How to multiply an effort by 500?

Taking part in the Oxfam 100km Trailwalk is teaching me much more than discipline and physical outstrip. I’m also learning a lot about team work, solidarity and social mobilization. Why? Check this out!

On top of experiencing the most demanding physical effort of our lives (100km of non sleep overnight bushwalk), each team of 4 needs to fundraise $ 1.000 for Oxfam’s programs in Australia and around the world. Oxfam helps with a well structured website and each team is bringing all its creativity and networks together to overcome the target. Last year, for example, the average fundraising was 5 times the original goal. Taking into consideration there are 4 organisers and 2000 walkers, it means that each person’s effort in branding and fundraising is suddenly multiplied by 500. Why are the results so amazing?

Well, it’s hard to say. What I do know is that a worthy cause, an engaging environment and a sense of achievement can do miracles! If you also want to take part of this fantastic initiative, click here and donate any amount to our team (and to fight poverty in the world!)

Poems & quotes #6: Great quotes by amazing female AIESEC alumni

Because "normal" people say awesome things all the time...


"Learn to dance with the universe. My experience – increasingly – over the past several years is that we can learn to work in tune with the universe. Often when we are in flow, things don't actually come from us, but rather come through us, and it is our work to learn how to be this channel, and how to access flow."
Marianne Knuth


"Think about it ... is life something different than a journey where day after day we have the right to choose who we want to be? And who we want to be is driven by our dreams. Let´s be conscious around that and be clear that dreams are realities and they are not buzzwords! Let´s enjoy this constant activity of exploring and taking choices and let these choices be the guardians of our dreams. If we approach life like that, I am pretty sure there is always a reason to wake up every day with a smile and with this emotion on our hearts that we feel when we are so close to our dreams."
Oriana Torres

Visiting the Nation's Capital

Last weekend, Mandi, Sveta and I rent a stylish red/pink Toyota and had the best time in Canberra, the Federal Capital, 3 hours south of Sydney.

The construction of Canberra was decided in 1901 (year of the constitution of the Australian Federation), in order to end the dispute between Sydney and Melbourne.

As a planned city, Canberra is a very organised place and, as the capital, it hosts most of the national governmental entities. On the other hand, the place has a small population (only 300.000 people) and not so much of a soul, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, we had the best time there! We visited the War Memorial, the new Parliament, the Science Museum and the Art Gallery, all great places, which helped us understanding Australian history and arts better.

On the social agenda, farewell party in Lauro’s place – with heaps of Brazilians and the first decent forro since I arrived in Australia! – and meeting Angie, my colleague in the UNDP Peace Project in Poland 2003.

Angie deserves a special paragraph. She is finishing her PhD in peace & conflict in Rwanda, is very relaxed and just joined the Australian Foreign Affairs Department’s Diplomacy Program. She is working in the Chinese economic committee and told me a story that made me feel in the West Wing. Apparently, the Chinese government may not sign the Free Trade Agreement as planned because it’s unhappy with the possibility of the Australian Prime Minister’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, because of the Tibet issue.

Olympic Games in Rio Grande do Sul

I'm sincerely sorry for the English speakers, who not even will a translator will be able to laugh at this wonderful article. Brazilians, enjoy! Gauchos, delight yourselves!


Por JURANDIR FEIJÓ

Só porque vai sediar o Pan, o Rio quer também organizar os Jogos Olímpicos de 2016. Não sei quem toma essas decisões, mas gostaria de apresentar uma proposta: a candidatura da cidade de Pedro Osório. Nada mais justo do que homenagear esse município que traz na sua origem o nome de Vila Olimpo.

É uma cidade predestinada. Nós, os gaúchos, somos o povo mais preparado para sediar os jogos, se levarmos em conta alguns fatores. Por exemplo, a tocha olímpica. Ninguém sabe fazer um fogo como nós. Qualquer índio velho junta umas achas de lenhas, acende um fósforo e pronto. E aí, aproveita o braseiro, enfia um naco de picanha gorda no espeto... Não há dúvida, seria uma olimpíada inesquecível.

É claro, teríamos que fazer algumas adaptações. As modalidades de esportes precisariam incorporar jogos com características mais regionais, como a Bocha, o Truco e o Jogo do Osso.
O espírito olímpico do Barão de Coubertain - "o importante é competir" - teria que ser alterado para alguma coisa do tipo "não te fresqueia, bagual". O Boxe poderia ser substituído pela Briga de Baile, mais emocionante. Só termina quando alguém abre a cabeça do outro com uma garrafa de cerveja.

Nas artes marciais temos a Queda de Braço e a Guerra de Bosta. Tênis de Mesa, o tal do Ping-Pong, pra nós é jogo de criança. Já que tem diversão pra gurizada, podiam incluir também Bolinha de Gude, Pandorga e Bodoque com Caroço de Cinamomo. Arco e Flecha é barbada, é coisa de índio. A gente mexe com isso desde o tempo dos guaranis. E esse negócio de Ciclismo é passeio de bici. Vamos botar as mulheres pra disputar com eles. Agora, aquela corrida esquisita em que os homens ficam se requebrando com passos de mulherzinha, está proibida.

Natação terá Nado de Costa com Poncho em Açude, esporte para poucos. Hipismo vamos manter, o que não falta é cavalo pra Cancha Reta. Tiro ao alvo também, mirando uns maçanicos do banhado. A Esgrima vai usar adagas de verdade e não aqueles arames fininhos, sem graça. E se tocarem uma rancheira, melhor, a coisa vira Dança dos Facões.

Futebol será o de Campanha - com bota e espora - para se adaptar às condições do estádio, que durante a semana funciona como pastagem para o gado. A Ginástica Olímpica será substituída, com vantagens, por Chula e Chimarrita. E vamos promover alguns esportes até então considerados menores, como Cuspe em Distância, Peteleco e Halterocopismo.

Tudo isso sem falar da festa de abertura: som de 300 bombos legüeros, apresentação de Gisele Bündchen e shows com Luiz Marenco, César Oliveira e Rogério Mello.... E por aí a fora.

Vamos amadurecer a idéia. Não quero cantar vitória antes do tempo.

World Press Photo

Last weekend I went to the State Library to watch the World Press Photo prize winners.

World Press Photo is a non profit that organises the world's largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest. Prizewinning photographs are assembled into a traveling exhibition that is visited by over two million people in some 45 countries worldwide. The idea is to develop photojournalism and consequently enlarge people's conscience.

As you can imagine, the exhibition is impacting. Amongst all the very interesting facts and stories featuring news, contemporary dramas, sports, nature and people, one picture called a lot my attention. It was taken by Espen Rasmussen, from Norway, and shows over 3,000 people gather for Friday prayers facing icy winter conditions to pray at the ruins of the main mosque in Balakot, Pakistan, one of the towns worst hit by the Kashmir earthquake.

That picture transmitted a sense of wrong and injust; but also a strength coming from an incredible faith, that makes people pass through one more disaster, overcome another unfairness and pray for a better future. Better than what? Was this dream possible at any point of our history? How do out minds work so unreasonably?

See the picture here (can't publish it here because of the copyright).

Australia's most famous songwriter crazy about Rio

Peter Allen is a famous Australian songwriter and singer, creator of the unofficial Australian anthem "I still call Australia home" and inspiration for a musical based on his life called The Boy from Oz, the first Australian to be performed in Broadway.

Look at parts of one of his songs:

"When my baby
When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio
De Janeiro, my-oh-me-oh
I go wild and then I have to do the Samba
And La Bamba
Now I'm not the kind of person
With a passionate persuasion for dancin'
Or roma-ancin'
But I give in to the rhythm
And my feet follow the beatin' of my hear-eart

Woh-ho-oh-oh, when my baby
When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio
De Janeiro
I'm a Salsa fellow
When my baby smiles at me
The sun'll lightens up my li-ife
And I am free at last, what a blast"

Poems & quotes #5: Another world in her way

Arundhati Roy - Indian novels writer and activist - once said:

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. And on a quiet day, if you really listen, you can hear her breathing."

Let's be part of the change, then!

Getting to know Brazilians by the way they shop

Today I was reading the McKinsey Quarterly Review and saw an article about how big retailers can serve Brazil's mass-market shoppers. I guess I could see some characteristics of the people between the lines. Check it out:

1) Brazilians are very warm

Compared with similar shoppers in China, India, and Russia, twice as many Brazilians have stopped going to a store as a result of poor service. Since shopping trips are the only opportunities that many consumers have to be served, they value customer service highly. Shoppers expect the human touch that they find at their neighborhood stores, where salespeople greet them warmly by name and extend credit without collateral or other formalities.

2) Brazilians have a strong sense of community and value the cozyness of their neighbourhood relations

On average, Brazil's mass-market consumers shop once a day. They shop frequently because they worry about freshness, income rarely arrives in the form of a regular paycheck, storage space is limited, and bargains appear and vanish daily. Since almost 70 percent of shoppers travel by foot, shopping is much easier when stores are nearby. As one Brazilian shopper explained, "Doce Lar [a neighborhood store] is about one kilometer [ 0.62 miles] from here, and it takes me about ten minutes to walk. Carrefour is five kilometers—it takes me about 50 minutes, which is too far. I cannot get back carrying my bags."

Even including the few households that own cars, nearly 80 percent of Brazilians traveled less than 15 minutes on their most recent shopping trip—about one kilometer by foot or five kilometers by car. These habits mean that a retailer can hope to attract households only within a radius of two or so kilometers (applying a weighted average). Even in an urban area as densely populated as São Paulo, that makes it challenging to attract the volume that big-box formats need to be successful.

3) Brazilians dream with a better future

Brazil’s shoppers express a preference for smaller, more convenient stores. Yet upward of 70 percent of all survey respondents (and the vast majority of focus group participants) also express a seemingly conflicting desire: to choose from a full range of products, including high-end ones, whether or not they intend to purchase those products.

In focus groups shoppers provided several explanations for this preference: the opportunity to treat themselves every now and then, a need to see a well-known branded product and use it as a reference price for the products that they would actually purchase, or the desire to impress neighbors—say, by purchasing Coca-Cola for a party instead of the local brand they drink every day. As one shopper explained, "I like to see the 25 reais brand of shampoo, not because I will buy it, but to dream a little." The challenge for retailers is to give mass-market shoppers a sense of choice, knowing that they often have no intention of purchasing the highest-end products and that the supply chain and inventory challenges associated with SKU proliferation can make it harder to serve the mass market economically.
What do you think?

Brand activation

Hey,

Great examples of creative ads for brand activation. Enjoy them!

Tipping pont

Have you ever thought why some good ideas become big successes while others as good just don’t happen? Have you ever wondered why some trends just abruptly increase or decrease as some point, without a clear drastic change in the factors influencing it?

It’s more or less the following: there are 50 people with a disease that lasts 1 day. They get in touch with 50 people every day and the contagiousness rate is 2%. This means there are going to be 50 sick people every day. If they start having contact with less people, the number of people infected will slowly decrease. However, if in winter people start having contact with 51 other people in average (just 1 more person), there are going to be 61 people infected (and counting) in 10 days. Epidemic has started!

A book called Tipping Point by Malcolm Grandwell tries to bring some insights about the patterns of such tipping points: who is involved? How do the ideas spread? What’s the underlying context?

One of the interesting examples is the decreasing criminality rates of New York in the 90s, following a continuous increase of the previous 3 decades. According to Grandwell, the drop was due to the application of the Broken Window theory, which says that if you’ve got a house with a broken window and don’t repair it, soon you’re going to have another broken window, people will think the house is abandoned, other things are going to be destroyed and rapidly you’re going to have just ruins of what was a house. In practice, this means that murders and rapes in New York were fought through combating small well being infractions, such as graffiti, not payments of public transport fares, peeing in streets, leaving trash in inappropriate areas and so on.

To say the least, it was very interesting…