Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

6 letters and counting sent out for the 6 for 6 campaign. 5994 to go….

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Today rabble.ca published a story I wrote about the connection between Apple’s 3G iPhone, released today in Canada, and the vicious war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The connection is that almost all electronics equipment, including cell phones, contain the element tantalum which is ideally suited for the production of capacitors used in these devices. Tantalum comes from a substance called coltan, and 80% of coltan comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The problem is that an incredibly vicious war has been raging in the Congo for years, fueled and funded by coltan mining. Groups are fighting over control of the coltan mining that is being spurred on by world-wide demand for electronics – especially cell phones – and lots of people are being killed as a result.

Now, given these facts, it’s no surprise that cell phone marketers don’t talk up the fact that their phone work so well thanks to Congo coltan. Most probably don’t know and, if they do, they work for companies that have no intention of doing anything about it so they’re stuck marketing products with a nasty secret. The companies are doing what Douglas Rushkoff suggested they stop doing in his interview with Mitch Joel in Six Pixels of Separation #107 – but with a twist. Rushkoff said companies should stop using spin to market bad products and, instead, make their products better and promote them using effective, honest, conversational marketing. Now, don’t get me wrong – most cell phone are excellent products – they’re just made with something that fuels wars.

So if marketers can’t do much and companies won’t – who can do something about this?

Consumers can.

Now, unlike blood diamonds, there is no clear alternative to blood cell phones. There are no Fair Trade cell phones – yet. So what can we consumers do since nobody, me included, is going to stop using their cell phones?

Well here are some things you can do right now:

1. Recycle your old cell phones – Old cellphones can be refurbished and sold to emerging markets such as, ironically, sub-Saharan Africa where 1 in 3 people have them already. If you can’t find a place near you to recycle your phone call City Hall and ask why not. Tell them the lack of cell phone recycling is bad for the environment at home and bad for people abroad.

2. Call or email the manufacturer of your current cell phone, or better yet, one you are thinking of buying, and ask them if their phones contain Congo coltan. If they say they don’t know, ask them why not. If their answer isn’t satisfying (like, “It’s impossible to know where it comes from”) tell them you are going to continue looking for a phone from a company that does know.

3. Get the word out – Blog and podcast, and comment on other blogs and podcasts, about the Congo-coltan connection.

Social economy marketers they can take lesson from the Congo coltan issue by understanding why this issue is being ignored by the mainstream media. Compare it to similar issues that have been ignored less – like the war in Darfur, Sudan – or those that got lots of airplay – like the Asian tsunami and understand the reasons. Learn about who got the word about on these issues and how they did it. That’s what I’m going to do and I will bring what I find out to an episode in the near future.

Posted in Africa, Global connections | 3 Comments »

I have always believed that the most powerful way to show how the actions of companies engaged in the social economy help improve people’s lives is to tell those people’s stories.

I had the rare opportunity yesterday to meet five people involved in fair trade, organic shea butter production in Mali and Burkina Faso, West Africa. Fatoumata Natié Coulibaly, Lalayssa Niare and Souleymane Traoré all work with the Mali-based Cooperative of Shea Butter of the rural district of Siby (COPROKASI) that runs La Maison du karité. Abou Dradin Tagnan and Mariane Bassia work with Burkina Faso’s Union des Groupements de Productrices de Produits de Karité (UGPPK) des provinces de la Sissili et du Ziro.

Bridgehead, that sells fair trade coffee, hosted the event at their store on Albert and Bank St. in Ottawa – a great marketing move by them.

They were all here on a tour to market their fair trade, organic certified Shea butter products. A few things they said stuck with me in particular:

• Shea butter is produced exclusively by women – the men I met were coop managers. This is because, before shea butter was a business, it was used for a variety of household and personal needs like cooking and moisturizing skin. These were activities done by women so the women have simply been helped to commercialize what they were already doing.
• 30% of the UGPPK’s products are fair trade – and this accounts for 60% of their revenues.
• UGPPK uses the fair trade premiums it gets for a variety of community-based initiatives including literacy programs for women and HIV prevention programs. Abou said Burkina Faso has the second highest HIV rate in West Africa after Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast produces nearly half the world’s cocoa making it literally the largest cocoa producer on earth.
• Guarantee fair trade premiums give women financial security needed to plan and the cash to afford things like clothes for the family, health care, transportation and educating their kids.
• 65% of Burkina Faso workers make less than $1/day whereas the women producing fair trade shea butter products make $3.50/day.
• Non-fair trade, non-organic shea butter is made with chemicals that greatly reduce its benefits.
• Fair trade makes shea butter, and therefore shea trees, more valuable. People, therefore, protect the trees.

One thing that Abou said that I really didn’t expect was that he does most of the UGPPK’s marketing…over the Internet. He uses the UGPPK website and targets small companies that have expressed support for fair trade.

It may take a village to raise a child – but one laptop can help raise a village….

                      Abou

        Mariane

Lalayssa, Souleymane and Fatoumata

Posted in Africa, Cosmetics, Fair Trade, Producers, Testimonials | No Comments »