So much Marketing for Good to talk about and so little time. Oh well, here’s a quick round-up of various things that caught my eye this week:
Toyota’s Why Not campaign is worth at least thirty seconds of your time. The TV spot called “Harmony” arrived on my desktop via a head’s up from Creativity’s newsletter. The spot is quite intriguing–a bunch of people build a car out of tree limbs (that funny enough looks like a Prius;-) and then leave it to degrade back into nature. The voice over adds “the best way for a car company to have an impact on the environment … is to have as little impact as possible.” A super at the end asks “Why Not?” and encourages viewers to visit a Toyota corporate microsite. The microsite offers a series of videos and slides that show all the “good” things Toyota is doing both environmentally and socially. Hopefully, future site updates will include more interactivity and the opportunity to engage in the conversation a question like “Why Not?” encourages.
Thomas Friedman’s article in the New York Times yesterday on the idea of E2K is well worth reading (like everything he writes).
E2K stands, in my mind, for all the energy programming and
monitoring that thousands of global companies are going to be
undertaking in the early 21st century to either become carbon
neutral or far more energy efficient than they are today. India is
poised to get a lot of this work.
Friedman describes how various Indian firms are preparing to lead the world in this area:
The key to winning E2K business for the Indian outsourcing firms,
said Mr. Nilekani, will be showing big global companies, like a
Dell, how becoming more energy efficient or carbon neutral doesn’t
just have to be a new cost they assume to improve their brand or
satisfy regulators, but can actually be a strategic move that makes
money and gives them an edge on the competition.
NBC’s “Green is Universal” campaign is making a lot of noise and promises 150 hours of green-related programming. The website has a lot to offer include green tips, fun games, helpful links and a guide to NBC/Universal/Telemundo’s green-related programming. Taken in its entirety, this is really an amazing effort by NBC and hopefully will do good for their ratings and revenue. It will certainly do good by bringing environmental issues front and center, both through news and entertainment programming. All this will undoubtedly enlighten while entertaining, encouraging consumers and companies to not just think green but be green.
And a fellow Renegade (thanks Dina) offered these links to some
pretty interesting green products:
* This eco-friendly oven stinks (because it runs on garbage)
* Inflatable solar arrays: up to 25X cheaper, feature cool
‘puffy’ look
* Drymer V0.5 electric bike
* MIT developing carbon-free, stackable rental cars
It’s all very inspiring. It’s all good.