Definitions of English words often change quite rapidly these days. In the not-to-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 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 a new movement 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.
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.
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.
* An alternate name for the Bilen ethnic group of Ethiopia or their language, Blin.
* The mascot of the ITESM CEM.
* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
BOGO lights
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 a 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 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 less well know businesses now doing Buy One Give One giving or transactional giving as it is becoming known. Some of the famous ones are One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) and TOM'S Shoes. Some of the less well-known ones (in the USA at least) are based in New Zealand, Australia 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 handful of special businesses that are heading the Buy One Give One movement.
Many Buy One Give One businesses are coming together under the single brand banner of Buy1GIVE1, a Singaporean based social enterprise which is becoming the home of transaction based giving. Any business can now choose to be part of Buy One Give One giving with ease. It's like a CSR 'plug-in' to allow a business to start giving from each and every sale today - starting from just one cent. It is now not even a matter of giving an equivalent product to someone else. Instead it is about giving to a charity project that is in resonance with a company's business activity. For example a magazine publisher can not support the planting of a tree every time they sell a subscription, a restaurant can feed a child for each meal sold, a TV store can gift a cataract blind person with the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision), and a builder or property developer can build a budget home for those in need who have lost their homes in a disaster (Buy1BUILD1) - the list is only limited by imagination.
The stats now add up saying consumers do care. The 2008 Goodpurpose global study of consumer attitudes revealed that nearly a huge 68% of consumers would remain dedicated to a brand during an economic slump if it supported a charity cause. 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.
* and 54% would champion a brand to promote a product if there was a good cause behind it.
* 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
The new concept of Buy One GIVE One is starting to replace Buy One GET One as the global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1 ripples out. Right now if you search for the terms B1G1 and BOGO you will find that websites that do Buy1-Give1 giving are on the first page of Google results. Certainly with the large consumer demand shown for products from companies like TOMS Shoes, BOGO lights and OLPC - One Laptop Per Child, this tide is set to continue and 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 contributed from each sale is not the point of focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. The focus is instead 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 unlikely to make much of a difference think again and consider the following idea.
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 185 million cups in the US alone seeing they purchase around 21% of the world's coffee.
Imagine now that for every cup of coffee sold a child in a developing region like Africa received drinking water from its own well and it costing only one US cent per person per day. Now any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a single cup of coffee because it has a high profit margin sale. Imagine the different that this 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
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."
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.
And remember - you don't 'get' giving till you get giving.
References :
http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
http://www.coffeepoet.com/2007/09/
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.
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 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 a new movement 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.
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.
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.
* An alternate name for the Bilen ethnic group of Ethiopia or their language, Blin.
* The mascot of the ITESM CEM.
* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
BOGO lights
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 a 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 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 less well know businesses now doing Buy One Give One giving or transactional giving as it is becoming known. Some of the famous ones are One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) and TOM'S Shoes. Some of the less well-known ones (in the USA at least) are based in New Zealand, Australia 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 handful of special businesses that are heading the Buy One Give One movement.
Many Buy One Give One businesses are coming together under the single brand banner of Buy1GIVE1, a Singaporean based social enterprise which is becoming the home of transaction based giving. Any business can now choose to be part of Buy One Give One giving with ease. It's like a CSR 'plug-in' to allow a business to start giving from each and every sale today - starting from just one cent. It is now not even a matter of giving an equivalent product to someone else. Instead it is about giving to a charity project that is in resonance with a company's business activity. For example a magazine publisher can not support the planting of a tree every time they sell a subscription, a restaurant can feed a child for each meal sold, a TV store can gift a cataract blind person with the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision), and a builder or property developer can build a budget home for those in need who have lost their homes in a disaster (Buy1BUILD1) - the list is only limited by imagination.
The stats now add up saying consumers do care. The 2008 Goodpurpose global study of consumer attitudes revealed that nearly a huge 68% of consumers would remain dedicated to a brand during an economic slump if it supported a charity cause. 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.
* and 54% would champion a brand to promote a product if there was a good cause behind it.
* 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
The new concept of Buy One GIVE One is starting to replace Buy One GET One as the global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1 ripples out. Right now if you search for the terms B1G1 and BOGO you will find that websites that do Buy1-Give1 giving are on the first page of Google results. Certainly with the large consumer demand shown for products from companies like TOMS Shoes, BOGO lights and OLPC - One Laptop Per Child, this tide is set to continue and 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 contributed from each sale is not the point of focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. The focus is instead 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 unlikely to make much of a difference think again and consider the following idea.
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 185 million cups in the US alone seeing they purchase around 21% of the world's coffee.
Imagine now that for every cup of coffee sold a child in a developing region like Africa received drinking water from its own well and it costing only one US cent per person per day. Now any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a single cup of coffee because it has a high profit margin sale. Imagine the different that this 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
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."
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.
And remember - you don't 'get' giving till you get giving.
References :
http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
http://www.coffeepoet.com/2007/09/
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.
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