Livity at Collaborative Consumption Europe 2012
Collaborative consumption – if you don’t know what it is yet, quickly get on board this runaway social revolution train of sharing, swapping, bartering, trading and/or renting access to products (as opposed to individual ownership). Ron Conway (legendary Silicon Valley angel investor) calls it a “megatrend”, whilst Time magazine states collaborative consumption as one of the “top 10 ideas that will change the world”.
Never one to miss a megatrend, here at Livity we’ve been sporting collaborative consumption with a number of our projects (such as nationwide space-sharing project somewhereto_ http://somewhereto.com/), and on March 28 we represented at the second Collaborative Consumption Europe event to find out what other innovative companies were doing, and what advice they cared to share.
Building and rebuilding trust in sharing is the first step says Kim Hardane (CEO of Wimdu UK, who recommended holding first time consumers by their hand and taking them through the process; if that is successful, he said “they will come back and be able to do it alone”.
Antonin Leonard (Co-founder of Ouishare), said there were two factors to success in collaborative consumption: “Knowing why first time users would come to you, and knowing why repeat users keep on coming back.” Antonin also states more targeted dialogue on social networks, and building online forums to promote and share service (without spamming of course!) has a massive impact, as “People who share online are more likely to share offline… Social media is a gateway to collaborative consumption”.
And Martine Parnell (Marketing Director of Zopa) added: “Promoting the success/impact of your service acts as secondary motivation for users, and will increase your own success”.
To find out more about collaborative consumption, click here http://collaborativeconsumption.com/ – or watch the TED talk (above) by Rachel Botsman, co-author of “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”.
For more information on our projects, and to see how we’re making collaborative consumption a success, click here http://livity.co.uk/2011/zeitgeist-young-minds-2/.
Livity celebrates one radical night on the tiles
Last night was a momentous milestone for Livity as we were recognised for our achievements at the Marketing Agency Association Best Awards. We scooped up three awards for NSPCC’s ChildLine Final Verse including Best Consumer Campaign, Best Social Media Campaign as well as Best of the Best Campaign given for overall campaign of the evening at the discretion of the judges.
Kate Brundle, Associate Director at Livity sums up the evening: “Final Verse is a project we are incredibly proud of. To create a campaign that reaches your audience with an important message and also receives industry recognition is a fantastic feeling. Winning Best Social Media Campaign and Best Consumer Campaign is an amazing achievement. We are so pleased we stood out to the judges and thank them for awarding us Best of the Best against so many other high quality campaigns.”
“Final Verse deserved this award because it was an absolutely inspired piece of work. It was built on a genuine understanding of their core male teen target group who are very difficult to reach and to get talking about ChildLine issues. Urban music, MCing and performing is at the heart of their culture and they create an authentic highly shareable idea which made it so successful in social media” said the judges.
Our rapturous celebrations were echoed at an event hosted by NESTA, for our nomination as one of ‘Britain’s 50 New Radicals’, awarding Livity with the distinction as one of the few organisations who are ‘changing Britain for the better, applying fresh approaches in practical and scalable ways, through social, technological, scientific and artistic methods’.
As The Observer pointed out in their article, “Thomas Edison famously said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” and if last night’s celebratory-antics are anything to go by we would say Livity are on the right side of genius!
Sam and Michelle win at the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Awards!
Livity Co-founders Michelle Clothier and Sam Conniff won the London and South Social Entrepreneur category at the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur awards. Michelle collected the award and said a few words to the room full of entrepreneurs, on arriving at the podium she opened an envelope with the words ‘you never know’ written on the front and took out for a few pre-prepared words, here’s what she said…
“When Sam and I found out what amazing people we were shortlisted against in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur awards we felt proud to be finalists amongst such amazing leaders and organisations (Sir Tim Smit of The Eden Project, Sue Riddlestone of Bio Regional and Emma Stewart and Karen Mattison of Women Like Us)
And we truly felt that we had got as far as we could in the brilliant Ernst and Young Entrepreneur awards.
“So, why on earth prepare a speech?” you’re all wondering.
Good question. 2 reasons:
- Sam my brilliant business partner is currently taking a break in Mexico, asking the woman he loves, to marry him (she said yes). Now anyone who knows Sam and I will know that I’m ‘the quiet one’ … and he… is…not the quiet one and he would feel far more comfortable up here with the mic. I, however, am someone who needs to prepare.
- Secondly, you just never know… as has been played out to me this evening.
In 2008 Sam and I were finalists in this same category and we lost out, quite rightly, to Ian MacArthur and John Bird of Big Issue. Rather than be disappointed to lose, we felt inspired to go away and ‘be better’ and so we pledged to continue building the business of Livity, proving the concept of Livity and delivering more business and social benefits to our clients and young people in equal amounts… until we were good enough to try again for the awards – and win. Think it, say it, do it. And here we are.
Thank you to the judges for recognising our improvements, growth and our ever-increasing ambition. Thanks and well done to our fellow finalists – we represent one of the most important and exciting developments in business and the community and must continue to support and inspire one another.
Thanks to everyone at Livity – we have a brilliant team – each and every single one of them. Thanks to our families and friends for supporting and believing in us and the business. Thanks of course to our clients and the biggest thank you must go to all the young people who have come through our door, been involved in our campaigns, the magazine, our workshops and apprenticeships – they are why we get up and go to Livity every morning.
Thank you, I’m really really thrilled.”
Sam and Michelle now go through to the UK finals in October…
Women and the Big Society
Livity co-founder Michelle Clothier was recently invited to speak at the RSA’s ‘Women and the Big Society 2011: Blast from the past or new vision?’event.
Here she shares her experiences and her words….
I was invited to speak at the Women and the Big Society 2011: Blast from the past or new vision? Both in my role as a Nexter and as a Fellow of the RSA . Mostly though, I was there to share my experience as a female business owner and leader.
This RSA Fellowship Women Speakers’ Network event, in association with the Big Society Network, set out to discuss the role that women will or already play (and have been playing for many years) in The Big Society… a movement promising to build a better and happier UK through civic enterprise.
Steve Moore of the Big Society intro’d and hosted us and humanitarian and FRSA Louise Burfitt- Dons led the discussion.
Here’s what I shared in my 3 minute slot…
“My business Livity has just celebrated our 10th Birthday.
For a decade, we have been proving the concept that you can run a profitable business model that has social objectives and purpose at its very core.
We are proving to some of the biggest brands in the world that you can align business objectives with social objectives – that benefit, in our particular model, young people, and achieve a win/win.
We are now 37 people strong at Livity, with a majority make up of 27 brilliant women – It’s important to say that the 10 men we employ are equally brilliant! – but only 27% of our workforce compared to the 73% women.
We insist on recruiting the very best people to work with us – I’m not interested in whether they are male or female – although I do think that culturally it’s important to achieve a healthy and diverse balance – and that is a business benefit that many businesses simply have not grasped any further than box ticking.
I do feel that women gravitate towards our business, because it combines creativity and innovation with social purpose and benefit. And I witness first-hand the pride and purpose our teams seem to have working in their various roles at Livity (in a recent employee satisfaction survey we scored 95% for “proud to work at Livity” ) and I do think that, it is because, as human beings we increasingly crave purpose other than that of simply earning and making money to exist. So, yes, maybe women are slightly further ahead on the evolution scale on this one.
That said, increasing numbers of men are attracted to our business model, mostly reflected at the moment by our clients, from the likes of Google, Coca Cola and Sony PlayStation.
I’m in agreement that women are perhaps more naturally inclined towards Big Society, – whether it be in a voluntary and community based role, or like my employees through their careers, and I absolutely champion that, but where I become really excited and where I believe the vision and ambition has to be set, is for business to take a greater role and responsibility through it’s models, methods, finance, reach and relevance in order to truly tackle some of the bigger problems that society is now and will in the future experience. And I truly believe more and more canny business leaders will see the value that such an approach will bring to their core business and brand – starting with the sense of purpose and pride they can give their employees with such an approach.
Finally, I’m keen to know if the panel and the audience believe that business and brands have a role to play in the notion of ‘Big Society’?
And if they do participate meaningfully, whether over time, this might help and address the lack the diversity and inequalities that many sectors are still challenged by – by attracting and benefiting from the masses of untapped and undervalued female talent?”
A healthy discussion ensued, business cards, tweets, new contacts shared and common interests were found.
It was a thought-provoking evening and a really good partnership between RSA and The Big Society Network. Here’s to more discussion and more importantly here’s to more ‘getting on with it’.
Can standing on a vibrating plate really turn you into Madonna?!
Kate Harwood talks about the latest fitness craze sweeping the Livity office!
Always an office to trial new ideas and take a leap of faith, the Power Plate has taken up residence in the corner of the Livity meeting room aptly nicknamed, the ‘dance studio’.
Despite being ridiculed by the hardcore marathon runners of the office, deemed “exercise for the lazy”, so far the Power Plate has gone down well.
The general consensus is that this is not a form of exercise without a level of humiliation. Trying to hold a conversation while lying on it with your legs in the air is frankly laughable, with the teeth chattering, eye ball wobbling and the general feeling you might fall off at any moment.
To an outsider, this looks easy, “What? You just stand on it?!” I hear you cry, but somehow this is trickier than you might think and despite feeling slightly cocky the next day, by the third I felt the burn.
Apparently designed for cosmonauts in the 60s to prevent muscle wastage, surely the Power Plate can only be a good thing for an office culture which despite its best efforts, leans towards sitting still for hours on end. Potentially this could catch on, imagine attending meetings where everyone had to stand on tiptoes on vibrating platforms whilst trying to maintain a straight face. I think we’re on to a winner.
I mainly feel like I should get off and go for a jog like normal people, but where’s the fun in that, and hey, you just can’t contest the maths – 10 minutes on a vibrating plate equals 60 minutes conventional exercise. That leaves 50 minutes to walk to the shops, buy and eat a doughnut or two.