My Take of a 3Rs Poster

This was the poster I made as part of the requirements in my 207 class. My teacher, Mam Gigi commented that “the poster design is simple, elegant and parsimonious. You have proficiently used the parts of a poster into a unified whole. Your “reduce,reuse recycle ” poster has good selection of fonts contributing to the poster’s clear message. It also uses interesting and eye-catching visuals. There is good command in the appropriation of space with the right proportions. The choice of colors livens up your poster. good work.” Well I love the words she used but I am not too keen with one of them. Parsimonious meant cheap, thrifty, frugal, stingy but I hope she meant my sparse use of visuals. Overall I appreciate her very positive comment. 🙂

Learnings in Reuse+ability

(Please be advised that this is an original write up and was derived from weeks of nonstop monitoring of our campaign. Any misrepresentation or claim otherwise is a violation of my intellectual property rights.)

Learnings…

Reuse+ability was the brainchild of like-minded individuals who hope to lessen their carbon footprints on Mother Earth through simple acts of bringing their own mug for coffee breaks in the office, carrying packed lunches, refusing the use of plastic bags or keeping litters like bus tickets/gum wrappers in their pants’ pockets in the meantime until they see a garbage bin.

B4 members hoped that through their awareness campaign, they would be able to influence people to practice the same discipline. They know they face such an arduous task since social media will be their main instrument in changing people’s mindset. Also they have decided that it would have better media mileage if they get to tie up with an existing green campaign of BPI, SM or Ayala Foundation. Unfortunately, this did not pan out as the contacts for said companies did not respond to the request.

This little setback did not deter the team. They focused on what resources they have at hand because they believe that they have a good campaign in their hands. Since B4 members knew that theirs is a purely online campaign, each one committed to have their respective friends and officemates help out in spreading the word. The Facebook page, Twitter and reuse+ability website soon had a growing number of followers. The initial number of 100 FB likes soon climbed to 500 and this made each member so excited that they aimed to at least reach 1000 followers before the semester comes to a close.

The mobile app soon was launched and by the end of August slowly became one of the popular downloads, it even made it to the second page. The team kept bombarding their FB walls with creative ways to reuse from old cartons to plastic bottles. The more they shared, the faster they got the attention especially of young moms who favored the DIY ideas for kids. Soon, the FB page had several contributions from their followers. Each time there was any changes, one member of the team would update the others of the increase in number in FB likes and shares. But soon, the deluge of DIY ideas from various websites led the team astray and they lost their focus a bit. When they regrouped anew, they not only cleaned up the stories in the websites and only kept the freshest DIY idea or article on the first page. Also they sought tie ups again with ecofriendly-enterprises to show their fast growing number of followers that trash can indeed be turned to cash.

Manila Sole and Siklo Pilipinas helped give reuse+ability the voice it needed to push harder when Rex Somera of Manila and Clarice de Villa agreed to be partners in the advocacy. Both businesses make use of old tires for their respective products and want to educate Filipinos about the hazards brought by old tires to the environment. Manila Sole promoted the reuse+ability campaign on their website. Another good news was Eko Lifestyle agreeing to maintain the website to continue what the group started.

Podcast hosts of the New Media Factory and a sports radio program of RMN were tapped latter part of the month of September to help boost awareness of the campaign further. Unfortunately this too did not pan out. Both hosts apologized and promised to bombard the pages they are administrators in to visit reuse+ability’s social media accounts and website.

The relentless effort of the team plus the change of their respective profile pictures with the reuse+ability logo paved way to 1330 likes for FB alone. The breakdown of each social media may be found in the appendices.

There were strategies the team was not able to carry out, like the creation of “Go Reusable” templates , badges, posters, that interested individuals could use to show their commitment or start their own campaign. In lieu of this, the group asked for pledges to be posted on the website. So far, there are already 54 pledges.

The sem has nearly come to an end and the group feels they could have done so much more but time had limited what they can do for now. They still hope though that the past weeks, their campaign created a dent in people’s perspective about thinking first before throwing anything away.

Anything reused, recycled, repurposed has the B4 stamp of approval.

 

It is always nice to go back to the basics.

 

The gorgeous website from the hands of webmaster Lea.

 

An FB experience.

 

Hashtag to advocate reuse.

 

 

 

 

Musings on one Thursday afternoon

I was seated inside the first car of the MRT when a frail looking woman carrying what looked to be a gaunt ten year old. The passengers near the door gave way to her and as she sat, she thanked everyone who cleared the area. She sat there quietly, her daughter comfortably enconched in her arms.

Someone offered her a seat and began to ask her what is wrong with her daughter. I failed to catch her answer, just that she said she had to be strong for them both. They were frequent passengers of the MRT, as her child needs to go to the doctor often. Apart from the doctor’s professional fees, she had to kepe buying a P500 worth of medicine which lasts only three days. A lady gave her money but she refused. She said “may awa ang Diyos.”

When we reached SM North, she carried her child back to the platform and without missing a step she soon vanished into the crowd. I remained on the farthest part of the platform. I heard her speak but I refused to listen. I knew where she was but did not glance at her direction. I mentally kicked myself. How did I become so apathetic? Any other person would have been reduced to any form of emotion except numbness.

I was numb, deaf and blind. Too many of us I guess have been jaded by life that we became like automatons. We pretend that if we did not know or meddle, it will not affect us. But it does affect us, indirectly. This is the reality. If she can be brave for her kid, turn down a stranger’s dole out money and keep up a positive attitude, then what is stopping me from being a human being for once and feel?

So I am writing about it now, about this mother who remained strong for her child, this stranger who did not have second thoughts in giving out money and this skill that I can use to give light to her plight. There are many like her who deserved our help, who were cheated by greedy people like Napoles of the money to come up with an efficient public health access.

It may be a long journey before I make any difference for people like her but I got to start someday, and that day is now.

 

 

Reuse+ability

For our group project we thought of how we can best help the environment. We have touched base with folks whose businesses were focused on going green. Our goal mainly is to improve the waste disposal behavior of the individuals and commercial establishments located in Manila through an online social marketing campaign to encourage reusing, recycling, and patronage of innovative enterprises who create more value for reusable/ recycled products.

Below are our three main goals at the end of this term:

What we want the audience to DO?

REFUSE non-biodegradable food containers by bringing own reusable containers such as reusable plastic/ glass food boxes and plastic/ glass water bottles and tumblers.

REUSE or RECYCLE/ UPCYCLE non-biodegradable waste products to give them a second life so they are not thrown away unnecessarily.

PATRONIZE and PROMOTE enterprises that are socially and environmentally responsible.

What we want the audience to KNOW?

Non-biodegradable waste takes up space in landfills and pollutes the ocean. It is waste that will last longer on earth than their children’s children.

What we want the audience to BELIEVE:

That individual actions such as REFUSING , REUSING, RECYCLING, UPCYCLING, and supporting ECO-ENTERPRISES translate into positive impact.

During our research and even our own observation, the only limit to one’s green living is not being creative enough. There are tons of things that can be repurposed and breathe life to…this can be our way of letting Mother Earth survive the onslaught of man made pollution.

My take on the 4P’s of the marketing mix

I would like to thank the world wide web for the various collection of materials I used for this marketing mix report for my 208 class. I know I added all my sources at the latter part, hopefully I did not miss out on anyone’s material I placed here. Thanks to the authors who shared their intelligence online.