Promoting Social Entrepreneurship

To raise visibility for Miami University’s Farmer School of Business, Stanton Crenshaw focused on two powerful differentiators:  the school’s unique commitment to experiential learning opportunities, and its just-launched Center for Social Entrepreneurship.  The opportunity came when University students developed a pilot program dubbed edun LIVE on Campus.  edun LIVE is a sub-brand of Edun apparel Ltd, the socially conscious clothing company co-founded last year by activist Ali Hewson, Bono’s wife. edun LIVE manufactures 100% African t-shirts and sells them to student groups and local businesses, thereby supporting employment in sub-Saharan Africa through “trade, not aid.”

The agency team positioned the Miami University pilot as an important step in the development of socially conscious business models.  Media were dispatched to interview undergrad entrepreneurs and their customers, who were selling and wearing the shirts imprinted with the catchphrase “I know who made my t-shirt. Do you?” Major national business, trade, and general news press were urged to cover the story as the group prepared to outsource the business model to 20 or more other universities. The national media, including The Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and Time magazine, picked up on the social entrepreneurship message as, in the words of faculty advisor Brett Smith, students respond to the opportunity “to change the world one T-shirt at a time.”