People
Simon Mainwaring

We First Book Video: 'We-defining Me'

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

We First Book Video: 'We-defining Me'

We-defining Me written and performed by Sekou Andrews (http://www.sekouworld.com). Design and animation by Troika (http://www.troika.tv). Original music and sound design by Machine Head (http://www.machinehead.com).

Claudia Freed 5:46 PM (3 hours ago) to me

Hi Peter,

So glad we had a chance to catch up yesterday. I hope all is ok with your electricity today.

I want to share with you a video about how the advertising/marketing industry is trying to tell the story of shifting focus away from profit for profit sake. It’s a bit much for me (I feel I need a drink after 4 minutes of colors flying across the screen!). However, I am thrilled that somebody as talented as Simon Mainwaring (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Chicago in March) is turning up the heat!! Check it out: http://wefirstbranding.com/about/

Best,

Claudia Freed | President & CEO EAL M 630-670-3321 P 630-690-0694 E cfreed@inventorydonations.org

Peter Burgess 8:40 PM (22 minutes ago) to Claudia

Dear Claudia

As you suggest the video is a bit trite ... but after all the purpose of the video was to promote a book ... and Simon Mainwaring is a brand guy, so he probably knew what he was doing.

The PDF that is linked to this page is probably more interesting:
http://wefirstbranding.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/WeFirst_Manifesto.pdf

This is from page 5 of the PDF

There was British economist Noreena Hertz who proposed co-op capitalism; Whole Food’s CEO John Mackey who created conscious capitalism, thought leader Umair Haque who invented constructive capitalism, and Economist Magazine bureau chief Matthew Bishop and his colleague Michael Green who wrote about philanthrocapitalism. Some of their proposals had taken hold among some corporations, having a small impact in business schools and on some boards but had not yet achieved the popular impact required to motivate the scale of social change that was needed.

This was all in response to Bill Gates who proposed at the WEF that year (2011 or maybe 2010) something he called Creative Capitalism.

But the back story is that Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1974 who proposed a world where Social Business was solving the problem of poverty around the world.

I have met Matthew Bishop courtesy of a mutual friend Chris Macrae. Chris's dad was Editor at the Economist from about 1945 for over 40 years (he died a couple of years ago) and had a reputation of thinking outside the box or into the future. Chris now lives in Washington and has a passion for the idea that young people networking is going to change the world. You should meet Chris when the opportunity presents itself.

Chris and I have met with Muhammad Yunus a few times. Yunus knows of my interest in 'social metrics' which I told him quite bluntly was critical to social business getting the traction it needs. I also met Yunus with Bishop in New York when Bishop had Yunus on the stage at the 92nd Street Y. Fast forward about 4 years and Yunus has dropped out of the dialog to a large extent (part is Bangladeshi politics, part is age, and part is positioning ... by which I mean that the world's mainstream economy is now taking over)

It should also be noted that the video and PDF go back to 2011 ... and a whole lot has developed in mainstream companies since then.

As you already know I missed meeting John Mackey when he came to New York a couple of months back (too much snow to get into town safely) but John Kiehl may have the chance to set something up again in the not too distant future. In any event I am trying to use a Mackey idea around nutrition density to 'value' foods!

There is a lot going on in this IMPACT space ... but a lot of the high profile people are not much engaged with the metrics that I believe are essential for success.

When I was doing corporate accounting we used to say ' Show me a company with poor accounting ... and I will show you a poor company!'

I think the same thing can be said of all these initiatives to change capitalism ... without metrics they are going to get much traction.

All the best ... do I sound like a broken record?

Peter