The knock on effect of an idea. Here is the story of a modest charity collection – told backwards.

Our team collected more than £800 for the Movember initiative, benefiting various charities related to men’s cancers.

The majority of people at work donated money and all of them seemed to be doing so with a smile. We had many comments about our various styles of moustaches – all good hearted and I do believe the whole campaign contributed, in a small way, to office spirit.

A colleague of mine ordered the official Movember collection box and we had a manual collection in addition to the donations we received online.

Pictures of our moustaches were published in the staff magazine and also put on all internal television screens – all to the amusement of less hairy-lipped staff.

I asked a member of our communications team if she could help us to raise some awareness to see if we could collect money for the charity.

More and more colleagues started to sport a moustache and as the collective hair on our lips grew, so did the general awareness of why we were doing it.

A small group of colleagues committed to join me and grow a moustache for the whole month of November after I sold it to them as a novelty and a charitable endeavour.

I decided that since I always wanted to have a moustache, this was the perfect excuse to grow one. And if we received some money, I would be able to justify the hair on my face to my girlfriend and other skeptics under the guise of it being for charity. The perfect cover!

I received a general email directed to some of the men in the office, jokingly suggesting that we participate in the Movember initiative as the sender liked moustaches and would not mind a couple of “Tom Selleck” look-alikes roaming the office for a month.

A colleague of mine read a small article in a magazine about jewelry in the shape of moustaches and that the company selling it planned to donate part of their profit to the Movember cause.

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 Thank you Debbie, because of your small spark, we collected £800 in charitable donations, contributed to a spirit of wellbeing in the office, suffered some well intended ridicule and forfeited the odd bit of “leg-over” due to our partners not being as impressed with our “taches” as we were, but it was for a good cause and a lot of fun. Well done.

Idea 4: Online food shopping - an alternative experience.

Using Ocado as an example, but most online supermarkets work in a similar way.

• You have the option to choose a recipe you like.
•  All the ingredients needed are listed.
• You then have to select each ingredient individually to add it to the shopping basket or, alternatively, you can select "Add everything".

The idea flips this logic on it's head.

Let us take this Spinach Lasagne from Ocado as example.

Ingredients

• 250g Spinach Lasagne sheets
• 500g Tomato Passata
• 2 Garlic Cloves
• 4 tbsp Olive Oil
• 500ml Milk
• 2 tbsp Plain Flour
• 2 tbsp Butter
• 1 pinch Salt
• 1 pinch Pepper
• 1 pinch Nutmeg
• 3 leaves Fresh Basil
• 1 ball Mozzarella, diced
• 1 cup Parmesan Cheese, freshly grated

All 13 these ingredients will cost me £16.36. But I have garlic, olive oil, milk, butter, salt and pepper in my pantry.

After removing these 6 ingredients, I am left with a total cost of £9.87 (60% of the original value) for the 7 ingredients I need to buy.

Currently, I am ADDING ingredients to a shopping trolley. I see the total cost rising with each addition and it "feels" like I am spending money.

Alternatively, you can re-design this whole "buying-from-a-recipe" experience as follows;

• You select a recipe and immediately it shows you the total cost in case you wanted to buy all of the ingredients. 
• The shoper now DE-SELECTS those items that he/she does not require. You see the total cost decrease with each de-selection and it "feels" like you are saving money. 

The argument against this is that it will put the buyer off as all recipes will initially seem very expensive. That is easily remedied by adding two additional costs along with the total potential cost of buying all the ingredients; 

i) Average cost per serving and ii) The average amount people who bought the ingredients for this recipe spent on it.  Looking at these two indicators, customers can then get a very clear understanding of how much they can expect to pay. 

The small amount of customers being put off by this "flip around" should be far less than those appreciating a more honest way to estimate the cost of recipes. It is also much easier to de-select what you do not want as opposed to select what you do want - adding to the overall experience.

To test if you agree is simple. 

• Register on Ocado.
• Select a recipe with 8 or more ingredients.
• Click on "Add everything" to see the total cost - note this down.
• Now de-select all items you do have in your kitchen (e.g., salt, pepper and milk) whilst keeping an eye on the total cost of your basket.

Do you find it quicker to de-select those items you already have?

Does it "feel" like you are saving money when seeing the price drop each time?

This can be implemented by the online shops themselves or by a "compare-the-market" type online shop where you shop from recipes pulling from various supermarkets.

Looking forward to hear your thoughts.