Fair Trade Connection

The Revolution Fair Trade Needs

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Ronny Hermosa

We have always believed in the benefits of fair trade for marginalized producers and were strong supporters of the movement even before starting Fair Trade Connection. Being on the road for so long and meeting so many of them has just confirmed our initial feeling that fair trade contributes to lifting small producers out of poverty and gives them more control over their lives.

We have been to the villages, talked to the artisans, shared meals with their families, visited their houses and spent hundreds of hours getting to know them. What comes out is a huge collection of testimonies all pointing out to the same reality: fair trade products are made with love and the income that they generate do create better lives.

Our job now is to tell you these stories, so that just like us, you can realize that fair trade does make a difference.

Fair Trade and Social Media
Most Western fair trade organizations (retailers and labeling organizations) have already adopted Social Media and use them as part of their marketing efforts to different extents. Social Media is now the name of the game, even for fair trade.

Organizations share all kinds of content on different Social Media platforms. Many of them provide information about the products they sell, raise awareness through advocacy campaigns, communicate about events that they organize and so on.

We believe that the positive growth of fair trade sales (12% increase since 2010 according to Fairtrade International) could be, at least partially, explained by the ever growing use of social media to promote the movement.
We see in social media the perfect tool for further connecting producers and consumers.
One tool in particular caught our attention…

QR Codes
If you’ve been in a public space in the last year or two, you’ve probably seen a QR (Quick Response) code —a small, square two-dimensional barcode that looks a bit like a miniature chess board. People who see these codes can use an application on their mobile phone to scan them and view information immediately.

In the context of fair trade, we strongly believe that the QR codes can deliver real value for retailers and consumers at the right place and the right time, offering a great medium for sharing the artisans’ story. A study shows that nearly half of all smartphone users have used their phones while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.
Fair trade is ready for a revolution and the QR codes might bring just that.

We can make your products speak

The concept
Our concept is simple: we will use the QR code technology to create a link to the artisan’s story.
By scanning the QR code on the product label with a smartphone or a tablet, one will access a short video of the farmer or artisan who produced the product.
The aim is to connect fair trade consumers to the people and communities that they are supporting by buying the products.

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynb2VGLeASk

Our Content Library
So far we have gathered around 85 interviews, mostly from certified handicraft producers (WFTO). We also met a few FLO-certified organizations, generating interviews about food products. Of course this is just the beginning and we plan on meeting many more producers in the months to come.
Our current video collection allows us to cover over 60 different products distributed by an estimated 20 Western retailers. This means that our videos could be used by most of the major fair trade retailers but also supermarkets who distribute fair trade certified products.

Be a part of the QR Revolution
It is a fact that smartphones are replacing old « dumb » mobile phones at a rapid pace, so more and more people could get a QR code scanner for free. This opens a new and not yet well explored world to marketers by creating an offline-to-online experience.
It is only a matter of time before QR codes hit mainstream. Knowing how to implement them in the right way for your fair trade business will keep your brand on the cutting edge of marketing and technology.
By using QR code technology to create a connection between the producers and the consumers your business will not only answer the eternal question of the impacts of fair trade on the local communities, it will grab a competitive edge on its competitors who will stay out of the digital game.

Download the full report here: We Can Make Your Products Speak.

Posted in Fair Trade Videos, Social Media Marketing | Tagged Fair Trade Connection, Ronny Hermosa, social media and fair trade, social media marketing | Leave a comment

Soluna: Argentina’s Premium Fair Trade Wine

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Ronny Hermosa

Most of the time we work with handicraft producers. So we were particularly happy when Gabriela, the owner of Bodega Furlotti, accepted our offer to shoot a movie about the Soluna wines.

We thought about contacting the people behind the Soluna wines because in 2010 we made a video about a contest organized in Belgium by Max Havelaar: the election of the best fair trade wine distributed in the country. The Soluna Malbec 2006 won the competition (best red) and since we were in Argentina we decided to pay them a visit.

It only took us 33 hours of bus to get there but the Mendoza scenery was really worth it. The red, yellow and orange of the autumn leaves contrasted with the bright blue of the sky and the white of the snowy peaks of the Andes in the background. Beautiful.

We quickly learned that in order to produce a fair trade wine, one needs to have fair trade certified grapes. So part of our job would consist of meeting the small vineyard owners and farmers who form the Viña de la Solidaridad cooperative.

We also learned about the contratistas. The contratistas represent a unique and traditional labour relationship in Argentina. As they are not land owners, these workers, who are essential to the maintenance of vineyards, formed strong partnerships with vineyard owners. In addition to receiving base wages, contratistas are also entitled to a percentage of the vineyards revenues. In our 3 video series you’ll discover these contratistas (Omar, Rosa and Oscar) as well as small vineyard owners (Eduardo and Francisco) and of course the bodega that produces the Soluna.

We hope that after viewing this series, you’ll understand the importance of the fair trade certification for these small producers and that you’ll see the Soluna wines with different eyes.

Cheers!

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGYxZ72Bz6I

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhCR4inWoAk

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdbghl9syDM

Posted in Fair Trade Videos | Tagged Fair Trade Connection, fair trade video, Ronny Hermosa | Leave a comment

Dhaka Handicrafts, giving work opportunities to women artisans in rural areas, but also in the city!

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Sarah Vandecasteele

Watch some of our photo of DHAKA HANDICRAFTS here, or go directly on Flickr

Posted in Fair Trade Photos | Leave a comment

Pushpanjali: Working with marginalized producers

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Ronny Hermosa

Everything started when we told Oxfam Magasins du Monde about our project to go meet the fair trade producers and produce videos about them. That was around November of 2010. We just finished editing our first movie ever about the Fair Trade Week in Belgium for the Belgian Technical Cooperation.

Oxfam immediately saw the opportunity that was presented to them: a way to obtain hard to get quality photo and video material about their producer partners in the South. Because we didn’t have much experience in video editing yet, Oxfam’s first reaction was to ask us to make the shootings only, they would pay someone else to do the editing. It was a start.At this stage we decided to move to Tunisia and start shooting fair trade videos there. We had the chance to work with Beni Ghreb Hazoua and South Organic, both dates producers in Southern Tunisia. When discovering our work about these two Tunisian organizations, Oxfam changed its mind and asked us to take care of the editing of their future videos as well. We were very proud to hear that! It meant that Fair Trade Connection had gone a long way since its early days and that the quality of our work was increasing.

Back from Tunisia we had a series of meetings with Oxfam to fine tune the details of our collaboration and we agreed on making fair trade videos about 7 of their partners: Pushpanjali and E.M.A. in India, Dhaka Handicrafts in Bangladesh, alura amara in Indonesia, Pueblos del Sur in Chile, MCCH in Ecuador and Bombolulu in Kenya. The videos will serve Oxfam’s marketing efforts and be uploaded to their website. With them, they want to do exactly what Fair Trade Connection has been created for: telling the story that is behind the product.

For each producer organization Oxfam asked us to produce a series of 3 videos:

an Introduction: telling about the socio-economic context of the area, how the project started, and who benefits from it
the Testimonies: where we can hear what the artisans and the managing staff has to say about fair trade
the Local Impacts of the fair trade project: where we highlight the main positive impacts of the project

In this post you’ll discover the first webisode telling the story of Pushpanjali (Agra, India), the first of Oxfam’s 7 partners we visited. We hope you’ll enjoy it.

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVSXTDBsdbQ

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDIeuPVyQuE

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8LZkMocLkE

Posted in Fair Trade Videos | Tagged Fair Trade Connection, fair trade video, Ronny Hermosa | 1 Comment

Fair Trade and Social Media: Watch & Learn 01 [@FairtradeUK]

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Ronny Hermosa

The more producers’ organizations we meet on the road, the more we understand the importance of Social Media as a way to promote your fair trade business. Indeed, Social Media is a great way to engage with potential new customers, give more information about your social project and products, but it is also very useful to keep an eye on market trends and latest fashions.

Ronny giving a Social Media training @Alura Amara, Indonesia.

About half the fair trade organizations we visited in Asia were already active on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, the other half seemed really enthusiastic about getting started. Fair Trade Connection is all about connecting fair trade producers with consumers so we quickly understood that in order to do so, we needed to train the non-initiated so that they too could leverage the potential of Social Media Marketing.

The “Watch & Learn” series is a collection of Social Media best practices in the fair trade industry that we gathered and analyzed for you.

This 1st post will be analyzing the videos of the amazing “Take a step for Fairtrade” campaign by the Fairtrade Foundation. The @FairtradeUK in the title of this post is their Twitter name, so go ahead and follow them if you want.

Let’s jump to the heart of this campaign and start with the presentation video:

1/ The Campaign presentation Video

What we liked:

Strong Corporate Identity: the Fairtrade Foundation really does a good job being consistant with the look and feel of their messages. One should establish a corporate document stating which typography and fonts, colors and shades, logotypes and declinaison logos your company will be using to comunicate. And most importantly stick to it!
Appropriate Music: the rythm of the video is given by the music. See how the text is synchronized with the music. Sync your visuals with the music to create greater impact on your viewers.
Proper use of Sound Effects: the additional sound effects helps the viewer relate to what he’s seeing. It also gives a more profesionnal touch. There are lot’s of free sound banks on the web like Freesound.org and Soundbible.com
Interactive Video: Notice how you are invited to click to find out more at the end of the video. If you click inside the YouTube video you’ll be redirected to the campaign main website with the step-o-meter where you can register your step and learn all the details. To learn how to create interactive videos, we strongly suggest you watch this episode of the ReelSEO’s Creator’s Tip.

What we liked less:

Too many calls to action: the first time we watched the video we didn’t quite understand what we were supposed to do? Was it to click on the website’s link at the end of the movie? Was it to take a step? To register my step online or with a postcard? Because there were too many calls to action we got confused and didn’t really know where to start. Calls to actions are great, if not necessary if you want to succeed with online video marketing, but let’s keep it simple. Choose one call to action only so that the viewer knows exactly what he has to do.
Not enough time to click: the invitation to click on the website’s link at the end of the video didn’t last long enough. Interactivity in YouTube videos is still something new for most viewers, so you have to be very clear about what they should do and leave them enough time to click on your link. A good lenght is about 10 to 15 seconds.
Non-Clickable links in video description: one of the great things about YouTube videos is that their Title/Description/Tags can be used as SEO tools. One should really leverage these info to boost his visibility in the search engines (Google or YouTube). The Fairtrade Foundation’s mistake was not to be able to make the links clickable in the video description as shown in this picture: An easy way to avoid that is to paste the entire URL. Had they type: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/step (thus not dropping the http://) the link would have been clickable.

2/ The other videos

What we liked:

Viral: It’s funny, I want to share! The repetition of the engaging theme song coupled with the dance steps executed by celebrities really participated in creating funny videos that the viewers were probably eager to share with their friends. Hence the average 50.000 views on the 30 seconds videos.
Series effect: by repeating some elements (visual, song, steps) in every videos they succeeded in creating a series that people could follow. We have to admit that the song plays an important role in the success of this series. They did a great job choosing/creating it. To our knowledge it is the first time a fair trade organization publishes a series of online videos that has nothing to envy the Coca Cola’s and Apple’s of this world.
Fresh: this is not what we are used to with videos coming from the fair trade industry. The Fairtrade Foundation managed to do something different without surfing the usual wave of the farmers, the fairer price or the impact on the communities. All that is implied but not directly put in front of us (except for the campaign presentation video). Instead of hitting us one more time with the same ol’ message, they decided to entertain us. Very clever. Remember to stand in your audience’s shoes when you create content. Ask yourself: “What might they like?”

What we liked the most:

Cross Media Campaign: the “Take a Step” campaign was really an example of a global campaign. The Fairtrade Foundation echoed the campaign using all the social media tools available. Be it their website, blog, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flick’r, Tumblr or Google+ they were all thoroughly prepared to speak with one voice, giving the larger audience the same message: take a step for fairtrade. It takes a lot of efforts and coordination to create that kind of unity throughout so many different channels.

Now we need to figure out a way to get that song out of our heads!

Posted in Social Media Marketing | Tagged content, facebook fairtrade, Fair Trade Connection, fair trade video, Ronny Hermosa, social media and fair trade, social media marketing, Social media marketing fair trade | 2 Comments

Inside ThaiCraft’s Communication department

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ronny Hermosa

During one of our recent trips to Thailand we stopped by Bangkok and attended one of the well known ThaiCraft Fair Trade Fairs. These fairs are organized on a regular basis in the Sukhumvit area, a very dynamic commercial center in the Thai capital. There we met Peng and Mynt, two very professional young ladies in charge of ThaiCraft communication department. We ceased this opportunity to ask them a few question about their social media marketing.

Ronny (FTC): What kind of content do you post on Facebook and Twitter?

Mynt (ThaiCraft): Mostly it is about our activities and pictures from the fairs, to attract more people to the fairs. But we also use these new medias to spread the news about punctual actions or events. Like during the floods in 2011. We wanted to support our artisan members who were affected by the floods so we spread the news on Facebook and were able to provide them with food and blankets during these difficult times. Some areas were severely affected, to the point that the handicraft production had to stop which means that many people were left without an income. We decided to undertake these actions to support them.

Ronny (FTC): Does ThaiCraft also have a blog?

Peng (ThaiCraft): No, only our website. But we should have one. It’s in our future plans. We would like to either create a blog or develop our website to tell more about the artisans’ stories, we are working on it.

Ronny (FTC): How would you like to tell the stories of your producers?

Peng (ThaiCraft): We would like our product tags to tell the story. Maybe with a QR code system that the customers could scan at the fairs and directly get the information on the people who made the products.

Ronny (FTC): So the QR code would link to a web page or a video?

Peng (ThaiCraft): Yes maybe a web page, maybe a video.

Ronny (FTC): How does ThaiCraft communicate about the fairs?

Mynt (ThaiCraft): We have what we call the « Friendship System ». Our customer can register and become a member of that program. We then send them an e-newsletter before every fair we organize, keeping them informed of what will happen during the fair. Like the workshops they can attend.

We also communicate about the fairs on our Facebook page which is linked to our Twitter account.

In terms of content we like to speak about the workshops that people can attend during the fairs and we post a lot of photos related to the fairs.

Ronny (FTC): Can you tell us more about these workshops?

Mynt (ThaiCraft): We have themes, for the moment we focus on environmental issues and craft work. This year it is also our 20^th anniversary. Mostly it is about how our artisans work, how they exploit their skills. The customers can engage with the artisans and watch them make the products but they also can join and take part in the production process.

In January our theme was « recycling » and we organized a workshop duringwhich people could bring their own second hand material and create original clocks from it.

Ronny (FTC): What else is being discussed in Thaicraft’s communication department?

Mynt (ThaiCraft): We are trying to make our websitemore interactive. We try to get people to interact with us. One of the strategies is to publish more pictures of our products. And also to link these pictures with the stories of the artisans so that people can understand how it is crafted, how it is made.

Ronny (FTC): How do you plan on doing this?

Peng (ThaiCraft): We have to reorganize the website and collect the information, the stories from the artisans. The plan is to update what we already have and make it more interesting.

Also we would like to have more videos, because we think that animated movies are much more interesting than pictures.

Ronny (FTC): Do you have someone in your team that could create these videos and bring the stories?

Peng (ThaiCraft): Not specifically but we need to think about it. Maybe you can give us some tips about making videos!

Posted in Social Media Marketing | Tagged facebook fairtrade, Fair Trade Connection, fair trade video, social media and fair trade, social media marketing, Social media marketing fair trade | Leave a comment

E.M.A, giving work opportunities in a rural area

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Sarah Vandecasteele

Watch some of our photo of EMA here, or go directly on Flickr

Posted in Fair Trade Photos | Leave a comment

Fair Trade World Tour: India (E.M.A.)

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Ronny Hermosa

Our journey for fair trade continues and we are now flying to Kolkata, India’s second largest city. Here we will be meeting Equitable Marketing Association (E.M.A.) and stay with them for 7 days.

We were expecting fumes, traffic jams and never-stopping-ear-blasting-horns since we heard E.M.A. was located in Kolkata, but instead we found luxurious gardens, ponds packed with all sorts of fishes and coconut palmtrees. E.M.A.’s development center, which is their production facilities, is really located 40 Km from the city in a small and quiet village called Uttarbharg. The organization provides work to approximately 100 locals focusing on underprivileged, marginalized, minority groups, widows and the physically challenged.

The story of the organization is too long to be told here, but can be found on their website. We really believe a picture is worth a thousand words, so we will let the video speak for itself. It is time to step into E.M.A.’s musical instrument division and meet the producers.

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAOYFydkpMI

Another particularity of EMA is that they focus on helping disadvantage minorities. For instance, their candle division is entirely operated by handicapped people. Some are deaf and dumb, others are just physically challenged.

The candle division of EMA (22 people)

Watch this second fair trade video and meet this extraordinary working division.

target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdcrZjvSCoI

Posted in World Tour Videos | Leave a comment

Fair Trade Connection

Soluna: Argentina’s Premium Fair Trade Wine

Dhaka Handicrafts, giving work opportunities to women artisans in rural areas, but also in the city!

Pushpanjali: Working with marginalized producers

E.M.A, giving work opportunities in a rural area

Fair Trade World Tour: India (E.M.A.)

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