Chrissie Elliot

Chrissie Elliot is a enterprise & entrepreneurship researcher who I met through attending one of her workshops. Following this attendance, I contacted Chrissie to ask for her assistance in my research around social enterprises. This led to meeting Chrissie and having a discussion about my research project. This meant I was able to explain my project and discuss ideas. Chrissie also provided me with a number of useful articles and research papers that explore social enterprises.

Discussion Transcript:

KB: I'm looking into different social enterprises. I have done my case studies on TOMS and Divine Chocolate. I've found that, and basically I bought a bar of Divine Chocolate the other day and found that it wasn't until I'd unwrapped it and eaten half that I realised that they gave out information. I don't know if you have ever had it and found that before? They do have a little logo on the front that says they are owned by farmers but it's linked in to the rest of the design. I've also been in shoe shops where TOMS are stockists of that shop and it doesn't seem that they have anything to say we are different from anyone else. I'm finding this a common theme between all of them.

CE: Is your dissertation around examining it from a purely branding perspective?

KB: Yes and No. I'm looking at in general in terms of the responsibility that they have. It's not, just literally, how they brand themselves, the image that they create of themselves. But obviously I have to do a practical side to what I've found. So from all the information that I have been gathering, the main thing that I have been looking at is trying to think of a way to make it more public about who they are without you having to go look on the internet.

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KB: Esco did a project in america and they found that out of 3,00 people, millennials knew more about TOMS, they are more likely to support toms than they were nike...even though nike are evidently more popular

CE: ... When you're looking at the branding of something, it is actually, from what I've looked at briefly, it's quite tactical. For some things there's good reason to say that it is ethical and sustainably motivated ... but actually it's competing against commercial organisations who are doing the same thing, that actually, people just want to know why they would buy that product and why they would buy that service. I think thats kind of some of the reasons that they don't put that on their marketing and their branding. I think it's kind of that trade off, i think, if you were looking at it more indepth going forward it would be quite interesting to maybe compare organisations, like what it sounds like you've done already, look for organisations that are kind of the same size ... and compare them in terms of the approaches they are taking.

CE: Some people buy Nike, a really commercial organisation that's making huge profits on what they produce because stylistically it seems like a really cool brand. and for all we know, secretly they could be giving their, I know they're not, but secretly they could be giving their money away to good causes. and you have to think of what is the main agenda if you set up a social business. is it actually to make sure that those social organisations are receiving money from your product or service and do then you have to sacrifice telling people about it in order to make it popular product. 


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