Octopus Strategies is Swimming into a Merger with Junxion Strategy!

Octopus Strategies has earned a reputation for values-driven leadership, award-winning marketing, and the development of leading brands for a long list of remarkable social enterprises and NGOs.

Junxion Strategy has long been respected for its diligent mission to build environmentally and socially responsible organizations—in both the business and not-for-profit sectors.

Each firm has been recognized with numerous awards and accolades, including Octopus’s recognition this year among Think London’s ‘100 Companies to Watch,’ a list compiled by London’s foreign direct investment agency to recognize companies they think are “most likely to grow and flourish in the global economy.” Octopus was named in a category that also included Panasonic and LinkedIn.

“This already has been an incredible year for us,” explained Mike Rowlands, Founder & President of Octopus Strategies. “By uniting with Junxion Strategy, we’ll accelerate our growth, expand our reach and position ourselves to deliver an even greater impact with our work.”

Peter ter Weeme, Junxion Principal, agreed: “Together, we provide an incredible resource for leaders of 21st century organizations that are wrestling to achieve financial, social and environmental goals. The reality is that leading brands and enterprises in the years to come must be responsible to all three.”

By combining our companies, Octopus and Junxion are solidifying a powerful suite of services designed to help drive the successful brands, organizations and movements of the 21st century:

• Social Purpose consulting, to support the social enterprise and corporate social responsibility movements
• Sustainability strategy, to help organizations adapt to environmental imperatives that really can no longer be denied
• Outreach & Engagement, to help organizations of all kinds to market their products and services, develop donors, and build loyal followings

With a combination of offices in Vancouver, Toronto, London and Delhi, we unite world-class expertise and experience with a significant international reach. The new company will operate as Junxion Strategy.

We look forward to sharing more insights in the coming months, as we merge our operations… and announce more great news!

Part cafe, part gallery, part immersion in global electronica, W2 is an internationally connected media arts centre. What appears at first as a coffee shop par excellence is but the first step into an ambitious organization.

W2 Media Café is a euro-styled coffee house experience—a large scale space that has already begun to host and curate diverse social and cultural activity. On this weekend alone, W2 will play host to a Pride World Dance Party, an Artist Talk & Presentation by Pia Massie, and the launch of the Surge Festival of Urban Digital Culture. The café itself is an open, modern and welcoming space, where people can connect with stories, art, ideas and each other. (And fabulous coffee and food, or course!)

W2 will engage people from throughout its Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, and from other communities across the city. Local residents will be able to access media and arts tools and support, to discover compelling arts experiences, to decide for themselves the programming W2 will deliver—co-creating the centre’s work. Some of the anticipated programs include instruction in social and digital media; a micro-enterprise incubator, where aspiring social entrepreneurs can learn from experienced mentors; access to the ideas and work of artists who will take up residence at W2 from time to time; and training and access to a letter press machine that once belonged to the Woodwards store.

W2 is located where the renowned Woodwards store used to stand. Vancouverites tend to associate Woodwards either with the great shopping experiences of the 70s and 80s, or with Woodsquat, the activist occupancy of Woodwards, in protest of housing policies and programs in the Downtown Eastside. W2 Media Café sits today at a symbolic meeting point—where Vancouver’s world class waterfront meets the working class neighbourhood that’s so significantly misunderstood by so many Vancouver residents.

W2 is determined to address some of these misunderstandings, and to bring people and communities together. Today is the beginning of another important chapter in W2. Why not join us there for a cup of coffee and a conversation about the city we all love?

Octopus Strategies has been proud to work with W2 during the past few months, in the leadup to this opening. We heartily congratulate the team for all their hard work, their perseverance, and for holding so closely to the intent of the collaborative that formed eight years ago to achieve the vision that today is opening its doors to the city.

As the riot itself unfolded on live television, the riot’s instigators and youth caught up in the fray made countless posts to Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, recording and documenting their activities. Some of the images they posted were bizarrely compelling; others were undoubtedly evidence of criminal activity. (The ‘social media vigilantism’ of the following week has also been an interesting topic of vibrant discussion.) News of the riot quickly spread around the world, making cover stories in Australia, India and elsewhere. Vancouverites collectively hung their heads in shame that their fair city—which had received accolades for its positive celebrations during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games just 12 months before—should again showcase an ugly side.

Yet at the same time as the riot was unfolding, so too was the Clean Up Vancouver campaign. Launched on the night of the riots on Facebook, this simple campaign invited positive Vancouverites to come downtown the following morning to help clean up after their not-so-positive fellow citizens. By 7:00am, hundreds of people were downtown with brooms and dustpans; by noon, some reports suggested more than 10,000 had joined the Clean Up. Plywood boarding over the broken windows of one major retailer became the ‘Love Wall,’ on which people wrote messages of apology and respect.

This Jekyll and Hyde capacity of social media is both powerful and puzzling. It’s powerful in its capacity to rally thousands of people to positive action. Yet, it’s puzzling, because it as easily can be used to drive disruption. However and organization might choose to use social media and its unparalleled reach, posts and other content are there forever, for anyone to see. And it is precisely this unprecedented transparency that gives organizations pause. Should we open up?

In a recent keynote at the Institute of Fundraising‘s National Convention in London, UK, I spoke about one organization that seized the potential advantage of transparency—somewhat to its own surprise.

Charity: Water is a US NGO that provides clean drinking water to rural areas in some of the world’s poorest countries. They dig wells in countries of sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. Each year, they run a ‘September Campaign’ to celebrate the anniversary of their founding (September 7). A key feature of the campaign is the live, online broadcast of Charity: Water’s latest well drilling project. For their first three years, this had been a tremendous morale- and awareness-building opportunity.

September 7, 2010, also happened to be Charity: Water founder Scott Morrison’s 35th birthday. So he was excited to be drilling a new well—to be broadcast live, online—in Moale, Central African Republic. Geologists had identified a perfect spot, where water was anticipated to be accessible between 500 and 700′ below the surface. A special drill was brought in that was capable of drilling to 800′, cameras were set up, and drilling began. It takes hours and hours to drill that far into the ground, but by 9:00pm, the drill had penetrated some 300′ into the ground. That’s when disaster struck.

The bore hole collapsed on itself. During the live broadcast. Supporters and donors around the world saw Charity: Water fail at their core service. The funds they’d donated went completely to waste. And there was no hiding from the damage.

The Charity: Water team began again, and worked through the night to make a second attempt. It also failed. And the following morning, Morrison stood in front of the camera—still broadcasting live—and shared his disappointment openly and honestly with his viewers. He expected to be rebuked, to lose key funders, and to suffer criticism from supporters. The opposite turned out to be true.

“We appreciate your transparency,” said one Twitter contact. “I think this is perhaps even more important than sharing your successes,” said a Facebook post. “Even with the best planning, scientific data and equipment, you can have a myriad of problems… thank you for sharing your challenges,” said a field engineer that supports Charity: Water’s work.

Rather than punishment, Charity: Water was congratulated for their hard work, and for honestly sharing that 5% of their well-drilling attempts do fail. They aren’t infallible.

Their website received more traffic that day than in the history of Charity: Water. Their support solidified even further. And their donations took a positive, upward turn.

This sort of transparency is daunting to many. The ‘old school’ public relations approach would be to bury a story like this: Failures were not to be shared; they were to be shunned! But that was never realistic. And today, ‘keeping a lid’ on such a story is impossible: Just one Tweet from one field operator at Charity: Water would make the story public. Rather than hiding from this transparency, Morrison and Charity: Water seized it as an opportunity to forge valuable connections with important stakeholders around the world. What may have appeared to be risky was really just an exercise in openness and honesty.

Every organization—in business, in the social sector, and otherwise—must acknowledge that this transparency is the new reality. Hiding from it is an ostrich-like, self-defeating exercise. Opening to it, and seizing its advantages is one way to build relationships of trust and goodwill.

Ultimately, transparency is about respect. As Scott Morrison said, “Perhaps people wanted us to fail…. I don’t think so. I think people just want to know the truth.”

Public sector cuts, restricting funding and stagnant donations means that it’s now even more important for charities to find new revenue streams. In particular, technology innovation has, and will continue to support our charities and enable them to find ways to increase funds.

In a political / social context where government funding for charities is shrinking, and during an economic period when individuals have less money to share with their favourite causes, innovative approaches to fundraising are essential to charities’ operations. Gowers argues–and we agree–that social enterprise is a valuable part of the solution.

Her firm, Everyclick, “turns search-based advertising into a revenue stream for any charity.” Everyclick’s Give as You Live tool, which Octopus helped to brand and launch, operates in the background as users shop as normal. Without changing their habits at all, Everyclick facilitates the donation of a small portion of their purchase price to the charity of their choice. The application alone has the capacity to raise £1.25 billion in unrestricted funding for UK charities this year.

Read more of Gowers’s Guardian article here. Or learn more by contacting us.

A Celebration of Renewed Vitality

Octopus Strategies is pleased to be sponsoring Vertality, “a celebration of the New Year for and by Vancouver’s change-maker community: people who believe that business can lead the way to a prosperous future by fostering an economic model that values the pursuit of profit equally with the pursuit of sustainability.”

After the shock of 2008, the uncertainty of 2009, and the turbulence of 2010, 2011 ushers in new optimism, and brings new opportunities to build on our successes, and to drive important missions forward.

Begin 2011 with a flourish! Celebrate the new year. Make new connections in an incredibly engaged community. And revel in the Vertality!

When? January 18, 2011, 7:00pm.

Where? Club 560 – 560 Seymour Street, Vancouver

Located in the old A&B Sound store at 560 Seymour, it’s much larger than most local nightclubs – 28,000 sq. ft. spread over four floors. The size means it can have several different themes within the overall space. When it’s going full-tilt, 500 patrons will be able to walk around and choose between three separate mini-clubs, each with its own DJ.

For tickets, visit Vertality’s Eventbrite page.

See you there!

To make this meaningful contribution to the emerging social enterprise sector, Octopus Strategies partnered with Enterprising Non-Profits to produce the Social Enterprise Marketing Toolkit, which we unveiled on November 5 at the first ever Social Enterprise Meetup in Vancouver.

Throughout Canada’s western-most Province of British Columbia, there are some 240 established social enterprises, each dedicated to addressing or supporting vital social and community projects and priorities. ‘Social Enterprise’ is defined as a traditional business, operated by a not-for-profit either to directly fulfill its mission, or to channel funds back into the purse of the not-for-profit itself.

In other countries, social enterprise is well established—especially in the UK, where it’s now seen as a vital priority for the national government. By contrast, it is a slowly emerging sub-sector in Canada. Yet in a context of economic constraint, and amid budget cuts to government funding for arts, cultural and social organizations, social enterprise presents significant opportunities.

Made up of five videos and a series of accompanying worksheets, the Toolkit introduces foundational marketing theory, and presents specific examples from BC’s social enterprises and some of Octopus Strategies’ proprietary tools. Some of these tools, such as the Value Spectrum™ and the Message Matrix™ involve approaches that have previously been available only to paying clients.

The Toolkit has been designed to make marketing and communications expertise accessible and applicable for social sector leaders who often have no training or background in marketing. They get pragmatic and actionable techniques they can apply immediately in their social enterprises.

The Toolkit has been launched as a ‘beta’ product and is available online at Octopus Strategies or at Enterprising Non-Profits. Feedback and suggestions for improvement or clarification can be sent to info@enterprisingnonprofits.ca or setoolkit@octopusstrategies.com.

The Enbridge project has the potential to radically alter the social and ecological landscape of Western Canada. The construction of this massive pipeline and the roads used to access it will result in extensive loss of wildlife habitat. Waterways and communities will be contaminated as statistically inevitable oil spills occur along the pipeline route. It will lead to expansion of the tar sands- adding to already critical global atmospheric carbon levels.

The 1,150km journey is a very long walk. But here’s a very short lesson: The length of this pipeline makes oil spills a statistical inevitability.

Of course, if we just ban the tankers, the pipeline idea will just go away….

What if Darth Vader’s voice was in your GPS?!

It doesn’t hurt that the intro video is hilarious, either:

You see, Maddy’s on a hunger strike.

She’s the most recent in a week-by-week relay of awareness-raising citizens who are concerned about the fact that roughly half of all Canadians live in fear of poverty. More to the point, there are somewhere between 10,500 and 15,000 people in BC alone who have no homes. Every 12 days, one homeless Canadian dies.

Scary statistics. But scarier still is the fact that until 1993, Canada had one of the most widely recognized social housing programs in the world. Federally funded and progressive, it was canceled after 20 years of effective support for people marginalized by hard luck or hard times. Since then, support for the most troubled of our fellow citizens has become fragmented. And progressively less effective.

So Maddy’s hunger striking for a new Federal Housing Program. There’ll be a new volunteer every week throughout 2010. Maddy’s the face of week 73. She follows UBC Professor Michael Byers, Vancouver activist David Eby and many others. I wonder who’s going to be number 74… 75… 76… 77….

Learn more about the Homelessness Hunger Strike Relay.  They might be on to something here….