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Eternal Vigilance is the Basis of our Business

1/20/2017

 
Flyer distribution, unlike addressed deliveries, is a mass activity. As such, there is always the temptation for a distributor to cut corners.
If you are instructed to distribute 1000 leaflets in a certain area, who is going to notice if you only do 950? Or 900? Or even 850? Who is going to notice if you only walk half-way down a certain road before turning back, or if you only do one side of the street instead of both? Or if you only deliver to every second or third letter box?
The answer is: we will notice. We have built a monitoring system that removes all of these temptations from our distributors' work so that they can simply get on with their daily round and do it as thoroughly as they can.
* First, we review each distributor's daily track and waypoints (the coordinates of each letter box that they visit) to make sure that they haven't missed a road or skipped letter boxes.
* Then, still looking at a map of their GPS routes and waypoints on computer, we compare the number of deliveries that they have made in certain streets with the verified number of letter boxes in those streets that we have on our database. Each distributor gets a daily score based on how close their number of deliveries are to the actual number of letter boxes in the sample of streets.  We expect a score of more than 90%.
* These audits are enhanced by daily spot-checks in the field to make sure that our distributors insert the flyers, leaflets, brochures, magazines and newspapers that they distribute properly into each letter box. When distributors rush to finish the day's work, they are tempted to stuff the item into each letter box, thereby damaging it. Another common mistake is to insert the flyer only half-way, exposing it to the wind and rain. The only way to remove these temptations from our distributors is daily spot-checks and constant feedback. 


What We Do When It Rains

8/15/2016

 
When it rains, our main concern is to keep our client's pamphlets dry. To this end, each of our leaflet distributors carries with him a raincoat which he can immediately deploy when rain threatens. 
It took quite a search to find just the right kind of raincoat for the job. The first requirement was that it had to cover not only the distributor, but also the backpack in which he carries the leaflets. Furthermore, it had to cover the flyers that he is holding in his had, ready to insert into the next letter box. These requirements disqualified most standard rain gear, and we narrowed our search down to poncho type raincoats.
Most of the ones we tried turned out to be too small. Others, even if they were big enough, had the tendency to blow up in the wind, exposing our clients' pamphlets to the rain.
Finally, we found the perfect poncho: it is large enough to cover the bag, the distributor and the pamphlets in his hands, and it also has a wide "sleeve" - more like a slit in the poncho, through which he can put an arm through to keep the poncho down when the wind threatens to blow it up. It this way, our distributors are able to keep the flyers bone dry in most types of weather.
When it rains too hard to keep the pamphlets completely dry, our distributors are instructed to find shelter, and to wait for the rain to pass. Only occasionally, perhaps once or twice a year has it rained so much that we have had to cancel the day's distribution. 

40 000 Leaflets - Each One Accounted For 

8/10/2016

 
Spec Savers in Canal Walk and Cavendish Square gave us the opportunity to do our biggest single round to date: 40 000 flyers distributed from Table View in the north all the way to Hout Bay in the south. 

This is what Spec Savers' manager Wesley Language said of the distribution of his pamphlets: "Thanks Barrie for the mail [the distribution report] and thanks for your efficiency, it's everything I was hoping for!!!"

We at Community Life Media would like to thank Spec Savers for allowing us to test our system at this scale. It worked like a dream, with every single leaflet accounted for through our GPS monitoring system.  


Some More Great Feedback From a Great Customer

8/9/2016

 
Oishi is an exciting new service in Cape Town that specialises in delivering top-quality sushi and asian side dishes to homes in the Atlantic Seaboard and the Southern Suburbs. They asked us to spread the word. This is what they thought of our delivery of their brochure:

Morning Barrie,
Thanks for the update and the tracking info. I was able to view each of the routes and each flag 'drop'. I think this is a really clever idea of yours to track the drops!
I must add that we were already seeing positive results from the drop on Saturday - new customers ordering with us as a direct result of having receiving a flyer. We also had friends sharing photos of having seen our flyers in their apartment's foyer. Really great! 
Thanks again for the great service. It's really appreciated!
Kind Regards,
Stefano
Oishi


Positive Feedback From Our Client, Harcourts

2/12/2016

 
We recently received this email from another of our satisfied clients:

Dear Barrie,
Walda and I would just like to thank you for your professional, efficient and friendly service thus far.
It really has been a pleasure making use of your services and we will continue to do so in future.
Have a great day further!
Yolande Murphy
Harcourts

You Get What You Pay for

1/22/2016

 
The other day our foreman was busy distributing a flyer when he found himself walking next to a distributor from a large, well-known competitor of ours. As they walked together, they struck up a conversation.

It turns out that he gets paid in a week what we pay our distributors in two days. After a while, he started complaining that our foreman was walking to every single post box. What you've got to do, he explained, is to skip two and only do every third post box. It cuts down on the distance, and at the same time your boss, if he checks, can see that the street was covered because he will find a flyer in a letter box here and there. If the boss finds some empty letter boxes as well, you just say that the residents must have taken out the flyer already, or that the resident was in the garden and you handed over the flyer instead of putting it in the letter box. 

With our system, a distributor would never get away with something like that. Short-cuts such as the skipping of letter boxes, only doing one side of a street and turning around half-way down a street will clearly show in the GPS data that our distributors bring back to the office. That data - pinpointing every letter box visited - forms part of the report that we give to our clients. 
​
Perhaps just as important is the fact that our distributors do not have to devise tricks such as these to survive. They are well paid, motivated, and proud of their work and their productivity. 
Even though the opposition distributor was only doing every third post box, our foreman outpaced him and, as he turned the corner, he saw him way back down the street, taking a break under a tree.  ​

The Fittest Pamphlet Distributors in Cape Town

1/5/2016

 
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Our team of distributors must count among the fittest people in Cape Town. They walk more than 20km on a working day, and sometimes close to 30km, distributing your flyers in post boxes around the city. We know this because their movements are minutely measured by the GPS units they carry. 

We give our distributors a shoe allowance every six months so that they can sustain their awesome productivity levels without any injuries. We have also found that if they feel professional, they act professionally, and a good pair of sports shoes helps to remind them that they are at the top of their profession. 
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In the case of our larger distributors, we find that even top-range sports shoes do not  last six month. The shoes pictured above had to be replaced after only five months. 
​

A Noteworthy Achievement by Our Distributor, Blessing Kaliat

12/18/2015

 
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Blessing Kaliat achieved an outstanding feat of endurance this week when he delivered a total of 3600 pamphlets in one hot summer's day. Blessing walked 24 kilometres and visited 1800 post boxes in Observatory on 15 December, exceeding our most ambitious daily targets.

To put this in perspective, our staff are encouraged to deliver up to 1000 leaflets a day, for which they receive a bonus. Blessing's superior ability to navigate the streets of Cape Town and his uncanny sense for finding the quickest route enabled him to almost double this goal.

​He has been working for Community Life Media for a year in which time he has become as fit as a marathon runner, walking distances of no less than 20 kilometres a day, five days a week. We are very proud to have Blessing as a member of our team and wish to congratulate him on his efforts.

The Hardest Working Flyer Distributors in Cape Town

10/12/2015

 
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Lloyd Kubvoruno, Francis Kaphetsa and Blessing Kaliat, the hardest working pamphlet distributors in Cape Town, show off their new work wear.

​The simple outfit, consisting of a standard over-suit, a cricket hat for protection against the sun, and, most importantly, a pair of Nike running shoes, has made a huge difference to how they are treated on their rounds.

Previously, when they wore their own work clothes, they were often hounded by security guards and treated with suspicion. Now, they seem to come across as legitimate workers, and are left mostly in peace. 

Trouble in Khayelitsha

6/14/2015

 
When Paradigm Shift, an NGO that does entrepreneurship training, asked us to distribute a flyer for them to small and informal businesses in Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, we jumped at the opportunity.

It was a chance for us to explore not only Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain as distribution territories, but also to test logistics of distributing to the hundreds of informal traders that line the main streets of Khayelitsha and the Mitchells Plain town centre every Saturday. 

We learned a lot on the first Saturday, and had to adjust our normal pricing of R360 per thousand for the second round the following weekend. 

All went well for most of the day, but at half past three we got a call that we've always been dreading. One of our excellent distributors, Dumiso Jita, phoned to say that he's been held up at gunpoint. Two youngsters robbed him of his wallet in broad daylight in the busiest street in Khayelitsha, Govan Mbeki Avenue (previously Lansdowne Ave). 

Fortunately, he wasn't hurt, and they didn't find his phone. They also weren't interested in our GPS unit that Dumiso carried around his neck on a lanyard. It's good to know that it doesn't seem to have any resale value in the eyes of muggers, at least for these two.

At the Harare police station we were shocked to hear the police officers on duty at the charge office try to persuade Dumiso not to open a case of armed robbery, because chances were very small that they will be caught. We stood our ground, arguing that, at the very least, we had a duty as citizens to have the incident officially recorded so that the police generals get an idea of the exact levels of crime in Khayelitsha so that police resources can be properly deployed. I get the impression that the police routinely try to dissuade people from opening cases so that the official crime stats look better than they really are. Who are they trying to fool? The politicians? Certainly not the people of Khayelitsha who live with the impact of rampant crime every day. 
​

So what do we do in future when we get orders for distribution in Khayelitsha? I'm not sure. I certainly don't want to send my colleagues into areas where their lives are in danger. What I do know is that we won't expect any of the distributors to go into Khayelitsha if they don't want to.
Dumiso, who lives in Khayelitsha, says he doesn't mind taking on more jobs there. They never cease to amaze me, our distributors. They walk 25 km a day, in rain, wind and the blazing sun, and they do so with enthusiasm and a spirit that seems unbreakable.
Thank you, Dumiso.   
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