How brands are successfully communicating their sustainability efforts — and how their stakeholders are asserting their own needs and preferences
Rainforest Alliance has announced a new platform for its annual Follow the Frog campaign. In partnership with the Guardian, Follow the Frog 2014 will be a 10-month integrated experience designed to foster engagement with a growing population that cares about sustainability and want to take action in their daily lives.
A provocative new documentary called PUMP, produced by Submarine Deluxe, in association with Fuel Freedom Foundation and iDeal Film Partners, is opening in limited release next week.Directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, and narrated by Jason Bateman, the film “tells the story of America's addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it — and finally win choice at the pump.”
First published by Net Impact in 2006, 'Business as UNusual' is the only publication for students, by students that ranks and highlights graduate schools at the forefront of social and environmental innovation.
How can you persuade people to make responsible purchasing decisions? It isn’t an easy question. Vast global industries have been built up around understanding and influencing the tangled web of decisions and motivations that take place when buying products or services.Price and quality are common factors. But as awareness increases around the environmental challenges currently facing the world then sustainability is becoming an ever-greater motivator.
A new documentary TV series, “Food Forward,” highlights the range of issues created and affected by our increasingly unsustainable food ecosystem, as well as the “food rebels” helping to transform it. The 13-episode series premieres on PBS on September 4.“Food Forward” highlights farmers, ranchers, chefs, scientists, teachers and fishermen in more than 50 US communities who are part of a rising urban agriculture, building local food systems and contributing to a cleaner, more sustainable economy. Interestingly, many of the methods modeled by these food revisionists emulate more traditional farming, ranching and fishing models.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) has announced it is launching a modernization initiative that will improve the process and increase transparency for making Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) determinations of ingredients added to food.GMA will take the lead in defining a standard that will provide clear guidance on how to conduct transparent ingredient safety assessments. These procedures will be documented in a Publicly Available Standard (PAS) for GRAS determinations. The PAS will be a science-based framework that specifies a rigorous and transparent ingredient safety assessment process. The procedures included in the PAS will also ensure GRAS assessments meet the regulatory requirements of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
Last month my colleague, Trish Wheaton, made a case for why the Sustainability conversation needs to shift from the typical “eco-babble” — high-minded and preachy — into something more relatable and consumer-driven. She describes “a new global vanguard of consumers with co-existing values and traits [who] care about the planet and ... love to shop” as the new group around which to shape the sustainability narrative.Who are these consumers? I took a deeper dive to define their values, and discover what marketers and sustainability officers can do to better connect with them.Who is “Generation World?”
Gaming, particularly role-playing games (RPGs), is increasingly serious business — US retail revenue from the video game industry was estimated at $887 million as of February 2014, and the global video game industry now exceeds $76 billion with projections of $86 billion plus by 2016.
Fashion designer Kenneth Cole, a champion of social change throughout his 30-year career, is introducing a new campaign for Fall 2014 called “Look Good, For Good.” Building upon the company’s heritage of promoting “style with a purpose,” as well as Cole’s personal interest in raising awareness for these causes, the new campaign will support charitable projects through the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti, HELP USA, and the Sundance Institute, which represent three company pillars — Collective Health, Civil Liberties and Artistic Activism.
Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has announced the launch of its annual World Hunger Relief effort, the “Pass The Red Cup” challenge, featuring multi-Grammy Award winner Christina Aguilera. The challenge is designed to drive awareness and inspire donations and the effort spans more than 125 countries, over 40,000 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants and 1.5 million associates.
WPP, Weber Shandwick, Waggener Edstrom (WE) Worldwide and several others in the top 25 global PR firms have told the Guardian they will not represent clients who deny man-made climate change, or take campaigns seeking to block regulations limiting carbon pollution.
Participant Media, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this week launched a new multi-platform series, TakePart World, which investigates the myths and misconceptions people across the globe have about the developing world. The year-long series spotlights the faces and voices of those driving progress towards a sustainable future for the world’s poorest.
Of the 50 certified wineries, surprisingly, only three have opted to display the Napa Green logo on their labels — despite the time and cost involved in obtaining those certifications — so, I dug a little deeper.
McDonald’s Canada’s experience is evidence that social media is pushing transparency mainstream, and that for them the risks have been worth the rewards of increased customer trust.
The word sustainability, first used around 1727, is derived from the Latin sustinere (tenere, to hold; sus, up). By that definition, sustainability just got a boost at the recent Cannes Film Festival as superstar musician/activist Bono was awarded the inaugural Cannes LionHeart award for his humanitarian work.Bono used the occasion to call on the global advertising community to become the "creative engine of capitalism" and "the world’s thermostat" to tackle problems such as AIDS.
You may be wondering about the word holonomics. Although the word was first used in 1896 to describe a branch of mathematics, we coined a new definition for the word, which can be thought of as the combination of the words economics and wholeness.My wife Maria and I are the co-authors of the book Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter, and this describes a new way of thinking, which teaches business leaders and managers how to respond, adapt and communicate in new, innovative ways. This new way of thinking, which we call holonomic thinking, can of course be applied to branding.
For the second year in a row, I was in Cannes last month doing a Palais session on marketing sustainability. This year, I was joined by my colleague Chip Walker, director of global planning for Young & Rubicam. Our strategic planning workshop was called “Beyond Eco-Babble: How to Change the Conversation Around Social Good.”Cannes has extremely stringent criteria for its sessions and getting on the program is akin to winning a Lion. In response to my initial proposal, the organizers told me that while they view marketing sustainability as critically important and definitely wanted to include it as a workshop, as a topic it can be too serious, a bit of a mood-kill and not very much fun.
Greenpeace continued its campaign against LEGO on Tuesday with the release of a dramatic video, called “Everything Is NOT Awesome,” aimed at further illustrating the reasons the toy company should sever its ties with Shell, which Greenpeace contends is putting the delicate Arctic marine environment at risk through its oil drilling.
When an irreverent spoof video can increase web traffic to the Affordable Care Act website by 40% in less than a day, understanding why can help your brand better communicate with young consumers.
A new “women-owned” label on goods will appear in Walmarts nationwide this fall, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.In recent years, many brands have responded to growing customer trends to purchase products they deem ecologically and socially ethical by slapping everything from “certified organic” to “locally sourced” to "GMO-free" onto product packages. But this is the first time a major retailer is using labels to spotlight products by women-owned companies.