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Summary of information gained from visits to MDCs on 27/11/08 and 28/11/08

30 November 2008 By Leave a Comment

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)
.
.
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]
.
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]
.
.
.
.
.		 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.
.
.		 On the tube
“Ah, no!”
.
.
.
.
.
On the wedge
“I have the space [to store the wedges] just give me the instructions”		 On the wedge
“It’s a good idea”
.
.
Other
“Is it free?”
.
.
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, Meetings, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: , , , , ,

Another good day but not so visually exciting

28 November 2008 By 4 Comments

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, Meetings, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

ColaLife Pods – what the frontline thinks

27 November 2008 By 17 Comments

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, colalife 101, Meetings, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08, Videos Tagged With: , , , , , ,

ColaLife pods?

26 November 2008 By 5 Comments

Another great day with a bunch of really creative people but more on the meeting in the next blog post. When the meeting finished I was able to arrange to tag along with Adrian Ristow to see more MDCs tomorrow and then I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for that. And the image is the result!

I’ve mocked up a couple of inserts based on Jess’s designs: 1) one (the cylinder) is a coke bottle replacement and 2) is a ‘toblerone wedge’ that should fit between the bottles. I want to see how the Coke distributors react when I put these in the crates. I’ll try and capture this reaction on video.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, design, Meetings, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: ,

Tanzania Diary – Day 1 – 25/11/08

25 November 2008 By 2 Comments

Children at Rene MDC, Dar Es Salaam >>more photos

Well, where do I start? I’ve learnt so much in such a short time. Here is a brief run-down of the day. It’s a bit ‘notey’ but I need to get some sleeeep!

The programme for the day was an introductory talk which I missed as I was still in the sky. Followed by a visit to the Kwanza Bottling Plant and three Manual Distribution Centres (MDCs). The ones we visited were run by women.

There are about 20 people here and they are all going to be great contacts for taking ColaLife forward. I think the best way forward is to try and engage some of these people, including people from Coca-Cola, in co-developing a business plan to trial. Otherwise we are going to have to put up something ourselves which there will be no commitment to and will be shot down. Anyway, that’s the tactic I’m going to try.

Key learning points:

  • I’m getting challenged by some of the ‘development professionals’ here but I was expecting that. But I think I’m responding OK but I’m not sure they are listening!
  • The Moo cards are BRILLIANT at getting people’s attention
  • 350 ml glass bottles account for 80% of sales – I’ll get some measurements before I leave
  • There are two sorts of crates that these go into:
  • A full height crate that is deeper that the bottles and is load-bearing
  • A ‘Ian Bishop’ crate which the bottles stick out of the top of (these are being phased out – which is good as it would be more difficult to carry stuff in these)
  • See the photos
  • The Manual Distribution Centres (MDCs) – we were taken to ones run by women – take a lorry load of crates at a time (ie the lorry doesn’t go on a circuit it leaves the bottling plant and goes to one MDC which takes the whole load (helpful when thinking at which point the ColaLife Pods could be inserted)

Tomorrow is the main meeting so I’ll report back on that and hjopefully provide more photos for you to see.

Sorry, but the Flickr photos are still uploading – I’ll put the link into these tomorrow.

Filed Under: Background Data, Coca-Cola Campaign, Meetings, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

BBC to cover Tanzania Trip

20 November 2008 By Leave a Comment

Jennifer Tracey of the BBC’s iPM team was in touch shortly after it was announced here that Coca-Cola had invited ColaLife to Tanzania. The BBC have been talking to Coca-Cola about the meeting and the possibility of covering it. I spoke with Chris Vallance last week who offered to send me a Flip Video so that I could submit video. Pity I’d just bought one for the very same purpose! Chris has offered to contribute up to £100 towards the cost of an internet connection so I should be able to send all the video that the BBC can cope with and will be able to blog regularly from the front line. Thank you BBC and especially the iPM Team!

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Any questions?

19 November 2008 By 1 Comment

[image of visa - removed]

I’m off! And here’s my visa to prove it. But before I go, please help me out with ideas of what information I should try and gather while I’m there. I got a load of questions from Julian this morning that were really helpful in giving me ideas on who I should try and talk to, what video I should try and get and so on. Here are a selection the Julian’s questions. Please comment with others or email them to s[dot]berry[at]ruralnet[dot]org[dot]uk. Thanks.

How many cokes do Coca-Cola distribute a year in Africa?

What is the volume of a coke bottle?

What is the volume of each ‘pack’ you want to distribute?

How many trucks and employees do coke have out there?

The average age of those who can be helped?

How much does a coke costs?

How many coke bottles fit in the average truck?

If you had a truck full of cokes, how many cokes would the ‘packs’ displace?

How young do people start drinking coke in Africa?

At the age of 5, how many ‘brands’ do children know?

At what age do young Africans learn to say ‘coke’?

Any more questions anyone?

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, Ideas, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: ,

Coca-Cola invites ColaLife to Dar Es Salaam!

25 October 2008 By 16 Comments

Image by ebel

Image credit: Rory McCann

Following on from last week’s excitment around our application to Google’s Project 10^100 and the associated ColaLife video, there is another significant development.

True to his word, Salvatore Gabola of Coca-Cola has invited me to a 2-day stakeholder meeting in Dar Es Salaam on 25-26 November to discuss the findings of their research into their distribution network which Adrian Ristow has been reporting on here. The meeting will make recommendations for the pilots* that will be carried out based on the research findings.

This is hugely significant. I’ve re-arranged my diary and suspended my no-fly pledge for this trip. Like the original interest and coverage from the BBC, this would never have happened if we hadn’t all been able to get together here, on the Facebook Group, in the Flickr Group and using Google Group Mailing List.

At this stage I only have limited information on the meeting, there’s been no agenda issued yet. But I do know that about 20 people have been invited, mostly local stakeholders. International invitees include DfID and Oxfam and someone from Harvard (who were involved in the research) will be facilitating the meeting.

Anyway – I need help with the planning. I’m going to stay on for a couple of days after the meeting to gather information and materials the ColaLife campaign needs. Your thoughts please! What should be on the to-do list?

* The main idea of the pilots is to see how the growth of Coca-Cola’s distribution network could be done in a way that maximises the impact on poverty reduction. This means we are going to have to work hard to get the ColaLife idea as part of the pilots but that’s our objective.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, Tanzania, Tanzania Trip Nov 08 Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Sustainability: building a system with people not for people

5 September 2008 By Leave a Comment

Sri Lanka Coca-Cola distribution
Image credit: Tielman Nieuwoudt

Here’s the latest from Adrian Ristow who’s been leading the research into Coca-Cola distribution in east Africa:

A bit of a gap in communication from me – but my August has been a bit different this year; I had to spend some time back in South Africa on some other work. But the MDC (Manual Distribution Centre) research project has been on my mind and I’m as excited as ever about the future – ‘super excited’, as some of my super American friends would say ;-)

I’ve spent a lot of time speaking to MDC owners and their staff, as well as with the key sales staff from the local bottling company, to get a deeper understanding of the current reality and future potential. So much so that I’m dreaming Coca-Cola dreams at night and visiting MDCs in my sleep! Maybe that’s not such a bad thing: nothing happens if you don’t have a dream, and my ultimate vision is for this system to spread and grow – beyond what any of us can imagine at present.

A key goal was to understand better the current community benefits of the locally-owned distribution businesses, through the eyes of external researchers. We also wanted to get a clearer understanding of the priority social issues facing MDC owners, their staff and the surrounding communities. This feedback will help us find ways to enhance the community benefit from the MDCs, while importantly not risking the income of the entrepreneurs who earn their livelihoods from these businesses. We’re not looking for a trade-off or a compromise, but a win:win solution that will let the market work for us.

One of my biggest challenges is patience. It would be great to do everything now, but then I am reminded that we are dealing with an extensive network of independently owned small businesses. We want to build a unique and sustainable solution with them not for them, which can take a bit of time.

However, we’ll soon be able to move from the research phase and building the conceptual understanding to some practical on-the-ground testing. Now our team are reviewing and analysing the research data that we collected during July, and we’re aiming to share some key findings towards the end of September. So watch this space!

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, Ethiopia, Tanzania Tagged With: , , , ,

Local matters – latest from Tanzanzia

6 August 2008 By Leave a Comment


Image by Gabi~

Adrian writes:

This week has been filled with interesting discussions with more distributors and their employees as we investigate how Coca-Cola can partner better with this group of people in addressing key issues. Having spent some time looking at how things work in Ethiopia, I’m keen to see where there are differences and similarities in the Tanzanian models.

One thing we’ve learnt very quickly is how important ‘local’ is. Each country has its unique elements and this changes slightly the way that products are distributed and the way that their businesses are run. What immediately strikes you are the obvious cultural and political differences between Ethiopia and Tanzania. But many social concerns among the people we meet are very similar – although with varying degrees of severity. The problems people talk about are unemployment, safe drinking water, poor sanitation and education – as well as general poverty-related issues. Once we have completed our data gathering we’ll  be doing our utmost to find the right match between a local priority need and a possible way to harness Coca-Cola’s distribution partners for maximum impact, to try to address that particular challenge.  The local bottling partner, Coca-Cola Sabco, has real clout; it operates in seven Southern and East African countries – as well as five Asian countries – and employs more than 9500 people in 25 bottling plants. We’re really encouraged that they have been very supportive of the process so far. This is vital as they have the key relationship with the distributors and the local presence to make things happen. Local matters: time spent building relationships and understanding at this stage is going to be the best investment we can make in the change process.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, Ethiopia, Tanzania Tagged With: , , ,
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