Are You Somebody?

Are you a digital somebody?

I can tell you now, that if you don’t tweet, and facebook, and whatsapp and all those things, then in the eyes of marketers, you are nobody.

But read on – it is not actually hard to be “somebody” in this world, and some of the people who belong to the marketer’s empire don’t know it, and perhaps people outside of this world want their opinions to count.

Since the beginning of the last century, marketing has been a “thing”. Companies used marketer’s to wrap their “products” – from actual packaging, to ads, to values, stories and changes to the products themselves. To do this marketers needed to understand what people wanted.

So there were questionnaires, and focus groups and opinion panels. Huge companies specialised in gathering all the information about what consumers want and think. As products became global products, these companies, like McKinsey, became global companies.

But now social media and very clever use of technology, is taking the manpower, and the man (and woman) out of this equation. The marketing just world counts your clicks.

One company specialising in this technology, uses software that combs through 30 million websites a day in many languages. They look for references on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs, etc) to specific companies, events or products. They use software robots to crawl through text and even photos to pick up references relevant to their clients, and then sell that information to their clients, to inform them about what customers like and don’t like, what they want and what they don’t want.

The information that is searched through is all publicly available. It is all information which we put out there, every time we offer an opinion or “Like”, it is fodder for the marketing robots.

Opinion Leaders

So the marketing world garners opinions from the activities of social media users. But that’s not all – they can pick up which social media users are actually influencers.

Influencers or opinion leaders are then targeted deliberately by marketers – and courted – for example with free samples or invitations to special events, so that they will broadcast positive feedback on social media, and the marketing job is done at a very low cost.

So how do “they”, the marketing robots, know who is an influencer? This blog has a relatively small audience, but I am 100% certain, that some of the readers are “opinion leaders” about the arts, about technology, about restaurants. You might not know that you are an opinion leader, but the marketing software can see how many people liked your comment on a product for example, then acted in some way to follow your advice – by going to a site related to the product and then commenting about a similar purchase. If people follow your advice – the ‘bots will know – but only if you exist in the social media stratosphere.

This brings me to another interesting point. Do you want to know how much influence you have on facebook or Twitter? Well that’s eay to find out, there are free packages which tell you.

Klout

One of those is Klout. Google it, register (just put in your Facebook or Twitter details) and you will get a score between 1 and 100. Apparently the average is 40. My score was 10 (which I suspect might be the minimum).

This doesn’t surprise me, because I find social media, socially challenging. I don’t want to tell people who I don’t know what I think (I don’t mind so much on this forum – we are an exclusive little group, and if you are still reading at this point, you are probably in a very exclusive little group!) I don’t particularly want to change this, but if I did, Klout and other similar products would help me to do that.

Now I have mentioned Klout 5 times – that should be good for an extra point on the Klout scale.

I don’t think I care that marketers don’t know what I want and don’t want, but all this makes me think that the future offerings from businesses is just going to be based on the likes and dislikes of those who live in the social media empire. That’s not a good thing.

Socially Responsible Corporations. Really?

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Often the Private Sector hurls abuse at public sector workers – they are too well paid, they have fat pensions, they are lazy and ineffective. I am a public sector worker. Am I financially better off than I would have been in the private sector –debatable. I am not lazy, and I am reasonably effective in my work. But just as the Private Sector has these biases against public sector workers, I have biases against the corporate sector, and in particular big business.

I have a nagging feeling that business is all about separating the little people from their money. I know this is a contradictory viewpoint from someone doing a Masters in Business. Equally, I know very conscientious, very generous, and very “good” individuals working in the corporate world.

Readers from the corporate world are probably familiar with the world of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), I was not until recently.

Three things fundamental to a successful business:

I have learned that there are three things (probably a million more too, but lets stick with the three) that are fundamental to a successful business:

• A good team (even if that team is your brother, sister, husband or wife or a thousand employees);
• A strategy that allows you to: either do different things to your competitors, or do the same things differently to provide customer value;
• Careful management.

Big companies need investors, and one of the ways companies try to stand out from other companies to attract investors is through Corporate Social Responsibility.

Annual Reports of these companies include CSR sections. I have read several of these. Some outline real projects, others seem to tick boxes, but clearly it is becoming an increasingly important part of the corporate role.

Some companies hold CSR very close to their hearts. Their CSR ethos underlies many of their decisions, thus trying to produce a win-win situation with their employees, with their business neighbours or community, their investors and with governments.

Corporate Citizenship

In the United States, Corporate Social Responsibility is often referred to as Corporate Citizenship.

There are 4 main pillars of Corporate Social Responsibility or Corporate Citizenship: economics, ethics, legal and philanthropic.

Some interesting examples of CSR come from Intel Ireland, through the following examples below:

• They proactively support their staff by investing in on-going education and professional development;
• They offer a service where a family meal can be ordered for collection at the end of work-shifts so that working parents do not have to spend tiem with their families cooking, and so enhancing quality family time;
• They invested in conservation of the land surrounding their factory and in working with local communities in doing this;
• They support second and third level entrepreneurship competitions encoraging next generation Intel-ites.

Reading about Kingspan, an Irish company which designs and manufactures next generation building products is working towards very green factories of its own using green power and limited CO2 emissions.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy is a very interesting aspect of Corporate Citizenship. Philanthropic donations are not subject to tax. The donor can decide who should be the recipient. The donor may or may not capitalise on the PR provided.

Philanthropic giving is fascinating.

There are philanthropists who, like Chuck Feeney who established the Atlantic Philanthropies is genuinely all about the giving. Chuck Feeney cashed in his wealth and established a plan to give his riches away, mostly to Ireland to be invested in education and to Vietnam to be invested in Healthcare. Chuck Feeney is retirred, he is not in business – he is just giving.

Denis O’Brien is famous for giving too, but he is still in business and the good PR from giving, performs a useful function in countering any bad PR, which has been known to surface from time to time.

I am aware of another company which supported philanthropic activities in an emerging country with the intention of securing licenses for drilling for oil.

Then there is the totally cynical donor, who gives to advertise – nothing more, nothing less. I read of a chain of chicken diners in the US, where the owner sponsored development of all playgrounds and sports pitches atound his diners and it had a very positive impact on his business.

This brings me to the key question about philanthropy:

If you do a good thing for the wrong reasons, does it negate the wrong thing?

The answer, I think, is “No”.

So one final point on philanthropy. How come the companies get to decide who they give their money to? Maybe the money would be more usefully used if directly invested in a given economy. That’s not going to happen though but it would be good to dream of a society driven to do good at all levels for the right reasons.

We are the customers. Maybe some of you are even investors. We should raise our voices and encourage CSR and nudge it in the direction of a better world in terms of education, healthcare, income disparity and the environment – good things for good reasons!

The TTIP – Be Afraid, Very, Very Afraid….

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a series of trade negotiations between the European Union and the US.

Apparently, the TTIP is about reducing the regulatory barriers to trade for big business, including food safety law, environmental legislation, banking regulations.

Please read on … it is relevant!!!!

It will affect you and your family!!!

It seems to be a very secret process. There is very little publicity about it.

You can read the official European Commission information about the TTip at: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1230

But to decipher it you would need to be getting paid to struggle your way through it and try and get the key points. Fortunately, there is quite a bit of journalism highlighting the risks of the TTip. The section below is from an article in the Independent by Lee Williams, (What is TTIP? And six reasons why the answer should scare you. 7/10/2014):
1 The Health Service

One of the main aims of TTIP is to open up Europe’s public health, education and water services to US companies. Could this mean privatisation for our health services.

I have direct experience of the American Embassy pushing hard tor US companies to get into the medical device sector in the public health arena in Ireland – this is already happening.

2 Food and environmental safety

“There will be a concerted effort to bring EU standards on food safety and the environment closer to those of the US.

But US regulations are much less strict, with 70 per cent of all processed foods sold in US supermarkets now containing genetically modified ingredients. By contrast, the EU allows virtually no GM foods. The US also has far laxer restrictions on the use of pesticides. It also uses growth hormones in its beef which are restricted in Europe due to links to cancer. US farmers have tried to have these restrictions lifted repeatedly in the past through the World Trade Organisation and it is likely that they will use TTIP to do so again.

The same goes for the environment, where the EU’s regulations are far tougher on potentially toxic substances. In Europe a company has to prove a substance is safe before it can be used; in the US the opposite is true: any substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. As an example, the EU currently bans 1,200 substances from use in cosmetics; the US just 12.”

3 Banking regulations

The opposite is happening in the banking sector where the US has much tighter banking regulations than for example the UK – these could be diluted – that’s not good for all those who have been burned by lax banking regulations in the past.
4 Privacy

The ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was thrown out by a massive majority in the European Parliament in 2012 after a huge public backlash against what was rightly seen as an attack on individual privacy where internet service providers would be required to monitor people’s online activity.

It’s feared that TTIP could be bringing back ACTA’s central elements.

5 Jobs

The EU has admitted that TTIP will probably cause unemployment as jobs switch to the US, where labour standards and trade union rights are lower.
6 Democracy

One of the main aims of TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which allow companies to sue governments if those governments’ policies cause a loss of profits. In effect it means unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of democratically elected governments.
To see Lee Williams full article, go to:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html
We don’t have a vote on this. It’s in the hands of European and American politicians. But you can raise awareness and sign a petition against it.

In Ireland, see http://www.ttip.ie

This is what they are about:

We are a network of diverse Irish civil society organisations who are focused on fair trade, global and local, social, environmental and economic justice issues, workers’ and consumers’ rights, as well as the provision and regulation of high quality food and public services.

You can sign a petition to stop TTIP – if that’s all you can do to say “no”, then do it, sign the petition (almost 1.5 million people in Ireland have already done so).

http://ttip.ie/sign-up/

A New Way of Doing Business

Muhammed Yunus –
Received his Honorary Doctorate from DCU, Ireland, on 18th October, 2014
-I was fortunate to be present

Dr Martin McAleese, Chancellor of Dublin City University (DCU) presented the ethos of Professor Yunus as a man who truly believes in the rights of the individual as stated in the UN Charter of Human Rights, as a man who does not promote charity but promotes the concept of a chance for those living in poverty to escape the shackles of poverty put on them by society.

Dr McAleese said that Yunus looks for more than charity can give:

• acceptance that each person is very important, that each person has potential and that he or she can have influence;
• acknowledgement that everyone has unlimited potential which often lies dormant;
• acknowledgement that if we harness all the unrealised potential of people- we could do so much;
• acceptance that things are never as complicated as we make them, it is our arrogance about our own sophistication that pushes us to complicate issues unnecessarily.

A Champion of Solutions and Simplicity

Professor Yunus became a champion of solutions and simplicity, of the need to challenge our default position of complacency, and of our need to recalibrate our conscience.

Professor Yunus was described as a creative destructor of equilibrium.

He had brought hope to the disenfranchised poor of Bangladesh.

He has a BA and MBA in economics and had received a Fullbright scholarship to study in the United States where he established a Bangladesh Information Centre and worked to highlight the plight of people in Bangladesh.

He was later lecturing in the University of Chitagon in Bangladesh and he brought his students on field trips to a nearby village where he was haunted by the poverty.

In 1976, a lady who was a skilled weaver told him her story: that she was being charged an interest rate of 14000% on a loan equivalent to 22cents by a moneylender who would buy stools from her at a price which he decided and so she was in the ultimate poverty trap.

This inspired Professor Yunus to invite his students to become volunteer bankers, starting with a stake of $20 and lending 40 women 50 cents each. This has blossomed into the Grameen (or Village) Bank which now has a turnover of $9bn.

Parallels with Jonathan Swift

At the ceremony in DCU, Dr Ní Bhradaigh took the opportunity to draw parallels with Dean Jonathan Swift who developed a system of Microloans in Dublin in the early 1700s.

Yunus believes that there is no village without an entrepreneur.

Professor Yunus, identified the concept of socio-economic building blocks of 5 women who were friends but who were not related. He valued the concept of social capital and efficacy, he understood the value of development from below. Almost 100% of the Grameen bank loans are to women and there is almost 100% repayments.

Professor Yunus identified that loans to women lead to more benefits to families and through that, more benefits to society. He put a value on mentoring and training, and developed the concept of “Sixteen Decisions”.

He has inspired spin-off companies, he is a true social entrepreneur who won the Nobel prize for Peace in 2006.

Instinct and Initiative

Professor Yunus said that what he had done, he had done on instinct and initiative, not as a researcher or an academic. That this was a work of desperation, he knew that something had to be done.

He had found himself teaching in a class which was disconnected from the people outside the walls of the classroom. The classroom felt like “make-believe” and as a teacher, he had a sense of uselessness.. So he crossed the border from the university into the village.

Professor Yunus said he “wanted to see if I could make myself useful, even for one day…”.

Unconsciously establishing a bank

So the little things that he could do to help started to become clear. He began to lend money from his own pocket, this idea became a sensation and it was very encouraging but more people wanted to borrow and the money was running out. So he tried to get the banks involved but it took three months to be successful in this. But the banks were not making enough money due to the paybacks, so the project started to fail, so Yunus started his own bank. It took seven years but now it is all over Bangladesh and has even got branches in New York, LA and San Francisco.

When he reflects on how he started a bank, he says, he looked at how conventional banks did it and he did the opposite: he loaned money to poor women, not rich men; he was based in the village and not the city, he brought the bank to the people, not the people to the bank; the bank is owned by the borrowers, there is no collateral, no legal papers, no lawyers.

He notes that poverty is not created by the people but by the system. Poor people are like a bonsai tree, they have not been given room to grow, to be entrepreneurs.

He said people are born entrepreneurs, but we are in a society where the drive is to find a job. But humans are job creators not job seekers.

Yunus believes that conventional entrepreneurship is limited to the goal of making money, it becomes a job slot focussed on making money. We need to go beyond this, we need social business focussed on solving problems.

A very strong theme running through the speeches about and from Professor Yunus is that the issue for society is not about charity but about freedom of opportunity.

“Sixteen Decisions”

The list below shows the “Sixteen Decisions” which is recited and agreed to by borrowers at all branches of the Grameen bank:

• We shall follow and advance the four principles of Grameen Bank: Discipline, Unity, Courage and Hard work – in all walks of our lives.Prosperity we shall bring to our families.
• We shall not live in dilapidated houses. We shall repair our houses and work towards constructing new houses at the earliest.
• We shall grow vegetables all the year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.
• During the planting seasons, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible.
• We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize our expenditures.
• We shall look after our health.
• We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.
• We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.
• We shall build and use pit-latrines.
• We shall drink water from tube wells. If it is not available, we shall boil water or use alum.
• We shall not take any dowry at our sons’ weddings, neither shall we give any dowry at our daughters’ weddings. We shall keep our centre free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.
• We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone, neither shall we allow anyone to do so.
• We shall collectively undertake bigger investments for higher incomes.
• We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help him or her.
• If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any centre, we shall all go there and help restore discipline.
• We shall take part in all social activities collectively.

These sixteen principles, with cultural adaptation could provide such a strong foundation in our own society. More interestingly, though, these are not presented as principles but as “decisions”, and arguably, that is where their power lies.

“Make myself useful even for one day”

Yunus’s idea of just wanting to make himself useful even for one day is an excellent starting point for reform. For those of us who aspire to be part of social reform and healthcare reform perhaps we need to adjust our thinking to “making myself useful, even for just one day…”

“Haves and Have-nots”

Professor Yunus said there is no need for poverty, however after just a few weeks studying for a masters in business, I am more aware than ever that, business is about differentiating the haves and have-nots. I believe, sadly, that the haves will always have a need to ensure there are “have-nots”.  But Muhammad Yunus’s ideas have thrived and he has brought hope to thousands who were hopeless.  Sometimes dreams triumph over reality.