Ep 67: Building Viral Campaigns for Social Enterprises | Daniel Flynn (Co-Founder, Thankyou) - a podcast by Ling Yah

Daniel Flynn, co-founder of Thankyou, is one of Australia’s most recognisable & successful social entrepreneurs. He is the recipient of EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Southern Region) and Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs.

Thankyou was conceived while Daniel was still in college and he learned, to his horror, that there were 900 million people who didn’t have access to clean water. 4500 kids were dying every day from water-borne disease and the women needed to trek 20km by foot to obtain clean water (they even risked being raped along that trecherous journey!).

Determined to make a difference, Daniel, his girlfriend (now wife) Justine and friend, Jared Burns, got together as first-year university students to launch the consumer brand now known as Thankyou.

Since 2008, Thankyou has raised over $17 million and impacted the lives of people across 22 countries. Thankyou’s products can be found in major retailers across Australia & 100% of its profits go towards ending extreme global poverty.

Thankyou has run many viral campaigns. To get 7-Eleven to stock Thankyou Water, they produced a youTube video that asked their followers to visit the 7-Eleven Australia Facebook page to promise to buy Thankyou water if it was stocked. Within two weeks, they had fans singing, dancing and rapping, and it was covered all over the media. 7-Eleven said yes & Thankyou became the third best selling brand (they were also top at certain points in time).

A similar viral campaign happened when they tried to get Coles and Woolworths, which controlled over 70% of Australia’s grocery market share, to stock Thankyou products. This time, they launched a video called the Coles and Woolworths campaign and also had two helicopters flown over Coles and Woolworths’ respective headquarters in Melbourne and Sydney. Unsurprisingly, both said yes!

And again in 2015, Daniel wrote a bestselling book, Chapter One, which generated over $1.4 million in sales & sold over 55,000 copies in its first month using an unorthodox ‘pay-what-you-want’ model.

However, these viral successes came after Daniel and his team experienced a great deal of setbacks. 

We explore all that and more in this episode. 

Highlights:

• 4:00 Selling helicopters, yabbies & gobstoppers as a child
• 5:15 Wanting to enter property development
• 6:14 Learning about how 900 million people don’t have access to clean water (the genesis of Thankyou)
• 10:17 Whether Daniel knew what a “social enterprise” was in the early days
• 11:21 Figuring out how to enter the water industry as 19-year-olds
• 13:39 Getting his business coach to donate $20,000
• 17:57 Experiencing huge setbacks
• 21:39 Deciding to not pivot
• 22:54 The idea behind the viral 7-Eleven campaign to stock Thankyou water
• 24:54 Running the viral Coles & Woolworths campaign
• 27:37 Building a core base of fans
• 29:46 Managing the risks behind each campaign
• 33:22 The “uncomfortable middle”
• 34:46 Being almost crushed by the pressure
• 42:19 Deciding to leave the water industry
• 44:16 How Daniel & the Thankyou team celebrate their wins
• 45:27 Any big idea Daniel has changed his mind on recently

📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/67  

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