It all started from a collaborative development workshop. The kind of workshop we hold regularly at Arexo, where, amongst other things, company objectives are exposed, as well as the challenges to reach them, involving the team members to find solutions.

To keep a long, though interesting story short, we use collaborative techniques to brainstorm and to come up with solutions. One of these techniques is the Learning Canvas, from Learning 3.0.

Using this technique, one of the ideas that stand out was to promote the image of the company, increasing our visibility quotient. To do so, we decided to use and/or distribute a few goodies that made sense for us, and one of them was a “mug”.

Ensued fun activities: finding nice mugs, brainstorming about how to brand them to our company design, drafting some layouts, voting, … Through our research, we found Gobis, by gobilab. A Gobi is a small, individual, reusable and brandable water bottle. (Gobi is a French trademark and the trademark choice of the COP21).

Turned out that the timing was perfect. One of our clients decided to stop providing disposable cups. The next day our Gobis were ready, and we came to our client’s premise with our great looking water bottles

The result was immediate: colleagues starting to look at them closely, grabbing them, asking questions about Arexo, …

A nice milestone was reached, yet along the way, we also had fun, and jokes started to appear on our internal messaging system: “Message in a bottle” song from The Police, Gipsy Kings’ “Djobi Djoba” , …