Learn to create a break-through, authentic, values-driven brand strategy for your mission-based organization.

A new generation of entrepreneurs and social change leaders rejects short-term, unsustainable practices, and aims instead to build organizations around enduring values. Yet many cause-driven organizations—whether not-for-profit, social venture or social enterprise—struggle to find their voice.
How should they engage donors, customers, staff and others in their mission? How do they focus their story, pitch and appeals to generate the greatest returns? And how do they stand apart in cluttered, competitive markets? We’ll be including the insights of new research and access to some of the tools and techniques that are typically reserved for our international roster of high impact social change clients.

Mike Rowlands, Founder & President of Octopus Strategies, will co-present this workshop with Stephen Abbott. Together, they’ve helped mission-driven organizations around the world to develop authentic, value-driven and inspiring brands. They’ll share examples, insights and experiences, while helping you to identify ways to distinguish your organization in a marketplace that’s increasingly conscious and ever more crowded.

The workshop will be offered only twice in 2011—both times in partnership with Hollyhock in Vancouver. The workshop does require advanced registration. Tuition per session is $185 CDN. Non-profit, Student, Senior: $165 CDN. Program dates are Wednesday, April 13 and Thursday, April 14 or Wednesday, October 5 and Thursday October 6, from 1:00pm – 5:00pm in Vancouver.

Octopus Strategies is proud to release the first ever Social Enterprise Marketing Toolkit to support the enterprising work of leading social sector organizations in Canada.

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.

“Who’s responsible for your company’s reputation?”

This is the question posed in the title of a Harvard Business Review article published April 28 and written by Ron Ashkenas, author of The Boundaryless Organization. His answer, which draws on the current case against Goldman Sachs, and the ongoing trials and tribulations of Toyota’s quality control progams, among others, posits that reputation management “may need to be part of everyone’s responsibility.”

When any stakeholder—customer, employee, investor, etc.—chooses to buy from, work with or invest in any organization, their decision is based at least in part on the organization’s reputation. Based on the historical performance and customer care of an organization like Disney (another of Ashkenas’s examples), we expect a certain experience: For customers, that’s fabulous, family-friendly entertainment; for employees, its an amazing, innovative work environment; for investors, it’s a healthy, reliable return on their investment in the form of regular dividends.

Organizations that don’t hold to their own standards of responsibility inevitably erode their own reputations: Toyota’s current experience, for example, implies a betrayal of their legendary quality control practices. They’re fortunate to have such a strong reputation, forged through decades of strict adherence to their core values; they’ll likely weather the current storm. However, their customers won’t be fooled again. Repeated errors and quality gaffes will erode Toyota’s reputation, sales, and market share.

Reputation management—and brand management—require the care and attention of leaders, managers, and everyone else in an organization. A strong brand requires a remarkable degree of personal responsibility. How successful and consistent is your brand at enhancing its reputation?

This expectation of an experience is precisely our definition of the word brand.

Organizations can choose to embed responsibility for this expectation in their operations and standards, or they can choose to let it follow the whim of circumstance. In Disney’s case, leadership and management “make every employee feel responsible for the entertainment products and services they provide.” Johnson & Johnson, legendary for their adherence to their ‘credo,’ emphasizes every employee’s “responsibility to put the well-being of the people they serve first.” These are two of the most reputable firms in the world. And they’re also two of the most valuable brands in the world.

Victoria, British Columbia’s Inn at Laurel Point is the first BC hotel to go carbon neutral.

This is the latest in a long line of sustainability initiatives for the Inn: When a landmark Arthur Erickson-designed extension to the Inn was built 20 years ago, it included a seawater thermal heat and cooling exchange. This was “long before people were thinking about that sort of stuff,” notes the Inn’s General Manager, Ian Powell.

Other initiatives include paperless check-in, room keys made of recycled paper and printed with vegetable-dye inks, an organic herb and veggie garden, reducing waste and increasing recycling, bike racks, optional linen changes for guests and cutting back on use of lights when not needed.

The latest initiative, which the Inn is undertaking in partnership with Vancouver’s Offsetters, will initially support a general portfolio of carbon-offset projects. In the longer term, the Inn hopes to find a Vancouver Island project to support.

The Inn at Laurel Point is both a client and a service-provider to Octopus Strategies. We worked with the Inn’s executive and management team in 2008, helping to develop their ‘Stay Different…’ brand and marketing strategy. We have also hosted executive retreats there for other clients, and wholeheartedly recommend the hotel for its warmth, beauty, and exceptional service standards.

Congratulations to the Inn at Laurel Point from all of us at Octopus on being BC’s first carbon neutral hotel!

The Social Entrepreneurship Experience, a student-run conference under the Enterprize Canada umbrella, took place November 21 at the Museum of Vancouver. The organizers’ goals were to “tackle the question of what social entrepreneurship really is and how local businesses are radically changing Vancouver and communities abroad.”

I put it a slightly different way: “Traditional business is a flightless baboon,” I said. (It’s a long story!) “I’m interested in the evolutionary next step.” And I believe it’s social enterprise.

The nature of ‘social entrepreneurship’ is as diverse as the individuals who adopt the moniker. Each of us can choose how we’ll build our organizations, but what we all hold in common is a purpose beyond profit, and an open, collaborative approach to resolving issues of sustainability. Yet it is the diversity that makes this burgeoning sector so hard to pin down. And so fascinating.

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As roles in corporate, non-profit and governmental leadership begin to pass from those born in or before the 1950s to those born in the 60s and 70s, will we see a different style of leadership emerge?

In a recent Harvard Business blog post, Tammy Erickson posits that we will: “The experiences that shaped those of you who were teens in the late ’70s and ’80s… translate into valuable contemporary traits and perspectives.” Whereas the idealism and ideological imperatives of post-war baby boomers have driven the last twenty years, GenX leaders will bring a pragmatic style, and focus on effectiveness—on setting and achieving important goals. Erickson suggests that their timing is perfect:

Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. Perhaps the biggest change from the past: leaders will have to listen and respond to diverse points of view. There will be no dominant voice.

It comes as no surprise to those of us engaged with social entrepreneurship that the trend toward values-driven leadership will only accelerate. We will take the “opportunity to change the corporate template,” and “look for a different way forward.” And we will do so in an inclusive, open and transparent manner.

GenXers will respond to the call to “serve as effective stewards of both today’s organizations and tomorrow’s world.”

As a child of the 70s, I’m ready to go.

Are you?