50

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Could you live with only 50 posessions?

Take an inventory of all that you have.  What's your number?

Selling the unseen. Marketing the undone.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

This recent post on Treehugger got me thinking about how Transparency has another edge to it.  It tends to be looked at from a marketing perspective, but what about from a progress perspective?

Below is a copy of my reply:

Pretend you are a very large multi-national corporation.  Now pretend you have 27 Sustainability initiatives underway.  Some of them are big.  Some of them are small. All of them are being done for a mix of reasons.  CEO-directive, fulfilling Sustainability programs, cost-reduction, and yes, even public relation opportunities.

Your competitors are doing the same thing.

Here’s the question:  How would you communicate this to the world? 

You may set some vapid 20xx goals.  You may publish some in a GRI report.  But likely, you’ll keep your mouth shut on the innovative stuff. 

Today, Sustainability programming is a competitive advantage, like product development, pricing, distribution plans and marketing campaigns.  It’s a race.  A secret, secret race.

Now imagine that you customer is interested in Sustainability.  Maybe some of them are hungry for it.  Maybe some have it in their ‘peripherals’. 

So, one of your initiatives gets completed.  Say, a compostable cup launched at a major university years ahead of a legal mandate for such a cup.  Do you announce it?

Of course.

Do you also reveal your other 26 initiatives?  No.  Why not?

Because (1) you are in competition with other similar companies who may be doing similar projects and first to market wins the prize; and (2) if you announce and fail to deliver it’s a bigger black eye than not bringing it up in the first place.

This is Transparency in Capitalism’s red-headed stepchild.  How do we encourage competitive industries to be more transparent in the face of competition?  Some industries and leaders are better than others at this.  Transparency isn’t just about marketing; it’s about sharing technology to advance Sustainability, quickly.

So, while we marketers, bloggers, and eco-entrepreneurs are running around trying to change consumer culture, someone needs to start focusing on changing corporate cultures.

Notes on New Years

Friday, January 02, 2009

A few observations from New Years eve as I sat quietly consuming all that TV had to offer.

1.  Everything is Brought To You By something else.  Originality is dead and everything is for sale.  People kissing in Time Square is brought to you by Scope.  If it can be, it is sold.  I think we will see some reaction to this.

2.  The Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Even with Ryan Seacrest Prime Time logo was as ridiculously convoluted as the name.

3.  Pepsi won the night with the most overwhelingly positie spots of the night.

4.  There was a fair amount of guilt this year for being ostentatious.   Seacrest seemed to be almost apologetic as he explained that the lights were LEDs and what their footprint was.  Forgive us.

5.  But the night seemed to do its job.  The next day there were plenty of emails with the general sentiment that people "glad 2008 is over" - as if midnight was magic.  But we need those moments.  We need to create time and space of change.  Time Sq. is a perfect representation of that.  We are a myth-based society that needs ritual as badly as any one before us.  New Years highlights this.

Deflation Today... Ecoflation Tomorrow

Thursday, December 11, 2008

We’ve heard of (and felt) deflation lately, but what about “ecoflation”?  A recent study shows that certain consumer goods (like cereal) will be more expensive in the future due to climate change impacts.

According to the study, companies that sell certain types of consumer products (like  food, beverages, household products) could face significant earnings reductions if they don’t implement sustainable environmental strategies.  Mr. Andrew Aulisi, director of WRI’s Markets and Enterprise Program said, “The Ecoflation scenario is a vision of a future where companies have to deal with environmental costs previously borne by society.”

The analysis, called “Rattling Supply Chains: The Effect of Environmental Trends on Input Costs to the Fast Moving Consumer Goods Industry” was performed by the World Resources Institute (the same folks who brought us the Greenhouse Gas Protocol) and A.T. Kearney, Inc. Read more about the report here.