Louise Whitaker from Peros and George Corbin, Brand Manager from Cafedirect, were both delighted to have been asked to deliver a guest lecture at the University of Leeds Business School last Tuesday.

In August Louise and George had escorted two prize winning Leeds Undergraduates to Tanzania to show the students first hand the positive benefits Fairtrade has with the coffee growers and their communities. “It was a real honour to be invited to speak”, says Louise. “ We decided to speak on a subject that we called Ethics v’s Ethics: The Communications Challenge.” We focussed on the broad range of ethical brands available in the market place, then using Cafedirect as an example, we tried to show students how challenging it is to convey all of the positive ethical work that Cafedirect does.

Using packaging as an example of this and contrasted all of the market research that brands like Cafedirect do into their customers against the speed at which people make purchasing decisions. We wanted to try and demonstrate how difficult it can be to get even positive messages across and we invited discussion from the students. We also wanted to talk to the students about our career paths and show that you can marry a commercial career with ethics and that sometimes the path to get there can be unconventional!”