WEconomy

“Use purpose to prove to young consumers that your values align with theirs.”

Part Two: Chapter 10Unlock New Customers

By Marc Kielburger

Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen WE, oh my!

It was the end of an era in Canada. The Royal Canadian Mint was phasing out the one-cent coin. A single penny is a rounding error, the reason lone coppers are found abandoned on sidewalks or loose in junk drawers. But what about all of the pennies still in circulation? Our 2013 WE Create Change campaign encouraged Canadian kids to collect endangered pennies for clean water projects in WE Villages overseas. Who wouldn't offer their last few pennies to dig boreholes and build wells in developing communities? The coins were about to become extinct. But there was a small snag in our plan. We envisioned millions of pennies pouring into our offices. Who would count them? Who would roll them into those finicky little paper tubes for processing? For that matter, who would process them? And finally, who would accept pennies as payment and turn them into real money? The coins were about to become worthless.

Small change can make a big impact! Watch the campaign video: Click for video.

Enter the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), the country's largest bank for much of modern history, and among the top fifteen banks in the world. Like any business, it couldn't be guaranteed that plum position in the future. Competition ...