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BOGO PDF Print E-mail
Written by David Anttony   
Definitions of words 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 educatio
by DavidAnttony


Definitions of words 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 educatio

There is a growing significant movement happening global where consumers are asking businesses to look after the things they care about such as the environment and the less fortunate in society. The request is still mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it still signals we are in a time of great change. Consumers these days want their 'toys' but they don't want the environment to be destroyed in the creation of these. They want cheap products but they do not want workers to be paid a pittance to create the cheap products.

There may not seem an answer to this complex puzzle and yet one actually exists. It exists in the reforging of a simple single word - GET. Today there is a new movement of people wanting to get but give at the same time and they are reforging it's meaning 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 acronyms for Buy One GET One free. You buy one and they give you an extra one for the same price.

If you look on Wikipedia you will find these definitions for BOGO (there isn't a definition yet for B1G1) -

* An acronym in the retail industry that stands for Buy One Get One. For example, you could say "Buy 1 DVD, Get 1 FREE!

* An acronym in slang British that stands for Britons Of Greek Origin or Greek Britons.

* Bogo, Cebu, a city in central Philippines.

* Norway, a village in Norway.

* Norway, a village in Norway.

* The mascot of the ITESM CEM.

* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm

* 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."

Mark Bent turned the acronym upside down when he started to use the word as part of his product name. For him now and the thousands who buy his lights, BOGO now means Buy One GIVE One. Each person gets to give a light every time they buy one for themselves. So now with each sale people who do not have the luxury of electricity can harness the power of the sun to support their lives.

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 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 run by a social enterprise based in Singapore. 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.

Something special is happening these days as more and more people are switching onto giving and 'citizen brands' 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. This very same study highlighted some other major things as well like :

* 52% of consumers globally are more likely to recommend a brand to others when it supports a good charity cause over one that doesn't.

* and 54% would champion a brand to promote a product if there was a good cause behind it.

* Globally consumers are voicing a distinct desire for marketers to associate their brands to social causes. Forty-two percent say that if two products or services are of a similar quality and price, commitment to a cause trumps factors like innovation, design and brand loyalty when selecting one brand over another.

Getting becoming Giving

In the minds of consumers, Buy One GIVE One is expected 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 recent Google search to find the top 25 keywords associated with the keywords BOGO and B1G1. The results were interesting indeed seeing none of them contained the word Give. You can see the results below. It will be interested to repeat this experiment in 12 months time to see what changes. Consumers are now starting to drive significant change and despite them wanting to receive free gifts (as in traditional BOGO/B1G1), they equally want to help others and the environment. This feeling is validated by 2008's Goodpurpose global study.

Here's the results :

Free, shopping, pics, join, prose, photography, blogging, discount, boots, groups, music, dallas, togo themes, wallpapers, buy, applications, skins, values, coupon, gift, sharing, networking, African.

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.

The actual amount given from each and every sale is not the point of focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. It is not about saying 10% is contributed or 5c from each sale - instead the focus is on the story and sharing the simple joy of giving. In the end, if you think that 1c is not a lot to contribute and is not likely to make much of a difference think again and consider the following.

From its origins in Ethiopia, where the main coffee production is still from wild coffee tree forests, coffee consumption has spread globally. Brazil is still by far the largest coffee producer in the world producing on average 28% of the world's total coffee. In 2006 Brazil produced enough coffee to make 216,400,000,000 (216 billion four hundred million) espresso coffees. If we were to calculate across global production then we get a daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 cups of coffee - wow. The figures are somewhat hard to track down but lets guess that 40% of the world's coffee is sold and consumed in coffee shops then we would get that 846,966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally - nearly 900 million. This would equate to about 185,485,714 cups in the US on its own seeing they purchase around 21% of the world's coffee.

Imagine now that for every cup of coffee sold a child in a developing region like Africa received drinking water from its own well and it costing only one US cent per person per day. Now any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a single cup of coffee because it has a high profit margin sale. Imagine the different that this alone would make in the world.

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.

Of course any company can do transaction-based giving with any of its products or services and do it on their own as some are like TESCO in the UK giving school uniforms to kids in Africa in partnership with Save the Children. And yet if companies choose to join together under a commonly recognised banner/brand they can have a powerful effect. The ripple that a single company creates is added to that of another and the ripple grows into a tidal wave of giving. 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 beginning

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."

Just imagine our world where every time you shopped and bought something you gave something - automatically and seamlessly. This is the simple joyful magic of transaction based giving.

This is the world I choose to be a part of.

And remember - you don't 'get' giving till you get giving.

References :

http://www.coffeepoet.com/2007/09/

http://www.buy1-give1free.com/index.php/Partnering/Worthy-cause-charity-projects.html

http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/

http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee

http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm

http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm

Footnotes: 1 Daily cost per person is calculated by taking the average cost to dig a well, dividing it by its average expected life without major maintenance, divided by the number of people in the community benefitting from the well on a daily basis.

About the Author:

Buy1/Give1 (B1G1) is now a global "movement" led by Buy1GIVE1. Visit Buy One Give One - Buy1GIVE1 for recent updates. Add this to your site with links active and intact. Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.

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