Author: Drew Neisser

Just got this letter from Fresh Direct CEO Steve Michaelson. It is a terrific example of Marketing for Good, providing even more reasons to feel good about using this incredibly convenient, reasonably priced and reliable service:

At FreshDirect, we’ve always been proud to be a homegrown NYC
business. With that thought in mind, we believe we have a
responsibility to serve our customers with an eye toward a healthy,
prosperous future for our neighbors and the city we all love.

Though we’re still a very young company (as of this summer we’re
just five years old), we intend to act as responsible environmental
stewards and to work toward better serving our neighborhood while we
take care of both customers and employees.

FreshDirect will accomplish this in several ways:

1. CUTTING EMISSIONS FROM OUR DELIVERY TRUCKS.
We love that our trucks have become a mass transit system for food,
each one replacing the many cars and cabs that would otherwise be
used to bring families and food together. We’re committed to making
our trucks as clean-burning and low-impact as possible.

FreshDirect has partnered with Tri-State Biodiesel, a NYC-based
company dedicated to providing the region with clean, renewable
biodiesel sources. Tri-State uses cooking oil donated from our
kitchen for use in non-toxic diesel fuel. In the next year, we plan
to initiate biodiesel use in 100% of our delivery fleet. This action
will both reduce emissions and cut back our use of fossil fuel products.

Additionally, we are working with the city to identify locations for
electrical outlets so we can plug in our trucks and refrigerate
using electric engines. We hope to have our first plug-in truck in
mid-2008.

2. REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF WASTE WE PRODUCE.
We recently switched our delivery boxes in favor of boxes that use
100% recycled fiber content – no virgin fibers are needed in any
FreshDirect box. We’re proud to announce that within the next 3
years, we’ll eliminate nearly all of our cardboard delivery boxes,
replacing them with recyclable plastic totes and grocery bags. Since
our facility was designed with cardboard boxes in mind, switching
our systems will involve a complex re-engineering process. We
believe these efforts will drastically reduce our use of cardboard
and eliminate any challenges we currently face with under-packed boxes.

3. FEEDING OUR NEEDIEST NEIGHBORS.
We work hard to make sure that surplus food doesn’t go to waste.
Accordingly, FreshDirect is one of City Harvest’s largest food
suppliers, helping them to feed New York’s neediest. We were
recognized this year for “extraordinary dedication,” and we intend
to maintain that level of commitment.

4. INCREASING THE AMOUNT OF LOCAL PRODUCTS WE SELL.
Forging partnerships with good people doing good work has been a
FreshDirect hallmark for years, and few companies sell more local
products. Buying from farms, orchards, dairies and fisheries in the
Tri-state area reduces the use of fossil fuels, supports artisanal
craftsmanship and stimulates our local economy. During the next
year, we will further extend our commitment to local producers and
work to bring you even more options for locally-based eating.

5. PROVIDING EVEN MORE INFORMATION TO HELP CUSTOMERS MAKE INFORMED
CHOICES.
Environmental choices are often complicated, highly personal
decisions. That’s why FreshDirect believes in offering customers the
opportunity to make informed choices for themselves and their
families. We will continue to deliver on that commitment by looking
for new ways to deliver quality food alongside thorough information.
In the coming year, we’ll work to increase our selection of fish
certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. And by
the end of 2007, our Seafood Department will display the
sustainability status on each product.

These commitments demonstrate just a few of the ways we’re working
to make FreshDirect a sustainable company and a good neighbor within
our community. We look forward to keeping you up-to-date on our
progress in the months and years to come.

Best Regards,

Steve Michaelson
FreshDirect President and CEO

All these initiatives *enhance* the core value proposition of Fresh Direct. Hopefully, their efforts to do good will result in even higher customer loyalty–certainly, they can count my family among their biggest fans.

Wes Anderson’s new movie Darjeeling Unlimited launched this weekend. I won’t ruin it for you by saying too much other than to say that it was a fun ride. The buzz about the movie is quite positive. Here’s what the ever-insightful Flavorpill had to say:

Director Wes Anderson may be the best aesthetician working today in
film, but not since 1998’s Rushmore have any of his projects boasted
a substance even approaching his tremendous style. Happily, The
Darjeeling Limited redeems that early promise and then some. Jason
Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Owen Wilson (sporting injuries that
spookily forebode his recent real-life troubles) star as three
estranged brothers embarking on a spiritual quest through India.
Though these boys don’t remotely resemble each other, they achieve a
fraternal chemistry — all deadpan humor and hangdog glamour — that
hurdles them, in a turquoise-and-pink train, toward their (and
Anderson’s) true adulthood.

If you have seen any of Anderson’s other movies like The Life Aquatic or The Royal Tennenbaums, you know you can expect a quirky movie that is sure to surprise and delight. What you might not have expected is an interesting bit of marketing innovation. Rather than simply coming out with the typical trailer, Anderson produced a 13-minute prequel which he hopes everyone will watch online (available free at the iTunes store) before seeing the feature. And like the dutiful Anderson fan, I did just that.

I won’t review the prequel, called the Hotel Chevalier, other than to say it is like a shard of bitter sweet chocolate topped with a naked Natalie Portman. Not a lot happens but it is none the less worth the watch. Which leaves me to answer my own question–is this good marketing? Well, it is good fun. It is good in that it gets you involved in the story even before you experience it on the big screen. It is good in that it is a novel approach that will be sure to be copied. What remains to be seen is if it helps generate good box office results. We’ll know how good it is soon enough.

SIDE NOTE:
Here’s a good idea for a weekend of international fun right here in New York City. Take a gypsy cab or train to see Darjeeling Unlimited and then have dinner at a really good Indian restaurant like Dawat. Follow this up with a trip to Afghanistan by seeing the Kite Runner (loved it!) accompanied by an Afghani repast at Pamir (it’s the only Afghani place I’ve tried).

File this post under “depends who is asking” and by that I mean, one’s perspective on something can be completely different depending on the source of the question. When B2B Magazine asked me for my perspective on the virtual world, Second Life, I offered the following:

“We have counseled our clients to stay away [from Second Life] for
the time being,” said Drew Neisser, president-CEO of Renegade, a New
York-based integrated marketing agency. “The quick-hit PR route is
now closed, so marketers need to carefully consider why they want to
be in Second Life and make sure they have a sincere commitment to
the betterment of Second Life.”

Neisser pointed to issues such as technical glitches, security
concerns (for example, hackers breaking into presidential candidate
John Edwards’ virtual campaign headquarters on Second Life) and
difficulties attracting a sizable audience.

“There are a lot of other ways to engage your targets online and
offline that may in fact be more cost-effective and more rewarding
than Second Life,” he said.

However, he added, “We are monitoring Second Life on a continuous
basis and will let [clients] know if and when the time is ripe for
their participation in Second Life.”

Shortly after this interview, I was surprised to see features on Second Life in two print publications focused on doing good. Good Magazine ran a very entertaining story on one gentleman’s adventures in Second Life. After wind surfing, smoking virtual weed which made him fall over every third toke, hearing a KISS cover band, finding American Apparel’s store padlocked and other retail shops like Dell and Reebok empty, he had “no choice” but to explore the seedy side of Second Life. Entering a bordello naked, he was asked “dude, where’s your dick?” discovering, much to his surprise, that unlike in the real world, genitalia was not free. At this point, my point-of-view on Second Life remained pretty much the same.

Then I read a story in a new magazine called Contribute New York which focuses on “the people and ideas of giving.” This story goes into detail about the good being done in Second Life noting that there are 32 charities set up in SL ranging from FightHunger.org to the Mariners Museum. Many of these have set up shop in SL’s new Nonprofit Commons that was established via the generosity of SL’s first millionaire and first philanthropist, Ailin Graef (her avatar’s name is Anshe Chung).

Turns out, real money is being raised in SL for non-profits. A virtual Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society raised $115,000 this year with 1700 avatars “walking.” And many including the MacArthur Foundation believe that lots more will be raised in the near future. The MacArthur Foundation has given the Center on Public Diplomacy at USC $550,000 to stage events in SL.

So, while I continue to caution most marketers from investing in Second Life at this point, non-profit organizations that want to *engage* “young intellectuals” may find some real goodness in this virtual world.

MTV announced last week that is was launching a social network to encourage teen activism. Here’s the topline from MediaPost:

AT ONCE SAVING THE WORLD and giving the growing number of activist
consumers a place to gather, MTV Networks has launched
Think.MTV.com. The community site will help the network and popular
artists attach themselves to socially conscious causes, serve as a
platform for users to focus on related ideas, and help various
non-profit groups and consumer brands reach concentrated
demographics through advertising.

Executives at MTV said the inspiration for the site came from a
study conducted last year, which found that 80% of young people want
to actively help their community, but only 19% are “very involved.”

Anastasia on her YPulse blog raises some interesting issues related to this new site:

There are already a couple of amazing sites connecting youth
activists in the non-profit space like YouthNoise, Do Something and TakingITGlobal. Part of me wanted MTV to just
sponsor Think MTV sections on all of these sites (and they still
can) vs. launch yet another social network young people have to
build a presence on. I also wonder if duplicating efforts works
against the spirit of what activists are trying to achieve. Does
having so many different communities around similar causes actually
work against the cause itself?

In my mind, it’s all good. Good for MTV for putting their weight behind the issue, good for the competition since MTV’s presence will act like rising tide for all the teen activism ships and good for teens who can easily lose their way in a flood of all consuming media options (TV, IM, video games, Facebook, etc.) And as a father of two teenagers, I can assure you that teens need every bit of *inspiration* they can get wherever they can find it.

Thought you’d find this email from a fellow Renegade (thanks Lydia) of interest:

You may have noticed the cabs around the city decorated with flower-power decals. Today, Jennifer was the third person to ask me if I knew what they were and I finally got curious enough to do a little research. Feels like marketing for good. Not really marketing since it is not-for-profit, but refreshingly non-commercial nonetheless.

*About*
The taxis hit the streets on September 12th and are part of a Portraits of Hope project called Garden in Transit. It is a community public art undertaking that was initially conceived as creative therapy for seriously ill and disabled children. It was approved by the city last year and has spread to adults, schools and after-school programs to create one of NY’s biggest public art projects ever. It’s a little mass-produced and not necessarily an exercise in creative expression, but definitely a way to help children learn about what it means to participate in something bigger than themselves, feel pride in an accomplishment and brighten up NY city streets at the same time. I’ve always been a sucker for flower-power, so I think it is cool.

*Logistics*
A flower template is provided and children color in the flower outlines. A decal company provided a deep discount on the stickers that are affixed to the cabs. Taxi drivers volunteer to have the decal affixed. Enough flowers have been made for every cab to have two stickers (some 27k) and will be on cabs until the end of the year.

*Quick facts:*

* 3,000+ people have participated in Garden in Transit.
* 90% of participants are from NYC public schools, hospitals and
youth programs.
* 200+ NYC area schools and hospitals are involved.
* Youth in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia, and Ohio
have also participated.
* 750,000 square feet of floral panels have been painted for the
taxis, including 80,000 flowers
* Using our 1″ brushes as a base, the GIT participants have painted
the equivalent of a 1″ straight line from NYC to Vail, Colorado, a
distance of more than 1,700 miles

Based on the NY Times blog posting, the response seems to be overwhelmingly favorable although a few nay-sayers call it a waste of time and money and a false exercise in creativity.

Drew’s Notes: For what it is worth, my 17-year-old daughter thought the flower cabs were pretty silly. I’m a little more neutral, happy that the kids who painted these (including some from Children for Children) felt a little “flower power”–empowered to make their city a little more colorful.

Whenever filmmakers want to establish New York neighborhoods of old, they pan across the tenements lingering on the heavily laden clotheslines. These images are burned into our brains to the point that just seeing a clothesline today is enough to signal hard times or a neighborhood gone to seed. Some communities have gone so far as to ban the use of clotheslines to prevent an unsightly display of undies setting up an almost comic skirmish between fans and foes.

The Wall St. Journal reported on this battle yesterday in their article called: The Right to Dry: A Green Movement Is Roiling America…Clothesline Has Neighbors Bent Out of Shape in Bend; An Illegal Solar Device? This story caught my attention, not just because of the “dry” humor, but also because the heroine of this conflict:

To Susan Taylor, it was a perfect time to hang her laundry out to
dry. The 55-year-old mother and part-time nurse strung a clothesline
to a tree in her backyard, pinned up some freshly washed flannel
sheets — and, with that, became a *renegade*.

Susan’s foes in this epic struggle include both the developer and snooty neighbors:

To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban
blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains.
“This bombards the senses,” interior designer Joan Grundeman says of
her neighbor’s clothesline. “It can’t possibly increase property
values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood.”

For marketers, this seemingly insignificant episode is in fact a harbinger of opportunity. With dryers consuming 6% of US household electricity, using clotheslines is not an insignificant way for people to try to be greener. It’s also cheaper since the sun, at least for now, is free. So consider all these potential business development opportunities:

* Dryer manufacturers will want to build machines that use
significantly less energy going well beyond Energy Star standards;

* Clothing makers could create a whole new brand of garments that
are particularly suited to line drying;

* Home/garden suppliers may want to produce clothesline shields that
blend into the environment but hide the clothes;

* Sign companies could create “I Dry Green” posters for homeowners
who want to brandish their right to use the sun;

* And one inspired clothespin producer would be smart to seize the
day, branding their product as “the green linchpin.”

The point of all this silliness is that with every challenge comes opportunity. Marketers can not afford to ignore the growing desire of consumers to do their part, however small, to help stop global warming. Instead, marketers would be smart to *inspire *the movement with products and services that help consumers make a difference.