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Top 13 Twitter Trends from SB '13

Twitter was buzzing with our hashtag during SB ’13. With a total of 8,426 tweets and over 32 million impressions during the conference alone, there was lots of great material being shared with the mighty Twittersphere. In line with our new tradition of hot lists, we now present the top 13 #sb13con trends from the week of SB ’13. Check below to see what got re-tweeted the most!

• 1. McDonough’s Memes

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William McDonough’s thought-heavy presentation was, somewhat expectedly, the most tweeted topic of the week. One of the most popular quotes from his Tuesday evening plenary proclaimed, “Why be less bad when you can be more good?” He insisted that being less bad, even having the goal of “zero” impact, is insufficient, and companies should go for upcycling solutions instead.

• 2. McDonough Announces Partnership with Waste Management

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That same evening, McDonough also announced his exciting new partnership with Waste Management. The Waste Management McDonough Sustainable Innovation Collaborative will focus on developing sustainable packaging. He committed to ‘looking up from dumpsters’ and asking those at the top of many supply chains to think more carefully about everything they are passing on.

• 3. BMW i

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BMW i generated quite the buzz following Uwe Dreher’s plenary talk “A Future Without Tradeoffs: BMW i’s Path to a Sustainably Beautiful Future.” Not only did BMW build an electric vehicle, but they made it at a new plant powered solely by renewable sources, using sustainable FSC certified eucalyptus wood, leather treated without harsh chemicals, and featuring technology informing the driver of the most energy-efficient routes. Dreher emphasized that BMW has given the BMW i team a great amount of autonomy needed to create such a vehicle from the ground up.

• 4. The Aspirationals

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The Aspirationals represent an emerging market of one billion consumers who place importance on social values, sustainability, connectivity, sharing and style. The psychographic was emphasized during a research roundtable workshop sharing fresh consumer insights vital to the SB community.

• 5. Millennials

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The topic of millennials came up frequently during the conference — both in terms of job market talent and also as consumers contributing as a major component of the emerging Aspirational market.

• 6. The Economy Is Not a Law of Nature

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Rich Fernandez, former Senior People Development Lead at Google, was part of the opening night panel following the moving screening of the documentary, I AM. The theme of the night was “What’s Wrong with the World and How to Fix It.” Fernandez was joined by Neal Gorenflo of Shareable magazine, Tom LaForge of Coca-Cola, Jo Confino of The Guardian and Joe Brewer of Darwin SF.

The panel was moderated by our own founder and CEO KoAnn Skrzyniarz and focused on the big-picture flaws of the current global economic system, which has devolved from a structure that optimizes collective well-being into one more akin to a competitive money sport, where an increasing divide exists between the winners and losers, and the playing field suffers from the game. As I AM smartly points out, no one can be neutral on a moving train.

• 7. Digging Up Your Own Dirty Laundry

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This sentiment comes from Bryan Welch’s plenary talk, “Vision: The Key to a Beautiful Future.” Bryan is the publisher of Mother Earth News and the author of Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want. He asserted that for every $20 million in revenue (arbitrary figure he picked to make his point), a company should hire a journalist to expose the negative impacts of their business before external stakeholders discover said impacts. It might make you smile, but his bigger point stands and is especially true for multinationals: Very few companies, if any, are completely on top of their own story.

• 8. Data on the Emotions of Sustainability

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Renee Lertzman and other participants in the Consumer Insights workshop, led by Coke’s Tom LaForge, analyzed tricky emotions involved in both perceiving and communicating sustainability in all its complexity. John Havens, Founder of the H(app)athon Project, made a compelling case for unleashing what he calls the Personal Data Economy.

• 9. Going Far, Together

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Hailey Broderick is the Brand Manager of Global Sustainability Programs at Puma and presented during workshops on both Tuesday and Wednesday. This African proverb has been quoted many times in sustainability — notably by Al Gore — but it is still relevant and embodies the spirit of our community. June Holder of UPS was part of a multi-brand working workshop on HR as a Tool for Embedding Sustainability for Transformational Change.

• 10. The Importance of Shifting Frames, including Your Own

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John Marshall Roberts’ research with Shelton Group has led to the conclusion that four major worldviews exist today — absolutistic, individualistic, humanistic and systemic (read more about them here) — and that these views can be used to frame sustainability messages in a meaningful way for the target audience. McDonough and many others in our community are all about shifting frames, too, of course.

• 11. Terminology Tipping Point(s)

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This quote speaks to the movement toward integrated sustainability, rather than external or disconnected CSR campaigns. Many speakers, including McDonough, emphasized the importance of integrated sustainability. This has been the case for a few years now, but it’s still worth mentioning.

• 12. Maximizing Efficiency: UPS’ ‘No Left Turns’ Policy

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Steve Leffin, Director of Sustainability at UPS, spoke during a breakout discussion entitled, “The Paradox of E-Commerce: A Quest to Reduce Footprints Through Process and Business Model Innovation.” Leffin was joined by Bonnie Nixon of Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. and Tom Day of USPS. UPS has been avoiding left turns for decades in order to save time, conserve fuel, lower emissions and increase safety. Read more about their study here.

• 13. The Power of Video in Sustainability Communications

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Many videos were shown during the week. While you can see the 20 most influential videos we showed in this neat compilation, here are the top four on the basis of Twitter buzz alone: Unilever’s latest Lifebuoy ad, the sensational Follow the Frog by the Rainforest Alliance, Landfill Harmonic and this highly-entertaining Saatchi S geese video. Enjoy!