ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
Over the next month, the Manchester Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire’s five video screens will regularly show an animated ad depicting the state’s four leading presidential candidates with tides rising to their waists from climate-induced sea level rise. The 10-second spot asks, “How will you deal with sea level rise in New Hampshire?” and is expected to be seen by the candidates, their teams, and the press as they arrive for the GOP presidential debate on February 6 and primary on February 9.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
The Federal Trade Commission announced complaints and proposed court orders barring four national retailers from mislabeling and advertising rayon textiles as made of “bamboo,” and requiring them to pay civil penalties totaling $1.3 million.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Colgate toothpastes and toothbrushes will not be the focus of the brand’s first-ever Super Bowl advertisement. Rather, it will be using its airtime to remind viewers to turn off the tap when brushing their teeth.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
This Tuesday afternoon breakout session saw Thomas Kolster, founder and creative director at the Goodvertising Agency, and Kerry Eustice, Editorial Partnerships Editor at The Guardian Sustainable Business, share their perspectives on changing the conversation around sustainability values.Early on, Kolster asserted that sustainability advertising is not doing enough to drive change, as it tends to be less engaging than other advertising messages. He and Eustice discussed dos, don’ts and new approaches that could change the way the message of sustainability is communicated.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
For many marketers or entrepreneurs, building a business with a purpose is the Holy Grail. It feels great – and we all want to do a job that makes sense. And it’s good business: brands with a purpose work better – Jim Stengel and a few others have clearly made the point.But building a business with a purpose requires a change of paradigm. For many of us, that means unlearning what we studied at marketing school.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
After nine years as a spokesman for Nespresso in Europe, actor and activist George Clooney has finally agreed to promote the brand in North America. Television advertisements began airing yesterday, and online videos promoting the company’s social impact and sustainability commitments are part of the deal. Clooney is a member of the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Schneider Electric, global specialist in energy management and automation, announced the launch of a new brand campaign in North America to showcase the business and societal value of sustainability and efficiency. The brand campaign executes on the company's newly launched global brand strategy, Life Is On, which aims to clearly articulate how the company helps customers around the world transform the way they access and consume energy.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
This might be the best recent trend in children’s brands.
After years of being a less-than-progressive feminine role model, Barbie is on the verge of becoming the feminist icon she should be. Mattel’s latest ad features a college professor, a veterinarian, a soccer coach, a businesswoman, and a museum tour guide — all girls under the age of 10. It asks the audience, “What happens when girls are free to imagine they can be anything?”
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
There was a time when the only way a company could hope to talk directly with real people was through the medium of advertising or public relations. Companies felt distanced from consumers and they worried that people wouldn't take them seriously unless they could broadcast a big campaign or get their PR agency to persuade a journalist to write about them.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
Designer Chris Onesto created California Water Company to highlight the state’s historic drought. The company’s water bottles are only about 6 percent full, to reflect the current capacity of California water reservoirs.“The Golden State is turning a toasty golden brown all thanks to a record drought,” reads the project’s website. “Oddly enough Southern Californians could care less. In response I created the California Water Company, bottled water that moves the drought from a startling thought into a disturbing reality.”
BLOG -
Sustainability marketing is a strange and special animal. To be effective, it needs to popularize the work of sustainability teams, which tends to be based on rigorous systems thinking, carefully and scientifically considering the whole picture before suggesting ways to improve it. And of course, sustainability marketing also needs to be as sexy and appealing as successful mainstream marketing. Striking that kind of balance is not easy, and there certainly has been significant progress over the last few years. At the same time, there still are some important sustainability marketing tactics that are not understood and adopted well enough.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
On the heels of a coalition of British NGOs and businesses issuing a “litter manifesto” to help clean up the UK last month, research from Keep Britain Tidy has revealed that an anti-littering campaign launched in May has achieved rather impressive results.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
A cloud seems to be looming over the recycling industry today. No matter where you turn, the reigning attitude seems about the same — the future of recycling is in trouble.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Hey Coca-Cola, how about redirecting your advertising budget for a year to help save the planet?That is the ask of the group Buy the World a Hope, an “independent group of people who believe that there must be new ways to substantially help the world, to work with the system and benefit the planet.”Buy the World a Hope aims to revolutionize marketing. Its website, available in 15 languages, asks visitors to sign an open letter to the CEO of Coca-Cola, urging the company to quit its $3 billion advertising spending budget for one year and direct that money toward protecting rainforests.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
B2B companies often see themselves as the dry toast to B2Cs’ Belgian waffles dripping with whipped cream and berries. And when we talk about making sustainability sexy, they may think it doesn’t apply to them. But it does.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
NYC/London-based production company Casual Films believes we have entered “a new era in branded communications.” As Managing Director Barnaby Cook asserts in a video on the company’s website: “In the future, all successful businesses will have to be sustainable.” Not only does the award-winning company help organizations tell their sustainability stories, Casual’s got one of its own, and Cook recently told us more about how his company aims to use the power of video to help responsible companies influence society and change the world.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
The television remains one of the most vital tools available to “green” marketers. From product placement to paid commercial spots, getting your product, service or mission featured on TV is an invaluable way to bring your company’s messaging directly into people’s living rooms. Unfortunately that precious ad space isn’t cheap, and for smaller, purpose-driven companies such as TerraCycle, the costs are simply too high. Even so, that hasn’t stopped us from trying to secure our own fair share of the TV spotlight.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
LAG:A period of time: a noticeable delay between action and reaction – Failing to keep up with another or others in movement or developmentJAG: A short period of overindulgence in an activity: a shopping jag: a crying jag. A stab; an intense and concentrated movement or actionI increasingly find myself at a very particular and exciting intersection.I find myself there not by accident but by design: having helped build a methodology that reaps its greatest rewards at the point where applied science and commercial creativity collide.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
A new video on humor website Funny or Die satirizes the unhealthy lunches served in American schools. Produced by the American Heart Association (AHA), the piece features comedian Nick Offerman as a “food expert” leading a farm tour full of greasy fare, including pizza vines and taquito trees.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
While major restaurant chains including McDonald’s, Subway, Panera and Taco Bell have recently begun to move away from unpronouncable, unfamiliar ingredients such as propionic acid and Yellow No.