Breaking things down, cutting things a different way
July 30, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Graphic from ColaLife Scenarios - Africa Village with shop
ColaLife is a very simple idea. However, if it’s to work it will require people and organisations to work together who have never worked together before. In other words it’s complicated. This has led me to think that perhaps we should take things one step at a time. Our current published strategy does this. First we want to do fieldwork and build the partnership that would be necessary to trial the ColaLife idea and then support this partnership in the co-design of the trial and then do the trial. But may be we should break things down further.
What if we cut things another way? We could focus initially on the issues associated with the distribution chain before we start carrying ’social products’. This would look at the following:
- Options for the design of the AidPod (single use; possible secondary uses; re-usable; biodegradable; insulated etc)
- The design of the boxes that would carry them before the individual AidPods are introduced into the drinks crates
- The design of the procedures and processes including:
- When and how to introduce the AidPods into the system to cause the least friction (both logistical and legal)
- Risk assessment for the partners involved
- How to mitigate these risks
- How to effectively track AidPods
- All the informational and motivational elements including:
- What incentives would be required, if any, to ensure wholesaler participation?
- What would be the key motivators for the retailer?
- What would be the key motivators for the bottler/haulier?
- What temperature fluctuations would the contents of the AidPods experience?
Such a trial would not require all the regulatory clearance necessary if we were carrying medicines but would provide the information we would need to determine which ’social products’/medicines could be carried. And this may whet the appetite of the regulators and make the acquisition of regulatory approval more simple down the line.
Thoughts?
Scenario 2 | Working with the Drinks bottler
July 27, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Scenario 2
This presentation is intended to be a conversation starter. It outlines one way the ColaLife concept might be deployed in the situation where the national infrastructure for the distribution of medicines to the district level is non-existent or below capacity. Press the play button to advance the presentation. When the presentation ends, you can pan and zoom freely using your mouse. Further scenarios will follow. Comments?
View other scenarios are here.
Scenario 1 | ColaLife complements distribution to District level
July 26, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Scenario 1
This presentation is intended to be a conversation starter. It outlines one way the ColaLife concept might be deployed in the situation where the national infrastructure for the distribution of medicines to the district level is in place. Press the play button to advance the presentation. When the presentation ends, you can pan and zoom freely using your mouse. Further scenarios will follow. Comments?
View other scenarios are here.
ColaLife presentation | Wieden + Kennedy | Canvas8
July 23, 2010 by Simon Berry · 2 Comments
Thanks to the good people at Canvas8, here is a video of the ColaLife presentation given at the Wieden + Kennedy (Coca-Cola’s Advertising Agency) premises at Brick Lane on 23/6/10.
There are two elements of the presentation that do not come over in the video:
- The Commitment from Coca-Cola to ‘trial the ideas behind ColaLife’
- The AidPod animation
Both of these are given here:
1. The Commitment from Coca-Cola to ‘trial the ideas behind ColaLife’ (ignore the first 45 seconds):
2. The AidPod animation:
Kolkata calling . . .
July 22, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Last Tuesday (20/7/10) ColaLife went global with calls programmed with India, Canada and the USA. The most exciting of all the calls was with members of the ColaLife group in Kolkata, West Bengal. This was organised by one of the group’s leaders Raghav Daswani. We ran it over Skype and the format was a short introduction and update from me followed by a Q & A session. Those participating were students of La Martiniere Calcutta, an independent school.
The ColaLife Chapter there was set up by Ragav and Rohin Daswani. The students in Tuesday’s audience ranged from those interested in Business Studies to Design. The group have already arranged a tour around their local Coca-Cola bottling factory, to see how the process works - and quickly came to the conclusion (which ColaLife fully endorses) that any support given by Coca-Cola or their bottling partner to an initiative like ColaLife needs to happen beyond the factory - with co-operation of the hauliers and transporters of the drinks crates. Now they would like to understand ColaLife better and to find out what they can do to help.
A key question raised was how local organisations and local people who need simple medicines engage with the ColaLife proposals. This is often asked - and is a vital point. It’s helpful to illustrate the answer with a graphic - see below.
This graphic is explained in more detail here.
The students at Hult Business School asked me a similar question when I was there a couple of months ago. Their questions were captured on video and can be viewed here.
Affordability of the medicines and how they would be priced was also raised. This is also partly answered by the links above: in broad terms, it will depend on how the proposed ColaLife distribution model fits into the supply chain. Depending on the country, legal issues, the partners and the supply chain route, medicines might be delivered to a remote retail shop (to be sold in the usual way), to a rural clinic (to be used as part of their public health stock), or, for example, be packed as a diarrhoea kit and picked up by the local birthing partner to support her work with new mothers. Some global initiatives, like the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) is specifically trialling the effects of distributing highly subsidised anti-malarials - and the ColaLife delivery model might offer part of the supply chain solution in that kind of initiative.
Joining up with other ColaLIfe groups in other countries - to exchange ideas on local fund-raising for group activities, and just talk to like-minded young people in other countries - was an idea very popular among the group. This is just what we would like to happen. ColaLife already has groups in USA (Wellesly College) and in Warwick University, UK. The Warwick group has a Facebook page - an easy first step in making links between groups.
There are lots of other ways groups can help. For example, our Intern, Dennis Tretter, is currently collecting information about botttlers in Africa, and drawing up country profiles on health and other issues, to support our research. India is a huge country with a lot of regional variation in culture, socio-economic and health aspects. Having local students in India to pull together some of this research for us would be a great help - and the same goes for information on bottlers and hauliers. We’re also at the stage where answers to design questions would be useful: What design and manufacturing capability exists in different regions? Does the current AidPod model fit in all the drinks crates in India; and if not, how could it be modified to fit, for example, in crates of Fanta bottles? What kind of AidPod would be most appropriate in a given region (for example, single use, bio-degradable, return and re-use, secondary uses) and what might it be made of (plastic? water-proof card?)
‘Can we go to the media in India?’ was another question asked. ‘Can we try to make ColaLife a public phenomenon?’ the group wanted to know. Anyone who has had brush with the media knows that PR can be a double-edged sword. It is important to get expectations right. We are not claiming that ColaLife is a universal solution to all health product distribution problems. There are many other great ideas out there - such as LivingGoods.org in Uganda - and many possible variations of the ColaLife co-delivery model. Our message to the media and all our stakeholders is that ColaLIfe is an idea worth testing. It is much better for us to generate interest and contributions to the ColaLife idea from our friends and wait for the media to come to us.
Thanks again to Ragav and Rohin to organising this very enjoyable Skype occasion!
The Dream Team | ColaLife Participation Ride 2010
July 20, 2010 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
Kiefer, Sam, Andy,
Nigel and Simon
The dream team has been assembled for the 2010 ColaLife Participation Ride and the members are:
Kiefer Scott (17)
My name is Kiefer Scott and I live near Scunthorpe in the UK. I am 17 and attend John Leggott College, I am studying Media, English Language and ICT. I am a passionate cyclist and have been for many years now, and when I heard about ColaLife I thought it would be a great oppertunity to raise money for a very worthy cause. I heard about ColaLife through a college friend who is also participating.
I really wanted to get involved because I love cycling, but also because I beleive that ColaLife is a worthy cause, and that the point in which they are outlining is one which needs to be made, and needs to be spread to as many people as possible. Also, the satisfaction and knowing that I have contributed to this cause, of saving lives, and improving the quality of life of people in developing countries, will be overwhelming. You can sponsor Kiefer via his JustGiving page here.
Sam Berry (27)
Sam, being Sam, has yet to provide a mini-biography for me to publish here. The penalty for this is that I will write it on his behalf (ditto Nigel below). Sam is my middle son. He has done a great deal for ColaLife already. He works for The Moving Picture Company and so is a bit handy when it comes to 3D animation. He was one of the team of 4 who pulled the first ColaLife animation together in 3 days. This has now received more than 12,000 views on YouTube. He also did this single handed to an impossible deadline - how the AidPod works. Sam has only just started cycling and this will be his first long distance ride.
Andy Clarke (18)
I’m an 18 year old student, looking to study politics at university. I have a strong interest in international development, and hope to be involved in some sort of government role in later life. I’m supporting ColaLife because once its aim is carried out, it’s a simple way to help people get the much needed medicines which they need. I also think that big companies such as Coca-Cola need to be doing much more to help the poorer people in the world, and ColaLife is a great way for them to do this. Andy and Keifer are planning the travel to the start of the ride and the travel back from Biarritz. You can sponsor Andy via his JustGiving page here.
Nigel Bolding (52, or thereabouts)
Again, no words from Nigel, so here are a few from me. Nigel is a great friend on of mine of many years. We shared a house with Jane (my partner in life and ColaLife) while at University. He is a ColaLife enthusiast and has obtained a quote for the manufacture of AidPods through one of his contacts in China (Nigel has contacts everywhere). This ride was his idea! Nigel runs The World’s Best Hotels and The Chic Collection - check them out. He is also the fluent french speaker in the team. He will be booking our accommodation along the route, if he gets round to it, that is. You can sponsor Nigel via his JustGiving page here.
Me (54)
The oldest member of the team and that would worry me except that I have done this sort of ride before: Land’s End to John o’ Groats (2006) and Land’s End to John o’ Groats (again!) on the national cycle network (2007)*. Oh, and I cycled from Cardiff to London in a day once. I’m planning the route and will be loading it on to my GPS so that we don’t get lost (very often). You can sponsor me via my JustGiving page here.
We are each raising money towards the cost of fieldwork in Africa which will produce a fully costed plan for an independently evaluated trial of the ColaLife idea. This plan will then be presented to Coca-Cola and one of the major donors for funding.
Onwards and upwards!
* For the cycling/GPS geeks amongst you, the mapping for this trip are here: gpscycle.com
AidPod heads east to Ulaanbaatar on the Mongol Rally
July 18, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
On 24 July 2010, my nephew, Tom, and two friends will be starting on the adventure of their lifetimes (so far). They will be driving this vehicle from Goodwood, England to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. They will pass through 13 countries and cover more than 10,000 miles. They have raised thousands for charity and when they get to Ulaanbaatar the vehicle will be auctioned and all the proceeds will go to a local Mongolian charity. Tom is a great ColaLife supporter and so the vehicle carries the ColaLife logo (in two places!). Tom is also carrying an AidPod to see if he can get some interesting photos for us. You can support Tom and follow his progress here: www.thisisoureverest.co.uk
Tom explains:
Have we got our priorities right?
July 15, 2010 by Simon Berry · 2 Comments
This Coca-Cola was some of the last to be produced and sold in glass bottles in Malta. These are 300ml bottles. African bottles typically hold 350ml.
One morning in 1988 I arrived early for a meeting in Chinsali, a small town in NE Zambia. I went into the dilapidated council chamber. There was no one else there and on the table was a copy of the Mining Mirror. It stood out because I’d never seen a copy before (Chinsali is miles away from Zambia’s copper belt, where the Mining Mirror is published) and it was printed to a very high quality which contrasted starkly with the dilapidated surroundings.
On page three, bottom right was a picture of a desperate African mother cradling her dead child. Along with the photo was a caption that went something like this:
1 in 5 of our children don’t make it to their 5th birthday
When we’ve sorted out this human catastrophe
we’ll start looking into the AIDS issue
At that time this view was not unusual. AIDS was seen by many people in low income countries as a preoccupation of the rich world. It’s something we, in the rich world, could actually catch and die of - a direct threat to us. A child dying in Africa from diarrhoea evokes our sympathy but not our fear. Not so in Africa. Today, in Africa alone, 4 children die every minute from simple causes like dehydration from diarrhoea. That’s 5,500 a day, 2 million a year. And those statistics have not really changed significantly since that morning in Chinsali more than twenty years ago.
According to a recent BBC article, Uganda’s misplaced health millions, the imbalance continues today, at least in Uganda. I quote:
In 2008 alone, funding from Pepfar reached $283.6 million - an amount which easily exceeds the entire annual budget for Uganda’s ministry of health.
“It makes you wonder whether this assignment of funds is justified when the most frequent cause of death in Uganda is, in fact, malaria,” says Mr Angemi.
The Ugandan health ministry acknowledges the imbalance.
“Since ARV medicine is very expensive and HIV testing equally so, expenditure on HIV completely overshadows what is otherwise available in the health system,” says the state’s head pharmacist, Martin Oteba.
After many trips throughout Africa, Harvard’s Daniel Halperin, who has been researching the disease for 15 years, has made the same observations.
“Many people in the West believe that all Africans are impoverished and infected with HIV. Yet the reality is that many countries have stable HIV statistics of under 3%,” he says.
But in spite of this, the vast majority of support, particularly from the US, is given specifically to the war on Aids.
“This is because it is a disease that we ourselves have dreaded and have therefore placed it at the top of the global agenda.”
Sometimes African health ministries become over-burdened with the huge deliveries of ARV medicine which they do not have the time, finances or manpower to distribute.
“The healthcare systems cannot keep up,” says Esben Sonderstrup, chief health consultant for Danida, the Danish international development agency.
“Then, there is the serious risk of medicine expiring and becoming unusable.”
For Mr Halperin, it is completely mindless to target aid with such a narrow focus on a single disease.
“Why then should foreign donors continue to multiply Aids spending but use small change on projects which, for example, provide safe drinking water?” he asks.
Last year, according to Mr Halperin, the US spent $3bn on Aids programmes in Africa but invested a mere $30m on safe drinking water.
Mr Halperin cites other examples.
One fifth of the world’s diarrhoea-related deaths occur in just three countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria, all of which have relatively low HIV statistics.
Yet diarrhoea, which is relatively straightforward to combat, is largely ignored by donors in favour of Aids programmes.
Soft Power and the Honda CR-Z
July 12, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
I didn’t understand the concept of ‘Soft Power’ until a couple of weeks ago, when I was invited to Cambridge Union to speak about ‘Hard vs Soft Power’. Until then, I certainly didn’t think ColaLife had any of either. But apparently we have soft power, and this car is a very obvious manifestation of that.
Soft Power (according to political advisor Joseph Nye) is ‘The ability to get what you want using attraction…’ Now I didn’t set out to ‘attract’ a brand new car (I’m more of a bicycle sort, a kind of ‘antidote to Jeremy Clarkson) and I didn’t know I wanted one of the new hybrids. I do now!
So, what have I been doing driving around in a brand new Honda CR-Z?
Well, ColaLife was recently invited to take part in ‘The Dream Factory‘, an exhibition in Brick Lane - alongside a website and a limited edition book - featuring twenty British “Cultural Engineers” (cultural innovators including musicians, artists, film makers, social entrepreneurs… and me.) A couple of weeks later, Honda phoned me up and asked if it would be handy for me to borrow the CR-Z for a few days, with a full tank of fuel, insurance and no strings. Well, what do you say?
The CR-Z was certainly a dream to drive - a bit like three cars in one. It has three switches: Sport; Normal and Economy. In the Normal and Economy modes it very subtly encourages you to drive economically. Definitely a bit of ’soft power’ there. The difference between the modes was incredible - from high performance sports car to sedate (but luxury) hatchback at the flick of a switch! When you’re in traffic and you stop and take the car out of gear the engine stops (in Normal and Economy modes). Then when you put it into gear it starts again instantaneously and with none of the noise and kerfuffle associated with the starting of a conventional car. In a busy London street the engine is not running most of the time.
Here’s a very bad picture of the instrument panel. Note the green ring around the speed indicator. This morphs through green - blue - red to indicate how efficiently you are driving. Here we are cruising at 75mph - the disc is green, cruise control is on and we are doing just over 50mpg (and the air conditioning is on). Note also that the car is drawing slightly on the battery unit - the blue band on the CHARGE-ASSIST indicator (on the left). Oh dear, I seem to have morphed into Jeremy Clarkson…
Well, driving the CR-Z was quite an experience. I’ve never driven a car that turned heads before - incredible. And, as well as delivering me comfortably, stylishly and economically to Cambridge, it made me begin to understand what Joseph Nye meant and helped illustrate my talk.
‘The Power of Dreams’ has long been a theme of Honda. Each new car is seen as the realisation of someone’s dream. Honda also work with young people through schools on ‘The Dream Factory’ project whose purpose is:
. . . to provide inspiration and a sense of excitement about manufacturing and engineering to students—to communicate the importance of dreaming and taking on challenges. >>more
This activity also, presumably, gets young people (future potential customers) interested in the Honda company.
Honda’s approach to marketing is a new one to me. The strategy clearly benefits Honda - no-one there asked me to talk about the CR-Z, or blog about it, or show it to anyone. But it has really helped get ColaLife to a new, extended audience, and, presumably, vice-versa. Their tactic seems to be: create an atmosphere around the car and then float it into the market on an undercurrent of interest, using more traditional approaches. I’d like Coca-Cola to look at this strategy . . . I have a few ideas.
Anyway, I was very sad to see this particular car go. And, if Honda want to find a long term home for this machine they know where to come.
Thanks for your support Honda.
ColaLife and the UK’s Big Society policy
July 7, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
ColaLife on the iPad - there were no shortage of gadgets at last night’s Big Society Network event. iPad (and hands) courtesy of David Wilcox.
A core theme of the UK Conservatives election manifesto was ‘Big Society’ (see David Cameron’s speech). The basic idea is that government has got too big and that ‘Civil Society’ (ie people like you and me) should be empowered to do more. Whilst government helps by removing barriers to this happening and, where necessary, putting in place enablers, such as new legislation, we would contribute through more active citizenship. So, there is talk of support for parents who wish set up their own schools and to others who wish to take on the delivery of services currently implemented by government at the various levels. I think it is true to say that the detail behind ‘Big Society’ concept is still to emerge and it is up to us to work a lot of this detail out for ourselves and come up with ideas on how the policy might be implemented in practice. The other issue is that government has no money and so critics are saying that this is just a ploy for government to withdraw from public service delivery to leave citizens, some very vulnerable, to fend for themselves.
Last night around 150 people gathered in a very hot room in the Department for Communities and Local Government to talk about how ‘Big Society’ might work in practice. So, why did I go along? Well, for two reasons really. Firstly, these gatherings tend to attract the more creative, enthusiastic and innovative elements of the not for profit sector (at least those who can afford to get to London) and it’s in these sort of places that I get my ideas. And secondly, ColaLife might be a case study for how elements of ‘Big Society’ might work. This is what I said, when I applied to go to the event:
ColaLife is about putting unlikely alliances together to do extraordinary things. To do more with less and to tackle problems that cannot be solved by one particular sector (business, public, civil society) alone. I think there are lessons in the ColaLife experience that are very relevant when it comes to realising the vision of the ‘Big Society‘.
- Given these people power. It’s given us enough power to get the attention of one of the world’s biggest brands - Coca-Cola
- Allowed knowledge to emerge from different kinds of people - who might not usually share ideas with each other - and be used for good. In our case it has resulted in refining the basic ColaLife idea and making it better, bringing in expertise from global health, supply chain, designers, non-profits, PR and corporates and so on.
- Given more and more confidence, to those involved, that ColaLife is a concept worth trialling
All these things: empowering people; pooling ideas and knowledge to come up with better solutions to the challenges we face, are at the foundation of ‘Big Society’. Well that’s how I see it.
What others are saying about ColaLife- ColaLife on Flickr
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