David Gay-Perret

Organization: The Good Country
Website: www.good.country
Country: Global

Assignment: Increasing awareness about the Good Country and recruiting more citizens in the Nordic Countries

Background
The Good Country was an initiative started by Simon Anholt and Madeline Hung. It stemmed from Simon’s previous work (mostly the Good Country Index and the Global Vote) and the basic idea that, in order to tackle today’s and tomorrow’s global challenges (global warming, conflicts, mass migration, pandemics, terrorism, etc.), the culture of governance worldwide must be changed from being fundamentally competitive (i.e. governments competing against each other to maximize their citizens’ benefits) to being fundamentally cooperative (i.e. governments making decisions that are good for their citizens AND the rest of the world). The philosophy – or mindset – behind this view is that we are all members of the human race living on a single planet before being citizens of country X.
I got in touch with Simon to offer my help in his work after watching his TED Talk about the Good Country Index and we started working together in August 2018, right before the launch of his project entitled “The Good Country” – a digital country with no territory, open to anyone, and run based on the cooperative mindset described above with the purpose of proving by example that it can be done and that it’s beneficial for both the country’s citizens and the world.
The project had no agreed-upon methods or processes; everything needed to be invented and tested. The main objective was to recruit as many citizens as possible in order to move on to the next phase: testing policy-making processes.

Goal
Establishing, growing and coordinating a network of “ambassadors” – people willing to promote the initiative and help recruit more citizens – in the Nordic Countries.

Responsibilities

• Being the point of contact for all Nordic citizens to answer questions about the Good Country and enroll & train those willing to join as ambassadors.
• Educating & informing existing and upcoming citizens about the ambassador’s role, in an effort to increase their number.
• Leading & coordinating the existing team of ambassadors to define together strategies and responsibilities, and then following up on the implementation and lessons learned in the process, always with the goal of increasing awareness about the Good Country and recruiting more citizens.
• Sharing ideas and best practices with other Regional Coordinators, Simon, Madeline and other people from the Good Country, along with sharing what is learned during these sessions with my ambassadors.

Results

• Successfully put together a network of ambassadors. We were discussing several ideas to inform about the Good Country.
• Working with Madeline to improve how responsibilities were divided and the reporting processes in order to allow the project to scale up without the Regional Coordinator becoming a bottleneck.

Simon and Madeline decided during spring 2019 to discontinue the Good Country project.

Company: Language Team 23
Website: www.linkedin.com/company/language-team-23
Industry: corporate training in language & culture
Country: Sweden

Assignment: Advertising Language Team’s Full Range of Services

Background
Language Team had been delivering successful language courses to the Volvo Group for many years but wanted to expand their activities to include the full range of their expertise: cultural training, consulting, localization…
For 2 years they had tried to find new customers while advertising their services within Volvo, but without success.

Goal
Defining and implementing an action plan to advertise Language Team’s full range of services.

Responsibilities

• Creating a communication strategy:

○ Identifying & gathering motivated individuals
○ Leading and coaching them so they could use their industry knowledge to come up with a marketing strategy: who to target, what to say, how, when…

• Leading the implementation of the communication strategy:

○ Identifying, planning & dividing tasks, following-up, organizing & leading meetings…
○ Upholding interests from non-team members (mostly the company’s board of directors)

Results

• Gathered a team of 4 volunteers from various nationalities
• Within 6 months we established an action plan and decided to target Volvo, then managed to obtain 2 meetings to introduce Language Team’s expertise
• One of these meetings led to a pilot project in India

After this initial success the company changed its priorities and so the project stopped there.

Company: SKF
Website: www.skf.com
Industry: roller bearings manufacturing
Country: Sweden

Assignment: Replacing the Translation Coordinator During her Vacations

Responsibilities

• Being the point of contact for all internal translation-related questions
• Requesting quotes, placing purchase orders and authorizing payments for dozens of simultaneous projects (documents & website elements)
• Keeping track of the progress of the translation steps and the associated layout work for 30+ source & target languages
• Receiving and forwarding files from suppliers & buyers all over the world to ensure the projects move toward completion, following several different processes depending on the type of content, project and buyer
• Learning the job by myself (very short training period)

Results

• Customer satisfied – gets back in touch whenever the translation coordinator needs replacement
• Created written tutorials summarizing most of the processes and exceptions, to simplify the training of potential future translation coordinators

Company: BTI Studios
Website: www.btistudios.com
Industry: multimedia localization
Country: Sweden

Assignment: Expanding BTI Gothenburg’s Operations in France

Background
The Swedish, Gothenburg office of BTI Studios offers worldwide localization services for multimedia projects (Internet videos, e-learning, audio guide…) and documentaries. However their French customer base was quite limited and although they felt there was a potential, they didn’t have the language & cultural expertise or the internal resources to seriously expand there.
At the same time they had to make sure they wouldn’t compete with any other branch or department within BTI Studios, especially BTI France.

Goal
Expanding the French customer base of BTI Studios Gothenburg.

Responsibilities

• Getting the project started:

○ Carrying out a study about specific segments of the French market identified by BTI Studios Gothenburg’s general manager
○ Suggesting a strategy based on that study
○ Helping the general manager to prepare an internal pitch to get key-stakeholders buy-in (especially top management and BTI France)

• Expanding the French customer base:

○ Identifying, contacting and following up on potential leads
○ Participating in fairs and other professional events to create contacts
○ Preparing & conducting sales meetings to introduce BTI’s offering and its relevance to new leads

• Providing customer support and being the first point of contact for new customers while gradually handing them over to project and production managers

Results

• Joined the Sunny Side of the Doc fair to increase awareness about the company
• Promising contacts with various production and distribution companies

Following a major internal reorganisation due to the merger of BTI Studios and IYUNO, the project was handed over to an employee dedicated to business developpement.

Company: Glaces des Alpes
Website: www.glacesdesalpes.com
Industry: premium ice-cream manufacturing
Country: France

Assignment: Entering the Swedish Market

Background
Glaces des Alpes has been extremely successful on the French market with their unique business model & product: premium hand-made ice-creams. They also exported a bit but usually because a foreign wholesaler contacted them to buy their product; not because of a proactive export strategy.
However they felt the French market would soon be saturated and wanted to look elsewhere in Europe. That’s when I got in touch with them and since Sweden was quite a big market for ice-cream they decided to go ahead and use this as an opportunity to test a proactive export effort.

Goal
Selling Glaces des Alpes’ ice-creams to Swedish wholesalers.

Responsibilities

• Preparing an export strategy:

○ Carrying out a market study to better understand consumption habits, potential customers and existing competitors
○ Creating a communication strategy to know who to target and what to put forward – the Swedish market is quite different from France and several basic assumptions and unique selling points weren’t valid, so new ones had to be found

• Understanding the industry & Glaces des Alpes:

○ Identifying who does what in the food industry, what regulations exist…
○ Learning about Glaces des Alpes’ manufacturing process, business model, products available…

• Obtaining and carrying out sales meetings to introduce the products to Swedish wholesalers
• Handling customer contact, administrative tasks (purchase orders…), and in general being the single point of contact for the Swedish market

Results

• Found several wholesalers interested
• Communication strategy proved efficient as it created awareness about the company’s unique products and how they could change ice-cream consumption in Sweden
• Discovered trends & processes specifics to the Swedish market that demanded additional investments from Glaces des Alpes in terms of money and time in order to carry out the project

Glaces des Alpes chose to focus on other, less complex and less expensive European markets and to leave Sweden aside for the time being.

Company: PMC Production
Website: www.i-pmc.co.kr & www.nanta.co.kr
Industry: live show creation & production
Country: South-Korea

Assignment: Bringing PMC Production’s Show “Cookin’ Nanta” to Europe

Background
I discovered the Korean show “Cookin’ Nanta” during my studies in Seoul. I thought it was amazing and wondered why it wasn’t available in Europe and so I decided to get in touch with them to see whether I could help bringing the show to Europe. After some communication difficulties due to the long distance, they accepted to work with me.

Goal
Organizing a Cookin’ Nanta tour in Europe.

Responsibilities

• Understanding the industry and the show (no previous experience in the field):

○ Learning the business models & processes in the industry to know who does what
○ Learning the show’s business details: price, requirements, participants, previous performances overseas…

• Creating a communication & sales strategy (show rather unknown and unusual):

○ Finding similar shows to use as references, deciding what characteristics to highlight…
○ Picking target countries based on Nanta’s historical data and my own abilities

• Introducing Nanta to festivals, arenas, theaters and other venues looking for shows to offer to their audience

Results

• Targeted French-speaking countries & Scandinavia to benefit from my language skills and geographical location
• Managed to create awareness about the show in the target markets and to give a clearer picture of what it was
• Found some venues interested but once it became clear that the few places where Nanta had been in the past had lost money in the process, it became very difficult to convince anyone without first doing major changes in the show’s business aspects
• Gave feedback and insights to PMC Production so they could adjust their European strategy

PMC Production chose to focus on successful Asian markets (where the show was working in its current form) and to leave Europe aside for the time being.

Note:
This page gathers a selection of projects I initiated and carried out for myself rather than for a customer.

Project: Starting & Running a Board Game Association

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Project: Utilizing the IP “Chronicles of Galadria”

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Project: Introducing Global Directions during the Swedish Publishing Prize

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Project: Gathering Teenagers into an Orchestra

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