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P.H.: Are these two goals of spreading awareness and actually donating money equally important?
Thum: I think that they're equally important to the extent that in the way the business model is constructed, the brand acts as sort of the connective tissue between the consumer and the problem. Without one you really don't get the other. By allowing people to purchase a product and through that product make a donation to solving the problem, helping someone who needs clean water and sanitation services and hygiene education, you vest that person in a solution of the problem through the brand.
Whether or not they were aware before purchasing the product, the question is not just can you create awareness but can you create active awareness, to the extent that they are actually willing to do something about it.
P.H.: How do you ultimately reconcile consumers willing to pay $1.80 for a bottle of water but not willing to donate independently? Why do you think that so many people either ignore or don't care about this problem that so many people face?
Thum: I think that there are several social issues and evolutionary issues here. There's a lot of meat to that question. It's not surprising that people in the United States drink bottled water and people in developing countries don't have clean water. We drive Mercedes, and people in developing countries still walk.
I think those issues of economic development are akin. The fact that people themselves are not donating to the water crisis doesn't surprise me. Ultimately that's why Ethos was created. Since the 1930s, when all of the work was done to build infrastructure in the United States, people in this country had clean water access and roads in a way that we'd never had it before. People have not lived without clean water in the U.S., in general, for a very long time, so the fact that our population doesn't consider it to be a problem just isn't surprising.
But I think, as the world gets smaller, people are starting to realize that people living in Africa are actually our neighbors. Now that you can turn on the television and watch 250, 350, 700 channels, you can see people in other countries living very different lives. Ethos is a tangible way to connect people that television doesn't really achieve.
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