Definitions of words often change quite quickly these days. In the distant past the meaning of words was often set in stone. Today the meaning can change in a blink. With new faster ways to communicate with wider and more culturally, socially and education
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.
Until recently there was no real answer to this complex puzzle but today one actually exists. It exists in the reforging of a simple single word - GET. Today there is a new movement of consumers wanting to get and at the same time give. They are reforging the word GET 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.
B1G1 and BOGO, despite sounding like characters from a Marvel comic are acronyms for Buy One GET One free. You buy one and they give you an extra one for the same price.
Look up BOGO on Wikipedia.com (there isn’t a definition yet for B1G1) and you will discover these definitions for BOGO:
* 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.
* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
BOGO Lights - torches that give
There is a business in the USA called SunLight Solar founded by Mark Bent. He has created a special torch that not only is an amazing and sturdy solar-powered light; his company also gives a free torch to those in need in developing nations for each one bought. If you look on their website you will learn about their “BOGOlight”.
“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.” - BOGOlight.com
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.
There is something very special happening these days as more and more people are switching to giving and what are known as ‘citizen brands’ as a part of their everyday experience. In the 2008 Goodpurpose study of global consumer attitudes it reveals that almost 68% of consumers would choose to remain loyal to a brand during an economic downturn 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 study also highlighted some other key points as well such as:
* Half (52%) of consumers globally are more likely to recommend a brand to others when it supports a good charity cause over one that does not.
* 52% of consumers globally are more likely to tell others of a brand when it supports a good charity cause over one that doesn’t.
* And going even further globally, consumers are voicing a strong desire for marketers to connect their brands to social causes or action. Forty-two percent say that if two products or services are of the same quality and price, commitment to a social purpose trumps factors like design, innovation and brand loyalty when choosing one product brand over another.
Turning Getting into Giving
In the minds of consumers, Buy One GIVE One is sure to replace Buy One GET One as the global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1 ripples out. Certainly with the large consumer demand shown for products from companies like BOGOlights, TOMS Shoes and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), this tide will continue to spread.
I did a Google search on the 25 topmost key words connected with the keyword BOGO as an experiment to see what would show up. The results were interesting so I have displayed them below. You may notice that right now the word Give doesn’t show up. It will be interested to do this test again in twelve months time to see what changes. Consumers are now driving change and yes they want to receive free gifts (traditional B1G1/BOGO) but equally they also want to give to others or see others being given to.
Keyword results:
Free, shopping, pics, join, prose, photography, blogging, discount, boots, groups, music, dallas, togo themes, wallpapers, buy, applications, skins, values, coupon, gift, sharing, networking, African.
Transactional or transaction based giving
Unlike normal charitable giving Buy One Give One giving is transactional. What is meant by that is: every time you buy something you give something. In the case of SunNight Solar they give a physical light for every light sold. In most cases, businesses that become part of this special form of transaction-based giving, give in a different way. At Buy1GIVE1, giving can start from just USD 1c contribution per sale. At this amount no business in the world can say they cannot give and 100% contributed goes to the cause.
The amount of money that is contributed isn’t the focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. The focus instead is on the story and sharing the simple joy of giving. After all, if you think that 1c isn’t a lot to give and would not make much of a difference think again.
From its origins in Ethiopia, where the main coffee production is still from wild coffee tree forests, coffee consumption has spread globally. Brazil is still by far the largest coffee producer in the world producing on average 28% of the world’s total coffee. In 2006 Brazil produced enough coffee to make 216,400,000,000 (216 billion four hundred million) espresso coffees. If we were to calculate across global production then we get a daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 cups of coffee - wow. The figures are somewhat hard to track down but let’s guess that 40% of the world’s coffee is sold and consumed in coffee shops then we would get that 846,966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally - nearly 900 million. This would equate to about’5,485,714 cups in the US on its own seeing they purchase around 21% of the world’s coffee.
Now imagine that for every cup of coffee sold a child was given clean drinking water from its own well. It costs just 1cent per person per day to do this. Any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a cup of coffee. Instead of clean water a coffee shop could contribute for the education of coffee farmers’ children, costing from 23cents per child per day. The options and stories are unlimited as well as the potential difference that Buy One Give One transactional giving can make to the lives of many.
Transaction-based giving is the story of a thousand-mile journey starting with a single step. Digging a well costs a few thousand dollars, however when you break the cost down it only takes the sale of a single cup of coffee to give clean water to a single person for a day1. This is the incredible and simple power of transactional giving. It is like the compound interest of giving - a little turns into a huge amount 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 check Wikipedia today you should find that a new definition has been added for BOGO. It is time for a change. A change from focusing on GETTING to focusing on GIVING. The subtlety in the words that we use so often point to a deeper underlying meaning. I added this small addition to Wikipedia, “… 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.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/
http://www.scfnw.org.uk/site/article183.html
http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/
http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm
Footnotes: 1 Calculated by taking the average cost to dig a well, dividing it by its average expected life without major maintenance divided by the number of people in the community benefiting from the well on a daily basis.
Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.
