Tanzania trip - summary of progress

December 2, 2008 by Simon Berry 

For those of you without the time to plough through all the material generated during the Tanzania trip, here’s a summary with some quick links:

ColaLife Pods - what the frontline thinks
A discussion about the ColaLife pods outside a Manual Cistribution Centre (MDC) in Dar Es Salaam. This includes a ‘must see’ video!
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Discussions with an international NGO with a long-term and significant presence in Tanzania
Before we can move to piloting the ColaLife idea we need to identify a local NGO who can lead on the initiative. I met with PSI, Tanzania on my last day and they may consider taking up the idea although there is no formal agreement in place yet.
Summary of information gained by talking with people who run MDCs
There was a consensus on the logistics of including ’social products’ within Coca-Cola crates.

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Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08
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Summary of information gained from visits to MDCs on 27/11/08 and 28/11/08

November 30, 2008 by Simon Berry 

On 27/11/08 I was lucky enough to be able to accompany Benito Xaverly, one of Coca-Cola Kwanza’s Area Sales Managers as he visited 7 of the 17 MDCs he looks after. The main purpose of the visits was to agree the month’s sales targets and discuss any issues the MDCs may have.

However, I took along the ‘ColaLife Pods’, the tube and the wedge, to test reactions to the overall concept of putting ‘social products’ into Coca-Cola crates and get opinions on the different ways of doing it.

Here’s a summary of what we found. There is an insightful video of the conversation at Freeman MDC here. Click on the images to see them in more detail on Flickr.

Mwenge South MDC Freeman MDC Unloading at Kisima MDC

1 Mwenge South

2 Freeman

3 Kisimi*
On the tube
“Ah, no.”
“But what happens to the [spare] bottle?”		 On the tube
“People would think we are reducing their profit margin”
.		 No discussion (lorry waiting to be unloaded)
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On the wedge
“That is beautiful . . . colalife.”
“We would find space” [to store the wedges for insertion at the MDC]		 On the wedge
“We would find space” [to store the wedges for insertion at the MDC]
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Other
Please see the video of the conversation here.
“It would need to be waterproof”
“It’s a good idea”
“Coca-Cola is distributed aggressively and gets everywhere but medicines don’t”
“It’s social responsibility”
“It would be good we would be doing something to help with people’s health”
– – –
DD Shop MDC Agreeing targets at Asma MDC IMG_2015

4 DD Shop

5 Asma*

6 Grace*
On the tube
“But now there are only 23″ [bottles - disapproval]
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.		 Discussion in 100% Swahili and a truck was being unloaded while we were there.
Again the wedge was the preferred option with insertion of the wedge at the MDC the suggestion.
I have a poor quality video of the conversation.
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.		 On the tube
“Ah, no!”
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On the wedge
“I have the space [to store the wedges] just give me the instructions”		 On the wedge
“It’s a good idea”
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Other
“Is it free?”
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Other
Insertion of the wedges at the MDC was thought to be best.
See text below also.

* owned by women

Everyone at the MDCs thought that the wedges were the best solution and everyone thought they should be put in at the MDC (not at the bottling plant). Although space at all of the MDCs seemed to be at a premium, everyone said that they would find space to store the wedges.

Payment for insertion of the wedges was not talked about at MDCs 1 to 5 but MDCs would incur costs in doing this (eg storage, handling and insertion) and a payment would seem to be justified. I did discuss the possibility of payment at the Grace MDC (MDC 6 above) and that was greeted with enthusiasm: “When would we get paid? The same day?”. I said that I thought that payment would come when there was proof of delivery to the outlets.

When I went to Grace MDC I was unaccompanied and made it clear that I did not work for Coca-Cola but was there at Coca-Cola’s invitation. This made the conversation much more cautious and the initial reaction to the idea was totally negative. “It’s a bad idea. The only thing that should go in the crates is Coca-Cola”. However, when I explained that this would be done with the sanction of Coca-Cola (or not at all) and that the wedges would arrive on the Coca-Cola lorry the attitude changed completely. “No, this is a good idea”. So although the wedges would not be branded ‘Coca-Cola’ it would appear that the sanction of Coca-Cola is absolutely essential.

Other background information

  1. Benito looks after 17 MDCs
  2. Six of these are owned by women
  3. Mwenge South (which was tiny and had crates filled high everywhere) was shifting 230 crates a day.
  4. Generally speaking an MDC takes a whole truck load of crates. I a minority of deliveries is the delivery shared between two or more MDCs.
  5. Truck capacities are: 390, 520, 780 or 910 crates.
  6. All the deliveries I saw were in the full-depth crates although I did see ‘Ian Bishop’ crates in the MDCs

Thanks to Coca-Cola Kwanza for allowing me to accompany Benito and to Benito for being such great company.

Filed under: Background Data, Coca Cola Campaign, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08
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The dimensions of a Coca-Cola crate

November 29, 2008 by Simon Berry 

Here’s all the detail you will ever need! To read the numbers, click on the image to open it full size on Flickr.

This is the crate. it takes 24, 350ml bottles and 80% of the Coca-Cola produced in Tanzania goes out in these bottles/crates.

Crate detail Crate dimensions

There are lots more photos of crates here.

Filed under: Background Data, Coca Cola Campaign, Tanzania Trip Nov 08, design
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Another good day but not so visually exciting

November 28, 2008 by Simon Berry 

Here are the bullet points from today in order of execution:

  • Set up a meeting with PSI Tanzania
  • Got the bike out and re-visited Grace MDC
  • Re-located Lilian MDC and Mwenge South MDCs
  • Got caught in a tropical down pour
  • Bumped into the Prime Minister when trying to get back up to my room with nobody noticing
  • Dried off
  • Got a taxi to PSI and met with Dr Jane Miller *significant highlight*
  • Tried to set up an interview with NewsTalk Radio in Ireland

Here’s the detail.

Set-up and meeting with PSI
In discussions with Euan and Adrian (from Coca-Cola) following the meeting it became clear that an NGO which operated locally was needed to move to a pilot phase. I had tried to contact PSI Tanzania before coming here and although I got an encouraging email from their Washington office - the Tanzanian office hadn’t replied. And why would they? Simon who?

So today I set myself the task of getting face to face with someone senior at PSI to facilitate future e-communications. I am grateful to Dr Jane Miller for squeezing me in at the end of what was undoubtedly a busy week. We had a very positive and constructive meeting and I am certain that now we’ve met the e-communications will flow. I showed her the pods and the video.

There are still many unanswered questions and we are still a long way from a successful pilot of the ColaLife idea but I now feel that the key players have been identified and we will be able to work out the detail.

This meeting is the most significant achievement of the day I think.

Got the bike out and re-visited Grace MDC
During the field trips of the last few days I’ve had my GPS switched on and I’ve been marking the locations we’ve visited - I might put them on Google Earth when I get back - this enabled me to find them again without an escort.

I went back to the Grace MDC but the owner (Grace) wasn’t there. But I did have a good conversation with her stock controller. I did the things with the pods in the crates and tried to explain but he was totally against putting anything inside the crates that wasn’t bottles of Coca-Cola UNTIL I explained that such pods would come on the Coca-Cola lorry and the insertion of the pods would have the sanction of Coca-Cola. His attitude then changed completely and he was very positive and we got on to discussing the relative merits of the tube vs the wedge and, like everyone yesterday, he went for the wedge.

As our conversation came to end the Coca-Cola lorry arrived and I was on my way.

Re-located Lilian MDC and Mwenge South MDC
I relocated the Lilian MDC but they were busy unloading and it was not appropriate to interrupt so I set off to find Mwenge South MDC (which my GPS said was 8 kilometres away). I was hoping to find Patrick Emmanuel who I met yesterday. It was during this leg of the journey that the heavens opened. When I got there, soaked to the skin, they were also unloading and Patrick wasn’t there so I continued on to the hotel. This was a pity because a repeat of our conversation yesterday would have made a great video.

Bumped into the Prime Minister when trying to get back up to my room with nobody noticing
I got back to the hotel absolutely soaked. It was like a wet tee shirt competition with none of the eroticism. Anyway, there I am trying to sort myself out and planning a dignified dash from the entrance to the lift when a very nice, very tall, smartly dressed man leaned down and whispered “Prime Minister Sir” in my ear. So my dignified dash was thwarted and I stood there in the middle of reception (well out of the way of the Prime Minister) looking like a very conspicuous drowned rat.

When I got to my room I tidied myself up and got into a taxi to PSI (see above)

Tried to set up an interview with NewsTalk Radio in Ireland

When I got back to the hotel, following the PSI meeting, I prepared myself for a 5 minute interview the national radio talkshow in Ireland. However, despite several attempts we couldn’t get a good enough line so that’s been postponed until next week.

Then
Then I went up to the 8th floor of the hotel and sat down looking out over Dar Es Salaam harbour, ordered a beer and started to write this blog post.

Then Philip arrived. Philip is a Central Banker from Uganda who is about 6′8″ tall and about twice as wide as me! We shared what we’d been up to since we first met two days a ago and I showed him the video. He understood the Swahili. When the video finished he turned to me and said “I‘m moved, I’m moved”. Result!

Tomorrow
My flight leaves at 2:30pm so in the morning I’m going to try and find this MDC:

which, apparently, is somewhere in Dar Es Salaam, and get my photo taken in front of it.

Onwards and upwards.

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08
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ColaLife Pods - what the frontline thinks

November 27, 2008 by Simon Berry 

I have written so much about what has happened over the last two days but I have not quite finished or publshed anything yet (it will come). But the video below sums it all up. The context is as follows. Today I went out with Benito Xaverly, one of the Area Sales Manager for Dar Es Salaam. He’s a Business Administration graduate and until recently he worked for Pepsi. He had not heard of ColaLife before we got in the vehicle and started on our journey. We visited 7 of the 17 MDCs that he manages and I took the mock-up ColaLife Pods I made yesterday. Here they are in Coca-Cola crates. They fitted!

Here is the video. The first 1min 15secs is in Swahili as Benito explains the ColaLife idea to the people who work at the MDC. Then it breaks into English . . . . it’s very interesting what is said . . . .

:-)

Tomorrow I’m going to try and hook up with an NGO that operates locally that I think could help move this idea into a pilot phase: PSI Tanzania

Filed under: Coca Cola Campaign, Coca-Cola Research, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08, Videos
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