Stories About Storytelling
Found 460 stories. Page 20 of 23.
'Sesame Street' Characters Now Encouraging Kids to Eat Healthier
MARKETING AND COMMS - Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama was joined at the White House by Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita to announce a potentially game-changing collaboration in the fight against childhood obesity. Sesame Workshop and the Produce Marketing Association (PMA) formed a two-year agreement with the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) to help promote fresh fruit and vegetable consumption to kids, according to Let’s Move!, Mrs. Obama’s initiative to tackle the childhood obesity epidemic.
Prescription for a More Sustainable Future: Sustainability Solutions Practice
COLLABORATION - How can we create a future where 9 billion people live well within the limits of the planet? Can we harness knowledge to encourage a transition to a more sustainable future? What are the best solutions for current social, environmental and economic issues and how will they need to change and adapt over time?
Walk on the Wild In-side: How Social Intrapreneurs are Disrupting the System from Within
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - Lou Reed was a rock-n-roll pioneer. While he may not have achieved many solo hits, he accomplished what all sustainability professionals seek: He shifted the system. Brian Eno famously said, ‘The Velvet Underground may have sold only 10,000 records but everyone who bought one formed a band. In David Bowie, Reed had his biggest fan.’With his passing last month, stories about his contributions to music abound. The world of music loves to celebrate its pioneers. The disruptors. The misfits who took music to a new level.
Wharton Professor Sees Misinformation on What Fiduciary Duty Really Means for U.S. Companies
MARKETING AND COMMS - It has been a business maxim for years: Shareholder value trumps all when it comes to measuring corporate success. But by overrating shareholder value, management could focus too much on short-term stock price measures, given that outsized executive compensation often is fueled by stock options. And focusing too much on the short term can hurt a business over the long run, says Eric W. Orts, a Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics. There are better measures of corporate success, he points out in an interview with [email protected] about his new book, Business Persons: A Legal Theory of the Firm.An excerpt of the conversation follows.
This Website Lets You Tell Everyone That All You Want for Christmas Is NO MORE STUFF
MARKETING AND COMMS - If you are like us, your family has already started asking you what you want for Christmas/Hanukkah/insert your mass-consumption holiday of choice here. And while we like getting presents, we really, really, honestly, we promise, do not need that much more stuff. Which is why we’re glad to see SoKind, which Treehugger describes as “a new and improved gift registry aimed firmly at those who value experiences over material goods, handmade crafts over mass-produced gadgets, and gently used and carefully selected pre-loved goods over things they’ll probably use once and never see again.”
5 Ways to Create a Culture of Sustainability in Any Company
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE - There is no simple way to identify a leading company in sustainability. Given the proliferation of ratings, rankings, blogs and indices, there is no shortage of opinions, and often these are in direct conflict with one another. The methodologies used to calculate performance are often very opaque, or nonexistent. Even highly reputable organizations, based on a good core of data, often produce wildly divergent results from one another. And once the pundits get a hold of any ranking, they usually tear it to pieces, bringing their own criteria, opinions and biases to bear and further muddying the waters. While the debates are often fierce, no one can really agree on what sustainability itself really means.
Yellow Leaf Hammocks: Enriching Lives East and West
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - What started out as a backpacking tour through Southeast Asia in Spring 2010 serendipitously turned into an entrepreneurial venture for San Francisco-based Boston native Joe Demin. One morning, while his friends dozed on the sands of the coast of Northern Thailand, Demin ventured through a nearby jungle on a bike and literally stumbled across a small wooden shop selling artisanal hammocks by a local hunter-gatherer community, the Mlabri. Visiting with this rural community, he learned of their story and struggle for economic independence and immediately wanted to help. As Demin explains, ‘I literally sketched out a business plan on the back of the plane’s airsick bag.’
Meet Bond, David Bond: Marketing Director for Nature
BEHAVIOR CHANGE - This weekend, the feature-length documentary film Project Wild Thing opens in independent cinemas in the UK.The film explores the increasing disconnection between British children and the natural world around them; kids’ roaming distance from their homes has reportedly decreased 90% in the past 30 years.PROJECT WILD THING - official trailer from Green Lions.
Effective Sustainability Strategies - Case Study #1: Pret a Manger
MARKETING AND COMMS - Bar none, the most persistent challenge that the sustainability movement faces is how to prove the business bottom line benefits of sustainability activities. This is particularly acute for small and medium-sized companies, for whom survival is the number one priority. When looking at who engages and communicates sustainability activities, a disproportionate number of them are large corporates with dedicated sustainability/CSR budgets, as covered in our previous post. All too often, sustainability is a ‘tack-on’ to what business normally do anyway, and not the reason for being.
The Answer Is: The Human Condition
BEHAVIOR CHANGE - “We need to do something about the environmental damage in our heads.”(Time, 24 May 1993).
Fair Trade USA and Kiva Launch Microlending Program for Fair Trade Farmers
SUPPLY CHAIN - Fair Trade USA has partnered with nonprofit Kiva to help small-scale coffee farmers access financing, improve crop quality and invest in the future of their families and communities.The partnership resulted from a successful collaboration last year between Fair Trade USA, Kiva and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to pilot Kiva’s first agricultural lending program with a Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Mexico. Kiva says its lenders around the world fully funded nearly all of the loans, which benefited hundreds of small farmers working to prepare their fields for harvest.
Don't Just Sell Green, Sell Great
BEHAVIOR CHANGE - Heading into this year’s Sustainable Brands conference, I was looking forward to driving BMW’s electric prototype that was on display. In hindsight, however, the technical highlight of the show for me was the Tesla Model S. You know, the ones that people were actually driving, with coffee cups in the console and crumbs in the backseat.
Capitals & Commons: A Dialogue with David Bollier, Part One
NEW METRICS - David Bollier is among the foremost global thinkers and advocates for the commons. #NewMetrics channel co-curator Bill Baue recently had the following discussion with Bollier about the potential intersections between the commons movement and emerging concepts and practices in the corporate sustainability movement.
Failure to Communicate: Dry Sustainability Reports a Missed Opportunity
MARKETING AND COMMS - Does your heart sink at the thought of reading yet another sustainability report?Over the last three years I’ve been documenting the ways companies are communicating sustainability online and using social media in particular. Time and time again, even those companies that demonstrate real panache in their sustainability communications fail to make the best use of the research, data and information that goes into their sustainability report. Often, as a result, a company’s most interesting sustainability work is left buried in these dull but worthy publications that no one really reads.
Social Value, Meaningful Brands, Human Capital Valuation Set New Metrics Day One Abuzz
NEW METRICS - As the definition of value continues to evolve, the demand for business to demonstrate its ability to create value of various forms for all stakeholders — and not just profit for shareholders — is increasing, and the question of how this value is identified, measured and communicated becomes paramount. The New Metrics of Sustainable Business Conference has convened some of sustainability’s top minds to examine leading-edge work that is expanding the way business creates, quantifies and manages the value it delivers through the metrics it adopts.
Setting the Table for Sustainable Supply Chain Issues
SUPPLY CHAIN - In this Issue in Focus, we are examining the latest tools and initiatives in sustainable supply chain management. Here, guest editor Dave Meyer offers his perspective on the state and direction of the field.
A Truer Measure of Economic Well-Being? Replacing GDP with GPI, Part Two
NEW METRICS - The chorus decrying the shortcomings of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic well-being has been rising, crescendoing recently with the release of the report by Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen commissioned by then French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Here in the US, states such as Maryland and Vermont are beginning to adopt an alternative to GDP: the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).
A Truer Measure of Economic Well-Being? Replacing GDP with GPI, Part One
NEW METRICS - The chorus decrying the shortcomings of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic well-being has been rising, crescendoing recently with the release of the report by Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen commissioned by then French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Here in the US, states such as Maryland and Vermont are beginning to adopt an alternative to GDP: the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).
Apathetic Consumer Discovers 'Hidden Consequences' of Irresponsible Products in Rainforest Alliance's Latest Video
MARKETING AND COMMS - As the Rainforest Alliance’s third annual Follow the Frog Week comes to a close, we take a look at this year’s campaign video, "Hidden Consequences."
Rubies in the Rubble: Fighting a Culture of Waste One Chutney at a Time
WASTE NOT - In 2010, Jenny Dawson was a couple of years out of university working at a hedge fund company in London. One day, she found herself at a wholesale market where she saw pallets of edible fruit and vegetables going to the waste bin. The food had been grown in neighboring countries in Europe and as far away as Kenya.To Dawson it was sheer madness and an environmental and social travesty that so much good food requiring great resources to grow and transport to London would ultimately end up in the garbage. “Seeing pallets of perfectly good fruit coming in from Kenya destined for the garbage evoked a reaction in me. There must be something we could do. We can’t be this wasteful,” says Dawson.
