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’s a significant global movement happening where consumers are asking business to take care of the things they care about such as the less fortunate in society and the environment. The request is mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it by far indicates still that we are in a time of vast change. Consumers these days want their cake and eat it. They not only want cheap products, they also want the environment to be preserved and they want workers to be well looked after.
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 it’s meaning into the word GIVE.
Every day automated email notices arrive from Google Alerts for two keywords – B1G1 and BOGO. I see all the new places these words are being used on the Internet. I can now see that the new meaning of these words is coming alive ‘poco a poco’ -little by little.
B1G1 and BOGO 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.
* Norway, a village in Norway.
* 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 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 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 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 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 companies 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.
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 :
* 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.
* 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.
Getting becoming 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 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.
Transaction-based or transactional giving
Buy One Give One giving is transactional – every time you buy something, you give something. In the case of SunNight Solar, TOMS Shoes and OLPC they happen to give a physical products of the same nature for everyone sold. However, in most cases, Buy1GIVE1 associated businesses give a charitable contribution from each sale. Giving can start from just a one-cent contribution per sales transaction and go up to thousands of dollars in the case of Buy1BUILD1. At 1cent any business in the world can afford to give from each sale especially when they also know 100% of the contribution 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.
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 lets 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 185,485,714 cups in the USA alone seeing they purchase around 21.9% of the world’s coffee beans.
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.
Of course any company can do transaction-based giving with any of its products or services and do it on their own as some are like TESCO in the UK giving school uniforms to kids in Africa in partnership with Save the Children. And yet if companies choose to join together under a commonly recognised banner/brand they can have a powerful effect. The ripple that a single company creates is added to that of another and the ripple grows into a tidal wave of giving. 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 have made a difference through their purchasing choices. The business wins in so many ways. And of course the charity cause wins because they are now able to receive small amounts from numerous sources aggregated and paid in a lump sum by Buy1GIVE1.
A new start
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.”
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.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm
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://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm
Footnotes: 1 Daily cost per person is 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 benefitting from the well on a daily basis.
Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.
