Friday 5: 4th August
Each week we publish five interesting ideas to take you into the weekend in our Friday 5. This week's edition is below, but if you want to subscribe and receive them direct to your inbox every Friday, you can do so here.
(1) Happy Birthday to Us
We’ve come of age, and this month we are celebrating 21 years of Good Business. Not by falling drunk out of a nightclub at 2am (although we aren’t ruling that out) but by reflecting on what we’ve done over that time, and what we still want to achieve. At the heart of what we do has always been our belief that businesses and their brands are a powerful tool for social change, as well as our unswerving commitment to making good things happen. Along the way we’ve supported young people to “think big” and become social and digital innovators, tackled rising smoking rates in sub-Saharan Africa, explored public attitudes to drug resistant infection and antimicrobial resistance, got young people to tell world leaders the changes they wanted to see in society and helped improve the sustainability standards of 5.5 million airline meals a year.
We’ve seen the world move with us, and confirm that we were right all those years ago, even though it felt like a bit of a risk back then. We’ve seen massive multinationals champion the power of creating social and commercial value at the same time, and the birth of completely new brands that originate from a sense of social purpose and a desire to create positive change. And we’ve seen the rise of a new generation of consumers who believe it’s not only cool to care, but important to do so as well. Our desire to create sustained and positive change hasn’t diminished. We still believe passionately in good business (and Good Business!) and the importance of finding thoughtful and creative ways to create lasting value for business and society, and restoring much-needed trust in institutions. And we couldn’t do any of it without our large and ever-expanding network of clients, friends and collaborators, who challenge and inspire us to do more, and to do it better. So thank you to all of you, and we can’t wait to see what the next 21 years bring.
(2) How to Buy Happiness
Despite Bo Derek’s claim that “whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping”, we all know that buying more stuff doesn’t necessarily make you happier. But it turns out that money can in fact buy you happiness, depending on what - and who - you spend it on. While we all love receiving gifts on special events (like birthdays!), have you ever felt that burst of joy when giving a carefully selected gift to someone? Researchers at Zurich University have found that those who spent their money on buying things for other people showed greater increases in self-reported happiness than those buying something for themselves. Sometimes, you do need to treat yourself though, and if you do, it turns out the best thing you can buy yourself is time. Another new study - this one published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - has found that that spending money to buy free time, such as paying others to cook or clean for you, leaves you feeling less stressed and generally more satisfied with life. We picked up some great tips at a talk we attended recently by psychology lecturer and writer Claudia Hammond about Money and Happiness (run by Action for Happiness). She has some great ideas on how to spend your money wisely: small treats, experiences, paying in advance and spending money on others are the way to go, apparently. So perhaps it’s time to buy a bar of chocolate and put it in a drawer for later, or buy some tickets for you and a friend to go to the theatre next month.
(3) Stubbing Out Smoking
It’s been 10 years since our rights to puff away indoors (in England, at least - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all got there first) went up in smoke. This week has seen a lot of chatter about the impact of the smoking ban - and yes, smoking rates have fallen, but they were actually falling anyway. By the time the ban was implemented, other strategies to tackle smoking were well underway: tobacco advertising was outlawed in 2002, graphic campaigns showing the effects of smoking were becoming more common from 2004 (leading eventually to neutral packaging), and regular tax hikes to increase in the price of cigarettes. Smoking rates were at 21% when the ban came into effect in England, and now stand at 15.8% in the UK, but it’s a different picture in many parts of the world. In lower and middle income countries, smoking rates have typically been relatively low, and tobacco control was often not considered a priority compared to other health challenges. Big tobacco companies took the opportunity to target these countries, encouraging people to take up smoking with aggressive marketing and government lobbying tactics. A report by the WHO in 2015 analysing smoking trends globally revealed that in Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean smoking rates are indeed rising. However, with current rates in sub-Saharan Africa still relatively low, public health efforts are on smoking prevention, rather than smoking cessation. Our work with the Gates Foundation in Africa targets younger generations by creating brands and movements that are designed to strip the aspiration out of smoking, making it cool to say no to tobacco. Instead of allowing rates to rise and then fall, as they have done here in the UK, we see this as an opportunity to leapfrog the peak, and maintain low smoking rates. To see our programmes in action, you can follow our Facebook pages (for Botswana, Uganda and Ghana), or get in touch with us for more info.
(4) Choose to Refuse
Plastic continues to dominate the sustainability agenda, and top of the hitlist this week is single-use plastics. Recently, the University of Georgia calculated that humans have now produced more than 1 billion elephants’ worth of plastic waste, or 8.3 billion metric tonnes, 79% of which ends up in landfill. Not surprisingly, plastic bottles are a huge culprit, and so this week Coca-Cola has released its new pun-filled ad campaign encouraging consumers to recycle their bottles. The ad is a stopmotion film that follows the love story of two bottle characters, and was created using 1,500 animated recycled plastic bottles. This comes as Coca-Cola announced it was increasing the amount of recycled plastic in its bottles to 50% by 2020. It’s not the only company taking the issue seriously – M&S redesigned 140 of its top-selling products in order to save 75 tonnes of plastic packaging each year. And what about those supposedly inoffensive cotton buds with a plastic stem? As the sixth most common contributor to ocean plastic, they are off the shopping list at both Tesco and Sainsbury’s. But as much as we applaud corporates making moves to reduce plastic waste, it’s also down to us consumers too. Refuse that tiny straw with your next cocktail. Buy veg that isn’t wrapped in plastic. Remember that long-life shopping bag. For more tips on simple changes visit Plastic Free July and #ChooseToRefuse.
(5) Taking Hold of Smallholder Poverty
When chewing a piece of Wrigley gum, you’re probably going to be more concerned with fresh breath than with the income of the smallholders in northern India who grow its key ingredients. Unfortunately, they’re by no means making a mint - many of the 200 million smallholder farmers around the world providing crops for global and local supply chains are living in poverty. If companies want to secure the long-term supply of their ingredients, they need to ensure a decent income for smallholders. This means going beyond corporate responsibility or sticking a certification label on products, and getting to grips with the underlying issues. This is what food giant and Wrigley-owner Mars is seeking to do with its Farmer Income Lab, a “think-do” tank that will invest in research and shape dialogue to produce practical ideas for improving the income of farmers. It will test its insights working together with the Livelihoods Fund for Family Farming (Mars and Danone’s investment fund of €120 million that aims to build sustainable agricultural supply chains with smallholder farmers over the next ten years), by implementing new models within Mars’ programmes in cocoa, mint and rice. Farmer Income Lab’s advisory board already includes Oxfam, with other delegates to be announced soon, and it intends to share externally what it learns to inspire action from businesses, governments and NGOs. The World Economic Forum rightly suggests we’re going to need some “surprising alliances” that bring together different sectors if we are to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and indeed Goal 17 is specifically focused on cross-sector partnerships to create change. Clearly, tackling smallholder poverty is as much about collaboration as it is about crops.