Definitions of English words often change quite rapidly these days. In the not-too-distant past the definition of words was often set in concrete. Today the meaning can change in the blink of an eye. With new and faster ways to exchange ideas and with wider and more culturally, socially and educationally diverse groups connecting together - words are put back on the hard anvil of evolution and transformed into something new and more reflective of current life and living.
There is a growing significant movement happening global where consumers are asking businesses to look after the things they care about such as the environment and the less fortunate in society. The request is still mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it still signals we are in a time of great change. Consumers these days want their ‘toys’ but they don’t want the environment to be destroyed in the creation of these. They want cheap products but they do not want workers to be paid a pittance to create the cheap products.
There may not seem an answer to this complex puzzle and yet one actually exists. It exists in the reforging of a simple single word - GET. Today there is a new movement of people wanting to get but give at the same time and they are reforging its meaning into the word GIVE.
Every day automated email notices arrive in my inbox from Google Alerts for two keywords - BOGO and B1G1. I see all the new places these words are turning up on the Internet. Little by little these two words are gaining a their new meaning as more and more people take up the Buy One Give One cause.
The B1G1 and BOGO acronyms both stand for Buy One GET One free. You buy one and you get given an extra one for free.
If you look on Wikipedia you will find these definitions for BOGO (there isn’t a definition yet for B1G1 - there will be soon when I write one!):
* An acronym in the retail industry that stands for Buy One Get One. For example, you could say “Buy 1 DVD, Get 1 FREE!
* An acronym in slang British that stands for Britons Of Greek Origin or Greek Britons.
* Bogo, Cebu, a city in central Philippines.
* An alternate name for the Bilen ethnic group of Ethiopia or their language, Blin.
* Norway, a village in Norway.
* The mascot of the ITESM CEM.
* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
BOGO Lights - torches that give
There is an organisation in the USA called SunLight Solar founded by a gentleman called Mark Bent. He has created a special torch that not only is an amazing and robust solar-powered light; his company also gives a free torch to a family in need in developing nations for each one purchased. If you look on their website you will learn about their “BOGOlight”.
BOGOlight.com. - “The BoGo - our Buy one/Give one - program has successfully provided lights to many, many thousands of people in the developing world, changing lives because of your purchase and participation.”
Mark Bent has managed to flip the meaning of the BOGO acronym upside down. For Mark along with thousands of his customers, BOGO now means Buy One GIVE One. A light is given whenever one is sold. Now each sale supports people in remote parts of the world who don’t have the benefit of electricity. They can now tap into solar power support themselves.
There are many other well known and many less well know businesses doing Buy One Give One giving, or transaction-based giving as its becoming known. Some of the famous companies are OLPC - One-Laptop-Per-Child and TOM’S Shoes. Some of the less well-known ones (in the US at least) are based in Oceania and the UK - Earthstar Publishing, Maple Muesli, Blinds Couture, Figure 8 Body Chains, Sunsplash Homes, Honestly Women magazine and Thavibu Gallery based in Thailand are just a small handful of these special businesses that are leading the Buy One Give One movement.
There are many Buy One Give One businesses now uniting under the common brand banner of Buy1GIVE1 managed by a Singapore based social enterprise which is becoming the home of transaction-based giving. Any business in the world can now integrate Buy One Give One giving with ease. It’s like a ‘CSR plug-in’ allowing a business to instantaneously start giving from each and every sale, starting from just 1 cent. It’s also no longer about giving an equivalent product to someone else. Instead it is about contributing to a project that resonates with a company’s activity. For example a restaurant can feed a child, a television retailer can give a cataract blind person the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision), a magazine publisher can plant a tree every time they sell a subscription and a property developer can build a low-cost family home for those in need (Buy1BUILD1) - the list is simply endless.
Something special is happening these days as more and more people are switching onto giving and ‘citizen brands’ as a part of their everyday experience. The 2008 Edelman Goodpurpose global study of consumer attitudes reveal that almost seven in 10 (68%) consumers would choose to remain loyal to a brand during a recession if it supports a good cause, and 71% say that when they think about the economic downturn, they have either given the same or more time and money to good causes. This very same study highlighted some other major things as well like:
* 54% would promote a brand and its products if there was a good cause behind it.
* and 54% would champion a brand to promote a product if there was a good cause behind it.
* Consumers are now voicing a clear desire for marketers to associate their brands to social causes. 42% say that if two products or services were of a similar quality and price, commitment to a cause outranks factors like innovation, design and brand loyalty when selecting one brand over another.
Turning Getting into Giving
In the minds of consumers, Buy One GIVE One is expected to replace Buy One GET One as the new global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1 spreads. Certainly with the massive sales results and consumer demand shown for companies like BOGOlights, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and TOMS Shoes, this tide will continue to spread and grow.
I did a recent Google search to find the top 25 keywords associated with the keywords BOGO and B1G1. The results were interesting indeed seeing none of them contained the word Give. You can see the results below. It will be interested to repeat this experiment in 12 months time to see what changes. Consumers are now starting to drive significant change and despite them wanting to receive free gifts (as in traditional BOGO/B1G1), they equally want to help others and the environment. This feeling is validated by 2008’s Goodpurpose global study.
Keyword results:
Free, photography, blogging, discount, networking, African, boots, groups, music, dallas, togo themes, wallpapers, buy, applications, skins, values, coupon, gift, sharing, shopping, pics, join, prose
Transaction-based or transactional giving
Unlike traditional charity giving, Buy One Give One giving is transactional in that every time you buy something, you give something. In the case of SunNight Solar they happen to give a physical light for every light sold. However, in most cases, Buy1GIVE1 associated businesses give in a different way. At Buy1GIVE1, giving can start from just USD 1c contribution per sale and go up to thousands of dollars in the case of Buy1BUILD1. At 1cent almost every business in the world can afford to give from each sale especially when they know 100% contributed goes to the cause.
The actual amount given from each and every sale is not the point of focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. It is not about saying 10% is contributed or 5c from each sale - instead the focus is on the story and sharing the simple joy of giving. In the end, if you think that 1c is not a lot to contribute and is not likely to make much of a difference think again and consider the following.
Coffee consumption has spread globally and Brazil is by far the largest coffee producer in the world producing on average 28% of all coffee grown. In 2006 Brazil grew enough coffee to brew 216,400,000,000 (216 billion 400 million) espresso coffees! If we were to make this calculation across global production amounts then we get an amazing number for the daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 (2 billion 117 million) cups of coffee - wow! The figures are not easy to find but if we guessed that around 40% of the world’s coffee is purchased in coffee shops then we would find that 846 million 966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally - almost 900 million. This would equate to about’5 million cups in the US alone seeing they purchase around 21% of the world’s coffee.
If we considered the impact of the coffee industry alone taking up Buy1-Give1, imagine now that for every cup of coffee sold a child in a developing region like Sub-Sahara Africa received clean drinking water from a well and it only costing 1cent to do this. Surely any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a single cup of coffee. Imagine the different that this one action alone would make in the world.
Transactional giving is the story of the thousand-mile journey starting with that first single step. Digging a well costs a few thousand dollars so it’s a big barrier for communities in developing nations. However if you break the cost down it only takes the sale of a cup of coffee to give clean water to a single person for a day1. This is the power of transactional giving. It is like the compound interest of giving - a little turns into a lot very quickly.
So many companies are used to doing things on their own. Doing transactional giving is no different. A company can go out find a cause and start doing Buy One Give One giving. And yet they are missing the point when they do this. Buy1GIVE1 giving is about sharing the joy of giving and not trying to change the world. As soon as you step up and say you are going to change the world then the world will step up and challenge you. Within a heartbeat a company would experience the sharp scrutiny of the media inspecting their every move. And yet when a company steps up and says it is supporting what its customer want and joins with others in its industry to do that in a win-win way, the story is different. When companies choose to join together under a commonly recognised banner/brand they can have a powerful joint effect. The ripple that a single company creates is added to that of another and the ripple grows into a tidal wave that benefits so many. This is the power of giving and doing things together.
The final power of Buy One Give One transaction based giving is that everyone wins - the consumer wins - at no extra cost to themselves they have made a difference through their purchasing choices - the business wins in so many ways - and the worthy cause or charity wins because they can now receive small amounts from many sources all aggregated and paid as a lump sum from a single source if done through the Buy1GIVE1 service.
A new start - a new world - new thinking
If you go and check Wikipedia.com today for the word BOGO you should find that a new definition has been added. It’s time for a tide-change - a change from focusing on GETTING to working with GIVING. I added this small addition to Wikipedia’s BOGO definition: “… an acronym in the marketing industry that stands for Buy One GIVE One.”
Just imagine our world where every time you shopped and bought something you gave something - automatically and seamlessly. This is the simple joyful magic of transaction based giving.
This is the world I choose to be a part of.
And remember - you don’t ‘get’ giving till you get giving.
References:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
Footnotes: 1 The daily cost for clean well water per person is calculated by taking the average cost to dig a well then dividing that amount by its average expected life without major maintenance then divided it by the number of people in the community benefiting from the well on a daily basis.
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