Seeds Beneath

Eric Hobsbawm, Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz

What would happen if Vodafone was a mutual, owned by everyday people rather than shareholder investors?

Vodaphone announced recently that it was selling its 45% stake in the US mobile company, Verizon Wireless, for over £80 billion. With much praise in the press, Vodaphone said that £66 billion of the sale will go to its shareholders. With nearly 50%of its shareholders in the UK, this will give a much-needed boost to the UK economy, equivalent to around 2% of GDP and some in the press said, akin to quantitative easing.

That’s a lot of money, no doubt, and it shows the ability of businesses to generate and distribute wealth.

The thing is, though, over 75% of Vodafone’s shares are held by ten investment institutions. So only a small amount of money will go into the pockets of real people or into the economy in any meaningful sense. Most of the pay-out will be re-invested in the markets with little tangible impact for economic wellbeing and the wider economy.

If it was a mutual things would be different.

If Vodafone were owned by its 19.3 million UK customers, rather than shareholders, each customer owner would get around £3,500, giving them a significant chunk of money. If Vodafone were owned by its 84,000 staff, the share each would receive would be considerably larger.

Not only would a mutually owned Vodafone put money in people’s pockets and boost the economy, it would share the wealth generated by the business amongst around 40% of the UK adult population.

OK, I’ve just finished reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin. He is one of the the new gurus of marketing. He’s recognised that marketing has fundamentally changed now we’ve moved out of what he calls the TV Industrial Complex, where mass products and mass marketing dominated, and into a world where people don’t need new stuff.

There are lots of things to dislike in his books - not least that he knows that consumers don’t need any more so he says businesses need to provide what them with things that are not about need but enable them to define themselves (you know, ridiculously expensive cars, watches, bags, coats etc etc). And he’s all about individual wealth and accumulation.

But there’s also lots of interesting ideas in there for those of us who want to build an alternative economy - ideas for how our organisations and campaigns can win over new audiences.

The big useful things he points out are:

There’s no point in selling a product or idea to everyone - most of them aren’t listening. You need to focus on getting innovators to take it on, people who like new exciting different things. They might then pass it on to others who like new things and gradually it will catch on. It’s through innovators and ‘sneezers’ that you get ideas to spread. So, for the alternative economy, let’s start with people interested in this area and then spread out through people interested in reducing consumption, in open source software, in transition and local community, in Fairtrade, in hyperlocalism … .

Micro-enterprises can flourish by developing a product for niche markets - this is perfect for those who think small is beautiful, who support what Kevin Carson calls the low overheard revolution or who have a vision of local enteprises, workshops, factories and fields.

Marketing is no longer just about spending lots of money on advertising, it’s about creating a great product or service that stands out from the crowd - that’s remarkable, a purple cow in the midst of a load of normal cows. What’s the alternative economy if not a purple cow in the middle of a mundane samey economy.