Student with Coloured Markers & an iPad VERSUS Multinational Marketing $$.
I’ve been working remotely over the last number of weeks from the Sunshine Coast in Australia as some of you know already (early morning calls only!) Happily Orla and Keith are holding down the fort in Cookie HQ in Mullingar and I’ll be home again soon – just need to get my annual fill of Vit.D! While I am here I thought I’d share a few stories I’ve picked up in the papers and online. This one is your classic David & Goliath…
One woman sticks it to the Aussie multinationals relentless pushing down of home brand milk prices.
Over here the multinationals in supermarkets are Coles and Woolworths. Coles thought they’d be clever and all right now and release a very nicely executed video directed at their consumers on how their (relentless) price reduction on their own brand milk (now an incredibly low $1 per litre) was not actually affecting dairy farmers at all – that was really just down to the high Aussie dollar and the export market.
Cassandra MacDonald, a student of Veterinarian Science was incensed at the hard spin that Coles was pushing in its pretty video clip and decided to try illustrate the other side of the story from the perspective of NSW (New South Wales) and Queenland dairy farmers. Well try she did and a great result she got! A few hours after she published it on YouTube and Facebook it went viral. Thousand of views later it was picked up by the media and brought to the fore again the struggles of the dairly farmers against multinationals (and of course, consumer choice). Check it out.
So how did she do it?
A couple of coloured sharpie pens and her iPad. Luckily she’s a great little drawer too! She wrote down what she wanted to say, then she filmed herself doing the illustrations to go with the narrative. She then chopped up and stitched together the video clips into a 5 minute piece and uploaded the result to YouTube. It’s simply brilliant. And she did it on her lounge floor over the space of couple of days. There’s a great interview with her on the Milk Maid Marian blog.
It’s a Wonderful Web
The web is a wonderfully democratising place. Everyday more, mostly free tools are launched that allow individuals, small business and small marketing departments to create great graphics, videos, websites and more and all without much experience or very much budget. With just a bit time and perseverance and creativity (don’t deny it – we all have it buried somewhere inside) you can compete against the big budgets and marketing departments of the multinationals.
And remember that to compete against the multinationals taking over our world we as consumers have to make the choice to spend a little more on our groceries and support our local farmers and producers – whether that be in Ireland or Australia. (Sorry for the soap boxing Orla!!)
Story source: Queensland Country Life Paper.
