Dopper bottles are valued for their design and they sell well, but clients are largely unaware that the company also wants to convey a message. How can we change that and what is the role of digital media? Two groups of minor students addressed these questions in a study they presented yesterday.

Reusable
Dopper is a reusable bottle for drinking water and the business that makes them believes it is important to reduce one-off use of plastic bottles from an environmental perspective. The group of minor students emphasised that point by referring to a recent newspaper article. ‘More plastic than fish in the sea by 2050’, was the headline in The Guardian.
The first minor group concluded that survey respondents (75 percent) know about this environmental issue. People buy the Dopper primarily to save money, but buyers are unaware of the Dopper message. That mission needs to appear more explicitly on the homepage and the company should consider backlinking, student Percy advised the company. ‘That is, share your link on other sites, for example, lifestyle sites.’

Storytelling
Dopper could also do more in the way of storytelling, with film clips for example, and by asking customers to tell ‘their Dopper story’. In addition, the company could send out a newsletter, obviously with stories about the mission. ‘Good ideas’, responded one of the attending Dopper representatives. ‘We are working on the latter. However, we are experiencing extreme growth and we do not have time to get to everything.’
The second minor group gave the same ‘storytelling advice’ and suggested a ‘Dopper community’, a digital platform where people can talk about sustainability. ‘Fun, important too’, say the people from Dopper, who agreed to give serious consideration to the advice from the students.

‘Join the movement’
Moreover, the group also had a suggestion for a new slogan. The current slogan is ‘The bottle is the message’, which could be changed to ‘Join the movement, reduce plastic waste’.
At the end of the presentation, the supervising lecturer had something to say to members of the second group. ‘Remember how angry I was? Because you had absolutely no research data!’ That research followed later and many respondents were questioned about Dopper. The lecturer: ‘In the end, you had more data than anyone!’

Demand from businesses
Jan, marketing lecturer for the minor programme, is very impressed with the new minor. ‘In our field (business administration study programmes, ed.) there is actually far too little focus on ‘digital’. But at the same time businesses, including B-corps with which we work at present, ask us to assist with their digital marketing. Hence this minor. We are also learning from it ourselves, and students are learning from one another.’
Daphne, an IBMS student, confirms that. ‘There are students from different study programmes doing the minor. They complement one another. We develop a good marketing campaign together and then she (nods towards minor colleague Arisya, ed.) can implement it.’

More about marketing
Arisya is studying Communication and Multimedia Design: ‘I want to set up my own design business, so wanted to learn more about marketing. And I certainly did that through this minor. Besides, it is such fun meeting students from all kinds of different backgrounds. I like it!’

Jos van Nierop