BOGO
- A new way to look at the world of giving
Definitions of words can often change quite quickly these days. In the distant past the meaning of words was often set in stone. Today the meaning can change in a blink. With new faster ways to communicate with wider and more culturally, socially and educationally diverse audiences – words are put back on the anvil of evolution and reformed into something new and more meaningful to reflect life and living today.
There is a growing global movement where consumers are asking businesses to take care of the things that they care about. The request is mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it non-the-less signals that we are in a time of change. Consumers these days want their ‘goodies’ but they don’t want the environment to be destroyed in the creation of their ‘goodies’. They want cheap products but they do not want workers to suffer to create those cheap products.
There does not seem to be an answer to this conundrum and yet one does exist. It exists in the recoining or reforging of a single word. This word is a simple one – GET. Today a new movement of people who want to get but give at the same time are reforging it. It is being transformed into the word GIVE.
Every day I receive a notice from Google Alerts for two words – B1G1 and BOGO. It tells me all the new places that these words are being used on the Internet. I can now see that the new meaning of these words is coming alive ‘poco a poco’ [Italian : poco, little + a, by + poco, little].
B1G1 and BOGO, despite sounding like characters from a Marvel comic are originally acronyms for Buy One GET One free. You buy one and they give you an extra one for the same price. This is now changing.
If you look on Wikipedia you will find these definitions for BOGO (there isn’t a definition yet for B1G1 – there will be soon when I write one!) :
- An acronym in the retail industry that stands for Buy One Get One. For example, you could say "Buy 1 DVD, Get 1 FREE!
- Norway, a village in Norway.
- An acronym in slang British that stands for Britons Of Greek Origin or Greek Britons.
- Bogo, Cebu, a city in central Philippines.
- An alternate name for the Bilen ethnic group of Ethiopia or their language, Blin.
- The mascot of the ITESM CEM.
- BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
 Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm
BOGO Light
There is an organisation in the USA called SunLight Solar founded by a gentleman called Mark Bent. He has created a special torch that not only is an amazing and robust solar-powered light, his company also gives a free torch to a family in need in developing nations for each one purchased. If you look on their website you will learn about their “BOGOlight”.
BOGOlight.com - “The BoGo - our Buy one/Give one - program has successfully provided lights to many, many thousands of people in the developing world, changing lives because of your purchase and participation.”
When Mark Bent the creator of a solar powered light called BOGOLight started using the word BOGO he turned the acronym upside down. Instead of it meaning Buy One Get One Free it was inverted to become Buy One Give
One Free. And Mark's amazing lights do just that - with each one
purchased one is given free to a family in a developing nation where so
many don't have the luxury of electricity.
Other well known BOGO leaders - Citizen brands
There are many other well known and less well know businesses now doing Buy One Give One giving or transaction based giving as it is becoming known. Some of the famous ones are OLPC - One Laptop Per Child and TOMS Shoes . Some of the less well-known ones (in the USA at least) are based in Australia, New Zealand and the UK – Maple Muesli, Blinds Couture, Earthstar Publishing , Figure 8 Body Chains, Honestly Women magazine , Sunsplash Homes and Thavibu Gallery based in Thailand are just a few special businesses that are leading the Buy One Give One movement in their parts of the world.
Many Buy One Give One businesses are uniting under the common banner of Buy1GIVE1™. Buy1GIVE1 is the home of transaction-based giving. Any business based anywhere in the world can now start doing Buy One Give One giving with ease. It is becoming like a ‘CSR plug-in’ allowing a business to instantly start giving from each and every product or service sale, starting from just one cent. And it is no longer about giving an equivalent product to someone else, instead it is about contributing to a project that resonates with a companies activities. So for example a restaurant can feed a child, a TV manufacturer can give a cataract blind person the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision™), a magazine publisher can plant a tree for every subscription and a builder can build a low-cost family home for those in need (Buy1BUILD1™) - the list is endless.
Global giving report
Something special is happening these days as more and more people are switching onto giving as a part of their everyday experience. The 2008 Edelman Goodpurpose™ global study of consumer attitudes reveal that almost seven in 10 (68%) consumers would choose to remain loyal to a brand during a recession if it supports a good cause, and 71% say that when they think about the economic downturn, they have either given the same or more time and money to good causes. Read more about this BOGO story. This very same study highlighted some other major things as well like :
- Half (52%) of consumers globally are more likely to recommend a brand that supports a good cause over one that does not.
- and 54% would help a brand promote a product if there was a good cause behind it.
- And going even further… Around the world, consumers voice a strong desire for marketers to connect their brands to social action. Forty-two percent say that if two products are of the same quality and price, commitment to a social purpose trumps factors like design, innovation and brand loyalty when choosing one brand over the other.
With sales of the SunNight Solar™ sky rocking, and Mark's company gaining support from both customers and the media with over 15 major media articles in the last 12 months alone and with the huge media coverage the other BOGO leaders are receiving, this seems to prove the statistics right.
Turning getting into giving
In the minds of consumers, Buy One GIVE One is sure to replace Buy One GET One as the new global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1™ spreads. Certainly with the massive sales results and consumer demand shown for companies like BOGOlights, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and TOMS Shoes, this tide will continue to spread and grow.
I did a Google search on the 25 topmost key words connected with the keyword BOGO as an experiment to see what would show up. The results were interesting so I have displayed them below. You may notice that right now the word Give doesn't show up. It will be interested to do this test again in twelve months time to see what changes. Consumers are now driving change and yes they want to receive free gifts (traditional B1G1/BOGO) but equally they also want to give to others or see others being given to.
Here are the search results :
Free, networking, boots, groups, music, dallas, togo themes, wallpapers, buy, applications, skins, values, coupon, African, gift, photography, blogging, discount, sharing, shopping, pics, join, prose.
Transactional or transaction based giving
Unlike normal charitable giving Buy One Give One giving is transactional. What is meant by that is : every time you buy something you give something. In the case of SunNight Solar™ they give a physical light for every light sold. In most cases, businesses that become part of this special form of transaction-based giving, give in a different way. At Buy1GIVE1™, giving can start from just USD 1c contribution per sale. At this amount no business in the world can say they cannot give and 100% contributed goes to the cause.
1c can make a difference - Cause marketing
The amount of money that is contributed isn’t the focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. The focus instead is on the story and sharing the simple joy of giving. After all, if you think that 1c isn't a lot to give and would not make much of a difference think again.
From its origins in Ethiopia, where the main coffee production is still from wild coffee tree forests, coffee consumption has spread throughout the world. Today Brazil is still by far the largest producer producing an average output of 28% of the world’s total coffee. Brazil produced enough coffee in 2006 to make 216 billion four hundred million - 216 400 000 000 - espresso coffees. If we calculate that across global production then we get a daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 cups of coffee. The figures are hard to find but lets guess that 40% of the world’s coffee is sold in coffee shops then we would get that 846,966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally. This would equate to about 185,485,714 cups in the USA alone seeing they purchase around 21.9% of the world’s coffee beans.
 Now imagine that for every cup of coffee sold a child was given clean drinking water from its own well. It costs just 1cent per person per day to do this. Any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a cup of coffee. Instead of clean water a coffee shop could contribute for the education of coffee farmers children, costing from 23cents per child per day. The options and stories are unlimited as well as the potential difference that Buy One Give One transactional giving can make to the lives of many.
Transaction based giving is the story of a thousand mile journey starting with the first step. To dig a well costs a few thousand dollars hence many communities in developing nations cannot afford to dig wells. But when you see that it only takes the sale of a single cup of coffee to give clean well water to a single person for a day1, then you can see the magic of transactional based giving. Buy1GIVE1 giving is like the compound interest of giving - a little turns into a lot very quickly.
The project to give a person clean drinking water can be found here on the Buy1GIVE1 site.
Doing it together
So many companies are used to doing things on their own. Doing transactional giving is no different. A company can go out find a cause and start doing Buy One Give One giving. And yet they are missing the point when they do this. Buy1GIVE1™ giving is about sharing the joy of giving and not trying to change the world. As soon as you step up and say you are going to change the world then the world will step up and challenge you. Within a heartbeat a company would experience the sharp scrutiny of the media inspecting their every move. And yet when a company steps up and says it is supporting what its customer want and joins with others in its industry to do that in a win-win way, the story is different.
When companies choose to join together under a commonly recognised banner/brand they can have a powerful joint effect. The ripple that a single company creates is added to that of another and the ripple grows into a tidal wave that benefits so many. This is the power of giving and doing things together.
The final power of Buy One Give One transaction based giving is that everyone wins - the consumer wins - at no extra cost to themselves they have made a difference through their purchasing choices - the business wins in so many ways - and the worthy cause or charity wins because they can now receive small amounts from many sources all aggregated and paid as a lump sum from a single source if done through the Buy1GIVE1 service.
A new start - a new world - new thinking
If you go right now and check Wikipedia.com for the word BOGO you should find that a new definition has been added. And soon B1G1 will be added. It is time for a sea-change - a change from the focus on GETTING to focusing on GIVING. I personally added a small addition to Wikipedia’s BOGO definition that says this: "... an acronym in the marketing industry that stands for Buy One GIVE One.”
Imagine a world where you wake up and every time you buy you are giving a gift forward to someone who is in greater need than you right now. This is the magic of transactional giving - seamless and simple.
This is the world I want to be part of.
Just remember - you don't 'get' giving till you get giving.
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