In This Together

I wrote to Brent Shulkin to wish him luck and he sent me this very nice reply:

Thanks Matt!
Your site looks awesome. Thanks for the blog post too…you can
consider embedding this vid too:

http://www.vimeo.com/925729

It’s a bit better than the CBS one…someone else in Newcastle just
emailed me today and requested that I put up a page for Australians
interested in getting something going, so I put up this page:
http://www.carrotmob.org/australia.html
it’s part of a list of regions:
http://www.carrotmob.org/in-your-town.html

so if you want to leave a comment there with some info you can be
connected to anyone else in the area who’s interested too. I’m putting
you on a list of resources in the area. Thanks again!
Brent

Cheers Brent….See you in Oz for a Carrot Mob one day soon,

Check out this which is a very interesting way in which consumer demand can drive change. Essentially this is again about using the power of social media to drive a collective conscience to make things happen. It is also a very clever way of turning the profit driver on its head by driving customers to stores/brands that commit to becoming more sustainable…very very clever and lots of fun.

Check out here and here for how the idea has capyured some attention.

Today is a ground breaking watershed day for me on lots of fronts. In The Australian Marketing and Media Section there is a piece about Carbon Reporting on communication channels.

That is really interesting because now the carbon cost is being directly linked to communications in a way that it never has before. Once the Carbon Trading Scheme comes into play then it really does shift the sustainability agenda from fringe to business critical for advertisers.

This week HAVAS launched a piece of research into sustainability and the consumer. They complimented this with the launch of a blog called Think Green which could be interesting. So we now have a whole global shift which putting sustainability reporting and accountability into the marketing agenda.

What else caught my eye. Ah yes the pitch for Tourism Australia. Lara Sinclair has also written a piece in The Australian about how important innovation is going to be at attracting people to Australia. Putting aside for one moment the issue of the Carbon impact of flying to the otherside of the world. What she is highlighting is that sustainable tourism and unique experiences are central to the future tourists decision making processes.

Here is a very cool idea that Lara talked about….

That’s all for now folks.

If you ever wanted to find out what someone thought of your brand or you were doing some research into what people though of other brands check this out….http://www.brandtags.net/

Here is a link to a clip of a talk that I saw last week by Michael Molitor YouTube - unsw’s Channel

H puts climate change in very rational economic terms. Essentially he is painting a picture of a enormously big task but one which we can achieve if we can move capital towards the problem.

He suggests in Australia we need a 14 times productivity improvement in our carbon usage. We also need to increase the current venture capital in Clean Tech from $100m to $2 Trillion within the next few years!

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Like a lot of people I thought the idea of Australia 2020 was a brave and interesting concept in opening up a genuine dialogue with the public about the future of the country. Only time will tell whether it was a good idea or simply a feel good talkfest to be swept under the carpet in a couple of years time?

Clearly organising such an event inevitably meant that some of the really interesting, challenging and confrontational public agenda points will have been smoothed out. However, there did seem to be a number of ‘good’ ideas that have captured the public’s imagination.

A ‘Fat Tax’ could be an interesting challenge for the marketers over at McDonalds and YUM!….that exclamation mark could be highly pertinent as time goes on! If ‘junk Food’ also becomes relatively expensive instead of relatively cheap then the need to drive other kinds of brand attachment is going to become important if they are going to keep the western suburbs on side.

McDonald’s has already gone some way to defending itself via new ‘heathier’ meal options and nostalgic advertising campaigns that remind you of Macca moments in your childhood…the building blocks of being a kid? However, if we get a Fat Tax then much of this work is going to be undone. Not least the spotlight that it will draw in terms of what really is going on with the sugar, fat and chemical impact of those Big Macs and Cheese Crust pizzas!

Back onto Australia 2020. I found this article on larvatusprodeo.net which is a related left wing piece which wheels around a huge agenda, from the Howard era, to climate change and back to 2020 and joins all the dots.

Earth Day is tomorrow. It hasn’r really got a lot of traction in Australia although judging by the website it is very US centric. We have just had Earth Hour here which in its second year went a little bit global. Having all these profile and issue building days is a great strategy. It worked for card companies and florists when they pushed Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day in order to sell more products. Why not use the same tactics to sell recycling, sustainability, energy efficiency et al.

The only issue I suppose is that either we are going to end up with so many environmentally focussed days and hours that people will start to become a bit indundated with it. I mean really, how many times can you hold an enviro party or sit there with all your lights off?

Also don’t you think that everyday is Earth Day? I know that’s a bit like the excuse that blokes use on Valentine’s Day when they have neglected to buy the card and flowers…’Darling every day is Valentine’s Day for us’….Hopefully Earth Day, like Earth Hour did over here in Australia, is getting a whole bunch of people who are maybe only vaguely interested in climate change to take some notice?

Today the Climate Institute revealed its second round of research into what the Australian public thinks about the issues surrounding the environment. It reveals what many of us have known for quite a while now. That Australians really do care and they really want something done about the causes of climate change.

What is so frustrating is that apparently 80% of people care about the environment and that environmental and social concern influences their purchasing decisions. The government is now starting to put in place the regulation and policy that has been so lacking here over the last decade. However, businesses are still dragging their feet despite the obvious opportunities presented by a more sustainable approach.

Interestingly enough I was just reading the Marketing section of the AFR that more and more businesses say that CSR is becoming central to their strategy. This does not seem to have  filtered down to most marketing departments yet (even now) but the headline at least is encouraging to see.

I was just looking for some Jack Johnson tonight and came across this video which I thought was an lovely integration of Gen Y, Asia, environmentalism and pop culture

I am not sure about the narrative but the message is a fun way to promote UNEP…