Groundswell

What we can know from example of Unilever

Unilever's example to incorporate the three elements of groundswell thinking into your organization:

• Take small steps that have big impact. The Dove team initiated a series of campaigns that were revolutionary in one area - innovating on the message with the Campaign For Real Beauty, listening go of message control with The Apprentice, and rethinking distribution with the "Evolution" video. The key was that they all had measurable success metrics that were tied to key marketing goals. These primed the pump for the more innovative, more challenging campaigns that came next
• Have a vision and a plan. Transformational thinking can be maddeningly slow. Rob and Babs demonstrated tremendous patience in getting executives to take small steps forward - in all, two year passed between the launch of the Campaign For Real Beauty and the "Evolution" video. But both Rob and Baba personally had a vision of Unilever's potential with groundswell thinking, a vision that kept them going through the rough patches. You should have in your mind a tree-year outlook of where you want to take the organization - and the simplest way to do that is to describe what the relationship with your customer will feel like in the future. 
• Build leaders into the plan. It took leaders like Rob and Babs to have the guts to take Unilever all the way to the top. The Dove team was relentless in hammering on one point - the need to let go and embrace emerging media and give the consumer a voice in the brand. Rob and Babs shared this vision and backed it up with persuasive and planning skills to drive innovative marketing to another level.

The Volga river

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage basin. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Volga-Matushka (Volga-mother) in Russian literature and folklore.

The downstream of the Volga, widely believed to have been a cradle of the Proto-Indo-European civilization, was settled by Huns and other Turkic peoples in the first millennium AD, replacing Scythians. The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia). He calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains.

Subsequently, the river basin played an important role in the movements of peoples from Asia to Europe. A powerful polity of Volga Bulgaria once flourished where the Kama river joins the Volga, while Khazaria controlled the lower stretches of the river. Such Volga cities as Atil, Saqsin, or Sarai were among the largest in the medieval world. The river served as an important trade route connecting Scandinavia, Rus', and Volga Bulgaria with Khazaria and Persia.

The Volga, widened for navigation purposes with construction of huge dams during the years of Joseph Stalin's industrialization, is of great importance to inland shipping and transport in Russia: all the dams in the river have been equipped with large (double) ship locks, so that vessels of considerable dimensions can actually travel from the Caspian Sea almost to the upstream end of the river.

Connections with the Don River and the Black Sea are possible through the Volga–Don Canal. Connections with the lakes of the north (Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega), Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea are possible through the Volga–Baltic Waterway; and a liaison with Moscow has been realised by the Moscow Canal connecting the Volga and the Moskva rivers.

This infrastructure has been designed for vessels of a relatively large scale (lock dimensions of 290 x 30 meters on the Volga, slightly smaller on some of the other rivers and canals) and it spans many thousands of kilometers. A number of formerly state-run, now mostly privatized, companies operate passenger and cargo vessels on the river; Volgotanker, with over 200 petroleum tankers, is one of them.

In the later Soviet era, up to the modern times, grain and oil have been among the largest cargo exports transported on the Volga. Until recently access to the Russian waterways was granted to foreign vessels on a only very limited scale. The increasing contacts between the European Union and Russia have led to new policies with regard to the access to the Russian inland waterways. It is expected that vessels of other nations will be allowed on the Russian rivers soon.

                                                                Fishing.

By the way. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (R) and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoy some fishing on the river Volga in Russia's Astrakhan region August 16, 2011. Russia's two top leaders spent Tuesday fishing and boating on the Volga river in a rare, day-long private meeting, the Kremlin said. Medvedev and Putin went for a walk on the river bank in the Astrakhan region in southern Russia, did some spin fishing and then set off for a boat trip to take underwater pictures. Picture taken August 16, 2011.