Q&A with Cyrill Gutsch, Parley for the Oceans
Tell me about Parley…
When we started Parley for the Oceans in 2012, we saw plastic as a design failure; something that we must let go of. We began creating material from ocean plastic debris and trash which we collected in remote areas of the world. We trademarked it as ‘ocean plastic’ and collaborated with brands to create ‘ocean plastic’ products. We thought that our products would sell better than other products because people will know that they’re contributing back. Back then it was just a dream.
Today, we can say with pride that this concept works. Adidas sold a million pairs of ‘ocean plastic’ shoes last year, and seven million pairs this year. The partnerships that we have with Adidas, and with Corona, and now with American Express have touched upon a lot of different layers of society, and this has become a much bigger trend. Now we’re seeing people reach out to us who want to cut out virgin plastic as well.
Ultimately — we want to get rid of plastic. The true next step is to get out of plastic, we want to encourage and support people to invent new materials.
What is the benefit of collaboration?
To create something together. If you decide to implement a project together, the exchange of knowledge is a side effect, and it’s way better to do things and open the minds of the people you talk to, than stay in the abstract and speak about things that probably otherwise will never be done.
Every collaborator, besides learning from the other, can touch on new area. They can play in a field where they would not have credibility before, or not have the knowledge to speak to people in these specific networks. It enhances the reach that you have on the audience, but then also enhances the network of people that you can work with, can create with, and you can learn from. Collaboration is the ultimate training to make yourself humble and to question your ego and to put the project and the idea into the foreground. Which in our case is the cause.
Collaboration is a very beautiful experience. We often forget we’re not the most important one on this planet, and really need to train ourselves that the true fulfilment is in opening up and sharing knowledge and being transparent and honest. It’s allowing others to take the stage and be the one that inspires and empowers.
How do you decide who you collaborate with?
For us, collaboration is crucial when it comes to environmental movement and what we saw when we started Parley, was a lot of fighting between environmentalists. That was very difficult for us to understand. We’re all moving towards the same goal. Why would we fight each other?
We realised that we wanted Parley to be the glue; to be the connector between environmentalists and brands and then between brands and creative industries and also between all these and governments or inter-governmental organisations.
Parley is about bringing people together that otherwise would not meet and creating a climate of trust and a climate of change where ideas become the unifying factor. When we looked at the environmental movement and we looked at the crisis of the rapid destruction of our oceans, we realised that the economy is pretty much the driving force of all the damage people are causing on this planet. And, you look at an industry and you wonder who is actually going to bring change to the industry?
It leads you right away to the creative community. The creative community are the ones with the artists, the designers, the writers, the scientists. All these creators, thinkers and leaders are the ones that show the industry where tomorrow is. They influence design, technology, and the reach of a brand. It’s our responsibility as creators to show how the future could look.
The first collaboration I was looking for was an artist; Julian Schnabel was the first one. Then we looked for brands; Adidas would help us to make our material inventions or our ideas for new materials — they would make them real. Adidas was a very important collaboration and we are engaged in a very long-term relationship with them.
We’ve teamed up with Anheuser-Busch InBev — the biggest beverage company in the world — because we both believed that the plastic bottle needs to go. To find somebody so big in the beverage industry going against the plastic bottle, is way stronger than us standing in front of the gate and shouting it.
It’s always a strong collaborator that can bring you into a network, that can bring you into the room where you can be heard. A room that normally you would not have access to, a room where you wouldn’t be relevant. By picking such a collaborator, all their competitors have to listen up. “Oh my god. If they do it, we have to do it. If Adidas are going 100% plastic-free by 2024 then we have to do it as well.”
Collaboration also allows us to establish standards that otherwise look very over-ambitious, but by partnering up with a strong partner, you make them real.
How do you make these collaborations work in reality?
Normally we do long term partnerships. We take the time to explore our partners and then we develop a roadmap of our mission and what we want to achieve together. For us, every partner is a champion — a potential champion.
It’s like making a sculpture, move by move, and in the beginning this object looks at you and you don’t see that you’re making any change and then more and more it takes the form that you wish it to. But it’s an ongoing process of exchange as well, where you learn, and you say: “okay what are the roadblocks?” If I ask for a sacrifice on one side — if I ask my partner to give up on toxic materials, what can I give them in return? How can I help them to make that investment pay? And to convince the internal and external key stakeholders because most of the time, these organisations are not driven by one person; these are very complex structures and you need to deep dive into them to understand them.
Our work with Adidas has a very specific mission. With Anheuser-Busch InBev we have a very specific mission. If we work with the United Nations, we have a very specific mission. So, it’s not repetitive — it’s complimentary. That’s very important for us; we don’t want to do all over again. You want to find the right partner for your one specific mission and normally ours are five to ten-year partnerships.
You also want to stay true to your goals with full integrity. You want to ask the impossible, and you help to make it work over time, step by step. I think that’s the point — you define a big vision, you don’t let go of that vision. You ask: ‘what can I do? Which step can I take every day to be flexible on the way there?’ Find ways to make it work, but never give up on the big vision.
What are your tips for making collaboration work?
Brutal honesty; and don’t work with people you don’t trust. The chemistry has to be right, and don’t compromise it all. If you have a vision, then formulate that vision give it time, explain your roadmap and then stick to that roadmap and never let go.
Show empathy, but don’t bend over. I think that’s the combination. And inspire. You want to be inspiring and you want to empower. I think these are the two most important aspects of a partnership.
If you’re the one that asks for big sacrifice, and that’s what we do as an environmental organisation — we ask for that. We ask people to trust us that tomorrow will be better than today if they are taking a financial hit. So, I think inspiration is always the most important part. If you are leading a collaboration, you want to get people’s hearts. The money isn’t so important; money always comes. I think the most important aspect is the vision, it’s the creativity, it’s also the aspect of inspiration that people feel like they’re contributing something. You are making every day richer. And, you have to win them for your purpose. Otherwise they don’t know what they’re fighting for.
Have you ever found that there’s any drawback to collaboration? Are there any instances where things haven’t necessarily gone to plan for you?
All the time. It’s a permanent process and sometimes the failures feel defeating and you feel that you’ll not get anywhere. It’s hard to get people into one movement. It’s hard to get people to change. It’s hard to get people to implement ideas which are probably not theirs. But, the reward is exponential because once you’ve fought through that, there’s nothing more amazing and beautiful than having strong collaborators finally out there pushing a vision.
And to be honest, these complex problems that we’re facing right now, not one superhero can fix them. It’s impossible. You know, this is only doable if we make the impossible work as teams; as multidisciplinary teams consisting of different organisations.
Do you think the world is shifting into a more collaborative way of working and living?
Yes and no. I think we’re in a time of great opportunity, and a time of great destruction. We are either finished on this planet if we don’t get our act together, or we are going to have an amazing time here. The truth is, that everything that we have always imagined, is possible. Communication is the key, and we are trained by the new technologies about how collaboration can work in every layer of our daily lives.
Now, after we’ve celebrated ourselves with mirror images called ‘selfies’ and everything else we did — I think it’s time to sober up and understand that we’ve got all the tools we need, to secure the future of our planet.
I feel that everybody has got the message — it’s just that people react differently to it. Some people say: “I will not accept or be part of a generation which is destroying the planet. I have to stand up and do everything that I can to work with others on solving this.”
Do you have any dream collaborations?
We are in a lucky situation — we are at least in conversations about collaboration with everyone we ever dreamt of. Our next big dream is size — to find a way of allowing way more people to collaborate with us. We want to do it in a way that inspires and empowers them, and we can give them missions, and they can give us missions. We want to create this global collaboration space where everyone can have a role, and everybody can have a reward, or an incentive and people can live from collaborating with us.
Lucy Chesters spoke to Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans. Parley is a collaborative environmental organisation, which works with brands, governments, artists, scientists and leading thinkers, to tackle our ocean plastic pollution problem.
