On Monday and Tuesday this week I published blogs here and here in follow up to my initial skepticism back in March upon the launch of the ThinkIrish.ie campaign.

My skepticism was due to the lack of information we were provided by the campaign on who was behind it, where the funding was coming from and what the ultimate tactics of the campaign would be. It all sounds similar to the questioning of other campaigns we’ve seen recently which haven’t actually turned out to be as they were initially portrayed in the opening press releases – see Ideas Campaign and Your Country, Your Call.

To clarify again, at no point have I argued with the aims of the campaign – though an examination of the numbers behind the prediction of +200,000 jobs if we start buying more Irish goods would be interesting – my desire here is purely for a closer examination of one of the many of the things we, as consumers, are expected to suck up automatically, and unquestioningly.

As a nation, we’re probably not used to that kind of closer examination because most of our Irish journalist types are unwilling to do it themselves. It’s much handier fill space by copying and pasting a press release rather than doing even a bit of simple investigation.

One of my questions yesterday (here) touched on something that interests me about the future of the ThinkIrish.ie campaign.

What consideration has been given to charge companies to be part of your product database – similar to Guaranteed Irish charging membership and for use of their logo?

This question, I think, will be key to this particular campaign. If they do begin to charge, then it becomes little more than the weak Guaranteed Irish scheme. But if they don’t charge, then the campaign is likely to continue to be low scale, low key. It’s a difficult bridge to cross.

I see already, though, that ThinkIrish.ie are asking that retailers make a “donation” in exchange for being allowed to use ThinkIrish.ie window stickers on their shop windows.  Suggested minimum donation sizes range from €75 to €250 depending on the size of the store – more details on that here.

In my opinion, any organisation or campaign will always lose a level of credibility and trust when one starts to charge for services or accept payments from organisations who could be seen to have a vested interest in the success or failure of your campaign. The rule of “he who pays the piper, calls the tune” will always raise it’s head when one receives money when you’re trying to promote an agenda.

The credibility of Your Country, Your Call was damaged greatly because of their reluctance to clarify who made donations to their campaign, and how much.

It’s an eternal question in such campaigns – to charge or not to charge.

Yesterday I published an overdue right of reply from Alan Graham of ThinkIrish.ie to my original post on their campaign back in March. In response to Alans comments, I posed a few other questions about the campaign:

1. What’s the overall budget for the campaign?
2. How much is being funded by each of the individual contributors?
3. Do you have a timescale for this campaign, or is it intended to continue ad infinitum?
4. What, if any, government involvement is there – direct, state agency, quango – any arm of the government basically?
5. What consideration has been given to charge companies to be part of your product database – similar to Guaranteed Irish charging membership and for use of their logo?
6. You mention a board – who else apart from Jonathan Stanley is on this board?

And here were the responses received from Alan:

1. We’d love to bank 250k to run the campaign but we’ll likely have to do it on a lot less than that. I guess it all depends on how successful we are in the coming months in building traction behind it.
   “If we build it…they will come”.
2. As we’re still out there trying to drum up donors, I’d rather not have the level of individual donations posted. The difficulty it would create is that it either sets the bar too low or too high for prospective donors – plus we’re less likely to convince people to cough up smaller amounts if they think we’re going to put their donation against their name. (“and that’s all he gave???” or “I thought he was broke!”). What I can tell you is that the founding donor has put about 60k up for the initiative – although I suspect he’d rather that not be broadcast widely – simply no the basis that he’s a relatively low key/private individual.
3. Timescales? I guess we’ll pack-up our tents when we feel the job is done. Much is dependent on funding but we’d like the campaign to endure and it would be good if the directory could remain on a permanent basis – I think it could be a really powerful channel for Irish business – and in particular artisan producers.
4. No government involvement, no interest groups, no quangos – we’re so squeaky clean it’s embarrassing.
5. Charging companies? We like the idea of a free-listing so that’s important to us and it keeps the initiative very grass-roots. In time, it’s natural we might look for ways to monetise the site and move to a self-funding model but no concrete thoughts on that at this stage. The invitation to list for free will remain whatever happens in that regard.
6. The board is composed of Jonathan, myself, Peter Kruseman, Paul McArdle and Eamonn Freaney – you’ll find a bit more on them in our FAQs.

Back in March, I wrote about the then new buy Irish campaign, ThinkIrish.ie. At that time, I reserved opinion on the campaign because it was lacking in the information provided on the website surrounding who was behind the campaign, where the finances for the campaign were coming from, and what direction the campaign was going to take.

Following my post, I received some clarifications and extra information from Alan Graham, campaign director for ThinkIrish.ie. In the coming days, I’m going to publish those communications.

From my own perspective, as I said originally about the campaign, while one can’t but support the key motivation behind the campaign – buying Irish with a view to creating jobs in Ireland – I’m not fully convinced.

Commenters on my original blog post had the following to say about my questioning of the campaign:

Good god but you’re a miserable fecker these days. Can you give a break on the whole if not an idea you came up with it’s c**p routine….

We’re all entitled to our opinions. My questioning comes entirely from the fact that I won’t unquestioningly regurgitate a press release to fill up space here on the website – unlike many others elsewhere, I’m going to do a little digging to find out what’s actually going on. I was one of the first to question the motives of both the IdeasCampaign and YourCountryYourCall – quite rightly and legitimately as it’s turned out on both occasions.

For now, here’s the first e-mail I received from Alan giving further details on the ThinkIrish.ie campaign:

Spotted your piece on ValueIreland and really just wanted to fill in some of the gaps for you on the background to ThinkIrish.ie

First and foremost we’re a not-for-profit. Moreover we’re in the final stages of registration as a charity and hope to conclude that early next week.

Jonathan Stanley is the man who was first to put his hand in his pocket to fund the campaign (and cajole some friends and colleagues to join the board) – he’s a serial retail entrepreneur who set up Let’s Talk Phones, Cards ‘n’ Things and more recently Homestore and More.

His motivation is entirely altruistic, a desire to do something about the state of the economy – and in particular the unemployed. More recently, he’s been joined in the “donor” camp by worky.com who have kindly given us some fresh funds BUT again they’re not a benefiting party to the campaign and nor are they part of any interest group within the manufacturing and producer groups we’re looking to promote.

We’re out there on a daily basis seeking additional funding and it’s not easy in this environment. Any comparison with Your Country Your Call is far too flattering to our budgets – we’re hugely boot-strapped and are running the campaign on a shoe-string.

Professional services (such as PR, website design etc.) are all being provided entirely PRO-BONO (Financial Dynamics and Bonfire Design have been hugely supportive). We couldn’t afford them if it wasn’t and we’re hugely thankful for that. IrishJobs.ie have offered us some free advertising (which is why you might see our banner ad on their site) as have teamer.net. Car stickers and retailer window decals we have produced were printed free by Horizon Graphics and we have the promise of some free radio ads with Communicorp – we’re fast becoming professional beggars!

This really, really is a grass-roots, consumer campaign Diarmuid and to gain traction we need the consumer on-board and qualifying manufacturers to engage with the directory.

We are asking everyone to think Irish but we’re also providing them with a product directory that will help to overcome some of the confusion with regards to what is and is not Irish made. We think consumer confidence has been massively undermined in that regard over the last number of years – hopefully we can help to address that.

The directory is a real simple (and not especially innovative) idea and it’s just surprising that Ireland hasn’t had one up till now. They have them in the US, New Zealand, the UK and Australia (to name just a few countries). We’re talking to someone about doing an iphone app for us FOC which would be cool and bring the directory to point of purchase – giving real power back to the consumer.