Business in our country often pools its resources to solve social problems – searching for missing people, changing the environmental situation, etc. This trend appeared a few years ago, and the pandemic has only strengthened it.
About the expert: Alexandra Babkina, director of social projects at Mail.ru Group.
Keep your distance but join forces
The issue of business merger arose acutely against the backdrop of the coronavirus epidemic, when it became clear that everyone on their own could not cope – but they could cope locally.
When self-isolation in our country was just beginning, the Dobro Mail.ru service launched a campaign to help older people #goodwill. The team came up with a poster that everyone can print out, hang up in the stairwell and find out which of the elderly neighbors needs help. Young people, who are slightly less at risk of contracting the coronavirus, can buy groceries or medicines without a prescription from the store and leave them at the door of their neighbors. Thousands of people joined this action: they placed posters in their entrance, those who did not have a printer copied it by hand.
A local social project has become global thanks to the involvement of several businesses at once: food retailers Pyaterochka, Lenta, Dixy, and Perekrestok have joined the action. For each of the networks, Dobro Mail.ru has prepared its own version of the poster with their logo. The first of the networks was Pyaterochka, but none of the retailers had a question about the championship or exclusive partnership in this project. Chains talked about the opportunity to help their customers, cardholders and members of loyalty programs.
As a result, the coverage of the action exceeded 20 million, the poster was shared more than 13 thousand times, it turned out to be in demand not only in our country, but also in Belarus, and in Armenia, but most importantly, the elderly received real help from their neighbors.
The risk of leaving thousands of their employees without work and, conversely, not being able to cope with the wave of orders, prompted retailers and HoReCa representatives to unite. Magnit said it was ready to temporarily hire employees from Burger King, KFC and Shokoladnitsa if restaurant chains suspend operations due to the pandemic. According to the company, in total, Magnit will be able to employ 2650 employees of Burger King and KFC in 20 cities of our country and from 300 to 1 thousand employees of Shokoladnitsa in Moscow during the crisis.
An initiative to support the exchange of personnel was made by the organization HR Golos. On the page for collecting applications for personnel exchange, the areas that are already affected by layoffs are listed: retail, fitness, restaurants, hotels, tourism, airports and others. At the same time, there are companies that, on the contrary, are now experiencing a shortage of personnel due to the increased demand for their services: these are delivery services, medicine, grocery retail and others.
Long before the coronavirus: the fight against bullying, the search for missing people and the environment
But the situation that is unfolding due to the pandemic has only strengthened the trend that started a few years ago. Combining brands allows you to take the first step in solving any problem, namely, to publicly declare it. For example, last year we engaged Internet companies in a conversation about the problem of cyberbullying.
According to a study by Mail.ru Group, 58% of our countries have experienced online aggression. And it’s not just teenagers – absolutely any Internet user can become a victim of online bullying. And the consequences can be the saddest – life on the Internet today is too intertwined with life offline.
We declared November 11 as Anti-Cyberbullying Day and encouraged other brands to join us. Companies changed their social media avatars to a yellow heart emoji (share symbol) and talked about their own initiatives. Now social networks (for example, the VKontakte Security Center), educational services (for example, Skyeng), telecom operators (Beeline), the media, and bloggers have activities aimed at reducing the level of aggression on the Internet. .
It is not uncommon for technology companies to pool their resources in an attempt to help NGOs and civil society organizations. One of the most successful examples is the association of telecommunications operators and IT companies to help the search and rescue team “Lisa Alert”. “Beeline” began with SMS informing the volunteers of the detachment, providing communication and a hotline for volunteers. Today, the operator is implementing the Beeline AI – People Search solution based on a neural network. Artificial intelligence determines the figures of people during filming from a drone and instantly transmits information to the cameraman. This greatly speeds up the process of finding missing people.
The infrastructure of Mail.ru Cloud Solutions allows you to safely store thousands of images from drones and work with them. When a message appears on the forum or group of the Liza Alert detachment on VKontakte that pictures from the next flight have been uploaded, up to 150 people start viewing them at the same time. The photo is divided into 32 fragments, and the volunteer must use the answers “yes” or “no” to determine whether there is a person in this or that image of the forest.
MegaFon uses big data to inform those subscribers who are in the area of the search operation about the missing. And MTS regularly tells Internet users what to do in a situation where a loved one has disappeared.
It is important that in this case we are not talking about “competition of logos”, but about pooling the resources of companies to support a professional volunteer organization and solve a problem.
Synergy projects also help in solving environmental problems. For example, in 2019, a project was created to collect and dispose of old equipment. It was initiated by the M.Video-Eldorado group, which began to accept old equipment and electronics from consumers on an ongoing basis, tracking the life cycle of the collected goods and controlling the recycling process. To solve the problem, a special Association of SKO Electronics – Recycling was created and the process of collecting old equipment through stores and in the form of a special service was built. The process is controlled through a three-way IT system between the retailer, the Association and the disposal companies. Up to this point, we are only talking about the retailer’s CSR project, but it is important that the largest manufacturers and importers of equipment and electronics have joined the initiative: Bosch, LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Canon, Indesit, B/s/h, Electrolux, Philips, Miele , DELL, BEKO. Processing is carried out at the Ecopolis plant.
The interaction of market participants and government agencies is aimed at the legal and environmentally correct disposal of equipment, compliance with environmental legislation and the development of entrepreneurship in the field of recycling. The geography of the project today is St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Ulyanovsk, Yaroslavl, Samara and Volgograd, 300 stores accept equipment from consumers. More than 300 tons of e-waste has been collected and donated to recyclers, which could have ended up in a landfill if the companies hadn’t merged.
Three win-win rules
But why should companies use their resources and team up with other businesses to solve social problems?
The economy does not exist without people, and people choose goods not only in terms of price / quality ratio. In a situation where most products in the consumer market have similar characteristics, the perception of “super discounts” is dulled. Then how the brand solves social problems becomes the reason for its choice. This is also confirmed by the results of international studies:
The success of brand unification initiatives can be measured by tracking the changes for which these alliances are created (unless, of course, they are created for a one-time PR effect). There are many global problems that require the pooling of efforts and resources of citizens and companies: from fighting unemployment against the backdrop of an epidemic to stimulating conscious consumption, supporting inclusion in society and developing sharing economy tools.
If you are now thinking about launching your social projects and pooling resources, I beg you to pay attention to three things:
Subscribe and follow us on Yandex.Zen — technology, innovation, economics, education and sharing in one channel.