Influx Insights Tag Feed: africa

looking in new and different places- dj frank

Influx Insights — 2008-08-03T23:18:09Z

DJ Frank is a New York-based DJ and like any good DJ, he is on a constant quest to discover new sounds.

The difference is that he's not content with digging in old record stores and flea markets in the US, instead he travels to West Africa to find records, before they get destroyed.

This new documentary chronicles his journey.

Posted by Ed Cotton

ingenuity in developing markets

Influx Insights — 2008-04-11T15:37:35Z

I was fortunate enough to attend Jan Chipchase's Street Hacks (avail for download from his site) presentation at Adaptive Path the other night.

He's Nokia's resident field researcher/ethnographer.

His function is to help Nokia better understand how people use mobile phone and identify potential opportunities.

In his presentation he shared some great examples of how people in the developing world are adapting/hacking and playing with limited resources to deliver experiences they want and need.

Here are some of his examples;

1. Not An Official Product: Two SIM cards on the space of a single SIM so users can switch between providers

2. Stealing Electricity, but with a Meter- from Brazil- It costs to add the meter, but having the meter gives you an address and the "rights" from having an address.

3. A system for airtime transfer gets turned by its users into a banking system- Africa- people can send airtime quicker than money and in towns and villages, individuals exchange that airtime for cash.

Posted by Ed Cotton

red's art heist- 7 reasons why it's brilliant

Influx Insights — 2008-02-15T11:24:43Z

RED, the brand designed and built to raise money for Africa, has been keeping a low profile in the last few months that was until yesterday.

As we all know, money talks.

In a single day, RED raised an incredible $42.6 million to add to the $50 million raised to date through its efforts with brands.

It did it with an auction of contemporary art.

Here's are 7 reasons why its brilliant.

1. Contemporary art is simply the hottest and most valuable product out there- prices have been going through the roof in recent years

2. Big name artists are the hottest brands there are- especially guys like Damien Hirst who had work in the auction

3. Rare and limited editions have a premium value- so art created especially for RED- fitted that criteria

4. RED leveraged its celebrity founders to give the art and the auction cache.

5. Playing to the guilt factor- like the RED brand in general- purchasers can feel good about buying and artists feel like valued contributors

6. Partnering with Sotheby’s added status and value to the event

7. Holding the auction on Valentine's Day, gave the event a theme and an anchor

This piece, a collaboration between Banksy and Damien Hirst was supposed to fetch $200k, but ended up going for $1.8 million!

Economists frequently tell us that we are a time of incredible wealth with a new class of super-rich, RED's strategy of pushing its brand upstream, creating an event to capture this wealth and line its own pockets, is pure genius.

Posted by Ed Cotton

(product) red gets its story out

Influx Insights — 2007-06-19T14:14:55Z

A few months ago, Influx looked at RED, worried that it might be in danger of getting drowned by the growing attention being placed on the environment.

We wondered if people were giving up on Africa and it was becoming a forgotten story.

We wondered if the interest and awareness for RED that we saw in 2006, was dwindling away.

We suggested that RED made more of an effort to get its story out.

This month, something big finally happened, with the help of Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair, who invited Bono to be the magazine’s first ever guest editor, for a special Africa issue for July.

In the magazine, RED gets the chance to share its story about getting pills to Africa’s 28 million AIDS sufferers.

The article talks about the power of ARVs to restore normalcy to the lives of AIDS victims and highlights the progress made by the country of Rwanda, where 67% of the people who need the drugs, now have them.

Elsewhere across the continent of Africa, only 28% are getting the drugs they need, so there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Beyond this month's Vanity Fair, RED seems to be making more of an effort with its communication, it has an active blog (RED, please make more of this!!!) and its starting to use YouTube a bit more.

The Vanity Fair July issue is a huge coup for RED, hopefully it will prompt more in the media world to donate the time and space to help RED tell its important story in new and intriguing ways.

Posted by Ed Cotton