This is a must-watch video. It’s a presentation by Jesse Schell, founder of Schell Games and former creative director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio. A veteran game designer, he is also on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He speaks about how games have taken on an ever important part of our lives. Going beyond classic gamers, games today(e.g. Farmville, Mafia Wars, Webkids, etc.) are the cognitive chewing gum for marketers, both for their psychological appeal as well as their stickiness. Taken to an extreme, this can look pretty scary. Schell ends the speech on a relatively positive note with a call to arms for game developers to step up and take responsibility for the future of the game narrative in our lives. Seems like that will be a tough road when up against Coke, Nike, Kellogg’s and Disney.

In Richard Seireeni’s recent article on Huff Post he outlines some of the concepts behind why people make the green choice. Of course, it’s never as simple as templating these things. Each of our clients requires its own individualistic approach, and the solutions are always a little different, and a lot unique.

The drivers for Southwest Windpower’s Skystream micro-turbine were more complex than we could have guessed and helped us with our communications and messaging strategies, but with Puget Sound Energy, it was essentially as simple as “how can I save on my electric bill?” Sure, there is still that small segment of the population that wants to actually pay a bit more for “green” power, but we devise a strategy that takes these varying segments into account in the context of the overall business, and marketing goals.

The title here is somewhat provocative in the wake of the news that Toyota may recall its iconic Prius. The headline seems to have become: Save the Planet. Kill Yourself. Not necessarily the best headline for green as innovation. I think this is a serious and unfortunate blow both to the fortunes of a great car company, as well as the larger “movement” towards sustainability. Just like that, many people now have that momentary initial brand impression that the “green” solution(as embodied in the Prius as icon for green) is not as technically advanced as we thought. In fact, it’s the opposite—it’s deadly. What a brand blow! Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Toyota’s crisis management can spin this back into the right frame for people quickly. We need the Prius now more than ever.

Would you work on a fast food account? Fried chicken? How about fried chicken with gobs of sodium and preservatives but no trans fats and they list the calories on the bucket and they do a separate “Hey, kids, don’t be a fatty!” campaign and put jungle gyms and salad bars at select locations? Does obesity run in your family? Diabetes? Coronary disease?

Would you sell sugary children’s yogurt to moms as a healthy snack choice? Would you bypass the moms and go right at the kids with animated spots starring skateboarding alligators and surfing polar bears on Nickelodeon programming?

How about an oil company? Would you take a creative director’s position running the account of one of the world’s biggest petrochemical companies if it meant a raise and an expense account and an office with eleven more ceiling tiles than that of your nemesis? Would you sleep better at night if your first assignment for mega-oil company was to do a global ad campaign about all the wonderful things it is doing for the environment, even if the media buy for the campaign cost more than the sum total of all the wonderful things they are doing for the environment?

Would the fact that you drive a Prius and intend to switch to compact fluorescent bulbs in less visible parts of your house make doing potentially award winning work for the maker of an SUV that gets eleven miles per gallon easier to stomach?

Thank you for this book, James.

When the rationalization wore down, you left the business, became a journalist, and wrote a book about it. We started an agency.

I am a supporter of the DDB brand. I was ECD there and have almost nothing but good things to say about the agency. And I will always be a fan of Bill Bernbach because he broke the rules and made the industry better. But I was a bit taken aback by the headline in the LA Times recently “Ad Campaign Tries to Elevate ‘Made in China’ tag’s cachet.” that describes an ad campaign DDB had done for China to polish its image so that American consumers might have a more favorable outlook on Chinese-made goods. Here are a few points to consider:

1. Some nations are becoming more aggressive in their efforts to combat what they see as unfair practices that have helped China siphon millions of global manufacturing jobs (from the US and others) on its way to becoming the world’s factory floor.

2. China has export restrictions on key raw materials such as bauxite, which raises the prices for foreign buyers and gives Chinese firms a low-cost manufacturing advantage.

3. The United States, whose trade deficit with China was nearly $166 billion through the first nine months of the year, recently slapped tariffs on low-cost Chinese-made tires and steel pipe.

4. Although some Chinese factories have been linked to the production of dangerous toys, melamine-tainted pet food and other shoddy products, many produce high-quality goods for well-known companies, including Apple, Nike and Caterpillar.

5. China was roiled by a high-profile milk scandal in which dairy producers sickened thousands of children with a chemical additive.

6. In the U.S., Chinese drywall is suspected of making U.S. homeowners sick and corroding pipes and wires. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a major investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints from consumers in more than 30 states.

7. The agency is also scrutinizing Chinese-made all-terrain vehicles over concerns that faulty brakes and sharp handlebars could injure young riders. About 800 have been recalled since last summer.

“Most people would be pretty cynical about” the campaign, said Paul Midler, author of “Poorly Made in China,” a book that examined how Chinese manufacturers’ drive for bigger profits often compromised quality. “I’m not sure using PR can turn the tide and change behavior.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Madison Avenue is for sale to the highest bidder, but I am still surprised at the seemingly conflict ridden relationships that our industry takes on. And lack of compunction.

In what has already seemed like a busy sustainability conference season, The Action for a Sustainable America Conference in Seattle finished up this week, which focused on sustainability as a driver of corporate strategy – rather than, say, just having a green product line, or an aim for carbon neutrality.

A good opening keynote was provided by Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist from Microsoft, who tells an inspiring story about the compostable cup he discovered at a small ice cream store while on vacation at the Oregon shore, which led to Microsoft’s now seemingly comprehensive and far-reaching view on sustainability. For a moment or two there, the romance of the story almost overcame the befuddlement in the discovery that such a powerful and supposed strategic organization should have no proactive view on such an important issue.

Our session, titled “When should marketing get involved in sustainability strategy,” and led by Marc Daudon of Cascadia Consulting, provoked some healthy conversation. Covered were questions like: Is sustainability a marketable attribute? Should sustainable companies market the fact? What in marketing terms and public perception is the difference between sustainable and green? Where do companies get their marketing strategies wrong when it comes to sustainability, and what are the greenwash flags?

Flanked by the sharp Laurie Demeritt, President & COO of Hartman Group, representing the consumer research side, and the frank and humorous David Quigg, Director of Marketing of Gray’s Harbor Paper, presenting the business case, the panel engaged with the audience on the overarching themes around marketing and sustainability.

See you at LOHAS?

Question if they really need your offering
Think hard about what you’re selling. Question it from every angle, and ask yourself it it’s truly necessary. Change is afoot. Peer-to-peer networks are developing powerful alternatives to gratuitous consumption — fashionistas exchange unwanted clothing at “swishing” parties; couchsurfing.com makes hotels obsolete; freecycling, freeganism, and all manner of “borrowing” networks are emerging day by day. These trends challenge conventional purchasing models at every step. So ask yourself what you truly want to give people, whether they truly need it, and — crucially — if they might just find another way to get it. Challenge your own sustainability practices at every point, and we might just make it through alive.

That’s it for our protracted series of marketing sustainability in these tough times. Let us know what you thought.

image from www.huffingtonpost.com

The latest swine flu scare presents the perfect example of how the path to sustainability is just that, a path. Move ahead a little, move back a little—and then hopefully move ahead a little more. So how do a bunch of lifelong enviro-loving, sustainably-minded, path-walking-and-talking marketing people deal with a little global pandemic? Same as a lot of folks: with just a smidgeon of socially acceptable paranoia. Here’s a brief run-down of the past weeks:

The Path: One Step Forward
• Walked to neighborhood shops instead of big-box germ factories.
• Cooked own food. Added bonus: avoided stray sneezes in takeout line.
• Nesting vs. Rampant Consumerism, Round One: planted garden, painted little seed marker signs with non-toxic paint, made arts and crafts using recycled paper and old yarn. Nesting wins.
• Went for a hike to unite with nature and sweet, sweet, uncontaminated air.

The Path: Two Steps Back
• Drove car 60 miles to get to said sweet, sweet air.
• Used large volumes of hot water while washing hands for recommended length of time (as long as it takes to sing the ABCs, three times if you’re OCD.)
• In effort to avoid crowded grocery store, had groceries delivered to front door via big, smelly truck. In disposable bags.
• Bought ten bottles of the only alcohol-based hand-sanitizer left on the shelf: half-ounce purse-size in coordinating snow leopard motif.

The Path: One Step Forward Again
• Hysteria lessens enough to venture back into the bus tunnel without sharing panicked glances with everyone on the platform, wondering if they’re going to sneeze.
• Already getting excited about numerous reuses for empty snow leopard bottles.

The path to sustainability is full of detours like these, and well-meaning Going Greens all over town have been looking out for numero uno just a little bit more these past weeks. But in the meantime, here’s to the dormant season. Maybe this “close call” will give us just the courage we need to peek at our bank accounts again.

Understand the deep roots of the sustainability movement.
This will give you the deepest clues about what to do, how to express it, and what conscious consumers really want. To understand a movement, we must look to the beliefs of its innovators and early adopters — this it where it all begins. Sustainability is not a fad or a trend. It’s a seismic cultural shift, and it’s here to stay. Most of our evolutionary history has been spent living sustainably. To the extreme conscious consumer (who would probably balk at the word “consumer”), our current unsustainable mess of a burning planet is seen as a big socio-cultural mistake facilitated by short-sighted application of technological innovation and the amoral reach of unchecked capitalism. Mental illness is, quite understandably, at an all-time high (50% of Americans suffer from clinical levels of stress, anxiety, depression, or personality disorders.) People feel less and less in control of their lives nowadays, and want to gain a sense of peace and purity and balance and real interpersonal connection and soulful depth in their day-to-day existence. And so, things are finally changing. We’re just beginning to come out of a dark age now, and there’s no turning back. Record numbers of MBA students want to incorporate sustainability into their careers; 80% of Fortune 500 companies have CSR reports. Yes, nobody is really there yet – watching corporations take steps towards sustainability is like watching an infant learn to crawl. But we’ll get there. As innovators, we can see that the rest of the world has no choice. They’ll have to catch up, or there will be no more world to live in. As we ease out of decadent late capitalism and into a more sustainable way of life, transparency, authenticity, balance, egalitarianism and distributed models will become the norm – it’s just a matter of time.

Give freely—but carefully—to build brand love
Given that people will, realistically, have trouble affording you, be generous. Very generous. And if you do this with free stuff and loyalty programs, rather than price reductions, people will love you all the more. Price reductions cheapen your brand; thoughtfully-architected giveaways feel like gifts and create deep feelings of attachment. During the Great Depression, movie theatres used to give away sets of silverware — piece by piece, week by week — and played to full houses even in the worst of times. Sampling is one of the most powerful known tactics for food products — 24% of people, when given an in-store sample of a product, will buy it instead of the product they intended to buy. So give things away. Give freely and cleverly, and people will flock to your brand, especially in times like these, when a generous sample will take on heightened significance to a heart more accustomed to privations.

Strategy 7: Attract with your values—not your pricing
Don’t condescend to people with heavy-handed “value” messaging, which has become ubiquitous during the past few months and shows no sign of abating. As a brand in the sustainability space, you’re focused on a triple bottom line, and your core consumers care about this. By suddenly focusing on cost, you risk seeming manipulative and off-brand. People are perfectly capable of figuring out whether they can afford you or not. “Green” products have had enough trouble gaining traction during the past decade because of premium pricing (among other reasons), and now would not be a great time to draw attention to the not-so-small matter that products and services in this space tend to cost a little bit more. Conscious consumers aren’t buying your product because you’re the cheapest – this was never your value proposition, and never should be. You know about true cost economics, and so do your core consumers. And even the “mid-range” consumers know that “you have to pay a little more” for things that are safer or higher-quality. Don’t compromise your values at a time like this. (But if you’re way out in eco-luxury land, you might have more of an uphill battle these days. Take solace in the fact that even during the Great Depression, low-key luxury still flourished and 75% of people were employed. And that “green” came to be associated with quality and innovation before the 2008 market crash, so its cachet is actually based on something real.)