Creating Demand With Social Marketing: ColaLife’s Approach

October 24, 2011 Editor 0

Authored by: Heather Esper

Getting back to the basics: Need does not equate to demand. And in creating demand there are challenges associated with awareness, access, willingness to pay and utilization. Erik Simanis explored this idea within the BoP context in both the Wall Street Journal and MIT Sloan Management Review, which is summarized well with the following key quote:

“Put most simply: The Base of the Pyramid is not actually a market. True, those billions of low-income people have a lot in common. But they don’t have two of the vital characteristics you need to have a consumer market. They haven’t been conditioned to think that the products being offered are something one would even buy. And they haven’t adapted their behaviors and budgets to fit the products into their lives. A consumer market is nothing less than a lifestyle built around a product.”

Too often ventures forget that they need to put forth an additional effort to create demand for the products they offer in BoP markets. ColaLife is a are example, as its founders thought this through early on in the design phase by creating a social marketing plan. Fitting into the unused spaced between crated bottles, ColaLife’s “AidPods” contain Anti-Diarrhea Kits (ADKs) for home use by mothers and caregivers in underserved rural communities (see the video below for a visual of how the AidPod works). They will be sold at an affordable, subsidized price by trained, local retailers in communities. To learn more about how ColaLife came to be and its overall concept, read our earlier post.

 

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Categories: Next Billion

Tags: bop, demand, social