Archive for the 'Green' Category

22
Apr
09

earth day

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: Green and PR Stunts
Tags: ,

earthday11

Since today is Earth Day, we thought we would write about a company that is doing their part to make our world greener.

King 5 News (Seattle,WA) reported today that Jones Soda’s corporate headquarters has taken itself completely off the power grid today.  How is this possible?

Jones employees, using a system developed by the applied physics lab at University of Washington, will ride nine bicycles throughout the day to power their office.  The system uses the momentum from the bicycles to continuously recharge numerous batteries.  These batteries direct the power to a main source and this source is essentially what will power their office today.

I think this is really exciting. Especially since they have asked residents of the community to come by and help peddle.

Click here for the video

22
Jan
09

Green still lives

By Beth Hardy Leave a Comment
Categories: Communications, Environment, Green, Marketing and PR

This morning Travis wrote about the green backlash and how we must tread carefully through it. Although PR and marketing pros need to be careful about how they market their clients, especially paying attention to credibility, not all green communications is bad these days.

According to Margo Mateas, the media relations maven, “green and eco-friendly stories will be important [in 2009], but only as they show others how to become more environmentally responsible – or demonstrate cutting-edge breakthroughs that will alter the way we do things on a grand scale.”

So it seems consumers don’t want stories that shove “green” in their faces. Unless your organization or client just invented the first car that runs on air, people are looking for practical, real-world solutions to reducing their carbon footprint and living a more sustainable lifestyle.

The Bulldog Reporter’s Daily ‘Dog ran a story late last year highlighting a recent campaign that followed these rules and “capitalized on true, effective green ethics.” It was an integrated campaign by The Rogers Group for Bosch:

“The campaign was a year-long effort that included aggressive media relations, partnerships and promotions—and signature events like the ‘100 Mile Menu,’ an organic, locally sourced meal prepared on Bosch’s latest cook-tops before the eyes of VIP New York media. The campaign garnered 125 million media impressions, including articles in The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek.”

This example proves that green products are still of interest to the media and consumers if positioned appropriately. As PR practitioners, we just need to work a little harder to highlight the stories that provide a benefit to the public.

22
Jan
09

Is “green” the new Britney Spears?

By Tracy Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Celebrities, Green, Marketing and trends

We love to promote the heck out of something and then tear it down. Britney Spears is this generation’s poster child for such behavior. I admit that I don’t really feel bad for victims of this process. Probably because I tend to dislike everything from the get-go, so I avoid this little dance. However, I like things that are “green.” And what does my devotion get me? That’s right, “green” is now on the chopping block.

Brand Week published an article last week about the inevitability of the green backlash. Here’s how it starts:

light“The signature spiral shape of the compact fluorescent light bulb has become, in many ways, a symbol of all things “green.”… but, upon deeper investigation, they are actually far worse for the environment (and the human race), than they are good.”

Here we go. Apparently everyone’s favorite new light bulb is filled with mercury and when we throw them all away in twenty years, they will flood our rivers and poison us and we will die. Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but you can bet there are people out there who will tell their friends about the situation in just this way.

We have to be careful that, during this backlash, we don’t undo all of the good that has come of our desire to be greener. While we should definitely annex the products and companies that claim to be green but in fact have not done much at all to better our planet, we should also remember that this new drive has prepared us all to move our entire society into an era of new energy and of new thinking.

As far as the light bulbs go, we all know what’s going to happen there…Jeremy Piven is going to claim he ate too many of them and got mercury poisoning and GMA is going to give him air time for it.

Today’s lesson = don’t believe the hype…on either side of the spectrum.

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