Speaking Books

Speaking Books

September 28, 2011
Brand management professional takes on a capstone project with an Acumen Fund-sponsored organization that provides books with audio to educate the illiterate

Olga Sherman GB ’11 decided what organization she wanted to work with for her capstone presentation in a slightly unconventional way. On her international residency trip to Cordoba, Argentina, she brought along, The Blue Sweater, a memoir written by Jacqueline Novogratz chronicling her life’s quest to understand and eradicate global poverty.

Novogratz is the CEO and founder of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve problems of global poverty.  Inspired by Novogratz’s story, Sherman emailed the CEO in hopes of arranging a capstone project with Acumen Fund. Much to her surprise, Novogratz responded personally to Sherman’s email within a few days’ time. She said that while she was not sure if Acumen Fund had an immediate need that a capstone project could fulfill, she would forward Sherman’s email on to several colleagues.

One of those colleagues happened to be Robert Katz, portfolio manager of Acumen Fund. 

“It all happened really quickly,” she recalled. “[Katz] and I got on the phone, and we talked for 30 minutes. He asked about what I did professionally and what my core interests were.” 

Before hanging up, Katz told Sherman that he had the perfect organization in mind for her capstone project. Acumen, as a venture capitalist private equity company for social entrepreneurship, works with organizations starting up in the social sector. One such start-up, Books of Hope, had an immediate need for marketing insight.

Soon after, Sherman was connected with Brian Julius, Chairman of Books of Hope, a non-profit organization that created ‘speaking books’ as a means to present complex health care issues to those that are illiterate. The speaking books consist of 16 pages of colorful illustrations supported by easy to understand text. On each page there is a corresponding button that triggers a sound track of the text, so no matter the level of reading comprehension, the information will be understood.

Sherman’s main goal in her capstone project with Books of Hope was to convey the importance of the organization taking action and establishing a brand identity. 

“Building the entire brand architecture [of Books of Hope] was one of my main objectives,” she said. “I went through their entire portfolio and identified the elements that would strengthen their brand.”

Sherman advocated that the organization first start by redesigning their website and building a communications plan from the new site. She also recommended that the company name be changed to Speaking Books in order to clearly convey its product and remove any sort of emotional connotation surrounding the word “hope.”

“[For Books of Hope], it’s important to understand what the customer-value proposition is,” she said. According to Sherman, their website was geared towards clients in the healthcare sector which might not appeal to NGOs who are focused on job training or another issue.

She encouraged Books of Hope to “have a position that’s broad enough to appeal to a variety of clients, and to spend time fine-tuning their customer-value proposition in order for it to be very specific to each of those clients,” she said.

Sherman also made recommendations on social media and, perhaps surprisingly, she suggested that Books of Hope define their brand before establishing a presence on social media outlets. “The people [Books of Hope] needs to connect with are not on Facebook monitoring it every day,” she said. 

“I don’t think anyone is going to jump on Facebook to first learn about Books of Hope; they’re going to visit the website first.” However, if Books of Hope had funds to hire an intern or outside social media consulting firm down the road, Sherman supported that long-term goal. 

“The last piece of my presentation was on the operations and finance side,” she said.  “[Books of Hope] really needs to look at their pricing structure.”  Books of Hope had a minimum order that they had to meet before the price would be at the most reasonable cost. Larger company clients, like Bayer and Eli Lilly, consistently ordered above the minimum order and smaller companies were struggling to meet the minimum.

“Lowering the price per book from $10 to $5 should help increase the number of books sold,” Sherman said in her capstone paper. “[S]ome clients see the $10 price tag as too high, and because large companies are used to paying high rates for consulting and advertising services, the company should lower the price per book and make up for that difference by charging for consulting fees associated with developing each book at a rate in the range of $300 to $500 per hour.”

The Richmond MBA coursework and professors enabled Sherman to create and present her communications plan to Books of Hope with ease. Sherman, who majored in foreign affairs, was prompted to pursue an MBA degree and establish a foundation in business.

“The Richmond MBA is not just about the numbers you learn, it’s really about structure and how you think about initiatives and projects,” she said. “The MBA gave me the fundamentals to break down certain pieces of a project.”

Sherman currently serves as Associate Product Manager at Church & Dwight, Co., Inc., owner of Arm & Hammer brand, in Princeton, New Jersey.