Author: Drew Neisser

Lest you were wondering if we practice what we preach over here in Marketing for Good-land, I wanted to share with you a memo we received today from our friends at Gilda’s Club:

TODAY is the day! Yes, now you can click on the link! We are featured on USA Today’s website at www.USATODAY.com or you can go directly to our page at www.gildasclub.usatoday.com. When you view the page, please take note of the following:

GCWW extends our sincere thanks to Lexus Corporation for crafting the beautiful interactive ads that you see on the page. Their tribute to us is so appreciated and we are very proud to recognize them as our sponsor. Lexus also created ads that are appearing in the print edition of the paper. Their ads should appear today, and at some point next week. Scrolling down the USA TODAY page you will notice a survey. This is real time and is interactive. We will share the results with you at the end of the promotion. At some point during the coming week, we will capture a PDF view of the web page and make it available to all for permanent posting on your web sites and for use in press kits and other marketing materials. Below the survey is the blogging site where we encourage you all to post your comments.

All links on our USA TODAY page go to the NEW Gilda’s Club Worldwide website which can be viewed at our same website address, www.gildasclub.org. The site is Phase I of a continued re-fresh to advance Worldwide’s internet capabilities. To the affiliates, be sure to check out the “Our Clubhouses” button on the navigation bar along with “Find a Gilda’s Club near you!” where you can view and play with the new map and find descriptions of the clubhouses.

Special thanks here go out to Renegade Marketing Group who worked nearly around the clock to design and launch the site (in less than 6 weeks) and to everyone of our Worldwide staff who tracked down and contributed information, edited and proof-read the material to help us meet deadlines…

Regards,
Kathy Kathryn Kavicky
Vice President Marketing & Communications
Gilda’s Club Worldwide

Helping Gilda’s Club is a wonderful way for Renegade to demonstrate that we practice what we preach (i.e. do well by doing good.) And while I realize that this blog post could be seen as shamelessly self-serving, I offer no apologies. We’re too busy eatin’ our own dog food and liking the taste of it to refrain from a brief moment of self acknowledgment. Try some…

NOTE: Kudos to Lexus for their own going support of Gilda’s Club.

D’oh–seems like everyone has already covered the Simpsons/7-11/Kwik-E-Mart conversion story and frankly I thought I had too. Turns out I wrote up a bunch of notes on my Palm and then never got around to posting them. Here’s what made it into the article on ABC News.com:

“‘The Simpsons’ 7-Eleven campaign feels wonderfully fresh to me,” said Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade Marketing Group. “‘Simpsons’ fans are already buzzing about it.”

7-Eleven only converted 11 stores in the United States and one in Canada, but still managed to create a strong buzz, Neisser said.

“For ‘Simpsons’ fans, this is an inside joke on a colossal scale,” he said. “Among ‘Simpsons’ fans this conversion is sure to enhance their perceptions of 7-Eleven as a cool place to shop. What it is really clever about this is the blending of reality and fiction.”

Neisser said he didn’t foresee any such problems with “The Simpsons” promotion.

“No one is going to freak out and call the cops when their 7-Eleven is suddenly a Kwik-E-Mart,” he said. “My guess is that many won’t even notice but those that do will feel like insiders, which is one the true measures of a successful guerrilla effort.”

Here are the rest of my notes from that interview:

As a small case in point, my 14 year old son told me about the Kwik mart conversion plan when we passed a local 7/11 last week. Having just read about it in the trades I was surprised he knew about it too. Turns out one of his friends told him about it and they both thought it was pretty cool. Considering they are only converting a handful of stores the buzz about it is really strong.

What it is really clever about this is the blending of reality and fiction. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 had an interesting blend of reality and fiction with its Google Maps mash up last summer. This year New York City also declared a week in honor of Spiderman coinciding with the third movie in that series. And the Post Office got into the act with its R2D2-wrapped mail boxes.

All in all I think it is a very clever way of rallying Simpsons fans before the movie launch. This promotion is a smart way of showing how powerful a cultural force the Simpsons has truly become.

AND THIS JUST IN…Fellow Renegades made a field trip to the Kwik-E-Mart in Times Square this week and brought me back a can of Buzz Cola (which I consider a collector’s item of sorts). Speaking of fields, here’s a fun addition to the Simpsons launch campaign that is hot off the press and that… d’oh a deer might enjoy.

Bottom line–Marketing for Good is sometimes simply about making people laugh. I suspect a lot of folks are eagerly awaiting the Simpsons movie including this fan who simply hopes it is as entertaining as the aforementioned promotions.

Great article in Promo Magazine this week called “Green Street” which provides a detailed look at how various marketers are riding the green bandwagon. One of the more surprising efforts comes from HSBC which has turned online bill paying into a major green initiative. HSBC customers who pay three bills online get a “green kit” filled with coupons, energy saving light bulbs and more. The article notes:

Going forward, they [HSBC customers] can have a tree planted in their name by the National Arbor Foundation (a group that has become very popular with marketers).

HSBC seems to have a clear understanding of the notion of “marketing as service” (something this blogger keeps harping on and on about):

“This campaign isn’t about us,” says Nicole Rousseau, vice president of marketing for HSBC. “It’s more about how we can help our customers help the environment.”

The article is also careful to outline the pitfalls of green washing while printing a “how to green” check list provided by JWT’s Trendspottting Group (not coincidentally, JWT is HSBC’s global agency):

1. Identify your target audience. Know whom you’re marketing and what green issues are most relevant to them.
2. Be relevant. Choose a campaign that makes sense for your business.
3. Practice what you preach.
4. Educate and inspire. Help your target navigate by providing easy-to-follow information and tips.
5. Be virtual. Save a tree and make collateral materials downloadable from your Web site.
6. Make your campaign sustainable. Eco-friendly campaigns shouldn’t be one-offs; they should be ongoing.
7. Create a green culture. Own your message and make it part of your corporate vision.
8. Advertise.
9. Be consistent. Take your campaign to the next level, and work with other companies with similar values.
10. Encourage customer participation.

I must admit to being somewhat skeptical about HSBC’s green campaign at first. What was hard for me to assess was the depth of commitment and whether or not HSBC was making every effort in their internal operations to reduce energy consumption and recycle. Last week, I had a casual conversation with a friend who works for HSBC in Buffalo and he assured me that the commitment is wide spread. HSBC employees are actively recycling paper, are powering down computers at night and are use energy saving light bulbs wherever possible. While none of these things are awe inspiring, it is amazing how many companies aren’t even taking these basic steps to reduce their impact on the world we share. Kudos to HSBC for recognizing that as “The World’s Local Bank” they have much to gain by making the world a little greener.

Last week I wrote about ConEd’s recent campaign encouraging consumers to cut energy consumption. A recent Wall St. Journal article provided a broader review of similar efforts by utilities across the country:

Utilities are rolling out more programs than ever to help consumers cut their energy use, motivated by cost considerations, pressure from regulators and increased consumer acceptance. In doing so, they hope to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, forestall the need for building new plants and put a brake on rising electricity costs.

It seems that the ConEd campaign was simply the tip of the iceberg:

Moving beyond traditional rebate programs, utilities are putting sophisticated tools in consumers’ hands, such as online calculators, advanced electric meters, in-home displays, remote-control devices and innovative pricing plans. Some consumers say they’re changing their energy habits as a result, a task that can be time-consuming but which many people say they find rewarding.

There are several items of relevance to Marketing for Good. First, utilities are enhancing their product offerings to help the consumer save energy and mollify fire-breathing regulators. Second, by enlightening the consumer on how much energy they are consuming, they are bringing everyone into the global warming battle. Finally, instead of offering empty advertising promises like “On It”, utilities are starting to see “marketing as service” by providing new energy saving products and communications that empower the consumer to be more green in a variety of ways. Sounds good to me.
NOTE:
Kudos to the Wall St. Journal to embedding both a relevant quiz ( Vote: How attentive are you to your daily household energy use?) and a energy consumption calculator ( Doing the Math: The Complicated Equation for Going Green ) into their online story on the utilities. This is a really smart way to bring the story to life online and perhaps even encourage green thinking among their readers.

Imagine if McDonald’s started a campaign that encouraged its regular customers to eat less. Shareholders would have a fit. Bloggers would insist it was some kind of a stunt that was really intended to increase sales. Advertising mags would praise the effort as trend setting and enlightened. And consumers would scratch their heads and give their fast food business to someone else.

Well, ConEdison’s new campaign featuring energy saving tips is the functional equivalent. Their full page ad in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal offered two such tips:

* Decide what you want before you open the fridge. You’ll save energy, and you might even save calories.
* Leaving your AC on when you’re out is like tossing money out the window. 25 cents an hour, to be exact.

Many more tips are offered at ConEd.com which is well worth a quick peak. Some of the tips are obvious and well promoted like replacing incandescent bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescents. Others are less intuitive like the improved efficiency of running a ceiling fan with your AC–evidently the more fuel efficient fan helps the high drain AC do its job better.

This campaign is another example of “marketing as service” in which ad dollars are used to educate and enlighten as opposed to sell and sell. If the consumer actually bothers to follow a few of these tips, then they will save themselves some money and in the process almost effortlessly join the battle against global warming. Everybody wins, right? Well, certainly the consumer does and the world does but what’s in it for ConEd? Won’t shareholders revolt if revenue goes down?
Cynics might say that ConEd is simply offering these tips as lip service to stave off negative publicity and keep the green fanatics at bay. And frankly, I don’t know if ConEd really expects the consumers to suddenly change their energy devouring ways. Most likely, they are counting on energy consumption rising simply through population growth and increased appliance usage which would offset any decline in per capita consumption. Regardless, I can still embrace this campaign on face value as Marketing for Good. Enlightened self-interest is fine by me. It is unquestionably in ConEd’s interest to seem like an advocate for green behavior. Even if only a few people adopt a few of ConEd’s tips, some energy will be saved, some good will have been done. It’s got to start somewhere.