The Isle of Serendipity and Intent Marketing

"Adams Branding, founded by legendary design icon, Donald Adams, has lent its innovative branding solutions and creative expertise to various national brands including, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks and Johnson & Johnson. This year, Adams has engaged its "heart" and mind with the American Heart Association for its "Go Red for Women" campaign by offering design expertise and strategic advice, all culminating in a sponsored "Go Red Women's Empowerment Luncheon" in April featuring key note speaker, women's health advocate and actress Jane Seymour."

Adams isn't this branding company's real name. I normally delete the myriad of press releases in my inbox especially when I'm on the road (see short snippet above). My curiousity wins out when it's subtitled, "Branding Agency Educates, Empowers Women and Corporations Through Cause Marketing."

This particular PR struck a chord because just Wednesday I visited Kahawe, Sri Lanka, accompanying the managing director and business development manager of a multinational company on a site visit.

• "We've turned down media attention."
• "We haven't ever advertised this project."
• "Our company isn't unique, really, hundreds of businesses pitched in after the tsunami. That's the story."

I'm tagging along today as a blogging buddy of Angelo Fernando, who is good friends with Joey, the managing director. I'm not considered exactly a member of the media.

We are driving along the Galle Road which hugs the sea. I'm bombarded with billboards and logos galore along the roadside, including a few for-profits, along Galle Road alerting everyone: "We were here", "We did this".  Whole resurrected villages are branded after a corporation.

"The US Marines built this seawall," Joey tells me. I note the sea wall might be useful for high tides and cyclones but it's utterly pointless in a tsunami: "The locals says the wave came up over the coconut trees," he continues. And these coconut trees are waiflike towers. Giant beanstalks.

Serendipitiously Ravi gets an SMS message from a friend in Germany. It's about 3 a.m. in Germany. "Can't sleep tonight. Watching TV. Colombo-Matura express. So sad. Email later."

I am tired today*. Quiet too. Particularly silent right now. We've been driving for hours and are minutes away from the site of the derailment.

We pull past aforementioned Kahawe train station: "This is the last stop the train made before it was washed away." He's of course talking about the now-infamous Queen of the Sea that his SMS buddy recalled for us five minutes earlier.

Their company has adopted 61 families since the day they were at the Buddhist temple camp immediately post-tsunami. Half are already in their new homes except those that didn't own land outside the government-imposed 100-meter zone.

We're visiting the new model village for the landless that's under construction surrounded by cinnamon trees. Ravi has been the project manager - nearly another full-time job since the tsunami - and he fields queries from the construction crew and asks questions in Sinhalen. We head to the temple next and the villagers at the camp are told that March 20th is the move-in date. Other errands too: Visiting the tailor that is a little late with the school uniforms.

This is really all part of another post on CSR, and corporate social responsibility.

You can work on honing your press release and dissecting your cause marketing strategy. But if the intention is primarily getting noticed, I'm starting to believe the overall effects (including the cause you're purporting to help) may fall far short of simply having a pure intention.

Something about this press release struck me because it is only after hours of conversation and developing a rapport that people here reveal how they personally chipped in after the tsunami.

Boasting isn't big here.

Giving for its own sake is.

The thing is you don't have to shout from the rooftops. Jumping up and down isn't necessarily efficient.

I have met several prominent and successful businessmen on this trip.  They exude understated power.

One I met simply through serendipity. I believed I was emailing a fellow enlightenment seeker. I found his book in a Sarvodaya bookstore. I resonated with his stories and his words, not his biography as their was absolutely nothing inside the jacket, in the first few pages, or anywhere "about the author".

The simple introduction says "There are some experiences and discoveries that are too overwhelming to keep to yourself. You get the urge to share them with others."

At lunch a few days later while at Sarvodaya, the cook takes an old April 2005 The Daily News to keep the vegetarian curry dishes and rice away from the hovering flies. I go to lift the newspaper and my eye falls on the author's name and the book title. I scan the small article listing a book signing and that he's authored a few business books, not much else. Except an accurate email address.

"I don't normally read email from people I don't recognize," he said.

When I visited his company the receptionist - the appointed gatekeeper for any company - asks me suspiciously "Are you sure you have an appointment?" Okay, she didn't use those exact words but it sublimally inserted in her doubting tone.

"How did you find my book?" he asks as we head out to his car. "Was it the title?"

"I don't know what it was. I saw it in the Sarvodaya bookstore." I had glimpsed through dozens of English-language books there mostly out of curiousity as I dislike carting stuff around while traveling and thus I rarely buy anything.

"I read part of the first story and felt I should buy it."

"That is my story."

It was only at the buffet that I realized I was having lunch with the CEO. Who just happens to believe, like myself, that of course his spiritual life is part of his business life: "Life is not compartmentalized, it's a flux."

In the days of The Arabian Nights, Sri Lanka was known as Serendib. The isle of serendipity. I don't know how it works exactly, but intent matters -- and is registered by the universe. Perhaps we've always simply shrugged our shoulders in confoundment and simply named it serendipity.

p.s. I'm not so sure this is marketing as you know it.

* I'd been getting up early and sleeping late the last few days - plus trying to record every thought emotion and impression for too many weeks now is draining. "This is good for hangovers, by the way," offers Joey as we sip an orange-colored thambili coconut. I was so tired I didn't noticed this was a hint. Thanks, no hangover but I was out drinking two days before. Since I'm a lightweight, social drinking does hit me hard, but once in a while it is a good way to maximize time and meet busy hotel owners, business conglomerate owners, and tea estate managers to name but a few. Ah, yes, another coconut drink was to blame: arrack. Now I'm simply sleep-deprived. And the temptation to move part-time to Sri Lanka is thankfully tempered by the wilting heat and mosquitos which are taking their toll on me too!

Photos: Ravi showing the map of the model village at the temple meeting.

Comments

[joey]

the project you saw, evelyn, is not just another csr project. this, like the spontaneous response from ordinary people and organizations worldwide to the tsunami, is giving purely for the sake of it.

even in this day and age, occasionally, just occasionally, a kiss is just a kiss and a song is just a song.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hi Joey,
Thanks so much for your time. That's my point precisely. Often we capitalists expect that there must be an 'upside' to justify a CSR project. Maybe at least we can polish off a nice press release and get some goodwill through 'cause marketing.' I guess there is so much "what's in it for me" in the West, it's refreshing to see a corporation that doesn't ask "what's in it for me".

On other hand, for 'practical' capitalistic Westerners this might not sound feasible (i.e. altruistic). For me, there ought NOT to be expectations with a gift, otherwise it is not a gift but a deal or bargain. I also wanted to make a little point that giving doesn't deplete. We only give to the whatever label we might call the Universe or the Totality, which is not apart from ourselves and does not require an announcement over the airwaves or Internet.

[joey]

agreed.

in the real world of corporate life though, i doubt there is pure altruism in our acts. it's all relative. however, i do think that the initial responses globally to the tsunami came close to such arcadia.

there is hope for us yet!