By Glen Westall

Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Mark White, Managing Director of Trinidad and Tobago’s Collier Morrison Belgrave Limited (CMB). He explains how the advertising consultancy agency is driving principles of sustainability in a country that doesn’t always lend itself to change.

CMB’s journey spans over half a century, having started in 1968 as an advertising agency and then evolving over the intervening years towards a more purpose-driven consultancy focused on sustainable development and community impact. Managing Director Mark White explains to Sustainable Business Magazine how CMB is right now repositioning itself in a rapidly changing world:

“Lately, we have attempted to strategically move more into consultancy, shift towards developmental work and work that is sustainable. By that I mean sustainable for the environment and for society.”

“It has been somewhat stymied, as you might imagine, by the President of the USA putting a hold on certain funding. As a result, that kind of put our initiative into limbo while we wait for that to be lifted. We’re also doing a fair amount of state sector work when we get the chance, although unfortunately our Prime Minister has put a hold on those communications as well.

“So, although our strategic intent is to go for work like what we would have done for the IDB and with our own Citizen Security Program, we still focus on retail when the opportunities come up. In fact, we’re right now involved in a competitive pitch for an insurance firm.”

Transforming Together Initiative

CMB has joined forces with major energy corporations in an ambitious collaborative framework aimed at maximizing social impact across Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. White goes into detail about this sea-change in approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR):

“This is the brainchild of Candice Clarke-Salloum, Shell’s External Relations Manager in Trinidad. She started it and invited us to join. We really only attended one meeting, but it was an in-depth meeting, and we started to reshape, rewrite and re-conceive the strategic outlook of their mission. What Candice realized is that, within CSR, you had a certain amount of ‘siloism’.

“So, let’s say – and I’m just quoting random organizations, not picking on any specifically – RBC was contributing to young leaders while BP was doing something for the people in their immediate environment. So, if Shell is doing its thing for one group and RBC for another in the same area, Candice realized that everyone should be brought together. What if we started to align these efforts so that things were not happening disparately, but they were happening in sync? That way you would get a symbiosis of CSR efforts.

“That is now in its fledgling stages. They call it TT, as in Trinidad and Tobago, but also it stands for ‘transforming together’. It’s a way to align and therefore optimize the effort, money and investment being done across the country’s society.”

Mr. White goes on to outline CMB’s role in the project:

“We were given a draft mission to maximize developmental and positive social impact by establishing a sustainable collaborative framework. It needs to harness, align with and optimize available resources. That was by and large CMB’s contribution to the discussion at the time, but that’s a big thing to my mind. It’s a difficult project because Candice has to pull together very busy people and nobody is profiting from being on this panel, so it may not always be their priority.  It’s still something worth doing, though, so we’re going to do it.”

Anni-servary and Helping the Community

The Anniservary event exemplifies CMB’s commitment to meaningful community engagement, transforming a simple anniversary celebration into a powerful tool for social impact. This initiative, born from an internal conversation, became an event intended to celebrate the company’s history by celebrating the people and communities around them, has touched many lives in Trinidad and Tobago’s underserved communities.

“Many years ago, my then-business partner Richard Wells said that next time we celebrate an anniversary, let’s not just give ourselves food and entertainment,” Mr. White says. “He said we should do something that is meaningful and committed to the community around us. Then Felix, a German guy who used to work for us years ago told me he needed a name, so I wrote down ‘anniversary’ on a piece of paper, looked at it, and said, ‘okay, anni-servary’. It was obvious, and shows that we serve as well as lead. Clients could participate if they wished, corporate entities could contribute if they wished, and in terms of beverages and so on, but no one was permitted branding and advertising on site. It was to be a giving in its literal sense.”

“Everything we did was aimed at helping the children in our immediate environment, whether it was someone volunteering to do face painting, or corporate entity donating a bouncy castle to us.

When we moved to Central, for example, it became Central and South children.

“What would have united all the children that we incorporated into this event was that they were largely overlooked. You have what I would call popular charities, the ones that have the publicity, the ones that are well known, the ones who probably have 24-7 sponsorship, and then you have all the NGOs and orphanages and people doing all sorts of work in the society, and it’s more difficult for them. They’re doing it on a shoestring, they’re doing it off their own backs, and I think sometimes we perhaps underestimate how a simple touch, even if it’s just a one-time connection, can help people.”

Mr. White shares a particularly poignant memory that underscores the profound impact of these initiatives:

“The last time we held Anniservary, it was in Patna village in Diego Martin. My youngest son still had all his books from childhood. I’d invested heavily in his reading as he grew up and knew that he’d have kept them in good condition. He donated them to the event. It broke my heart to see them go but it was very lovely of him but he said he would be happy if other children experienced the same he got from them growing up.

“On the day itself, one of the guys came up to me and said, ‘thank you for taking care of my children for a day. I gave those books away to children’. It made me realize that for some of them, it was the first time they’d had such a book. So, here I am distributing 30 or 40 books that my son had all to himself to children who had none.”

Recycling Challenge

Despite personal and organizational commitment to recycling, CMB faces significant structural challenges in maintaining environmental sustainability practices in Trinidad and Tobago. The lack of government support and infrastructure creates barriers to any organization’s attempts at self-improvement.

“I personally like to recycle, but also everybody within CMB likes to do it,” says Mr. White. “I collect glass from the office and carry it home because I have a bin near me. We do plastic, too. We recycle because it’s good. 

“Trinidad and Tobago is one of the higher garbage per capita societies in the world. I don’t know if you have seen any stats around that, but that is a regrettable truth, and our method of disposal, how we dispose of things, is actually kind of at the bottom of the barrel. As a nation, how we dispose of rubbish and what we are doing in what was once a wetland, is insane. We’re just digging, and burying, and covering. It’s a wetland!

“As a nation we’re not doing anything innovative, we don’t recycle. I believe that Trincity, at a government level, or at least a council level, has attempted to start a recycling drive in its community. However, we are in a situation where if you get to recycle, it’s done privately. There’s no state program. There’s no, ‘we’re collecting paper today’. That does not exist.

“I recently tried to get it into my neighborhood through the HADCO group, because HADCO does paper and plastic on their own volition. Meanwhile the company that used to recycle paper and plastic for us, Ace, has gone out of business. So, it’s now a matter of doing it domestically, but we continually find that bins have to be removed from our neighborhoods because people come and dump shrimp in them. That attracts vermin and makes the recycling useless. So now we’re down to personal efforts.

“When this is how it is for the general population of the country, it makes even larger-scale efforts at a corporate level even more difficult. Nonetheless, we will continue pursuing it where we can.”  

Citizen Security Program

The Citizen Security Programme represents CMB’s most comprehensive community transformation initiative, employing behavioral change strategies and authentic storytelling to empower underserved communities.

“The Citizen Security Programme is exactly what its name says it is,” Mr. White states. “We are looking at behavioral change to empower, you know, the term we use would be ‘underserved communities’. That’s not so much politically correct term, I absolutely despise political correctness because I think it is a veneer, a superficiality, and believe that most times it reflects a dishonesty. So, I think underserved communities is a much better way to say that because it’s accurate. It is descriptive and you’re dealing with inequality, inequity and reduced opportunities.

“Taking that philosophical principle and understanding how the human mind works and the importance of connection and real connection, that has informed how we approached communities in this program. One way we have done that is through art. We went into a community and hosted art programs. We brought an artist in to guide it so that they would have an expert leading them in creating murals and other types of paintings.

“A lot of it was actual physical real connection between people within the underserved communities. It gives people a voice and a chance to speak out.”

The program’s innovative approach included creating powerful documentary films featuring real community members.

“We also went and we filmed three authentic life stories,” says Mr. White. “One of the guys working in the ministry was himself a former prisoner. He was in there for murder and his life had been redeemed. He’s gone from ex-con to employee of the Ministry of National Security, helping young people, and helping the community around him. We had to film his story.

“One of the others, she was a rape victim who had herself evolved into a sexual predator and redeemed herself from both of those. What she went through is terrible but also her story is amazing. The third person we looked at lives in Belmont, in one of the rougher areas. She’s a policewoman of all things, but she rallies in a lot of young people in the neighborhood. We did real life docu-movies on them.”

“We premiered the movies within the communities, at the community halls and gathering spaces. It felt like it was theirs, and to be frank it was theirs because it was from them and about them. The protagonists were all from there, and it was their communities that got to see it first. 

“During the Citizen Security Program, everybody was made to feel like a citizen. Whether it was through experimental art, through sports, through photography or filming, or whatever it was – that was the success of the program.”

‘Absolutely essential’

Looking toward the future, the CMB is resolute in its unwavering commitment to sustainability work despite social challenges:

“Our business has transformed with the whole advent of digitalization. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but the need for creativity has massively reduced. At the same time, people’s need for immediate gratification has increased, so that if people don’t get what they want within the first three seconds then off they go. The time available for thinking and imagining is under threat.

“That’s why we want to get into these larger, lengthier community service projects. They offer those opportunities and represent a better vision of sustainability. That’s more satisfying, and we can help influence the world around us. It’s absolutely essential for us to do that. It’s what we want to do.”