My two personal business goals are:
1) make marketing for social good a thing all marketing and communications professionals strive for; building community and supporting marketeers in non-profits, B-corps and for-profit social businesses by sharing best practices and lessons learned.
and
2) helping for-profit companies realize the following:
"The bottom line isn't the goal. The bottom line is the means to make the world better."
Marketing for social good
By all means, make money! The more money, the more good impact you can make. But also, embed the two principles of (1) Do No Harm (to people or planet) in your company's DNA and (2) invest a decent % of profits in making the world better. That could be in your supply chain or a cause you believe in.
As humans, we connect through shared experiences and storytelling. Our stories shape us, who we are, our history, what we believe. It is through stories that we can reach the empathetic center of the brain. We remember the stories that resonate with us, that made us laugh or touched our soul. Those are the brands, the companies we remember, we identify with and we share.
Following are some of the storytelling productions I've worked on in the past years for Fairtrade.
Mary Catherine Bateson, anthropologist
"The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories."
With the Covid19 pandemic, the world was hit hard, especially already struggling farmers in countries with less infrastructure and means. With this short 1+ min film, we wanted to give our communities here a sign of hope and a shared purpose for the future; that together we can build back a better world. Even our smallest choices, for example the coffee or tea we drink, can lead to bigger impacts for a better world.
I wrote the script and produced this film together with filmmakers from Orientation.
Build Back Better
This stop motion animation is an element of our banana campaign month that I worked on in collaboration with Online Slimmerik, a group of creative digital strategists, and filmmaker Niels Hoebers. The goal: to let consumers and businesses know that their choice for Fairtrade bananas is the best choice, with the most impact for people and planet.
Fairtrade Makes more possible!
This film idea took shape in my head while flying to Côte d’Ivoire on a media trip with Veronica van Hoogdalem, Dutch TV presenter and host of Spotify podcast Praat Muziek met Mij. We wanted to bring the life of a young woman in West Africa closer to the lives of chocolate consumers in European countries and North America. To achieve this, we used a split screen version of two lives, worlds apart, but showcasing very similar moments in their days. We filmed Mirjam during her daily activities in Côte d’Ivoire and then filmed Veronica back in Amsterdam. Being able to film them together was the key shot, their singular lives joining paths at the end.
Two women, two countries...one world
To drive awareness around issues facing cocoa farmers, we hosted the Netherland’s first edible pop-up shop in the middle of Utrecht Central train station, one of the busiest location in the Netherlands. I worked collaboratively with our internal team on the concept and led on the exterior design and storytelling inside and around the pop-up shop. Inside was a dividing wall made completely of chocolate bricks. Words formed inside the chocolate bricks represented struggles cocoa farmers face: poverty, child labor, low prices, exploitation, climate change, etc.
Break The System
To engage people deeper into the lives of cocoa farmers, I produced, together with filmmakers Orientation Travel Productions a series of short video portraits; people in cocoa farming communities in Côte d’Ivoire. This unique exhibition featured large video screens turned sideways so that the people in the videos were life size. Visitors felt as if the people in the videos were addressing them personally. Because of this and that we kept the videos short (>1.5 min), many pop-up shop visitors watched every video in the exhibition.
Click here for a collection of all 6 profile videos. Below is a fun closing collage that gives you a quick impression of all the people we filmed for this series.