Authors@google - Eugenie harvey

Eugenie Harvey: Thank you, Kate. And thank everybody for taking time out of your busy days to come and hear a little bit about the work we do through our little organization, "We Are What We Do.” You may not have heard We Are What We Do. It's not exactly a brand that trips off the tongue. But, you might have heard of a couple of the projects, which we're going to talk about today. One of which -- or two of which -- are the books that are on your seat. Which I hope you've had a chance to flip through. And if you haven't, please take with you and read and pass on and enjoy. And you most likely, I think, will have heard of a project we did with Anya Hindmarch, which I'm going to talk a little bit about, a bag called, "I'm Not a Plastic Bag.” And if you haven't heard of either or any of those projects, by the end of this year, I certainly hope "We Are What We Do" is a brand which trips off your tongue, because we are infiltrating your organization, and working on an extremely exciting project with you. Which we're going to talk to you -- or Nick's going to talk to you about today. At the risk of stealing your thunder, Nick, I'm going to say that the name of the project that we're working on with Google is, "Share Your History.” That may be a working title. I don't think so. It's sort of, you know, the way these things do. It's kind of -- seems to be sticking. And, in the spirit of sharing your history, I'm going to begin my talk about We Are What We Do, with a little tiny bit of my own history, if you will indulge me. I am Australian, in case you hadn't guessed. And I grew up in Australia. I spent the first thirty years of my life there. I had a very, very happy fortunate childhood. But two things happened to me when I was 12, which left an indelible mark on me, and I think have really led me to want to do the sort of work that I do. And the first that happened was that my mom and dad got divorced, which is obviously not a wildly unusual event, but it was -- as it always is -- very traumatic for me and my sister. And within 12 months after that, our house had burnt down, and we lost everything that we owned. And so, it was a fairly intense period in my early teens. And it gave me a very strong sense of the kind of sadness and unfairness that people can and do experience every single day in the world in any number of different forms. And it made me very determined one day to try and do something with my life that could, in some way, ease the suffering or improve the circumstances of people who have been the victim of problems like those that I had. So it's a long time ago, back in Sydney, Australia, in the 70's and 80's. I went to university. I did a mass communications degree. Enjoyed it very much. I went and worked at a company called the Sydney Theatre Company. I worked in the arts, at a time when we were launching the careers of some very exciting, famous Australian people. Then I went to work for Rupert Murdock in his big pay, television start-up, which was called FOXTEL. It was our equivalent of SKY, and it was a very, very exciting time in telecommunications and -- well, business in Australia. I did three or four years there, and by the time I hit my 30th birthday, the net result of those experiences was that I kind of burnt out. I hadn't kind of burn out; I completely burnt out. And, more to the point, that voice that had been inside me since I was really quite a young girl of, you know, wanting to do something to make the world a better place. That drive, which I've sort of managed to keep at bay during my 20's, when there was a lot of other things to be doing -- a lot of other exciting things to be doing -- started to get louder and louder and louder. "What are you doing?” You know, "How are you going to make this ambition of trying to help people come to life?” And I had absolutely no idea because, as someone who'd done a mass communications degree, I clearly had absolutely no skills or experience that really, you would think, could do anything to improve the circumstances of people in the world. So I did the honorable thing. I have, thanks to my dad -- who is a wood-grain lad -- I have a British passport. And so, as I approached my 30th birthday, I took my British passport, and I jumped on a plane and I moved to the other side of the world where I virtually knew no one, and no one knew me. And I could embark on this mission, or reinvention, to do this thing which was going to make the world a better place -- whatever that might be -- in glorious anonymity where nobody knew me. I could kind of fail spectacularly and no one would ever know. And the great thing was, I did fail spectacularly on several occasions. When I got here, you know, with this determination to find this new thing to do -- this better thing with my life -- within you know, I think six weeks, I was working just down the road here for a PR agency, having moved to the other side of the world to get out of PR, promoting the Australian Tourist Commission's -- or, well, promoting Australia, effectively in the run up to the Sydney 2002 Games. So I was on the other side of the world with no family, no friends, no money, doing the job I disliked, and promoting the country I just moved halfway around the world from. So it was a spectacular failure at, you know, reinvention. So I did that for a couple of years, and I really was very unhappy. But the good thing that happened during that time -- which I look back on really with gratitude now -- was for the first time in my life -- and I'm not proud to say this, because I worked in the media for a decade at that point -- For the first time in my life, I used to sit down and read the newspaper. Because, obviously -- well, the media here is so fabulous and it's very, you know, so different to Australia where we just have one newspaper. So I was very interested and engaged by this incredible media that you have here. And I started to read the newspaper every day. Not least, because I didn't have very much money and was really sort of all I could afford by way of entertainment. I managed to have a couple of white wines I think, too. But, on the whole, I led a fairly solitary existence. And I started to read about problems in the paper. And as I said, I've had -- ever since I was quite young -- had this hope that I would try and do something to make the world a better place. But I hadn't really ever -- if I was honest -- considered some of the issues, or the issues that I might be interested or able to participate in. And so, reading the newspaper during that period of time and really forcing myself to think about the sorts of injustices and problems and crime and terrorism and this thing called "climate change", which was, sort of -- back in 2001 -- starting to come on the agenda. And to really think about those big issues. And the first thing that happened was, I became incredibly dispirited and entirely overwhelmed. And thought, you know, how naive and foolish was I to think that one person with a mass communications degree and a few years of PR could in any way, shape, or form, have any impact on something like infant mortality or slavery or climate change. You know, there's just no way, really. And so, I went through a period of feeling pretty grim about things. But, as luck would have it, I had a chance encounter with someone. And, I don't know if any of you have ever been kind of scratching around to sort of make a change in some aspect of your life, but what I was doing was kind of looking out for any kind of foothold that I might be able to get onto this new life -- whatever that may be. And somebody came to my company -- I was working at a different company then, at Brunswick, a big financial PR house -- who was invited to a -- they had a forum exactly like this, a kind of monthly opportunity for someone to come in from a different company -- or world -- to talk about their work. And a man called David Robinson came in and talked about the charity that he founded in East London, in Newham, which is called "Community Links", and which he started, I think, about 25 years ago in his mom's front room when he was a very young man, and has now gone on to be an incredible force for community solutions to problems that are affecting a very poor part of London. And I think they help about 50,000 people every year get back on their feet. You know, no small feat. And so, David came, he talked about his work and the sorts of things that they did. And he was looking for people to do volunteering. And he was obviously seeing if anyone in the room would like to. So I thought, "Well, that's a good place to start.” And I went up to talk to him afterwards. And I said, "You know, I don't think I've really got much to offer, but I'm very interested in your work. I was very inspired by what you said, and I'd really love to come out and see your charity, Community Links, in action.” So I went out there, and I got to know David, and I got to know some of his colleagues. And it was a really eye-opening experience for me. I've never really sort of been anywhere near that far east. I think I've been further east than Liverpool Street up to that point -- didn't know it existed. And I went out to Kennington. And I started to talk to David and learn about the work, and it was extremely interesting. And I talked to David. I said, "David, you know, I think I'm like a lot of people. I'm a really ordinary person who reads about problems in the paper, who wants to do something about these problems, but has absolutely no idea how to begin, and no confidence that anything I did do might make any impression on any number of these problems.” And he said, "Well, that's very interesting.” He said, "Because I've been doing some thinking myself.” As his charity had come up to their 25th birthday, and he had -- he said he had come to my company to give this talk, because they couldn't get people like me any other way to go and help them with their work. And he said when -- that the model for Community Links is engaging local people who don't have problems to help local people who do have problems. And when they launched the charity in his mom's front room, he said, "We had more people wanting to help the people in need than we had people in need.” He said, "It was a nice problem to have, but it was a problem.” He said, "These days it could not be more different.” They cannot get enough volunteers to come and help them with their work in East London to help people in real need. And he showed me some research which substantiated his experience. And this is just one stat which I pulled out, which I think really illustrates the point. And that is, that back in the 1980's, sixty percent of people in their 30's remember of a local community association, club, or other organizations. That might be a church or trade union or a football club or a bridge club or a parent PTA, something like that. But today, this figure has dropped to less than ten percent. I think it's about six percent. And I would be interested -- I think, you know, this room is probably largely comprised of that age range -- people in their thirties. And I think -- I'm not going to do a "Name and Shame" -- but, I'd be surprised if more than, you know, ten or twenty percent of us in this room belonged to something. So we started to think about that, and I realized that really resonated with me, because I realized that I was very much one of those people who was this sort of lost generation back 20 or 30 years ago, I probably would have connected with something locally, an association or a club or a charity or some kind of organization that would have allowed me to participate in something that would be worthwhile in helping towards some kind of cause. Whereas, these days, the thought of joining something and going regularly on Tuesday night to a town hall for a regular meeting was utterly foreign to me. I just wouldn't consider a formal commitment like that. And we could talk about the reasons for that. I think it's, you know, not particularly scientific. It's things like: We move around more. We're busier. We work harder. We want more flexibility. It's a whole range of things. But the net result is, people aren't joining organizations like David or many others, and those organizations are suffering. But equally, people who have found real purpose and fulfillment from supporting causes are not able to find that sense of reward. So, we started to talk about that, and we thought there was a real opportunity here to come up with a way of bringing people together around big problems we read about in such a way that wasn't a formal seven o'clock on a Thursday night commitment, but was a looser association which would be expressed -- rather than through an actual regular commitment -- rather through our behavior, through the things we do. They would be the signifiers of membership. And we started to think about these big problems of climate change, crime, health problems, poverty. And we started to break them down. And rather than seeing them as these great, big, massive problems that we couldn't have any impact on, we started to think about them in terms of our daily lives and the very small practical things that we could do each day that would have an effect. So obviously -- and we have to bear in mind this was back in 2002 -- we started to think about things that would affect climate change. And they were very practical, simple things we could do around the way we used resources. Around any number of very practical things like recycling, and plastic bags. And we realized that actually, there's quite a lot you could do every day. And that if we could get lots of people to do these simple things, well, we would in time affect the outcome of the problem. But, perhaps, more importantly, we would create a consensus, a new way of being -- that these things mattered. And that would then go on to inform our decisions which are taken by businesses and by governments. So, not only was doing the action important in connecting us and making a difference to the problem, it created a new way of being, which would be noted and taken on by others in authority. So we started applying that thinking across a whole range of issues from, you know, you can improve the strength -- you can strengthen your community by getting to know the people in your street. You can have strong relations with your family by sitting down and having meals together. You can avoid spending three hundred million pounds on cleaning the streets of chewing gum by not spitting your chewing gum. Those sorts of things. And we thought that we were perhaps onto something by providing people with these very simple entry points into these great, big issues. So we came up with this idea that we would try and create a global movement, a loose association of people. Not a formal membership organization, but a loose association of people who would share our belief that small actions done by lots of people could and will change the world for the reasons I've explained. So the first thing we did was -- that was back in 2002 -- and I was still working at Brunswick, the PR company, and I thought this was a very interesting idea. And I thought David was a fantastic and inspiring and wonderful man. And I could see that he had gathered around him a really interesting group of people largely drawn from the creative industries who were thinking about this idea along with him. And I could see that there was the need for someone basically to turn up to all their meetings and take notes and write the actions and chase people up and get the things to happen. Otherwise, it would just continue to be these very stimulating conversations in cafes in East London, and it actually wouldn't move on. So I took a sort of -- well, quite a risky decision, but it seemed quite obvious at the time, to quit my job and to take the small amount of money that I'd saved and to use that to live on for a period of time and to join David as a volunteer. Something I never sort of saw myself as doing, but I thought, "I'll be a volunteer," and so I did. I turned up out at Community Links one day, or Tuesday, and said, "Well, David I'm here. I've quit my job.” I think he was quite surprised, but nonetheless we started from there. And that was November 2002, and that was kind of -- well, that was the start of my formal association with We Are What We Do in my informal association. So the first thing we did was a piece of research. We asked the question, "What would you ask one million people to do to change the world?” Put that in the paper. We e-mailed people. We wrote to people. And we got thousands and thousands and thousands of suggestions of very simple things. Because I knew the things that I thought would make a difference, and David had his views as well. But, we were really, really keen to make sure that what we were proposing was actually the sorts of things that people were willing to do. And we got, I think, three-and-a-half thousand unique suggestions. And the most frequent suggestion was "Smile," which is nice. But other things were "Say no to plastic bags" or switch off lights or turn the tap off when you clean your teeth or write someone who inspired you or share a bath with someone you love. Whole range of things -- most of which we threw out -- but a core number we held onto as being symbolic of a whole set of behaviors and connecting to a wide range of issues. Then we had this list and we thought, "Well, we will put them in a book.” And I think that was a big shazam: we'll make a book. And we thought it would be a little black and white printed book, and it would sit by the tiller, and it would have a hundred things you can do, and it would sell for five pounds. And that would mark the launch of this global, social change movement which was about trying to inspire people to use their every day actions to change the world. And we had a brilliant guy who was part of our development group called Twivy, and he -- I believe he put the "red nose" in Red Nose Day. I believe he came up with the red nose. And he took me aside after one meeting and he said, "Eugenie, I think this is all great, but I think this little book of a hundred instructions -- because that's what it's going to be -- it's going to be incredibly boring. I think you've really got to think a bit more creatively about how you present these ideas. I've got some mates who work in advertising who I think will be quite interested in helping you out. Here are the names and addresses. Write to them." So I did. I wrote to these six men -- all in their middle age and quite burnt out, I think -- and said, "Would you come along and help us create a book out of a list of several hundred actions?” And to my surprise, they all said, "Yes, absolutely.” And so, we began an 18 months creative process, where we sat down every month with these guys going through these actions and coming up with treatments for these very, very simple spreads. And then, we had all these treatments, and then we needed photographers and writers and illustrators and copyrights and all sorts of things to come in and bring those treatments to life. So we got, I think, about 130 people to donate their skills to that phase of the process. We found a publisher, Rebecca Nicholson, who said that she would publish the book and not make any money out of it. We found a distributor, TBS, who said that they would distribute the book all around the country and not make any money out of it. And so, the only thing we were going to pay for was the printing, which at a print run of about 5,000 copies was around three quid a unit, which was all great. It was fantastic, apart from the fact that we decided that the book would be called, "Change the World For a Fiver," -- the "Fiver" relating to the price -- and we were determined that we would keep the price low so that it would be accessible to as many people as possible. We didn't want this to be something that price was a barrier to. But the problem about that -- as they're rolling off the printing press -- was that, we'd forgotten something quite important, and that is the retailers. And you may not know this, but the retailers take a cut and it's upwards of sixty percent. So we had a very nasty moment where a book called "Change The World For a Fiver" was going to have to retail for about six pounds fifty to break even, [laughter] which was, you know, nothing short of a PR disaster. And so, the only thing to do was -- well, cry obviously in the first instance and go and have a stiff drink -- and then, somehow, we got the phone number of the buyer at Waterston's, and I had been hounding her. And I rang her up, and I said, "Jenny, look, we've got a little bit of a problem here. We actually need you to take this book on the same terms that everybody else has participated in the book.” And she said, "What are they?” And I said, "Basically, make no money.” [laughter] And she roared with laughter, and she said, "You have no idea what you're asking.” She said, "The book trade is the toughest trade there is. We fight for our margin. It's just not going to happen.” And we had one dummy copy of the book at that stage that was available. So I said, "Look, can I send it over to you, and can you show it to your boss, and see what he or she says?” And she said, "Well, do. But it's not going to go anywhere. I assure you.” So a very, very nervous couple of weeks as this five thousand books. You know, I mean, we -- I don't know how we were paying for the printing of them. It was all very dodgy. Nervous couple of weeks until she rang up, and she said, "Well, hello," you know, "I have got some good news. It's not as good as you want.” And I thought, "Okay, what is it?” And she said, "We'll take it at ten percent. We'll make 50 pence on every book, every copy sold.” And she said, "We have to do that, because it costs us money every time, and we can't lose money on this.” And I said, "That's fine. That is absolutely fine.” And she said, "And we'll take -- I need to place an order with you and we'll take 5,000 copies.” So, in that one conversation, not only did we solve the small problem of the price in the cover, but we also solved our first quantity. And, of course, all the other bookshelves fell into line, and it became a book that was called "Change The World For a Fiver" that sold for five pounds that made us a couple of quid every time we sold a copy, which was fantastic. And that book has now gone on to sell a million copies around the world. It's been published in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, USA, and most recently, in Spain. You've got copies of it, and I hope you'll take them and you'll enjoy reading it. But we're very, very proud of that project. Because, as I said, it represented lots and lots of people coming together around this idea of contributing your small bit to make something far greater than you could have done on your own. I think about two hundred people, in the end, donated their time and talent to that book. And I always describe that book as dropping a pebble in a pond. And, like a pebble in a pond, it made a big splash. I mean, it hit all the bestseller lists, and it got loads of publicity, and it sold lots of copies very quickly. But actually, the pebble in the pond isn't the thing that's changing the world, that's making a difference. It's the ripples that it created. And what excites us is what that book has started, what it's facilitated, what it's leading to. And I'm going to talk really quickly about a couple of those projects. Some of those ripples are Al's, like the one I'm going to tell you about, like the project with Google. Many, many of them are done by people in communities, in schools, in hospitals, in villages, all around the world doing very simple things inspired by this idea of small actions done by lots of people. So "Plastic Bags", I mean, I hope you all have seen that project. The first action in the book is "Say no to plastic bags". After we published the book, I went to Australia, and within the space of 12 months, plastic bags had gone. No one was using them, which was extraordinary change. And I came back thinking, "Well, if that kind of change has been made in Australia, it's going to come here sooner or later.” And so, we'd started to think about maybe doing a bag around the plastic bag idea. And, as luck would have it, Tim Ashton, who is one of our designers on the book, went to a wedding, sat next to Anya Hindmarch's husband, happened to have a copy of Change The World For a Fiver in his pocket, as you do when you go to a wedding, showed it to James, and he said, "Oh, I think this is great. I think Anya would really love this. Let's have a conversation.” So within about two months, the Anya Plastic Bag Project was borne out of that. And what appealed to Anya -- and, I think, is what's important and unique about us is, she appeared -- the tone of what we do. She said, "It's just -- you speak about this stuff in a way which isn't worthy, which isn't boring. You're not pointing the finger at me and making me feel bad. You're inspiring me." She said, "When I read your book, I do quite a lot of those actions. It made me feel good, and it made me feel inclined to do more.” And she said, "I think your psychology is *** on.” She loved the creativity of the book and she, you know, she felt that it really sat with her brand aspirations, just to use a kind of brand-speak. And so, it gave us this tremendous starting point for this project, which went on to be on the front page of every newspaper. And ladies camped out overnight outside Sainsbury stores to get one. It sold out, I think, within two hours of launching it at Sainsbury's. When it was launched in -- Taiwan, I think it was -- the police came, and they canceled the launch at Anya's shop, because ladies were rioting. They were hitting each other over the head with handbags. And so, they canceled the launch of it, because it was a health and safety risk. But what this bag did -- and the whole kind of phenomenon around it -- was it put the issue of plastic bags fairly and squarely at the heart of mainstream media, which is exactly where we wanted it to be. And, as a result of that -- well, certainly as a part of that -- supermarkets have now, since that project, achieved a 40 percent reduction in plastic bags handed out, which is incredible. Now, we don't claim to have been the sole reason for that. We are part of a movement, of plastic bags movement, but I think we can certainly say that we raised the profile of the issue. And when we talk about creating a mood to which businesses respond, that's the sort of thing that encourages businesses to bring in new business practices which reflect what people are saying, what they're doing, and what's in the media. And I'll just quickly talk about "Teach Your Granny To Text," which is our most recent book. And it's our children's book, and we're very proud of it. The Department For Education rang us up and said they'd like to give a copy of Change The World For a Fiver to every school in the country. But, if you go to Action Eight? -- Eleven -- Eight, you'll see why that conversation ground to a halt. There was no way, on God's earth, they could put that book into every school in the country, which was a disappointment, but obviously, they had some budget. And they were keen to find a way of working with it. So we said, "Well, why don't we do a children's book together?" And they thought that was a great idea. And the result was this book, "Teach Your Granny To Text.” In other words, Change The World, which came about as a similar consultation with children, asking them what simple action they would ask a million people to do to change the world, and taking their responses and creating this book. And "Teach Your Granny To Text" was I think a favorite suggestion from a little girl called Erica Ritchie, whose granny lives in Scotland and who -- her mom and dad had got divorced, and it was her dad's mom -- and she didn't see her very often. And so, when she went up to see her at Christmas, her dad had bought her granny a mobile phone. And she sat down and taught her how to text. And now, they're in touch every single day. And, you know, she's gone from having a relationship with her granny -- which is a couple of times a year for a visit -- to a daily and very regular exchange of news. And, you know, if you said to Erica, "Oh, well done for overcoming the digital divide.” Or, you know, "You've really overcome your family breakdown," she'd look at you like you'd grown a second head. But that's what's at the heart of that action. Similarly, my favorite is -- I always tell this wrong, but I'm just going to tell it like this today -- from a little boy who told us he suggests "Walk Your Dad.” And he said, "My dad's really fat, and I haven't got a dog. So now, I'll walk my dad." [laughter] Which I think isn't true, but it's just become a truth in my mind. And the little boy who wrote "Speak Football," which was when he went on holiday in Tanzania, and he took his football with him. And he used to go around at the end of the day and kick the football with the little boys down the street. And he wrote and said, "I think everybody should Speak Football, because I couldn't understand what those boys were saying and they couldn't understand what I was saying, but when we had a football, we all knew what to do." So charming, charming stories that are at the heart of this book. Now, there is a multiplicity of projects I could tell you about, which -- don't give me too much encouragement or I will -- things like partnerships with *** Atlantic to create a book about changing the world from 35,000 feet. I could tell you about a woman in the Inland Revenue, the HMRC, who came to talk like this and has now collected more than 6,000 pairs of spectacles, because she was so inspired by the "Recycle Your Spectacles" action in the book. And she has a scheme that works out of 94 offices of the Inland Revenue around the country, and began with a photocopier box next to her desk. I could tell you about a man in Uganda, a teacher, who uses "We Are What We Do" to talk to people in his village about the practice of bigamy, and the way the practice of bigamy -- which is very much part of every day life and very much encouraged -- it's obviously contributing to this hideous spread of ***/AIDS. And he uses what he calls the "spirit" of the idea, we "are" what we do. We get world that we deserve. It's a consequence of the actions we take. And he applies it in his community to that issue. I could tell you any number of stories, but I'm going to stop there and hand over to Nick. We have a wonderful new site, which we'd love it if you go and have a look at it. You'll see more stuff about us. But we want to spend the rest of the time we have with you talking about the work we're going to do with you, and I hope you'll find that really interesting. Thank you. And -- I just want to say "Ming, if you're out there, I'm here because you gave me an introduction to Sylvia.” Ming in San Francisco who I saw earlier this year. Hi, Ming. >> [laughter] >> [Clapping]