Finally Contract Advertising India did something I'm proud off. They finally realised the potential of Green Initiative and where it can take their brands. JK Tyre's Soles with Souls is one such initiative. A project well done and worth mentioning at every global forum.
It is not just about recycling and meaningful recycling. Shoes made with waste tyres. Collaboration with the Footwear Design and Development Institute of India, young footwear designers and creating objects of desire from scrap tyres. Amazing.
Here is Future.ly. They are mapping global innovations from everywhere. Great initiative. If you're an innovation freak and wanting to find out what cool things happening around the world in sustainability, social causes, CSR, Green projects etc., Future.ly is the place to be in. Good work guys. Cheers.
India's telecom policy is strange in many ways. Though the govt. has good intentions but the way policies are formed, implemented and executed are rather chaotic and anarchic. A lot has has been written and said about the recent telecom scams that rocked the Parliament, the nexus between ministers, bureaucrats, corporates and other lobbyists. The spectrum allocations and pricing, the corruption and bribery etc. etc. A vicious circle that engulfs the good intentions into one deadly evil virus. Well let me not get into that side of the story.
3G has been implemented. Most telecom operators have rolled out their 3G services and purely focusing on speed and the mundane features that accompany 3G. Mobile internet, high speed browsing, high Speed mobile gaming, mobile TV, video calling etc. But sadly no one is talking about the great social change that 3G services can bring in India. No one is talking about why high speed Broadband shouldn't become the birthright of every Indian. Indeed it comes at a price just like education, eletricity, clean water, clean air. But real problem lies in handing over information and knowledge to the common man, to the poor people. Broadband is the gateway to information to people's life. Now this is where the core problem lies. When people become more knowledgeable from the information available on the internet, politicians will have a problem manipulating people and securing their vote banks. It's a power game here in India. Broadband will enable more transparency. Broadband will enable e-governance and along with it reforms in the banking and financial sector. Macro issues at a policy level.
Look at some of the figures and you'll be surprised:
Today, total internet subscriber base is approx 70mn compared to 740mn mobile subscriber base.
India is expected to have 120mn internet subscribers base by the end of 2012.
Penetration of laptops and notebooks will rise from 4.91mn at present to 9.87mn by 2013.
10% increase in India's internet penetration will lead to 1.4% increase in GDP.
So where can telecom and broadband service providers play a role for the betterment of society? How can broadband service providers really help elevate lives? Can they become the true change agents of Indian society and not just restrict themselves with few features as means to make profit?
Let me give you some examples:
In Dhanbad, the Old Age Pensioner's Payment and Monitoring System pilot project has brought about much required reforms in a system marred by graft, fraud, long delays and complete lack of transparency. No connectivity to beneficiaries is provided through kiosks, with biometric recognition and RFID cards. The pension is now credited directly into a post office or bank account and payments are dispersed within five days of the transfer of funds. In the past, getting pensions was a pain in the ass and not to mentioned the large sums of bribery involved.
In Chhattisgarh is a similar case where the public distribution system and the implementation of the NREGA is transforming lives in Jharkhand.
In Karnataka, Narayana Nethrayala rolled out the country's first tele-ophthalmology programme in infant blindness prevention in 2007, called Karnataka Internet Assisted Diagnosis of Retinopathy of Prematurity or KIDROP. Today KIDROP provides timely and affordable treatment by screening as many as 3400 infantts and successfully treating 328 kids.
Moving from healthcare to community development, Chanderiyaan or the Chanderi Weavers ICT Resource Centre is another case in point. Set up in 2009 in Chanderi, MP, the resource centre has demonstrated the extent to which internet and broadband can make a difference, affecting livelihoods directly. Eighty weavers retailing their products using Chanderiyaan have seen their incomes double. They have been trained in computer-aided textile design, apparel design and tailoring new patterns and designs have been developed, looms have been set up for poor weavers, an in-house showroom is functioning, an e-commerce website has been recently established and a digital design library has been set up too.
In Kerala, the tele-classroom initiative by Edyounet technologies aims at reaching out to college students in rural areas. Dealing with the problem of lack of interactive virtual classroom training in tier 2 and 3 cities, the programme is a network of digital classrooms equipped with LCD TV's, computer and internet connectivity. Students can visually and verbally interact with teachers and can even write or type on the LCD screen. using high speed 1 Mbps pipe, the programme facilitates delivvery of lectures from 'education studios' in prominent cities that have no dearth of high quality faculty.
Unilever India's Project Shakti now reaches to more than 80,000 villages in India covering 15 states and providing employment to more than 25,000 women who are earning an average salaary of Rs. 10,000 per month.
Examples like these are plenty in India. Small, significant changes are indeed taking place and happening at the grassroot level. Real meaningful work is being carried out by unknown individuals. Pity the telecom and broadband service providers are busy in their pursuit of profit margins and market shares. What bothers me more is their inability to see competitive advantages beyond tariff plans and boring advertising. They could have made a big difference to society and building themselves as a social brand rising driving changes at the bottom of the pyramid. Driving these kind of changes for the betterment of society is not about ticking the CSR box or fulfilling their obligations as an organization. These changes help create long term value creation. It creates a sustainable source of revenue for them too. Alas, broadband providers don't think that way. Hope it changes for the good very soon.
I really like and believe in what Mr. Noam Kostucki (Co-founder of Seeducation) says at TEDx. It only reinforces my belief that the sole purpose of making profit is for doing good. Period. Exactly the same point I mentioned in my ATTICUS paper.
Well, watch out. Companies who still don't realize this simple fact is bound to have larger problems later. Do Good or Die.
Further to my ATTICUS 2010 paper called"Do Good or Die,"here's an interesting article on how Nestle is emphasizing on making profits from doing good.
Chief executives should not use shareholders' money for philanthropy, says Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who instead focuses the world's biggest food maker on making money by doing good. The growing corporate trend has been dubbed "creating shared value" and Nestle now publishes an annual progress report on goals such as increasing the nutritional value of products and reducing its use of water and quantity of greenhouse gas emissions.
Brabeck spoke about the concept at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday. He said Nestle concentrates its efforts on rural development, water and nutrition. "Creating shared value has a big attractiveness because it really takes into consideration the interests of both sides (business and society)," Brabeck told Reuters on Tuesday. "We have integrated this now into the purpose of our company.
"Philanthropy basically is doing good for no other reason that doing good," he said. "This you can do with your own money but I don't think you can use the money of your shareholders to do philanthropy, to do good."
Brabeck said creating shared value certainly had its challenges, such as dealing with issues like deforestation and child labor, a problem that Nestle was trying to address by providing education for the children. "If they have the access to good schooling, then the child labor as such if it is helping the fathers in the field and helping with the harvesting, I don't think this is a problem," he said. "The problem is when you use the children only for that and don't allow them to go to school."
Charitable contributions by corporations were valued at $14.1 billion in 2009, according to a Giving USA Foundation report researched by The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Two-thirds was cash and in-kind contributions from company budgets and the rest grants by corporate foundations.
Five years ago Brabeck said he stunned global and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos when he declared that corporations did not need to give back because they had not stolen anything from the world. "I was just shocked that in a very short period everybody started to say, 'Yes, I agree we have to give back to society,' and I was thinking, 'Well, we're creating value for society,'" he said. "If you have to give back it means you have taken something that doesn't belong to you."
Since then Nestle has established a Creating Shared Value Advisory Board, which includes Michael Porter of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, who is responsible for the creating share value concept. Brabeck said there are 600,000 small poor farmers around the world who work exclusively for Nestle and the company has helped them produce higher yields and quality, increase their income, reduce their environmental impact and boost Nestle's reliable supply of good coffee.
Most of Nestle's 443 factories are in rural areas and more than half are in poor countries. Nestle said it was working to provide skills training, clean drinking water for communities, literacy and numeracy programs, and infrastructure, among other things.
"It was always difficult to justify the spending of an important amount of money when you had this old concept of corporate social responsibility," he said. "Should the company get into a nonprofit situation and do it as a business purpose? I don't think my shareholders have given me money to do this."
This is my second attempt at writing another ATTICUS paper. Do Good or Die is an attempt at understanding the paradigm shift from branding to service. The shift from making profits to being ethical and doing good to society and people. This paper explores how Return on Investment is making way for Return on Involvement. How Social Media and Social Responsibility is changing the way brands are marketed and its future impact on Earth and people living on the planet. How Social Media and Social Responsibility will help brands become more acceptable to people and society. It also explains how Sustainability will become the core focus of brand marketing in an era of increased globalization.
HELLO. HELLO. I am back. Had wonderful time doing whatever I was doing. And finally I have some free time, so I thought I might as well rant about few things:
Tony the tiger, Pug the dog and now Stripey the cub....
HUTCH had a pug. They gave up the Pug to get ZooZoo as VODAFONE. Pug left the market unplugged, "Stripey, the Cub" is filling it up now. Animals have the power to attract indeed people, don't they. Wonder why advertisers don't think about it much. Long back I did write about brands with animal mascots. :)
Anyways. I started thinking, crap like always :) What if:
1. Are we about to see a whole range of animals being adapted by brands now?
2. Did "AIRCEL" get influenced by Shiv Sena's symbol Tiger.
3. Will WWF help sell more mobile phones?
4. How can AIRCEL leverage 'Stripey, the Cub'?
5. What if, AIRTEL adapted "Don, the Donkey" as part of their reaching the destitute (read masses) plans?
6. Does Aishwarya Rai Bachchan have a pet pussy? Will IDEA ever make it their brand mascot?
7. Will DOCOMO ever manage to make our national bird The PeaCock, dance to its tune?
Anyways matter of fact is brands need stories to survive. Animals make wonderful stories. Aircel is doing and applying the classical ways of creating buzz.
However, the bigger story lies in how they are slowly integrating CSR as part of their brand building measures. IDEA from socially responsible to environmentally responsible, now AIRCEL embracing similar activities, AIRTEL taking up INNOVATION FUND. Change takes time but its happening.
Don't laugh, when I say, "Straight from Paris to Powai." Ok, pooR_Planner is in your city now. B@$%&*#$. :)
Yes. Moved to Mumbai. Thought will update all of you those who still follow this crap site. I'll be in this on-off mode for quite some more time I guess. Actually enjoying it. So I'l be gone again very soon. Don't know when you'll hear from me next.
Spent the last two months in the hills of Himachal and Uttarkhand. Had a severe fall. At about 8000 feet trying to manage a bend. Spent twenty day in the hospital fixing my broken bones and wounded face. Feel much better now thinking, 'Fuck, I survived yet again!' Trust me, you can't capture that feeling in words. Its like this ... Boom... Black... I'm fucking alive... Check yourself in the mirror... Shit its bleeding bad... Wash...Sit down... Call ambulance... Start shivering... Black again!!!
Anyways. So that's about it.
Finally, I thought I'll start writing again for few days, which may or may not make sense.
So here's what I think makes sense.
I'm impressed by the guy in this video. He is a taxi driver and he's promoting himself as a tour guide too. All at a very nominal price and service charge. Clear proposition
He has identified the right media for the right target audience with the right message. Clear delivery channel. Why - Because foreign tourist generally research more about places they're about to visit using the internet.
And don't laugh at his ascent, or english grammer. That's not his mother tongue so excuse him the embarassement. At least he got balls, give him credit.
Clear target audience - The foreign tourists visit North India. (He doesnt know about adsense, tags, technorati but knows what he has on offering)
His difference/USP - As an individual he can give better personalised service than others, read tour operators.
End Result - Bang on communication. 23k hits. Great Comments. And am sure, chances are he's getting lots of mail in his inbox. Anyways.
The bigger point is, I actually met one of his kind this time in the hills, the guy who drove us through those treachrous mountainous roads. At 52 yrs, he was desperate to crack the internet code in his life, because his other friends are earning more using it. But I think he was suffering from that initial media phobia or fear of not being knowledgeable about the mechanism of this media. I suggested him the same solution that Devesh Misra did, without having the knowledge that someone has already done what I suggested. So when I later checked out myself and found this video, I was little disappointed with having the feeling of not being original but I was atleast happy knowing the fact, the idea works since it seems to be working for someone.
Having said all the above, here's the final TISSUE IDEA. Hang on! Listen, you better send me the cheque before you use it to win your next big pitch and become famous. Cocks. You wont pay me neither ways. Like the the one I wrote here years back and how Wal-Mart India is using it today. WHERE'S MY bloody CHEQUE??? Fine, be good and send me a box of chocolate at least. $#@%@ :) ;)
Fine, fine. Here's the TISSUE IDEA: 1. Find out the number of person available or willing to render these personalised services. 2. Ask a brand (e.g. Lonely Planet, Google Maps, Trip Advisor, Samsonite, Patagonia) to sponsor him. 3. Train him the basics of being a honest, helpful, highly professional tour guide and accrediting him with a certificate of merit 4. Once a trained Tour Guides, they promote the brands and becomes voice person of the brand 5. By doing this simple excercise, those poor drivers become self sufficient, which is the CSR angle you can play as a brand too. F*&^%$# But more importantly they can become a new model of revenue steam for your company. To know this part of the story, you gotta write to me. Ha.
What is the new Coca Cola Corporate Campaign launched this week supposed to mean? Are they trying to cover their arse over the pesticide issue? Are they trying to show they are a Responsible Corporate Citizen of India? Or is it that McCann suddenly decided to give a twist to the successful "Happiness Factory" and Indianize it with "Little Drops of Joy." Why a Corporate Campaign for gawd's sake?
