Definitions of some English words can change quite rapidly these days. In the recent past the meaning of words was often very fixed. Today the meaning can change in the blink of an eye. With faster and newer ways to exchange ideas such as Twitter and with wider and more culturally, socially and educationally dissimilar groups connecting together – words are put back on the anvil of evolution and changed into something new and more reflective of current life.
There is a growing global movement where consumers are asking businesses to take care of the things that they care about. The request is mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it non-the-less signals that we are in a time of change. Consumers these days want their ‘goodies’ but they don’t want the environment to be destroyed in the creation of their ‘goodies’. They want cheap products but they do not want workers to suffer to create those cheap products.
There does not seem to be an answer to this conundrum and yet one does exist. It exists in the recoining or reforging of a single word. This word is a simple one – GET. Today, new movements of people who want to get but give at the same time are reforging it. It is being transformed 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.
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.
* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
BOGO lights
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”.
“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 turned the acronym upside down when he started to use the word as part of his product name. For him now and the thousands who buy his lights, BOGO now means Buy One GIVE One. Each person gets to give a light every time they buy one for themselves. So now with each sale, people who do not have the luxury of electricity can harness the power of the sun to support their lives.
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.
Many Buy One Give One businesses are uniting under the common banner of Buy1GIVE1 run by a social enterprise based in Singapore. Buy1GIVE1 is the home of transaction-based giving. Any business based anywhere in the world can now start doing Buy One Give One giving with ease. It is becoming like a ‘CSR plug-in’ allowing a business to instantly start giving from each and every product or service sale, starting from just one cent. And it is no longer about giving an equivalent product to someone else; instead it is about contributing to a project that resonates with a company’s activities. So for example a restaurant can feed a child, a TV manufacturer can give a cataract blind person the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision), a magazine publisher can plant a tree for every subscription and a builder can build a low-cost family home for those in need (Buy1BUILD1) – the list is 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.
* 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.
Here are the search 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
Transactional or transaction based 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 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 throughout the world. Today Brazil is still by far the largest producer producing an average output of 28% of the world’s total coffee. Brazil produced enough coffee in 2006 to make 216 billion four hundred million – 216 400 000 000 – espresso coffees. If we calculate that across global production then we get a daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 cups of coffee. The figures are hard to find but let’s guess that 40% of the world’s coffee is sold in coffee shops then we would get that 846,966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally. This would equate to about’5,485,714 cups in the USA alone seeing they purchase around 21.9% of the world’s coffee beans.
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.
Transaction based giving is the story of a thousand mile journey starting with the first step. To dig a well costs a few thousand dollars hence many communities in developing nations cannot afford to dig wells. But when you see that it only takes the sale of a single cup of coffee to give clean well water to a single person for a day1, then you can see the magic of transactional based giving. Buy1GIVE1 giving 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.
Everyone wins with Buy-One-Give-One transaction-based giving. The consumer wins – at no extra cost to themselves they’ve made a difference to the lives of others through their purchasing choices. The business also wins in so many tangible and intangible ways. And of course the charity partner wins because they are now able to receive small amounts from numerous sources aggregated and paid in a lump sum on a regular basis allowing them to focus on what they do rather than raising funds.
A new start – a new world – new thinking
If you go right now and check Wikipedia.com for the word BOGO you should find that a new definition has been added. And soon B1G1 will be added. It is time for a sea-change – a change from the focus on GETTING to focusing on GIVING. I personally added a small addition to Wikipedia’s BOGO definition that says this: “… an acronym in the marketing industry that stands for Buy One GIVE One.”
Simply imagine our world where every time you go and buy something you give something automatically and seamlessly – giving a gift forward to someone in greater need than you. This is the simple joyful magic of transactional giving.
This is the world I want to be part of.
Just remember – you don’t ‘get’ giving till you get giving.
References:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm
http://www.scfnw.org.uk/site/article183.html
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
http://www.scfnw.org.uk/site/article183.html
http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/
http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm
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.
Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.