marketing

Co-operatives, collaborations, partnerships – antidote to the default setting of corporate greed?

Pic credit: Master Isolated, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php? photogid=1962

I’ve always liked the concept of co-operatives, the idea of ordinary people joining together and sharing the labour and the profits of their labour, as opposed to fat-cat directors skimming off the cream and leaving a few drops of sour milk for the people who make their wealth possible, in the form of pathetic little bonuses and below-inflation pay rises.

Somehow, in our loony capitalist world, it’s become accepted that one particular group of workers, those that sit in offices and administrate, should be an elite who earn disproportionately way more than the rest. “But we bring in the money!” they cry in justification for enormous salaries. Yes, and we accept we couldn’t do without you. But we clean the toilets, or serve the lunches, or treat the sick, or produce the staff newspaper, or handle customer complaints, or deliver the post, or mend the computers…. And you couldn’t do without us! Everyone, every function, in a business is interdependent. No business can succeed without everyone performing their own role to the best of their ability. Where did this idea come from, and how has it taken root, this idea that those who perform one function should be so much better recompensed than others?

Directors of big companies; premier league footballers; and top bankers are the obvious examples. They’d argue “but we’re the best at what we do!”. That’s as maybe. Isn’t everybody in a company the best at what they do? They wouldn’t have been recruited in the first place if they weren’t. Who’s to say who brings more real value to a business – or especially to society? Why the huge disparity in remuneration? There are only 24 hours in a day and even those who need little sleep can scarcely work more than 16 hours a day, even if they wanted to. Even then, even working twice the hours of the “normal” worker, that’s no reason to be paid more than twice the rate of that normal worker.

Let’s face it – if we were living in an egalitarian society where everyone earned the same salary, the footballers would still choose to be footballers, the company directors would still choose to be company directors, the cleaners and porters and postal workers would probably still choose their jobs. We’d choose our jobs according to our own abilities and tastes. No one job is intrinsically more worthy of reward than others.

You might find, of course, that some would opt for what is currently considered to be a lesser role, knowing in their hearts that their current position exceeds their abilities. That would be fine – by all means, weed out those who have been promoted beyond their abilities though over-confidence, or through knowing “the right people”. Others would choose a job that suited their natural inclinations, that they couldn’t do under the old system because it wouldn’t pay the bills – like helping with literacy classes or looking after sick people, or rescuing abandoned animals or helping the homeless and dispossessed. Useful jobs.

Ultimately things would all even out and everyone would be doing the job that best suited their personalities and aptitudes and interests – and society would be all the better for it.

There is an alternative to the default setting of corporate greed, and it’s not new. The co-operative movement began in Europe in the 19th century, spurred on by the exploitation brought about by the industrial revolution, the idea being that workers should be self-governing, reaping all the benefits from their own work. No one person would be in the position of being able to command an income far bigger than the rest. Everyone would do the job to which they were best suited, everyone would work equally hard, and everyone would share in the rewards.

Probably the best-known today in the UK is The Co-operative Group http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/, the UK’s largest consumer co-operative, which comprises the supermarket chain and insurance, travel, banking, legal and funeral businesses. The core idea is to sell products in a fair and honest way, support communities and make a reasonable financial return to the member-owners.

Then there’s the likes of the John Lewis Partnership, another major retailer, not strictly a co-operative but still with the aim of divvying up the profits among the people who create them. http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/. It works – the staff like getting a share of the dibs and the customers like getting the good service that is a result of that incentive.

Here’s another example of collaborative working. This week, I did an interview with office and meeting space provider Regus http://www.regus.co.uk/, whose UK regional director told me about a growing trend for co-working – where unrelated businesses choose to share an office for the opportunities that provides for company and networking. This has been particularly noticeable at Regus’s sister brand B.hive, which is targeted at women – and headed by well-known businesswoman Lynne Franks http://www.lynnefranks.co.uk/.

Regus UK regional director Celia Donne told me: “We have many examples of women who met at B.hive and who are now working together or finding ways to help each other. It’s like a private members’ club but with business facilities. Women, especially those in smaller organisations, tend to seek a slightly less corporate approach.”

Then there are the quirky little local examples, like the Spring Garden pub and live music venue in Hotwells, Bristol, which is run as a CIC (Community Interest Company). It operates as a non-profit organisation, putting all surplus money back in to music and drama and local interest groups. I’d provide a link except its website doesn’t seem to work, so maybe it’s gone out of business, which would be a bit shit considering I’m singing the praises of co-operatives. Anyway, it’s a nice little place and when I went in there the other day to ask if they had live music on Saturday the bloke behind the bar said “no, but you can come in and play if you like” which, considering he’d never heard my singing, makes him a very brave man.

And finally, in my list of examples of lovely collaborative enterprises, is the newly formed Golden Mustard Media http://www.goldenmustardmedia.co.uk/. The idea is that a load of creative types – writers, designers, marketing bods etc – club together to offer the same services that a larger marketing agency could do. Golden Mustard offers the whole gamut of creative services, such as design, marketing, copywriting and PR – and I’m going to be part of it, which is fab. The brains behind the idea is an entrepreneurial journo called Graham Garnett, who will bring in the business, sub individual projects out to whoever is best suited to handle them, taking his percentage in much the same way as any agency does. I’ll let you know if it works!

While ads make parents obsess about hygiene, kids learn to hate their own bodies

I got really cross after reading a batch of press releases out this week. One, issued by a manufacturer of office cleaning products, listed a variety of dirty habits that are “annoying the UK’s mums”. These include not washing hands after going to the toilet, leaving toe nail clippings in the lounge, picking feet, kissing pets and taking cookery books and laptops into the toilet.

Apparently more than a quarter of mums said their children had had a mystery sickness recently, thanks to poor personal hygiene – oh, and not cleaning their computer equipment.

This makes me mad for two reasons. One, using guilt to make people buy stuff (“you bad parent, your kids are getting sick, and all cos you’re too mean to buy our product and too lazy to clean properly!”).
And two, demonising the mums. Why is this all about women? Where the hell are the dads? Why aren’t they being encouraged to take some responsibility for the family’s welfare and worry themselves into a panic over toe nail clippings and dirty keyboards and whether little Johnny’s got the squits?

The poor cows questioned in the poll admitted the main reason why they are “not more hygienic” is lack of time to clean due to work commitments and caring for their children. Come now, ladies, don’t forget the chaps let you have the vote and all that – now stop making excuses about having to work 20 hours a day to pay the mortgage and bring up a family – do your bit and get on with the cleaning.

Meanwhile, a press release from a manufacturer of power tools says 45% of parents spend less than five hours a week playing and bonding with their children. This means not enough time to teach the kids the DIY skills they’ll need to put up shelves and things when they grow up.

Of course parents haven’t got time to play with their children and teach them life skills; scare stories about e.coli have put the willies up them to such an extent that they’re too busy buying cleaning products and scrubbing computer keyboards – which is exactly what manufacturers of cleaning products, though clearly not of power tools, want.

Meanwhile, according to a cosmetic surgery company, a quarter of women first considered plastic surgery when they were between the ages of 10 and 15.

Don’t even start me on dodgy research: the women polled were “asked at what age they first considered cosmetic surgery”, the assumption being that they all had! So we’re led to believe that a quarter of all women had considered surgery as children, whereas the truth is probably that a quarter of all those who had considered surgery had first done so as children. The difference is important and potentially statistically significant. It makes me so cross to see imprecise research because it makes the resulting statistics misleading or even meaningless.

Anyway, that’s by the by. The gist of the research, that some children are so uneasy about their bodies that they think about plastic surgery, is shocking. Even the company involved admits as much. Could this trend be related in any way to the fact that these poor kids are left in front of the TV, soaking up the insidious messages of the adverts telling them they should be more beautiful, while their parents are working all the hours and are too busy worrying about whether they’re hygienic enough, to actually talk to their children?

Perhaps while the mums are cleaning the family’s mobile phones and doing the DIY, the dads could be encouraging children to critically analyse the vile marketing messages that are damaging their self-worth to the extent that they want to surgically alter their bodies when they get older.

Pic credit: Scottchan, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1701

Knickers to “National Underwear Day”

It was National Underwear Day today, according to a press release from a well-known British purveyor of pants and bras. My reaction on reading this was “oh yeah, sez who???”

I guessed that, like most of these so-called National Days, this was a manufactured, blatant attempt to get people into the shops to buy stuff they don’t need. National Underwear Day, I subsequently discovered, is actually an American invention, launched in 2003 by a US company that gave away 5,000 pairs of pants and sent out loads of emaciated models to roam around New York in their under-garments.

National Underwear Day, according to the organiser, is “the day when underwear becomes not just the first thing you put on and the last thing you take off, but the most important thing you wear all day”. Actually, I’m at that age where a nice pair of comfy sandals is more important.

In a shock announcement, the organisers revealed that 80% of Americans never change the type of underwear they wear. Perhaps the knicker manufacturers need to hire new marketing staff, then?

Anyhow, it all sounds pretty tasteless, so I won’t name the British company concerned other than to say it issued a statement urging “every woman from office worker to stay at home mums, to wear their best undies!”

“Ask yourself,” it pronounced, ‘do I have the right shapewear for my figure and needs?’ Nah, probably not.

‘Are those greying knickers ready for the bin?’ Yeah, probably.

‘Do I wear the right size bra?’. Dunno. Don’t care.

“Women ask themselves these questions every day,” it went on. No, they don’t. I’m bored now.

In a mark of protest I selected a fetching ensemble of a manky old pair of pants that were white and frilly once but frankly a bit grey now, teamed with a limp pink bra with the lace trim all frayed and tired.

Then I went down the local charity shop and helped my friend Christina pick out a bra costing £2. “No point spending £20 when I can get a perfectly good one for a tenth of that, is there?” she said, giving her own cheerful finger up to National Underwear Day.

Meanwhile, a British “home emergency expert” also jumped on the underwear bandwagon by putting out a press release saying it recovered more than 5,000 pairs of pants, knickers and socks from the nation’s pipes last year. Crikey, that must be what happened to all that new “shapewear” I bought to celebrate last year’s National Underwear Day.

Pic credit: Suat Eman, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=151