation
Everyone likes fresh, fruits, vegetables, and meats? Of course, who doesn’t? As in the United States, many foreign countries have began to promote the organic marketplace, branding the industry as fresh, safe, and more flavorful. Over the past several years, the United Kingdom, through support from government, nonprofits and the private industry has began to proactively promote this immerging market through many branded public relations and educational campaigns—and social media and user-generated content have been on the forefront of all the efforts. In the UK, the industry has also turned to online shopping for organics to turn the industry from “niche” to norm.
The European Union and the Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission set out to rebrand the organic industry by creating a new logo to be placed on all organic foods. To create the new logo, they targeted the general public by seeking submissions for new ideas via a campaign with a 6,000 euro reward. Towards the end of the competition, they had over 3,400 submissions and worked to narrow the pool by allowing people to vote on their favorite logo. At the end, they had three finalists and picked a winner. Aside from the cash reward, people had an incentive to participate because the winning logo would be used on organics within the EU.
“From July 2010 the EU organic logo is obligatory for all organic pre-packaged food products within the European Union. It is also possible to use the logo on a voluntary basis for non pre-packaged organic goods produced within the EU or any organic products imported from third countries.”
Also, in addition to the overall re-branding initiative within the European Union, the United Kingdom also set out to brand the organic industry within the country.
“There is lots of confusion around the word organic and what it means. Research shows that people value naturalness but don’t link this with organic. Our communication strategy will not only build consumer understanding but will also drive the organic sector as a whole.”
As part of the campaign, the UK Organic Trade Board created a branded website, Twitter account and Facebook page to engage followers and those interested in organics within the UK—an initiative that is part of the overall EU organic branding campaign. Another facet of the overall, integrated public relations campaign, Organic UK also sought public opinion and advocacy to promote the industry by allowing users to “sign” a petition and also donate money to the cause.
“The campaign’s vision is that, following the three year initiative, there will be a 15% increase in the volume of organic sales in the UK, per annum.
“The target audience for the campaign will be the main shopper – women – aged between 25 and 54 as this sector of the population has the greatest potential for buying more organic products. Six million women in Britain are in this category.”
Why this campaign works
This campaign—from both the European Union and United Kingdom vantages— is great for four reasons.
- It is fully integrated and utilizes hierarchy, partnerships, integration to the fullest extent. The United Kingdom’s campaign to build brand awareness and increase sales fits into the overall branding campaign implemented by the European Union.
- User-generated content promotes transparency and connects multiple audiences to successfully build trust amongst consumers. I really like how the European Union turned to the consumer base to look for new logo ideas, allowing them to be part of the overall process.
- The campaign was strategic-driven and was organized from day one. The European Union hired a public relations agency to research the topic and build an integrated campaign (the actual plan is even posted online), promoting the industry across borders. As part of the overall organic campaign, the European Union provides funding for countries to promote country-specific organic campaigns.
- In addition to the plan, the branding materials are posted online allowing all involved parties to use the same branded materials to maintain brand identity. All that required to use the logo on their products are also subject to apply to EU organic farming regulations, certifications, and inspections.
For these four reasons the campaign works, and I truly believe that other countries can learn a lot about successfully implementing integrated social media and user-generated content campaigns that span across borders.
