My letter to Annie Lennox of 30/5/08

May 30, 2008 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment

Here’s the transcript:

Dear Annie

On Desert Island Discs you said:

We can distribute Coca Cola all around the World but we can’t seem to get medication to save a child from something as simple as diarrhoea and I think that that is wrong. You know, you have a choice you either get involved with an issue or you walk away from it. I think it’s a human rights issue and I feel very passionately about human rights.

I was so delighted - I had to stop the car! I am trying to get Coca Cola to use their amazing distribution network in developing countries to distribute rehydration salts. Your comment inspired me to set up a facebook to gather people around this idea. For a week or so the group has been growing by about 2-3 per hour. Today it has really taken off and is growing at about 15 per hour.

You can read the full story of the campaign here: www.simonberry.net.

Would you be willing to lend your support to this cause? A person of your stature would make an enormous difference and may mean we could actually make this happen.

I hope you get to see this letter.

With best wishes

Simon

Further information:
All of the Coca Cola campaign posts

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Correspondence
Tagged:

3rd Facebook Newsletter - 29/5/08

May 29, 2008 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment

29/5/08 - 3rd Newsletter

Simon Berry sent a message to the members of Let’s talk to Coca Cola about saving the World’s children.

——————–
Subject: Coca-Cola Group Update – 27/6/08

Dear Group Member

We are now nearly 2,500! Please consider forwarding this email to all your friends and ask them to join here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18947780476.
Numbers are everything! Before this group formed we made no progress at
all. The list below shows what we have achieved in just 6 weeks. Quite
remarkable.

We now have Coca-Cola’s attention. We are now trying to engage with an
international NGO. The full story of the campaign is here: http://beamends.typepad.com/simons_blog/

5,500 children under 5 die every day in Africa. This initiative could
save thousands and thousands of children’s lives through collaboration
between the private, NGO and Government sectors. And now we are talking.

Our progress to date:
* 18/5/08 facebook group formed
* 21/5/08 interviewed by Eddie Mair for the iPM Programme
* 23/5/08 written statement received from Coca-Cola - ‘willing to talk’
* 24/5/08 Featured on iPM (Radio 4)
* 24/5/08 Eve Graham (ex lead singer - The New Seekers) sang supporting lyrics to “I’d like to teach the world to sing”
* 1/6/08 Campaign nominated for the New Media Awards
* 5/6/08 Telephone conference with Coca Cola’s Global Head of Stakeholder Relations and UK counterpart
* 16/6/08 Face to face meeting with Coca-Cola in Brussels
* 23/6/08 Contact made with WaterAid
* 27/6/08 Contact made with Oxfam
* Membership includes a ‘frontline’ Rehydration Project in India
* Members of the group have posted: 7 videos; 35 links; 9 photos
* There have been 7 discussion threads started and 85 Wall Posts

Onwards and upwards

Simon
——————–

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Newsletters
Tagged:

Impromptu interview

May 27, 2008 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment

My good friend David Wilcox just loves gathering stories on video. Take a look over here on socialreporter.com. We met up today for our regular top-up of “getting all excited about the possibilities Web 2.0 offers” and we got on to the Coca Cola campaign and David pointed a camera at me. This is the result . . . . sorry, I’m a bit nervous to begin with but I get into it!

Thanks David.

Further information

All of the Coca Cola Campaign posts

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Interview, Videos
Tagged:

Coca Cola song competition announced!

May 25, 2008 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment

Can you sing or play the guitar? We need you now! Following the Cocal Cola feature on iPM yesterday the podcast was slightly delayed due to legal considerations. It’s now been released but without Eve Graham’s wonderful song!!

So what the people at iPM are suggesting is that we all have a go at singing it and send our renditions into the iPM Blog.

Here’s what you need to get started:

1 The Lyrics (these are slightly different from the ones on the iPM Blog but are what Eve actually sang)

I’d like to fix those Burmese homes;
Give poverty the shove
Grow sustainable trees, give aid with ease
And show Africa some love..

Chorus:
I’d like to reach the world and bring
It perfect harmony.
I’d like to reach its outstretched arms
But I need a company:
Coca Cola we need them today
They’re the real thing

2 The chords:
D, E, A, G and D

3 The tune: sung to the tune of ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’ by The New Seekers

This is how Eve Graham sang it:

Here is Coca Cola’s statement.
Go on! Get that guitar out!!

Download iPM_24_05_2008_song.mp3

Further information

All of the Coca Cola Campaign posts

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign
Tagged:

A big thank you everyone at iPM

May 24, 2008 by Simon Berry · 2 Comments

Eddie Mair | Rupert Allman | George South

These guys have worked their socks off this week to support the Coca Cola campaign and the results came together beautifully at 5:30pm today on the iPM programme on Radio 4. In exchange for a simple idea and interview from me they have:

Encouraged Coca Cola to respond to the Campaign (their letter is here)
Got the support of the one and only Eve Graham who spoke very positively about the campaign AND sang a song written just for us.

This is how the whole thing is reported on the iPM website:

We’d like to teach the world to sing . . .

Copyright problems mean that podcast listeners will have been denied the chance to hear our very first iPM song. It’s Eve Graham of the New Seekers, and she’s singing about this.

Not to neglect our digital listeners, may we suggest a home
performance of the anthem? By marrying the lyrics below with the chords
D, E, A, G and D, you can take part in our biggest crowd-sourcing
project yet. We’d like to teach the world to sing (but we can’t help on
the guitar unfortunately).

I’d like to fix those Burmese homes;
Give poverty the shove
Grow sustainable trees, give aid with ease
And show Africa some love..

Chorus:
I’d like to reach the world and bring
It perfect harmony.
I’d like to reach its outstretched arms
But I need a company:
They’re the real thing
The world needs them today.
They’re the real thing
The world needs them today
(Coca-Cola)

Now, I just happened to have my recorder running while the show was on and by some fluke of ICT trickery the recording of the item, including the song has ended up here.

Click the play button below

Or you can download the recording here: iPM_24_05_2008_extract.mp3

Further information

All of the Coca Cola Campaign posts

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign
Tagged:

1st Facebook Newsletter - 23/5/08

May 23, 2008 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment

23/5/07 - 1st Newsletter

Simon Berry sent a message to the members of Let’s talk to Coca Cola about saving the World’s children.

——————–
Subject: 1st Newsletter - Day 5

Dear All

* 345 members/1,606 invited - but we need an extra effort to move into accelerated growth.
* We have the support of experts inc a frontline org in India.
* We are the top story on the BBC’s Radio 4 iPM programme on Saturday at 5pm.
* No one has said this is a flawed idea.
Please, please continue spreadigng the word.
Thanks
Simon
PS: We also need celebrity support - any contacts anyone?
——————–

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Newsletters
Tagged:

Coca-Cola have responded!

May 23, 2008 by Simon Berry · 10 Comments

Many thanks to Rupert Allman of the BBC for his work contacting Coca Cola over the last few days.

This is just in via Rupert from Salvatore Gabola, Global Director Stakeholder Relations at Coca-Cola. I’ll be taking him up on his offer of a chat. We will get there a step at a time.

“This is an extraordinarily interesting discussion. And it is one
which goes to the heart of the key question of how we can make better
use of the successes of business to serve the development needs of the
world in general and of Africa in particular. The recent Millennium
Development Goal Call for Action by Prime Minister Gordon Brown stems
from this simple starting point.

It is also something we take very seriously at Coca-Cola. We are
proud of what we are already doing through the Africa Foundation - for
example, providing safe drinking water to communities throughout the
continent. But we are also asking ourselves how our core business
operation can do more. And this includes whether we can use our
distribution network to deliver other goods which will help improve
lives in local communities.

The challenge, of course, is to do this without undermining the
successful model which helps explain why you can get a Coke across
Africa. Because the very success of this network rests on the fact that
it is not owned by Coca-Cola but made up of many small independent
local distributors.

Our bottlers do help these small firms get started with training and
start-up capital. But the system works so well because the better they
distribute our drinks, the more money they make. It taps into Africa’s
entrepreneurial spirit of and gives people the means and the incentive
to develop their business and create more jobs.

So what we are considering is if, and how, this system can be tweaked
so it remains economically successful but can be extended so it does
more to help the common good.

We don’t have the answers yet. As often happens, it is not as
straightforward as it looks at first glance. But I can promise we are
working hard to find solutions.

This summer, we are beginning a research project and pilot in Tanzania
to analyse in depth our distribution model and examine how it can be
used to enhance its development potential. The Harvard Kennedy School
of Government and the International Finance Corporation are helping
with it.

Our hope is that this research will come up with concrete measures we
can then apply to our distribution systems across the African continent
and beyond.

Together I hope we can come up with the right solutions. And I am happy
to have a chat on this subject with Simon in the near future.”

Salvatore Gabola, Global Director Stakeholder Relations, Coca-Cola.

I am really pleased. Thanks to everyone for signing up and posting resources to the Facebook Group this MUST keep growing if we are to make things happen so please keep spreading the word.

Further information

All of the Coca Cola Campaign posts

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Correspondence
Tagged:

You have built this …. they will come!

May 22, 2008 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment

Today the Coca Cola facebook group has received a big boost in terms of content but I am a bit concerned that it is not growing as fast as it might. So PLEASE join if you haven’t done so already and invite your friends to do so as well.

In terms of content. Fully narrated photos have been uploaded by Nand Wadhwani of the Rehydration Project in India. Fantastic stuff.

Nand also emailed me and the email is reproduced here with permission.

My understanding is that the logo to the left was produced in 1985 to support a UNICEF report that Nand mentions.

Nand Wadhwani | Rehydration Project to Simon

Dear Simon,

Thanks for the link to the site. I’ve added information and links about the Campaign to my home page … http://rehydrate.org

fyi … UNICEF first proposed the idea of making the ORS sachets more
available in a poster in their State of the World’s Children report in
1985. Please see [ http://rehydrate.org/resources/selling_survival.htm ]. I’ve also updated that page with links to the Campaign pages.

I had spoken with Coca Cola in Atlanta, about 20 years ago, about
putting a small sticker on their bottles which stated that a portion of
their profits would go towards rehydrating a dehydrated child. With
Coca Cola being the largest ‘rehydrater’ in the world … with the
variety of Coke products, water, juices and other soft drinks … it
made perfect sense to me … great advertising and good will as well.
The proposal got lost in the maze of Coca Cola’s management.

With Facebook, a new awareness, and ….. I trust you will have more
success. I will also contact Coca Cola here in India and keep you
advised of their response.

Please let me know if I may be of further assistance in helping you get
your FIRST 1,000 members. You have built this …. they will come!

Good luck.

regards,

nand

Nand Wadhwani
Rehydration Project • Health Education To Villages

Further information

All of the Coca Cola Campaign posts

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Correspondence, India
Tagged:

Interview with Eddie Mair for iPM

May 21, 2008 by Simon Berry · 2 Comments

The interview with Eddie Mair went ahead
today – what a nice man! He is even more amusing off air than he it on air!
Because of the nature of the iPM programme they are happy for me to publish the
whole interview here ahead of the programme on Saturday. How refreshing! [In fact they have also published it on the iPM Blog].

I do make some sweeping
generalisations in the interview which I apologise for but I wanted to keep the
message simple. This is how it is reported on the iPM Blog:

Simon Berry and others on the [iPM] blog have been keen for iPM to to hear more about his big idea.
For more than ten years, Simon worked all over the world as part of the
British aid effort. He thinks there is a simple way to help the one in five children in Africa who die from simple causes - usually diarrhoea. And the answer is Coca-Cola.
Not the product - but its distribution network. We’ve asked Coca-Cola
to debate, but in the meantime Eddie has been speaking to Simon about
him and his idea.

Add Coca Cola is it to your page

The version that goes out on Saturday will be an edited version of this. There is a possibility that this won’t go out at all; if Coca Cola respond then another interview might be done which is more interactive. That would be brilliant.

Further information

All of the Coca Cola Campaign posts