Author: Drew Neisser

I almost spilled my coffee this morning when I spied the cover story on Sports Illustrated: “Sports and Global Warming–As the Planet Changes, So Do the Games We Play. Time to Pay Attention.” If ever there was a sign that we’ve reached a tipping point here it was.

The sports industry and sports fan have typically lived in happy oblivion to the world around them. When ever there is a crisis, the sports world digs deep just to figure out whether or not to cancel the big game. Usually they do something to acknowledge the disaster like having a moment of silence and then before the fans lose patience, its time to get back to the game. After all, if we stop playing our games, haven’t “they” won? True sports fans (a group I count myself among) pass over the front page of the newspaper dashing instead to the sports section. The world can wait until we find out who beat who. Sports are our anchor providing proof positive that all is really still right with the world. It is in this context that SI’s cover story seems so significant. Here are some of the highlights from the SI article:

Global warming is not coming; it is here. Greenhouse gases — most notably carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas — are trapping solar heat that once escaped from the Earth’s atmosphere. As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.

All of which is changing the way we play and the sports we watch. Evidence is everywhere of a future hurtling toward us faster than scientists forecasted even a few years ago. Searing heat is turning that rite of passage of Texas high school football, the August two-a-day, into a one-at-night, while at the game’s highest level the Miami Dolphins, once famous for sweating players into shape, have thrown in the soggy towel and built a climate-controlled practice bubble. Even the baseball bat as we know it is in peril, and final scores and outcomes of plays may be altered too.

The article notes how responsible environmental policies can save certain sports and prevent other sports from causing harm:

• Golf courses can dramatically reduce the pesticides they use;
• Stadium can be built to incorporate conservation, sustainability and energy consumption;
• Ski resorts globally are getting less natural snow and struggling to create artificial snow cost-effectively and preserve the snow they do have.

The online edition of the article also provides a number of things that sports fans can do to be greener:

• Join tennis and swimming stars John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Jim Courier, Janet Evans, Aaron Peirsol and others, who are signing on as ambassadors to provide clean water to developing nations with the Global Water Foundation.

• Join the Surfrider Foundation, half of whose members don’t surf — they care about the protection and enjoyment of oceans, waves and beaches.

• Get your name on the Honda Racing Team’s slick new 2007 F1 ride.

• Buy green from the Energy Star program, which features 40 categories of energy-efficient products including appliances, heating, cooling, electronics, lighting, office and commercial food-service products.

• Twelve things you can do from the National Resource Defense Council

• Offset your CO2 emissions with this carbon calculator.

• Subscribe to superbly entertaining Daily Grist for information about the planet.

With this cover story, Sports Illustrated, has thrown down the gauntlet, making it clear to all sports fans that we can no longer ignore the front page headlines in favor of the box scores. Global warming could ruin the big game, the big golf outing, the big fishing trip, the big helicopter skiing adventure. It’s finally time we get our head’s out of the sand trap and save the day.

Was at the PSFK Trends & Ideas conference yesterday morning and had the pleasure of hearing Laurie Rosenwald speak and show some of her portfolio. Laurie, who admitted to me later, spent three years as a stand-up comic, is not surprisingly a wonderfully entertaining speaker. She showed over 40 different pieces of her work ranging from ads (both those that ran and a few slightly obscene ones that didn’t) to book illustrations to posters to magazine covers. It’s worth a trip to her website www.rosenworld.com to see some of her work. Here’s a portion of her bio which will give you a taste of her sense of humor:

Laurie Rosenwald is the World’s Most Commercial Artist and principal of rosenworld. rosenworld’s motto is “No job too big, No job too small, No job too medium.”

The studio’s areas of expertise include drawing, graphic design and typography. They make books, magazines, packaging, logos, and posters. And animation. And portraits.

Actually there is no studio, Miss Rosenwald usually works alone, and rosenworld doesn’t exist. In spite of this, rosenworld.com was launched in 1995.

Laurie Rosenwald’s “New York Notebook” is published by Chronicle Books. It’s a hyperillustrated, overdesigned guidebook, sketchbook, and blank book all mushed up together.

Rosenwald does graphic design for IKEA, animation for Sundance Channel and lots of drawings for The New Yorker magazine. She has some other good clients too, such as Ogilvy, J. Walter Thompson, Sony Music, The New York Times, Fortune, Vintage Books, Coca Cola, Bravo, Nickelodeon, Krow, BHV Paris, Little Brown, Houghton Mifflin, and Knopf. She has worked in Japan, France, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Austria, Germany and the UK. She can speak Swedish like a native New Yorker.

What I really like about Laurie’s work is that it feels real and is filled with child-like wonder. She avoids computer art (with rare exceptions) decrying its perfection. She has spent her career learning “how to make mistakes on purpose” while noting “there is no personality in perfect.” I love that thought—there is no personality in perfect. Laurie’s work is full of her personality; funny, self-deprecating, personal yet easy to grasp and relate to.
I found Laurie’s work and her approach to her work quite inspiring. While I’m certain there is a Marketing for Good opportunity here, I can’t yet put my finger on it. Perhaps a non-profit and a big brand could work with Laurie to create something magical that could help both organizations. Laurie is quite approachable unless she happens to be in Sweden (for which occasions she provides her Swedish phone number–go figure!). Give her a shout. Ya sure ya betcha.

–postscript–

I wasn’t the only one who found Laurie inspiring. Noah Brier pointed me to Grant McCracken who wrote about her extensively on his blog

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A fellow Renegade (thanks Stef) sent me this about a hilarious website promoting a pesky exhibit at the Toronto Zoo:

Lowe Roche (Toronto) is at it again, with another fun piece of marketing for the Toronto Zoo. This time the Toronto Zoo is promoting their second annual Bugzhibitz show, an exhibit of exotic bugs which runs through the first half of March. And they’re using Jeb, the Hissing Cockroach from Madagascar, to help get the word out. I’ve only seen the website, but hopefully there’s some online media being served up to Toronto area people to actually drive them to the site.

So here he is, Jeb…. www.bugsrock.ca

(If you have a strong physical reaction to cockroaches, you might not want to go to the site. But he plays SQUASH! Ha!)

… last summer Lowe Roche launched a campaign for the Toronto Zoo, using similarly unconventional humor to reach a new audience (shift consumers’ perceptions about the quiet, conservative personality of zoos), and remain top of mind with their existing audience. The campaign centered around a group of common animals who were jealous of animals special enough to be collected for zoos. Bitter, actually. And so they staged a number of protest rallies and aired TV spots, in the hopes of getting media attention for their angst. The website is still up at www.jealousanimals.com. The wallpapers are brilliant.

I love all of this stuff. Very funny. As you may remember from an earlier post, I’m a big zoo fan and believe most do a lot of good for the world. I hope Jeb attracts a ton of visitors to his new home.

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A lot of folks have written about the ridiculousness of CareerBuilder’s firing Cramer-Krasselt over their sub-par ranking in the USA Today Super Bowl poll. I too lament this decision as a sad one for our business especially in light of the outstanding business results the Monkey campaign achieved prior to the Super Bowl. Marketing for Good is a firm believer in the power of laughter to build brands. If you any doubts about this power, please read the following excerpts from the memo C-K’s CEO Peter Krivkovich sent to his staff:

Then we had an insight into how to go from chasing the same job seekers as the monster in the category (Monster.com) to going after the much bigger opportunity of those frustrated in their jobs but needing a push to make a switch. It was a gold mine for CareerBuilder and our 360-degree thinking drove it. We made them famous. In less than 36 months, C-K helped put CareerBuilder and their management on the map.

We helped drive up traffic 43%. We grew their awareness by 64%. We helped drive their shares from the low 20s to 40% while driving Monster’s share from 50% down to 36%. We made them No. 1, even while [it was] being outspent three or four to one by Monster.

We also created two of the biggest and hottest sites in internet history. Monk-e-mail is the most-visited site ever. Age-o-matic, at its launch, is more visited than Monk-e-mail was. Of course, we did the phenomenal “I work with a bunch of monkeys” series and “I work in a jungle” TV series.

In truth, I was not a big fan of the most recent monkey ads because frankly I didn’t think they were funny. I thought they were bleak and painful to watch. I assumed at the time that the client was a partner in the decision to move away from monkey slap stick and figured they’d get back to the original shtick faster than you can say “whoopie cushion.” Wrong again, banana breath! Instead, the agency takes the fall and the client moves on. Certainly left more than a few industry heads scratching. Here’s a few of my favorite comments about CareerBuilders’ decision from around the blogosphere:

CareerBuilder is retarded. (b12partners.net) There has to be more to the story. Who fires their agency because of a low-rank in a poll in the fracking U.S. Today? Especially a poll of only 238 people (located in Houston, Tx and McLean, VA). Come on, that’s ridiculous.

CareerBuilder’s ROI on Super Bowl ads is ludicrous (Ed Moed). Yesterday’s news that Cramer-Krasselt resigned the enormous CareerBuilder account came as no surprise to this blogger…However, sometimes agencies needs to accept more responsibility for a colossal account loss (such as this one) than its senior executives would like. It’s still apparent to me that too often agencies fail to set up measurable goals and benchmarks for a campaign (or program) that is agreed to and signed off on by both the agency team and client.

Career Builder’s Absurdity (MarketingInsideOut) Have the people at Career Builder lost their minds? What the hell kind of Kool Aid are they drinking over there? They can’t possiblity be that stupid can they? In what has to be the most absurd of all reasons ever uttered publically, CareerBuilder put its account up for review today saying that the Cramer-Krasselt Super Bowl ads failed to rank in the top 10 in USA Today’s viewer poll.

The point of my post is not to throw more gasoline on the CareerBuilder pyre (though that wouldn’t be hard) but rather to remind us all of the power of a funny idea to help build brands. Monkeys as bosses is a funny notion. It made me laugh as it did millions of job seekers who suddenly became interested in CareerBuilder as a resource. Laughter helped put that brand on the map. And laughter can make the world a better place. Keep it coming.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an interesting article called, “Take My Emissions, Please,” reviewing the various ways consumers can offset their energy use. This growing trend is interesting to me especially as marketers offer customers the option of paying more for offsets:

• Expedia.com and Travelocity.com teamed up with outside companies to let customers pay extra to offset their travel emissions.
• On SkiGreen.org, visitors can buy “green tags” to offset ski trips.
• AT&T donates 50 cents to the National Arbor Day Foundation for customers who choose to receive online statements.
• Dell will plant trees for consumers who pay $2 per notebook or $6 per PC to neutralize their carbon footprints.

• Cliff Bar sells $2 “Cool Tags,” each of which offsets 200 miles worth of driving (which, they acknowledge, is not a major contribution)!

With the average US citizen emitting 21 tons of carbon dioxide per year (versus the global per capita average of 4.5), we have a long way to go before achieving emissions neutrality. According to a study by Tufts University, a full grown tree can only absorb three to 15 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Clearly, we better start planting a lot of trees and begin figuring out what we can do as individuals to cut down our emissions (see earlier post on energy-saving lightbulbs as one easy example).

Marketers can definitely be on the forefront of this emerging movement. Not only can they offer customers the chance to neutralize emissions as a new form of “gift with purchase,” but they also can encourage their companies to find a myriad of ways to improve the eco-friendliness of their entire supply/distribution chain. This in turn will give them more to talk about with their customers. Sounds like Marketing for Good to me.

Red is not my favorite color but I’m thrilled with the success Product (RED) has enjoyed thus far. When I first wrote about the Bono-inspired fund-raising effort back in November, I was simply hopeful that it would become a “poster child” for Marketing for Good. Thanks to a detailed cover story in PROMO magazine, I’m delighted to relay that Product RED is an unequivocal success helping participating marketers sell their products and raise millions for fighting AIDS in Africa. Let’s look at the GAP for example:

Gap has set up RED boutiques in its top 200 stores, and smaller displays in the rest of its nearly 1,300 outlets. The products include T-shirts and jeans…The RED T-Shirt is already the bestseller in Gap’s 35-year history, says Gap spokesperson Erica Archambault. Even better, Gap generated an estimated $60 million to $71 million in revenue and has donated an estimated $2 million to $2.5 million to the Fund, enough to pay for AIDS medication for 14,000 Africans for a year, she adds.

A brief excerpt of a recent speech given by Tamsin Smith, President of (RED), which was posted on the JoinRed blog, provides further evidence of the success of (RED):

To date (RED) sales have generated over $20 million dollars for the Global Fund, which has gone straight into programs focusing on women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Rwanda and Swaziland. Hundreds and thousands of mother, grandmothers, infants and orphans are profiting from (RED) purchasers.

When some folks hear about my job, they sometimes say: “How wonderful of you to do what you do for people you don’t even know.” And I tell them: “I do what I do for me. I do it for how good it feels.” That’s to me is what will make (RED) a huge success at the end of the day. It empowers, it connects, it inspires – things that do that are things that you do over and over again. That’s what will sustain this effort… We never want anyone to shop (RED) out of guilt. Shop (RED) out of love. Shop (RED) for the sheer joy of it.

Not everyone shares my point-of-view regarding the (RED) effort. Ann Handley reports on her Daily Fix blog:

An interesting response to the ubiquitous (RED) campaign kicked off yesterday in San Francisco.
The BUY (LESS) campaign—with its tagline “Shopping Is Not a Solution” and the pointed domain name of BuyLessCrap—is spearheaded by words pictures ideas (WPI) and Romantic Static as a direct dis of corporate cause marketing efforts, but particularly Project (RED), launched in the fall of 2006 by Bono and to engage the private sector in the fight against AIDS in Africa by chanelling funds from the sale of (RED) products to the Global Fund.

BuyLessCrap is actually quite an amusing parody and is also an indication of the broad exposure (RED) has achieved thus far. You don’t go to the trouble of creating an elaborate parody like this unless you know lots of people are familiar with the idea. I suspect the folks at (RED) are laughing too since this continues the dialog and provides further proof of the pervasiveness of their concept.

The brilliance of (RED) is that it designed to be a win, win, win from the beginning. Marketers win because they sell more product and burnish their reputations. Consumers win because they buy things they would have bought anyway and can feel better about their purchases knowing some of the money they spent goes to a good cause. The Global Fund wins because they have established a continuous revenue steam for AIDS relief ($20mm so far) and built awareness of the importance of this relief effort. This win, win, win scenario is the very essence of Marketing for Good.

–update

Rohit Bhargava had some smart insights about this campaign on his Influential Interactive Marketing blog  today.