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!
The Stake
The Stake is a competition we’re doing with Channel 4 Education and Barclays, which gives young people the opportunity to pitch ideas for the chance to win a share of £100,000 and turn them into a reality…
The Stake meets the challenge of engaging young people on personal finance head on in an interactive, learn by doing, peer-to-peer led format. Throughout the competition thousands of young people will be pitching their ideas and completing various challenges along the way that help them get to grips with managing their money.
The top 20 ideas, as voted by the stakeholders on the site, will be reviewed by a panel of Channel 4 and Barclays judges and up to 6 winners will be awarded up to £20,000 prize funding for their ideas. The winners will be supported by Livity and Barclays mentors throughout the implementation of their projects.
The Stake is a non-traditional way of teaching finance or enterprise. It’s not about homework or complicated jargon. It’s about learning by doing, the process of peer-to-peer collaboration, sharing and supporting fresh ideas whilst helping to improve young people’s financial capability in the process.
Throughout all the work we do, we hold on to the belief that if you trust young people, they become trustworthy. If you give them responsibility, they become responsible. Our longest running project, Live Magazine, is a prime example of this, and so too is The Stake…
Watch The Stake TV advert here
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…
Live Magazine
Live is a quarterly magazine produced for young people by young people, with a little help from Livity. It’s run from our office by an amazing team of Livity mentors and young people. This video gives an idea about what it’s like to be part of the team:
If you’re a young person and you want to get involved email us – we’d love to hear from you.
Or email Andrea our Advertising Sales Manager if you represent a brand and want to find out how you can communicate with a youth audience.