What can Housing Associations learn from Coca-Cola?

It’s surprising where inspiration comes from. After watching a video of Melinda Bates, I thought how fitting some of her analogies were for our sector.

Melinda spent time traveling to various parts of the world and speaking to people in need of support — She realised they have something in common. She saw that they may not have access have running water, sewers, electricity, medicine etc. However there was one thing they did have. One consistent product that all these families had access to…

Coca Cola.

Coke is everywhere. It’s ubiquitous. Now think about the things we’re trying to do in housing:

• providing safe and secure affordable housing to people
• inspiring people to be their best and achieve their aspirations…

Coke’s success makes you stop and wonder; How can they get their service to these extremely isolated places in the world? And if they can, why do social businesses and organisations sometimes struggle to do a similar thing?

As a sector, we have so much to learn from this example. It’s staggering when you think that Coke serve 1.5 billion servings per day. One serving for every man woman and child on earth per week.

Why does this matter?

As a housing association, if we’re going to deliver on our promises of helping people on to the next step in their life (whatever that may be), we need to look to the innovators in the rest of world. Those innovators are in every single sector of business. From big brands to sole traders.

If we can see what makes products desirable, we can apply those lessons to our strategies for the good of the communities we serve.

Coke’s success is relevant — we need to learn from their business plan:

1. They take real time data and use it to shape and tailor their services.
2. They tap into local entrepreneurial talent.
3. They have incredible marketing

1. DATA:

Just like we have to include certain information in our customer annual reviews, and ensure our spending is sensible and regulated, Coca cola have to report to stakeholders etc on profit/loss on a regular basis. But Coke have this continuous feedback loop. If they learn something about one of their products, they make necessary changes, and the product then goes back on the market. That team is called ‘Knowledge and Insight’. I like that team.

By running this sort of real time data collection, they know where every can vs bottle of Sprite/Coke/Fanta etc is sold. So, if sales start to drop, you have the insight and data to identify the problem and address issue. Now, let’s look at housing. In my experience, the evaluation always comes at the end of a project. But by then it’s too late to be looking at the data to correct problems. Do you think the same?

‘It’s like bowling in the dark. You roll the ball, knock some pins down, then turn the lights on and see what you missed.’

Real time data turns on the lights.

2. Coke are good at using local talent.

Coke have been in Africa since 1928 but their system involved huge trucks full of product, that could only access limited areas of the country. However…

They noticed that local people were buying stock in bulk and reselling it to the hard to reach areas. So they took time to learn about it. They decided to train the local entrepreneurs, give them small loans, and set them up as ‘Micro Distribution Centers’ . Those local entrepreneur’s then hired sales people from villages to go out on pushbikes and wheelbarrows to sell the product.

There’s now 3000 of these centers employing 15,000 people in Africa. In Tanzania and Uganda this is 90% of Coke sales.

As Housing Associations, we need to tap into that local enterprise talent as well, because the locals know how to access the hard to reach places, they know their neighbours and what motivates them better than any business right now…

We need to help local people to develop their own ideas and incentivise people based on the outcomes they’re having in their own areas. That’s when you tap into local talent and really unlock potential.

3. Amazing Marketing

Coke’s success depends on one fact. That is, that people want Coca Cola. The reason that their local entrepreneurs make a profit, is that they have to sell every single can and bottle from their cart — They rely on coca cola’s marketing. And what’s the secret to their marketing?

It’s aspirational. They associate their product with the kind of life that the people want to live. And, even though it’s a global company, they take a local approach. Coke’s global campaign slogan is ‘Open Happiness’. But they localise it, they don’t just guess. They went to Latin America and they learned that happiness there is linked with family life. In South Africa they learned that happiness is linked with community respect.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJSt4wP2ME]

Coke’s world cup campaign was something people could relate to. It was a feel good song. They localized it to 18 languages and it went to No. 1 in 17 countries. The marketing is based on happiness and community.

We need to get out in the community, show the easy steps that can make a difference, and highlight the benefits they bring. You work with the community, you let them see the benefits, then position it as a marketable convenience.

It’s an innovative marketing strategy. It saves lives. If we can start to understand what people really care about and empower local people to effect change, it will help communities develop.

So what happens when you tie the three together and use them?

It gives us our own continuous feedback loop. Think about it. We have housing workers across the country that can report back on a variety of struggles people are currently having. (It could be applied to many more avenues too) We’d then look at that real-time data and analyse trends so that we can react to it in real time.

We’re struggling with funding in the housing sector. It was OK for years, money was flowing (pretty) freely to build new houses and schemes. If our marketing were more aspirational; if we could link our good work to positive outcomes in communities, wouldn’t we be so much more attractive to funding providers?

As a sector we need to see more and more around using customer stories to inspire others, and less and less ‘telling’ customers the best action to take. We must try provide each customer a bespoke journey that unlocks their potential, and do our best to help people to help themselves; enabling those with aspirations, and inspiring those without.