Sustainability Advertising

Spread the Word

2010-07-07T11:10:00.003-07:00

Need to spread the word without spreading the dough?

While we won't argue that it's nice to have a monstrous marketing budget, it may surprise you that this is more of a luxury than a necessity - especially for small business.

What's really important is the ability to think and act creatively.

For example: with a little out-of-the-box thinking and a small budget, you can create an attention-getting contest.

If your idea is unique or outrageous enough, it may even garner the attention of the local media.

Contests can be very effective and affordable, especially if the prize is your business' product or service.

Do business a new way.

Morning Smile... Logo update suggestions.

2009-02-04T11:56:00.018-08:00

During the current economic times, companies have gotten very creative with their logos. Take a look at these:

Makes you think...

2009-02-03T13:00:00.004-08:00

This story was passed on to me by our President, Diane Lund, and makes a very good point. How often have we been in a rush or too busy and have missed out. I encourage you to read to the end of the story to better understand.

A man stood in a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing the best music ever written, on one of the finest instruments in the world - how many other things are we missing?

Let this be a lesson to us to not miss anything - even if we are in a hurry!

Why people yell at each other when they are upset?

2009-01-20T11:31:00.002-08:00

Our owner studies Pranic Healing and this is a wonderful story that has been passed down the ranks. It's message is universal in appeal and is really worth the read.

A sage asked his disciples, "Why do we Yell in anger? Why do people yell at each other when they are upset?"

The men thought for a while, "Because we lose our calm," said one. "We yell because of that."

"But, why do we yell when the other person is just next to us?" asked the sage. "Isn't it possible to speak to him or her with a soft voice? Why do you yell at a person when you're angry?"

The men gave some other answers but none satisfied the sage.

Finally he explained, "When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance they must yell to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to yell to hear each other through that great distance."

Then the sage asked, "What happens when two people fall in love? They do not yell at each other but talk softly, why? Their hearts are very close. The distance between them is very small...."

The sage continued, "When they love each other even more, what happens? They do not speak, only whisper and they get even closer to each other in their love. Finally, they do not even need to whisper, they only look at each other and that's all. That is how close two people are when they love each other."

Then the sage said, "When you argue, do not let your hearts get distant, do not say words that distance each other more, else there will come a day when the distance is so great that you will not find the path to return."

"Have a good and calm day today."

To advertise or not to advertise during a recession?

2008-12-16T13:24:00.002-08:00

The article below shares an important, yet counterintuitive point about marketing during a recession: it's actually best to increase advertising efforts!

Advertising in an economic down cycle

In an economic down cycle, is it best to batten down the hatches, hunker down and ride it out? No!

Businesses have been asking this question for decades and every major study reaches the same conclusion: continuing with a marketing budget equal or greater than pre-recession levels produces the best results.

Advertising executive Roland S. Vaile tracked 200 companies through the recession of 1923. He found the biggest sales increases were rung up by those who advertised the most. During the post-World War II recessions of 1949, 1954, 1958 and 1961, the companies that cut back on advertising saw the biggest declines in sales and profits. In 1974, the companies who cut advertising budgets lagged far behind the ones that maintained or increased advertising.

The research firm, McGraw Hill analyzed 600 companies from 1980 through 1985. Results showed firms that maintained or increased advertising expenditures during the 1981 recession averaged significantly higher sales growth, both during the recession and over the next three years as compared to those that eliminated or decreased advertising. By 1985, sales of companies that were aggressive recession advertisers rose 256% over those that cut advertising.

The conclusion is unanimous: advertising aggressively during recessions not only increases sales but also increases profits.

For maximum results both now and in the future, consider these timely tips:

Don't cut your advertising budget, increase it! Let your competition cut theirs. Once they abandon their marketing and promotion, your message becomes far stronger and more effective.

Don't waste money advertising in the wrong places to the wrong audiences. Develop a strategic marketing plan that tracks your best customers and in turn targets them in your ad placements and messages. You can’t be all things to all people, but you can waste a lot of money trying.

Stay in close touch with your most loyal customers. Now’s a good time to develop a customer appreciation program.

Maintain continuity. Advertising works cumulatively, so remind people frequently about your brand and don’t deviate from your core message.

Telemarketing: a sure way to annoy consumers

2008-08-27T16:20:00.002-07:00

In a day and age where there are almost as many methods of advertising as there are people on the planet (advertising on eggs—yep, eggs—has recently been added to the list), how on earth is it that many marketers resort to bugging you at home?

If you’d like to tell me about your product or service, you have ample opportunities for doing so: run an ad in the paper, plaster your product or service on billboards, or you can even tell me about all about your product during a private moment in a public washroom. But, please, for the love of Buddha, don’t call me at home, interrupt me mid-mac-and-cheese and think I’m going to be pleased—or even neutral—about this annoyance.

What irks me the most is not the bogus, “You’ve won a free cruise!” recorded announcements, but rather the calls from legitimate businesses, especially those of whom I’m currently a customer. There have been points in my life when I have been stalked by the Royal Bank, Telus—or both. The calls, of course, aren’t to sell you anything. No, they’re simply courteous check-ins from service-oriented businesses. “This is just a friendly customer service call to make sure you’re happy with your VISA/bank account/phone plan” they assure you. Followed almost immediately by a casual, “I’m just looking over your VISA/bank account/phone plan and I notice you don’t have insurance/a platinum card/the bigger, better bundle, etc.” It’s often the same, and it’s always annoying.

The very purpose of marketing is to popularize your product or service to consumers. People need to like your organization in order to support it. While telemarketing is more sales than marketing, it is still a consumer touch point and can undo positive results from other marketing efforts. Obviously, it must have some success in terms of financial gain, but I doubt the dollars are worth it. I have been with RBC my entire life, but have considered switching banks (a MAJOR hassle) as the number of calls I have received amounts to nothing short of harassment. I don’t feel the need to take any action, however; I find comfort in the fact businesses that resort to this pathetic "marketing" tactic are likely harming themselves. Hmph!

One Sheet Wonders

2008-07-30T13:51:00.001-07:00

Below are entries for an art contest at the Hirshhorn Modern Art Gallery. Artists had only one rule, but it was a big one: they could only use one sheet of paper.

When it comes to creativity, we often think it's best to have no rules, no limitations, no guidelines even. Isn't that when the magic happens? Well, judging from the works of art below, it seems this isn't always the case. In fact, high-level creativity often comes in response to a problem or a boundary. The "problem" for these contest entrants was that they were confined to using one sheet of plain white paper. This limitation, however, clearly served to provide focus and prompt the artists to look at a common item from a new angle. Most of the artists, it seems, embraced what was allowed instead of focusing on what wasn't. There were no rules around cutting or folding, for example, which is what creates the cleverness for most of these pieces.

What on earth does this have to do with advertising? Well, believe it or not, this type of creative problem solving is exactly what advertising is all about. Clients have parameters and guidelines--things like budgets, target audiences, media preferences, and pre-existing branding. Often, at first glance, an advertising brief can seem very constraining and creatively hindering. However, this is the very purpose of an ad agency: meet all the mandatory items on a brief in a way that's completely new and creative--and increases sales by 7.5%.

What is the Story of Stuff?

2008-02-14T09:54:00.001-08:00

The Story of Stuff

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.

The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Fun Images for a New Year

2008-01-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

Here are some fun visual ideas for making people notice your brand.

Bags that have a great creative handle.

And of course the classic bus samples.

8 Coolest green gadgets

2007-12-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

This is a great website for those of you looking for green stuff to give this holiday season.

2007 could go down in history not as the year when consumers started paying attention to the environment, but the year when companies started marketing all sorts of useful and completely useless green-theme gadgets to the public. Here are a few of our favorite gadgets released this year that will lower your electric bill and save a tiny bit of planet earth.

Here's one of the products featured on the site:
Solio Hybrid 1000

It seems like every time we blink one company or another is coming out with a solar powered charger for your cellphone, laptop, or other portable electronic devices. The Solio Hybrid 1000 is a $70 charger that lets you power your gadgets on the go. A fully charged device should power your iPod for 10 hours of playback. Or one hour of sunshine should provide about 15 minutes of cellphone talk time or 40 minutes of MP3 playback on a portable media player.

Right Brain vs Left Brain Creativity Test

2007-12-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

I took this test this morning and thought others mite like it. (67% x 33% score)
It's form The Art Institute of Vancouver website.

Being creative or artistic doesn’t mean you know how to draw or play an instrument. Being creative is a way of thinking, a way of viewing the world.

Creative people use the RIGHT side of their brains more than the LEFT. Take the test and find out if your brain is RIGHT for a creative career.

Enjoy

Now this is a great way to advertise!

2007-12-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, the photo are of a train interior in Japan.

With the results looking nicer than most nurseries, the Japanese have taken the idea of ‘child-friendly public transport’ to the next level with these 2 beauties, both designed by eiji mitooka. He was the artistic force behind ‘omoden’ (toy train) and ‘ichigo ec’ (strawberry train), a couple of regional trains which travel on a daily basis on the 14.3km kishigawa line in Japan. Jhe Japanase are intent on making train travel a more comfortable experience for everyone, women and children especially, and the results are incredible.

Both trains contain hundreds of toys, tv screens showing cartoons, immaculately clean wooden flooring and cots for younger children. Call me cynical but I can’t imagine anything like this emerging in Canada unless it was an attraction at a theme park.

Wake Up: A Guide to Living Your Life Consciously

2007-12-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

I read this the other day and thought it was great.

For the full story visit there blog at zenhabits.net.

As much as possible, I try to live my life by bringing to my consciousness what is bubbling up from my unconsciousness.

I try to clear the fog through which we often drift, to see where I’m going, to make conscious choices instead of automatic ones.

Do you ever have a feeling that you’re drifting through life, and not going where you want to go? Or that you don’t know how you got where you are today?

Living consciously is about taking control of your life, about thinking about your decisions rather than making them without thought, about having a life that we want rather than settling for the one that befalls us.

If you’re drifting through life, or feel out of control, or don’t know how you got here … deciding to live consciously could be the single most important thing you do.

Are you living unconsciously now?
Ask yourself the following questions … if you find yourself saying yes to many of them, you might want to consider trying conscious living:

1. Are you in a job that you fell into rather than the job you want?

2. Are you doing things that are given to you rather than what you love to do?

3. Are you spending your time doing busy work rather than what you want to do with your days?

4. Do you wish you could spend more time with loved ones?

5. Do you find yourself overweight because you’ve been eating the food you’ve been eating for years and stuck in a rut of not exercising?

6. Do you find yourself living from paycheck to paycheck or in debt, not knowing where your money goes?

7. Do you find yourself wasting your time doing things that aren’t important rather than focusing on completing the things that are very important?

8. Do you go through your days not thinking about what you want out of life and how to get it?

If you answered “no” to all of these questions, you’re probably already living consciously, and you don’t need this article at all. For those who would like to live more consciously, read on.

Real Age Calculator

2007-11-26T09:48:00.000-08:00

See what your "real age" is and how long you are going to live.

Treasure hunting in an outdoor art gallery

2007-11-16T16:56:00.000-08:00

"Geocache and discover public art in North Vancouver", says Lori Philips of the City of North Vancouver Public Art Program.

Fans of the great outdoor activity, geocaching, are excited about new locations around the North Shore. Thanks to the efforts of the City of North Vancouver Public Art Program 10 brand new geocaches will be placed in late October this year. They will be stashed near some of the city’s less known public art pieces to help the public discover those hidden items of culture in this beautiful city.

If you would like more information on public art, the Public Art Program has a brochure and map detailing the public art and they invite anyone who is interested to call the office at 604-984-9582 to obtain a copy. The brochure has a description of the work and the artists involved. You can find more information on their website (arts-alive.ca)

So how do you find them and what the heck is geocaching?

Geocaching is one of the fastest-growing sports/adventure/hobbies in the world today. It is a family-friendly, vacation-friendly activity that involves using satellite technology to look for hidden treasures. More importantly, geocaching is about finding new places you can explore, that you would never have discovered unless someone took you there.

It involves taking the locations of the cache (a waterproof plastic box containing information about the area, a log book and goodies) from internet websites like www.geocaching.com and tracking them down using a hand held GPS (Global Positioning System). A GPS is a handheld device that shows your exact latitude and longitude coordinates anywhere on earth by triangulating from several satellites. There are over 400,000 geocaches around the world and more are being placed every day.

Lori Philips says, “This is a new idea for the Public Art Program. There are currently more than 21,000 caches in Canada, and many right here on the North Shore. People are participating in this activity but it's the first time Geocaching has been used by the municipality to help people discover some of the amazing public art installations managed by the City of North Vancouver “

“Approximately 55 million people view public art firsthand everyday, says Lori Phillips, “geocaching is a new way to direct people towards our local public artworks in a fun and family oriented way.”

Letter From: Stu (Scruffster) Garret - BCGA President

Hi Bob,

I can't tell you how pleased the geocaching community is to see the City of North Vancouver participating in the sport. The Public Art series has created quite the buzz. Although the Public Art caches have been available for a short time I've already received emails on the topic from all over the Lower Mainland, Washington State, Alberta and New South Wales, Australia.

North Vancouver entered into geocaching at the right time. It will go down as a Canadian Geo-friendly city along with Canmore, Alberta and Wilberforce, Ontario. As geocaching becomes increasingly popular, geo-friendly cities will benefit in the form of tourism.

Geocaching enthusiasts always like to hunt down a few quick caches when travelling to cities for conventions or other business. They do not always have an automobile at their disposal. For this reason, geocachers always look for hotels around "geo-hotspots." The Lonsdale Quay area, with many geocaches within walking distance, is turning into Vancouver's hot spot. The city of North Vancouver should witness an increase in geocaching related hotel visits.

For people that live in the lower mainland, North Vancouver has and will continue to be a geocaching destination. It is where geocachers will plan daytrips, fill their cars with gas and buy lunch.
I've been to all the caches in the Public Art series and I must say I'm quite impressed. I loved the cache in the "nut" and the granite living room with children's art was amazing. I was sad that the living room was in such an obsure little park. It should be in a place where more people will see it. But that is what the geocaches will do. They'll bring people to parks they would not normally visit. For bringing me to these places, I thank you.

It's my hope you continue with the series. After looking at the Public Art registry, there doesn't seem to be a lack of public art in North Vancouver.

If there is anything the BCGA can do to help, please feel free to ask. We enjoy working with all levels of government to enhance the geocaching experience.

The truth about recycling

2007-11-16T16:50:00.000-08:00

As the importance of recycling becomes more apparent, questions about it linger. Is it worth the effort? How does it work? Is recycling waste just going into a landfill in China? Here are some answers.

IT IS an awful lot of rubbish. Since 1960 the amount of municipal waste being collected in America has nearly tripled, reaching 245m tonnes in 2005. According to European Union statistics, the amount of municipal waste produced in western Europe increased by 23% between 1995 and 2003, to reach 577kg per person. (So much for the plan to reduce waste per person to 300kg by 2000.) As the volume of waste has increased, so have recycling efforts. In 1980 America recycled only 9.6% of its municipal rubbish; today the rate stands at 32%. A similar trend can be seen in Europe, where some countries, such as Austria and the Netherlands, now recycle 60% or more of their municipal waste. Britain's recycling rate, at 27%, is low, but it is improving fast, having nearly doubled in the past three years.

Even so, when a city introduces a kerbside recycling programme, the sight of all those recycling lorries trundling around can raise doubts about whether the collection and transportation of waste materials requires more energy than it saves. “We are constantly being asked: Is recycling worth doing on environmental grounds?” says Julian Parfitt, principal analyst at Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a non-profit British company that encourages recycling and develops markets for recycled materials.

Studies that look at the entire life cycle of a particular material can shed light on this question in a particular case, but WRAP decided to take a broader look. It asked the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste to conduct a review of 55 life-cycle analyses, all of which were selected because of their rigorous methodology. The researchers then looked at more than 200 scenarios, comparing the impact of recycling with that of burying or burning particular types of waste material. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.

Based on this study, WRAP calculated that Britain's recycling efforts reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 10m-15m tonnes per year. That is equivalent to a 10% reduction in Britain's annual carbon-dioxide emissions from transport, or roughly equivalent to taking 3.5m cars off the roads. Similarly, America's Environmental Protection Agency estimates that recycling reduced the country's carbon emissions by 49m tonnes in 2005.

Recycling has many other benefits, too. It conserves natural resources. It also reduces the amount of waste that is buried or burnt, hardly ideal ways to get rid of the stuff. (Landfills take up valuable space and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas; and although incinerators are not as polluting as they once were, they still produce noxious emissions, so people dislike having them around.) But perhaps the most valuable benefit of recycling is the saving in energy and the reduction in greenhouse gases and pollution that result when scrap materials are substituted for virgin feedstock. “If you can use recycled materials, you don't have to mine ores, cut trees and drill for oil as much,” says Jeffrey Morris of Sound Resource Management, a consulting firm based in Olympia, Washington.

Extracting metals from ore, in particular, is extremely energy-intensive. Recycling aluminium, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Savings for other materials are lower but still substantial: about 70% for plastics, 60% for steel, 40% for paper and 30% for glass. Recycling also reduces emissions of pollutants that can cause smog, acid rain and the contamination of waterways.

A brief history of recycling

The virtue of recycling has been appreciated for centuries. For thousands of years metal items have been recycled by melting and reforming them into new weapons or tools. It is said that the broken pieces of the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue deemed one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, were recycled for scrap. During the industrial revolution, recyclers began to form businesses and later trade associations, dealing in the collection, trade and processing of metals and paper. America's Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), a trade association with more than 1,400 member companies, traces its roots back to one such organisation founded in 1913. In the 1930s many people survived the Great Depression by peddling scraps of metal, rags and other items. In those days reuse and recycling were often economic necessities. Recycling also played an important role during the second world war, when scrap metal was turned into weapons.

As industrial societies began to produce ever-growing quantities of garbage, recycling took on a new meaning. Rather than recycling materials for purely economic reasons, communities began to think about how to reduce the waste flow to landfills and incinerators. Around 1970 the environmental movement sparked the creation of America's first kerbside collection schemes, though it was another 20 years before such programmes really took off.

In 1991 Germany made history when it passed an ordinance shifting responsibility for the entire life cycle of packaging to producers. In response, the industry created Duales System Deutschland (DSD), a company that organises a separate waste-management system that exists alongside public rubbish-collection. By charging a licensing fee for its “green dot” trademark, DSD pays for the collection, sorting and recycling of packaging materials. Although the system turned out to be expensive, it has been highly influential. Many European countries later adopted their own recycling initiatives incorporating some degree of producer responsibility.

In 1987 a rubbish-laden barge cruised up and down America's East Coast looking for a place to unload, sparking a public discussion about waste management and serving as a catalyst for the country's growing recycling movement. By the early 1990s so many American cities had established recycling programmes that the resulting glut of materials caused the market price for kerbside recyclables to fall from around $50 per ton to about $30, says Dr Morris, who has been tracking prices for recyclables in the Pacific Northwest since the mid-1980s. As with all commodities, costs for recyclables fluctuate. But the average price for kerbside materials has since slowly increased to about $90 per ton.

Even so, most kerbside recycling programmes are not financially self-sustaining. The cost of collecting, transporting and sorting materials generally exceeds the revenues generated by selling the recyclables, and is also greater than the disposal costs. Exceptions do exist, says Dr Morris, largely near ports in dense urban areas that charge high fees for landfill disposal and enjoy good market conditions for the sale of recyclables.

For the full story please visit the Economist.
Jun 7th 2007 From The Economist print edition.

What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

2007-11-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of their operations. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large (CSR - Wikipedia).

I think it is fair to say that organisations mostly started to think about CSR 10-15 years ago when they began to be increasingly criticised from other groups like Greenpeace, WWF or other pressure groups to change their ways of doing business or at least change some of their ways of managing their environmental and social impacts.

CSR then really jumped on top of the global agenda when Shell was boycotted for the way it dealt with the disposal of the Brent Spar (Brent Spar).

After this boycott nearly bankrupted Shell, organisations all around the world started to take notice and developed their Plan B for public relations disasters like this.

This was when CSR was born.

This Plan B called CSR quickly developed into a more comprehensive list of actions and responsibilities and in the end to a complete management framework on how to (1) manage the expectations of your stakeholder, (2) change and manage the way you do business more responsibly and (3) take care of your environmental impacts. There are more areas to CSR but I think these three are the most known ones and good to start with when first reading about CSR.

CSR since then has grown continuously into a-must-have for organisations around the globe. No matter whether they have a complete management framework for CSR in place or a policy of some kind, CSR is different from one company to the other and needs to be a tailored approach to managing the responsibility within our society of this particular organisation. There are obviously good and bad examples in the world but overall one can say that CSR been promoting responsible business practice in the world. And this is a good thing.

If you are interested in finding out how your company can participate or learn more about CSR, sustainability and what LOHAS is please e-mail Diane Lund at Creative Wonders (diane@creativewonders.ca). She would be happy to chat with you about it.

Don't judge a book by its cover

2007-10-29T09:58:00.001-07:00

Judge looking worried

Watch the faces of the judges as this guy walks out on the stage. You can almost see what they're thinking as they pre-judge this guy based on his looks and the fact that he's a cell phone salesman.

Performer looking worried

Part 2
The return of the phone sales guy

After amazing first performance he goes on to the next round.

Happy Judges

Feed the world with your vocabulary skills

2007-10-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's not exactly on-message but it's addictive and it's for a good cause.

FreeRice is a computer "game" that tests your vocabulary and for every word that you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations to end world hunger.

Curious? It's simple: a word pops up with multiple choice answers. If you click the right one then a harder word comes up and the level of difficulty keeps increasing. For every click 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Programme. Since October 7, 2007 when it began, 164,650,960 grains of rice have been donated.

The site is funded by the advertisers: Macy's, Fujitsu, Timelife, Apple, Office Depot, Reader's Digest and many more whose names pop up as you play the game. The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries.

I have tried it and have started to help feed the world. Why not take a break and see how much you can help.

It's the little things that make a differance

2007-10-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

If you have a minute, please watch the following Power Point video clip it is a beautiful story of Johnny, the grocery store bagger. It is very short, but it will remind you of why and how we make an impact in what we do.

Eco Friendly Bedroom

2007-10-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

You can see platform beds in home decor magazines, in interior design plans and even in prototypes developed for green housing. The rooms containing a platform bed are usually flushed with light, open and immaculate, and at the same time very chic and very attractive. Did you know that it could be the start of an Eco Friendly Bedroom as well?

Platform Beds are extremely popular right now. The simple, clean lines in this style of furniture work well with minimalist decor preferences and styles influenced by artists and architects from contemporary Japanese to Art Deco. The size and depth of this clean, balanced architectural and graphic style makes the platform bed ideal for efficient use of space and as a graphical element to highlight any room as a whole.

Okay, you say, how is a platform bed a green piece of furniture? Think about the use of materials: the platform bed design requires fewer trees, so big planks of wood are not required and are instead replaced by a minimum number of slats (not even always of wood). Like many modern beds, the platform bed requires less expenditure and bulk in the mattress department, too. It only needs an innerspring or futon mattress. And all of this can contribute to conservation of a very important resource, your finances too!

And when you extend your efforts to match your green concerns, you can use a natural-fill, untreated mattress. As you may know, traditional box spring mattresses are potent, with their petroleum-based polyester, polyurethane, nylon, formaldehyde, perfluorooctanoic acid, and other compounds and gases.

You can insist on an FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certified frame, one which, when possible, uses only wood culled from responsibly-managed forests. These are mostly solid, not pieced together with glues and compounds that also emit VOCs like formaldehyde, as well.

And once you add only untreated, organic cotton bedding (foregoing the bleaches and dyes and subsequent carcinogens); natural, organic pillow stuffing; and surround the piece with only natural (hemp or other) area rugs resting on FSC-certified wood floors, you have a platform bed and bedroom furniture that not only is more sleek in style but will contribute the health of you and your family. You'll be contributing to the global community.

This is a great start towards making a difference in the battle against global warming and creating a more pollution free atmosphere. It's a way of insuring a brighter future for our children and cleaner air for everyone to breathe right now. All of which should help you to get a better nights sleep.

Food for thought

2007-10-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

Here are a series of photo that where sent to me the other day. It is poignant statement about what we eat, how much it costs and what it looks like. If you look closely you can see that most of the expense in the richer families is for non-nutritional heavily packaged food and soft drinks.

What The World Eats

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide

Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07
Favorite foods: fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring,
fried noodles with eggs and cheese, pizza, vanilla pudding

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina

Food expenditure for one week: $341.98
Favorite foods: spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken

Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City

Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25
Favorite foods: sashimi, fruit, cake, potato chips

Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily

Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11
Favorite foods: fish, pasta with ragu, hot dogs, frozen fish sticks

Great Britain: The Bainton family of Cllingbourne Ducis

Food expenditure for one week: 155.54 British Pounds or $253.15
Favorite foods: avocado, mayonnaise sandwich, prawn cocktail,
chocolate fudge cake with cream

Kuwait: The Al Haggan family of Kuwait City
Food expenditure for one week: 63.63 dinar or $221.45
Family recipe: Chicken biryani with basmati rice

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09
Favorite foods: pizza, crab, pasta, chicken

China: The Dong family of Beijing

Food expenditure for one week: 1,233.76 Yuan or $155.06
Favorite foods: fried shredded pork with sweet and sour sauce

Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna

Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27
Family recipe: Pig's knuckles with carrots, celery and parsnips

United States: The Caven family of California

Food expenditure for one week: $159.18
Favorite foods: beef stew, berry yogurt sundae, clam chowder, ice cream

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo

Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53
Family recipe: Okra and mutton

Mongolia: The Batsuuri family of Ulaanbaatar
Food expenditure for one week: 41,985.85 togrogs or $40.02
Family recipe: Mutton dumplings

Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo

Food expenditure for one week: $31.55
Family recipe: Potato soup with cabbage

Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village

Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03
Family recipe: Mushroom, cheese and pork

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp

Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

Consumer Consequences Game

2007-09-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

I have been playing this new interactive game designed to illustrate the impact of our lifestyles on the Earth.

It asks you a series of questions about your lifestyle, and as you play, it will show you how many "Earths" of natural resources it would take to sustain all the humans on it.

Keep an eye on the background graphics as it changes and shows you the waste you produce, the infrastructure you require and the energy you consume and how your lifestyle impinges on forests and other undeveloped land.

Have fun and tell a friend.

Cheers
Bob

Subliminal messaging for digital images

2007-09-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

I love this new technology. Now anyone can create a hidden message that only shows up if you take a digital image.

Kameraflage, is a technology that encodes a layer of information which is only visible after being photographed by a digital camera.

The technology is possible because digital cameras see a broader spectrum of light than the naked eye. Kameraflage exploits this gap to create displays that are only visible after being captured by the camera.

Next week I am going to looking at "Pageflakes" as an alternative to Facebook.

Cheers
Bob

Water Batteries on Sale in Japan

2007-09-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a great new product out in Japan and hopefully available to the rest of the world soon.

In February Water Powered battery where in the testing phase in Japan. Now it would seem they have made it to the store for the Japanese to buy and use. NoPoPo (Non-Pollution Power) Aqua Batteries are available in both AA and AAA form, although the company page shows they are producing the technology for all sizes of battery, and can only be currently purchased in Japan.

The batteries can be recharged with various different fluids using the new development which forms electric power using liquid as a catalyst. The basic principle is that a mixture of magnesium and carbon reacts when mixed with a liquid to produce, in the case of the AA battery, up to 500 milliamp-hours (mAh) of life. Each time the battery is recharged it has a lower power level than the time before and the life cycle allows for about 3 to 5 recharges before disposing of the battery.

Each battery can potentially keep its charge for up to 10 years which could be great for many life saving devices in remote locations. Since the battery does not contain mercury and other harmful materials, it can be easily disposed of without worry for the environment.

Fun Bus Ads

2007-09-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

Back to school and work for the lot of us.

Enjoy the great weather before it's to late. With this in mind I have dug up some fun transit advertising to put a smile on your face. Have lunch outside if it's a nice day and see if you can find a great use of sticker based advertising in your neck of the woods.

Cheers
Bob

Mr Rogers shows us how to sell from the heart

2007-08-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of respect for what Mr. Rogers has done during his career to help improve children's learning. He has provided great tools to help children deal with emotions and day-to-day problems including strife. I watched him when I was younger and your kids probably have watched him too. He even appeared as a guest on the animated children’s show Arthur.

This video is a great example of how a sincere sales pitch can do wonders.

Background: 1969, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was in danger of getting their funding cut in half by Nixon because of war costs. Watch the effect he has on John O. Pastore, notoriously gruff and impatient.

Best Magazine Covers

2007-08-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last week the American Magazine Conference presented the greatest magazine covers in the last 40 years. Follows is a small sample from their press release as well as a link to all the covers.

“This diverse and surprising spectrum of covers is a fascinating cultural montage, and beyond that, points to the role that magazines play in shaping our culture and telling our history,” said Whitaker. “From newer magazines, such as Budget Living and Details, to venerable titles such as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, these images reflect and shape decisive moments in American society – revolutions in design, technology and landmark geo-political events.”

In total, of the 41 winning covers, 32 were photographs, seven were illustrations, and two displayed typeface, only. The decade-by-decade breakdown was as follows: 11 winning covers from the 1960s; eight winning covers from the 1970s; three winning covers from the 1980s; ten winning covers from the 1990s, and nine winning covers from the 2000s.

Creative and Cool

2007-08-17T15:59:00.000-07:00

You are never going to get a photo looking like this right out of any camera regardless of the formats size (perhaps an 8x10 inch digital or film back). Photoshop is part of the picture taking process these days. However to get a photo to look this great you need a great shot to start with and then some serious time in your desktop darkroom.

Creative Wonders Acknowledged for Community Work

2006-11-27T15:01:00.000-08:00

Creative Wonders Communications has been acknowledged for their generous community work with the Ethics In Action Community Care Award. Founded 14 years ago by Diane Lund to “go beyond the mind, beyond the bottom line, and straight to the heart”.This company actively fulfills its policy to get involved in, and give back to their community. In fact, their prolific pro bono and charity work to a wide variety of causes, has resulted in investing back 50% of their annual profit, and has generated millions of dollars for charity. Their practices exceed the Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) guidelines for leading a socially and environmentally conscious company.

“Our philosophy is to bring creativity, wonder, responsibility and a higher consciousness to businesses interested in balanced living,” explains Lund. Creative Wonders are experts in the LOHAS (Lifestyles Of Health and Sustainability) market, an award-winning powerhouse boutique with local and national clients.

Their success is the result of applying a unique “Ready, Aim, Fire” process to all their projects, and encouraging clients to think economically, environmentally and profitably. Staff is paid to do community and charity work, and are offered flexible work hours, plus fully paid professional communications and personal growth training.

“Diane and her team have worked tirelessly and creatively, for the past two years, helping to lead and facilitate the emerging Interfaith Spiritual Centre of Vancouver, a sanctuary for peace andthe spiritual home for our diverse multicultural community,” explains founding Board MemberHong Leng Chiam. M.D. “Diane’s vision, gentle heart, knowledge, and skillfull leadership have helped this organization grow and I see the effects of their social consciousness and generous spiritat work in our community.”

“They’ve literally worked wonders for us!” says Lori Phillips, Director of Culture Services for the Arts + Culture Commission of North Vancouver.

“Diane has worked to bring a common identity to a diverse creative community that struggles for funding, awareness and audiences. We now have an integrated, visible brand identity that has brought an awareness of the rich contribution of art to our community life.”

Among the many community organizations to benefit from Creative Wonders generosity are the:

North Shore Community Foundation
Lions Gate Hospital 911 Relay
Christmas Bureau
Children’s Wish Foundation
BC Women’s Hospital and Health Care Centre
North Shore Homeless Shelter
Pacific Dreams Theatre Society
Souls in Stride
Lookout Emergency Aid Society, Kind
Acts Haven Institute
West Vancouver Memorial Library Foundation
North Shore Community Foundation
and many more.

To see examples of their stellar creative wonder work visit their web site or for a free consultation on how to help your business grow - call today.

Creative Wonders welcomes Monica as new VP Client Services!

2006-09-25T16:56:00.000-07:00

Monica has recently joined Creative Wonders as VP Client Services. She has been in the field of marketing for over two decades working on the client side. In her most recent position at Starbucks Coffee as Director of Marketing, she was responsible for all aspects of marketing including, marketing strategy, media strategy, creative development, market research, promotions, public relations and special events. Before that Monica spent almost eight years at A&W and was responsible for the return of The Burger Family and Chubby Chicken, which have proven to be incredibly successful moves for the burger chain. Recently a desire to reconnect with her community and deepen her relationship with her family led her to re-evaluate her life. Joining Creative Wonders allows her not only to bring her years of professional savvy and experience to our L.O.H.A.S. customer base, but it adds balance and humanity to her own life. Something we promote and work to achieve for clients and staff.

Sheep and Yaks?

2006-09-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to Vancouver this weekend. He came to speak about global and social issues. The weekend began with a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and high-school students. The Leader’s Dialogue was on Saturday and Sunday. It was basically a series of small group conversations among prominent national and international business leaders and social innovators. Though these are not things I would normally associate compassion with, that was his central theme. Compassion as the central element of life, in business and pleasure. His holiness hopes to spread this knowledge through his education center, The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, which he opened this weekend. There are webcasts of some of the dialogues available on the Center’s website. (Vancouver Dialogues 2006) It was these corporate and social leaders that his Holiness referred to as sheep and yaks. Apparently he was the Yeti.

Cars, Planes, Busses and Boats...

2006-09-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

I choose to ride transit to work. I have a car and insurance and even a parking spot in the garage at work, but I would rather ride transit. There is something so intimate about being crammed on the Skytrain with people who you would normally not want to be in the same building with. I have three legs to my journey every morning; bus, Skytrain, Seabus. After the Seabus I take a leisurely walk through the park and up a little hill to my building. Sometimes I stop and watch the seaplanes take off or land. And then I feel like I am ready for the day. I had not had to drive in Vancouver traffic for an hour or merge with the merging impaired, nor have I contributed to the pollution while driving my car all by myself. To me this is worth the noise, the smell, the walking. This is one of the things that make us all so lucky to live in Vancouver. Check out the Translink website, maybe you can enhance your morning commute.

Air instead of Gas?

2006-08-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

Finally something has been invented that has the ability to improve air quality, eliminate emissions and increase quality of life-all for little over a penny a mile. All this in a tiny little package. The air car is here, it is not longer some far-fetched dream. This little car runs on compressed air and emits nothing but water as a byproduct. What could be better than this? No more paying for gas, no more pollution, no more guilt. If I were backing this project I would want to get these on the market as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, The oil industry is huge and I’m not sure how happy they are about this invention. If people no longer need to buy gas to fuel their cars, they are out of business. Where does that put the oil industry? Out on the streets? I’m scared that this car will not pass all the tests that it needs to become certified for the road. With an innovation like this, surely the world will last another 100 or so years with its ozone layer intact.

Aspartame-Sweet Side Effects

2006-08-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

Although there are many things in the world that cause health problems, some of them are avoidable. It is common to see people eating a large fattening meal and topping it off with a diet soda. In their eyes, this is a healthy, low fat contribution. Not so. The sweetener aspartame, used in most diet sodas, is more dangerous than fast food and some might even argue, worse for you..

The Truth About Aspartame...
Aspartame is NOT a natural substance!
Aspartame is NOT a Diet Enhancement product!
Aspartame is NOT safe - for ANYONE!
Aspartame is NOT a food "additive"
Aspartame is an UNREGULATED and UNSAFE DRUG!
(It was originally slated to be a peptic ulcer drug!)
Aspartame in liquids turns to FORMALDEHYDE above freezing!
Aspartame is even worse for DIABETICS!
Aspartame poisoning is cumulative (it adds up IN YOUR BODY!)
Aspartame byproducts get stored in your FAT!
Aspartame has 92 "Official" Side Effects (the worst is DEATH!)
Aspartame MIMICS a wide range of problems
Aspartame side effects are USUALLY MISDIAGNOSED!
Aspartame is unfit for human consumption!
Aspartame's approval by the FDA is a SHAMELESS tragedy!
Aspartame's approval for use in EVERYTHING is far worse!

Who are the culprits? FDA, Searle, Monsanto, NutraSweet and more!
The ONLY "CURE" is total exclusion from the diet!
TOTAL recovery may not be possible!
Only an irate and active PUBLIC can rid the world of this POISON!
If YOU have been affected, REPORT IT! GET INVOLVED!

FDA Audit - The Bressler Report
Jerome Bressler is now retired from the FDA but he was an employee when
all the shenanigans were going on. In a conversation with Dr. Betty
Martini, Dr. H. J. Roberts and Dr. Russell Blaylock, he admitted the
studies on aspartame were so bad that when his report was retyped, the FDA
removed the worst 20 percent. So, as bad as this report is, it was
originally worse. Dr. Roberts wrote his congressman demanding the FDA
release the other 20 percent, but they refused saying it was confidential.
Read the FDA report.

BACKGROUND: Aspartame was discovered in l965 by Searle chemist, Jim
Schlatter. He was developing this drug for another use and after
accidentally licking his finger found that aspartame was sweet. Today
aspartame is consumed by more than 100 million people in the United States.
This chemical (aspartame) has been approved by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) who said that an individual can safely consume 97 packets of aspartame every day. Aspartame is in many products including some that children use such as diet soda, light yogurt, Flintstone Vitamins,
baked goods, puddings, and Winterfresh gum. It has been known
to cause headaches, nausea, vision problems, seizures and cancer in its
users.

The ingredients in aspartame are aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and
methyl alcohol. Methyl alcohol is a chemical that breaks down in high
temperatures and turns into formaldehyde and DKP (diketopiperazine), two
chemicals known to cause problems in the nervous system. Aspartame's
life is 262 days at 77 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 degrees Celsius. The FDA
gets more complaints about aspartame than any other food or drink.

The symptoms of aspartame are a lot like the symptoms of multiple
sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Ever since aspartame was approved in
l985, there has been an increase in brain tumors. There is no direct
proof that aspartame caused the brain tumors, but there is enough reason to
suspect that, and the television show, "60 Minutes" recently did a
report linking the increase in brain cancer to aspartame use.

The FDA reviewed Searle's studies of this artificial sweetener in which
rats were fed aspartame daily with their meals for one year. There
were 12 brain tumors in the 320 rats that were fed aspartame and no brain
tumors in the 120 rats that were not fed aspartame.

There was also a study done at the University of Wisconsin on rhesus
monkeys. They were fed aspartame daily. After day 200 of a one year
study the monkeys developed epileptic seizures. After the study ended,
the aspartame was discontinued and the monkeys were fully watched for 60
days. The monkeys had no more seizures.
~ Keith & Susana Byron

The Vancouver Convention Centre Goes Green-A Park in the Sky!

2006-08-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

There has been quite a bit of new development in the City. A glance towards the downtown skyline elicits a view of numerous cranes and scaffolding. One of the largest projects being undertaken right now is the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion. This $615 million project is being built with sustainability in mind. The roof, a whopping six acres, will be a living roof with grass, trees, a virtual park in the sky! This will be one of the largest of its kind in the world. There are many other “green building” ideas and innovations in the project. All of the construction is being performed under the strictest policy of environmental awareness and the outcome, a new, larger more environmentally friendly building will be complete in 2008, just in time to gear up for the Olympics! Check out this link for a more detailed sustainability plan.
Vancouver Convention Centre Site

This is the building style of the future, and advertising your sustainability will only help your business. Even doing small things like buying organic whenever possible, not driving and recycling makes an impact. With more and more “green buildings” like this popping up, we just might make it a few more years before Richmond becomes the bottom of the ocean.

HO'OPONOPONO: A story of healing

2006-08-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is a story of love, healing and spirit. Diane Lund was given this story and feels that it is important to share with our readers. Enjoy!

HO'OPONOPONO
By Joe Vitale

"Two years ago, I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.
"When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best self-improvement master cure the criminally insane? It didn't make any sense. It wasn't logical, so I dismissed the story.

"However, I heard it again a year later. I heard that the therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called ho 'oponopono. I had never heard of it, yet I couldn't let it leave my mind. If the story was at all true, I had to know more. I had always understood "total responsibility" to mean that I am responsible for what I think and do. Beyond that, it's out of my hands. I think that most people think of total responsibility that ay. We're responsible for what we do, not what anyone else does--but that's wrong.

"The Hawaiian therapist who healed those mentally ill people would teach me an advanced new perspective about total responsibility. His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We probably spent an hour talking on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the complete story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous.
Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.

"Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.

"'After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely,' he told me. 'Others who had to be heavily medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance of ever being released were being freed.' I was in awe.'Not only that,' he went on, 'but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed.'

"This is where I had to ask the million dollar question: 'What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?'
"'I was simply healing the part of me that created them,' he said. I didn't understand. Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life- simply because it is in your life--is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.

"Whew. This is tough to swallow. Being responsible for what I say or do is one thing. Being responsible for what everyone in my life says or does is quite another. Yet, the truth is this: if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life. This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy or anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to change them, you have to change you.

"I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Blame is far easier than total responsibility, but as I spoke with Dr. Len, I began to realize that healing for him and in ho 'oponopono means loving yourself.

"If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life. If you want to cure anyone, even a mentally ill criminal you do it by healing you.

"I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he looked at those patients' files?

"'I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again,' he explained.

"That's it?

"That's it.

"Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve your world.

"Let me give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an email that upset me. In the past I would have handled it by working on my emotional hot buttons or by trying to reason with the person who sent the nasty message.

"This time, I decided to try Dr. Len's method. I kept silently saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you,' I didn't say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within me what was creating the outer circumstance.

"Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message. Keep in mind that I didn't take any outward action to get that apology. I didn't even write him back. Yet, by saying 'I love you,' I somehow healed within me what was creating him.

"I later attended a ho 'oponopono workshop run by Dr. Len. He's now 70 years old, considered a grandfatherly shaman, and is somewhat reclusive.
He praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I improve myself, my book's vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.

"'What about the books that are already sold and out there?' I asked.

"'They aren't out there,' he explained, once again blowing my mind with his mystic wisdom. 'They are still in you.' In short, there is no out there. It would take a whole book to explain this advanced technique with the depth it deserves.

"Suffice It to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you. When you look, do it with love."

Lights Out Hong Kong

2006-08-10T23:17:00.000-07:00

On 8 pm on Tuesday night a portion of Hong Kong fell into blackness. It was a part of the 'Lights Out Hong Kong' campaign that would see residents and businesses turn out their lights for three minutes as a cohesive protest against air pollution. The idea was to show an awareness of the dangers of pollution through energy consumption and to take responsibility.

However, I didn't notice a thing and neither did most of the city. The pollution levels registered "high" for that day and the portion that went black, was small. In fact, the protest had a rather disappointing turnout, with some large organizations flatly refusing to particpate, namely the Festival of Lights, which began promptly at 8 in spite of pleas from organizers. The light show stated that such a protest would give the international community a 'misleading message' about Hong Kong and create 'adverse publicity'.

Depsite only gaining the participation of 15-20 percent of the city, organizers see this first attempt as a success. It has people talking about air pollution and the event was written up in every major newspaper (and probably countless blogs). Only about a third of residents this year had heard of the campaign, and the letters sent to many large organizations and buildings were ineffectual. Perhaps next year the event will put more focus on their Business to Business and Business to Consumer sustainability advertising.

My last post

2006-07-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well the marathon is over and so is this blog for the time being as I am off to Asia and Europe. Right now I am in Tokyo.

I would like to thank everyone that was a help in our fundraising efforts, together we raised $9500 for leukemia, lymphoma and Hodgkin's Disease research.

I would foremost like to thank our corporate sponsor Pardon Services Canada.

Others I would like to thank include:

Diane Lund and Creative Wonders
The Media Club
The Marine Club

Huge thanks to Katie Lapi for all of her help with the bands and posters, she's a star and a mighty fine designer
and Rupy Kambo for her organizational prowess

Also big thanks to
Jon Kanngiesser
Stephanie Strelau
Tracy Ho
Amber Gehrts
Nancy Page
David and Louise Catherall
Petra Goor
Dana Cullum
Jordan Catherall
Glenn Mageau
Sandra De Jesus
Abigail Viner
Suzy Lapi
Kristen Senz
Rob and Helen Catherall
Erin Catherall
Anne Greenwell
Petra Dodgson
Alisha Mohamed
Shirley Palmer
Athena Palm

And most of all my partner in all of this, Maria Hruschak

Online Public Relations

2006-06-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

The American Chronicle site has been down for the last three weeks, so I haven't been writing my usual weekly column, but now it's back.

If you are interested in getting your sustainable product or service on Google News, let me know.

604-987-8401
Ask for Mike

Here is an ad for the UN by Saatchi that won a Bronze Lion at Cannes.

(courtesy of canneslions)

Business In Vancouver Sustainability Breakfast

2006-06-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

It was interesting to hear Don Rolfe, the President and CEO of Ethical Funds give a speech this morning about the power to create positive change through the strength of investment. If investments can create sustainable and ethical protocol in the North American thought leaders of organizations, such as Wal-Mart, then there is opportunity to create positive change in every country that the organization is rooted. Essentially, they have to opportunity to steer companies worldwide towards more socially conscious behaviour. Powerful stuff. To learn more about the direction Ethical Funds is moving in check out their website for makeadifferencenow.ca

And The Winners Are...

2006-06-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Cannes Lions winners have been posted. Turns out it wasn't the best year for Canada, but there are some pretty amazing ads being produced all over the world. Design Barcode won the Titanium Lion for a small shop in Japan. They came up with the idea and then shopped it around to different manufacturers. It is a simple and brilliant idea. The best ads usually are. Forget high production values and the eye candy appeal. Usually it is a simple singleminded concept that makes for a truly breakthrough ad. Here are some examples:

March of the Emperors is a great concept, it won a gold.

Bangkok Insurance also had a brilliant concept behind this campaign. They took golds as well.

Amora Hot Ketchup had a series of three bizarre Ed Wood type ads that took silvers. They are hilarious. If you ask me, TBWA\Paris is one of the hottest shops around right now.

I absolutely love this Starburst ad, although it is rather silly. It took a silver.

The 'What Your Mom Would Feed You If Your Mom Were A Man' Campaign took five silvers, personally, I love it.

The 30 second movies that won silver for Volkswagon are fun, but I felt a bit cheated, as these were up and running on the Internet before VW bought them...

This is very cool. Nike circulated this viral campaign over the Internet...is it real or is it staged? It won them a silver.

This ad blew my mind. What an amazing rebranding ad. The Gap

Another brilliant concept: Take two soccer stars, give them two hours to put together a team and have them play. It's all made documentary style. Adidas - England vs France

Brilliant strategy. Vodafone wanted people to use their cell phones for long calls, as opposed to their landlines. This series reminds us of those long talks instantly. Pregnant

This ad is incredible. It is one of the smartest ads I have ever seen. Truth

Simple, singleminded concept. This singular idea won a bronze for Halls. Halls Vapours

This is one of the smartest, most cunning media buys I have ever heard of. Last summer during the final ashes test (in cricket) Kit Kat bought the only spot between overs. They made it seem as though the camera crews just happened to leave the cameras running...while the players shared a Kit Kat.

This ad is funny. Taxi

So is this one. Energizer - Beard

Anyone who has ever run will love this ad. Nike Reincarnate

Not as good as the 'Girlfriend' ad, but I love how Tacoma use alternative media sources such as hand-cams and in this case, a web-cam.

This ad is twisted. But it taps into bored youth. Family Function

Another smart ad by National Geographic. Words

This ad made me howl. Photographer

Here's a dead simple drinking and driving ad. Optical Illusion

And three twisted spots that really drive the point home for the the safety and well-being of humanity. Innocence in Danger, Win a TV drives our desensitization home and Blackwater Springs spells out the problems in Africa in black and white.

Check out this year's winners, there are some great ideas here. This is what makes advertising so interesting, powerful and fun.

What's Your Footprint?

2006-06-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Measure your ecological footprint at myfootprint.org

Ethical Advertising

2006-06-20T15:40:00.000-07:00

At first glance, it might seem like an oxymoron, or even a sham. On one hand you have an industry hell-bent on persuading consumers to buy things they don’t need by prying into their insecurities, reinforcing oppressive stereotypes and pouring gasoline on the fires of capitalism. On the other, you have an industry with a sudden new desire to make the world a better place.

Where these values intersect is the latest boom in the advertising world: ethical advertising. Targeted at Conscious Consumers, ethical advertising taps into the residual idealism and guilt of Boomers who have rediscovered their romantic 60s idealism lost or temporarily replaced by vapid consumerism, only to see the light again in their twilight years. Pair this with nagging thoughts of mortality, the afterlife and a fear of coming back as a cockroach, and you have a bolstering opportunity.

The Earth is on a doomsday clock as well and it is only a matter of time, as Clinton himself has stated, before Manhattan is knee-deep in water. And time is running out. The effects of global warming will be prevalent even in our generation. Our natural resources are running out and the population crisis is driving the planet to the breaking point. This built in sense of urgency is a marketer’s dream come true: For a limited time only, while supplies last.

On second glance, ethical advertising is as opportunistic as any other niche specialization. To the capitalist, the targets are just another market, with another set of special interests, and another set of unique insecurities, and they are ripe to be separated from their cash.

While Conscious Consumers, as they are known, make up the majority of this target market, the reality is that they are now more capable to make a difference than ever before. Their children are now self-sufficient and they have succeeded at proving themselves “successful” to their parents’ generation. This leaves them with a lot of time and resources to put to good use.

At third glance, ethical advertising is evil! It is selling off the values and virtues of a passionate group of advocates and activists and doing more harm than good by allowing Big Business to slough off the stringent guidelines and moral gauntlets of the watchdogs.

Take green-washing, where companies pay lip service to sustainability and pat themselves on the back for token, highly publicized concessions. Oil and mining companies will applaud themselves for a reforestation initiative to put them back in a favourable light while soft drinks and candy have jumped on the organic and herbal bandwagon long ago. There is a brilliant ad put out by Duracell that claims that the GPS systems used in Brazil for conducting sustainability projects contain Duracell batteries, so therefore these toxic, high unsustainable and corrosive piles of metal are actually helping with the greenhouse problem.

Introducing Sustainability Advertising. Sustainability Advertising is out to improve the way in which we interact with the world. It exists to bring awareness the public of wasteful and dangerous practices, and introduces healthier, and saner alternatives. A good example of this is water bottles. Once word was out that water bottles were filling our landfills at an alarming rate, the public demanded an alternative. Alternatives are expensive to large bottling plants such as Coca-Cola’s Dasani, but they are available, and if the public wants water bottles that are made of corn products that can bio-degrade in a few months, then the public shall have water bottles made of corn products that can bio-degrade in a few months.

It is an awareness issue. A good way to spread awareness is the news. A better way is through advertising.

But advertising, and global warning, is expensive. So you need a company to foot the bill, and to do that you need a consumer base to buy the products, use the services and receive the message.

What separates what Big Business is referring to as ‘ethical advertising’ and the real deal is principles. While most advertising uses any means necessary to break through the clutter, principled ethical advertising opts for positivism.

For example, recent ads made by the Ad Council have used the metaphor of an oncoming train to get the attention of the public. Regardless of the message, the result is the same, increased anxiety and insecurity in the viewers that can only be alleviated by adhering to the cause. It is the same poison-remedy model they would use to sell cigarettes.

Ethical advertising agencies such as Creative Wonders, and informative blogs on the matter such as Sustainability Advertising tackle the issues pertaining to ethical advertising, and attempt to ensure that ethical advertising remains consistent with good business practice and that it is not corrupted and used as an additional capitalistic entity.

Entrepreneurial Spirit

2006-06-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Here is an ad to celebrate entrepreneurialism.

Orange - The Van

(courtesy of boardsmag)

Aching Bones and Black Balloons

2006-06-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I finished the marathon and that is the most important thing. My time was okay for a first go at four hours 35 minutes. Maria fared well also, coming in at 2:27 for her half-marathon. Now I am in pain.

Back to Sustainability Advertising: here is an interesting way to get people to think about the amount of greenhouse gasses they are releasing every time they use power.

Sustainability Victoria

In other news, for some reason, the American Chronicle site is shut down at the moment, they say it is temporary, however.

The Alaska Marathon

2006-06-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hello my faithful readers,

Finally! It's here, with your support I have been able to raise $5500 for leukemia, lymphoma and Hodgkin's Disease and tomorrow Maria and I are off to Alaska to run a marathon in honour of those who are battling blood cancers.

As a team, Maria and I have been great together, however, as a team we are still shy $1775. We have until the end of the month to get it together, so hopefully we will reach our $11,000 goal eventually.

We have raffle tickets for sale, and the draw is July 1st.

The grand prize is an inflatable lifevest from Mustang Survival.
The second prize is a free teeth whitening.

Let me know if you want one! Or 177!

almost there

Wal-Mart Organics - Halfway There

2006-06-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

Wal-Mart has introduced an organic line to its mix at only 10% higher cost than its regular line. This has even the greatest Wal-Mart haters grumbling kudos. But is it really all rosy?

While this new accessibility to organic food is helping the organic food industry to slough off its elitist stigma, it neglects the ethical dimension of the process.

Organic food is more than just food without fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. It is also an approach to food, and animals. While organic farmers have traditionally used animals that were local, and well-treated, Wal-Mart will reintroduce some of the captive and inhumane methods used in traditional livestock farming. In other words, they will piggyback on the goodwill of an organic label to sell food that comes from less-than-desirable conditions.

This is an education and awareness issue, but nonetheless it is positive to see healthier food become universally accessible.

Ethics and Marketing: How Much Do Consumers Really Care?

2006-06-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

According to the latest research there is a huge gap between consumer attitudes and reality. While on paper, or during survey conditions, consumers may be very heartfelt about their purchase intention toward ethical products, this passion does not reflect in their behaviour. It has been found that when faced with lower prices, superior customer service, or convenience, customers are more likely to shop with what is cheap and easy, as opposed to following their own conviction under artificial conditions.

Take retail shoppers: When asked what is most important to them, 40% stated that they wanted great customer service and 25% stated that they want their need met, as opposed to the 4% that cared if it contributed to society’s well-being and the 0% that was primarily concerned if it is honest in its dealings.

Why all the discrepancies in research and behaviour? Maybe it is just a question of outdated survey methods and validity errors..

Here's A Nice Spot

2006-06-08T16:59:00.000-07:00

nice spot

courtesy of shots

Ethical Advertising: Advertising to Children with Puppets

2006-06-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to think that the colourful, fun characters from Sesame Street were originally used in television commercials in the 60s. Jim Henson had been running a highly successful advertising shop at the time, and when the show was first conceived, the producers found the most creative minds from advertising to help them build this masterpiece of child education. In fact, every episode of Sesame Street was meticulously engineered under the scrutiny of child psychologists and scientists to ensure that it would hold a child’s attention, often using techniques borrowed from television commercials. The concept was to teach children to read using the same tactics that they would use to sell them cereal.

Big Bird was originally a seven-foot dragon to sell La Choy. Cookie Monster was created to sell Frito-Lay, and Grover was used in promotional films for IBM. From these commercial beginnings grew the most effective staples of children’s education on television for the next three decades.

What Your Mom Would Feed You If Your Mom Were A Man

2006-06-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Cheetos

Here is a great, original concept.

Welcome Amber Gehrts and Beware The Beast

2006-06-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Creative Wonders would like to officially welcome to the fold our new Production Coordinator Amber Gehrts. Amber has been keeping order out front for the last 3 months now, but it has come to my attention that we have not officially added an Amber Gehrts page on our website, or had an Amber Gehrts mention on this blog. So, to make it official, Creative Wonders welcomes Amber Gehrts on this ominous day.

In case you didn’t know, today is the 6th day of the 6th year of the 6th month.

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number.

Ethical Advertising: Kids With Guns

2006-06-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

This ad was banned for encouraging violence in kids. It's a pretty accurate depiction of video games and everything that video games stand for in youth. But it has moms everywhere up in arms.

It all links back to the age-old censorship debate. If this was shown at a gallery would it be banned as well and if it were, wouldn't everyone be rattling sabres about nanny and police states?

If advertising is a reflection of a culture, then this ad, and the reaction it created, is spot on.

What do you think my readers?

Xbox 360 - Standoff

(courtesy of iFilm)

Hippos, Carnivals and Female Armwrestling

2006-06-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

There has been much controversy lately with Hazina, the Telus Hippo. After performing in the very popular Christmas commercial for high speed internet TV, Hazina was paid the hefty sum of $10.000.00 with the promise that it would contribute to the fund for her new home. To no avail. Hazina is still living in apparent squalor and the zoo is now facing criminal charges. She lives in a windowless concrete shed with a pool that is too shallow to allow herself to be entirely submerged. Lucky for Hazina she is a big TV star that has fans and spokespeople. If Hazina wasn’t a public figure would people still make it their mission to look out for the best interests of animals in advertising? What about animals owned by individual people instead of organizations? Who looks out for them? Is it ethical that the animals are doing all the work but the human reaps the benefits? In Hazina’s case, although there has been a very long delay, she is benefiting from the work she performed. But does she even know or care?

Here is an ad for a zoo that’ll make you care… Buenos Aires Zoo- Together

In other news...

Come on out this Friday to Fight Leukemia in a carnival of fun and madness.

Take part in:

Poker Tournaments
Karaoke Contests
Pole Dancing Competitions
Taco Eating Challenges
Frozen T-shirt Events

and pit your strength against the loveliest, but strongest women I can find in...

Female Armwrestling

It will be a great night at the Gecko Club (518 Richards - the Old Marble Arch)
This Friday, June 2nd

$10 at the door, includes a free drink before 10.

Help support Mike and Maria's quest to raise $11,000 for leukemia, lymphoma and Hodgkin's Disease. We are at $7500 now, with only 3 weeks and $3500 to go!

I hope to see you there!

Mike

Personal Development

2006-05-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

Diane and I are at a course to learn how to edit Final Cut Pro, so there won't be any blog entries for a week.

Soon we will be able to take you (our clients and those interested) to television and online easier than ever before.

If you would like to make the jump into television, now is your chance.

Until then, see you on Friday for our next fundraiser at the Gecko Club (518 Richards).
It will feature female armwrestling, poker tournaments, pole dancing, karaoke and taco eating contests. It will be a ball. $10 at the door, includes a free drink before 10.

Now is also a great time to buy raffle tickets - the grand prize is a teeth whitening by Dr. John and an inflatable PFD from Mustang Survival. Tickets are $10.

Rock n' Roll Fundraising at the Marine Club Tonight

2006-05-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight at the Marine Club will be four great indy bands playing for a cure:

Safety Show
12 year old girl
La Drama
Lover, Lover, Lover

Come on out and support our fundraising efforts to raise $11,000 for leukemia (we still have $3500 to go!)

Want to help out but can't make the show tonight?

There are pleny of ways you can help make a difference.

You can donate online here or here.
Contact us for public relations articles that will shoot you to the top of Google News like this article
Donate something to our raffle, or buy a raffle ticket ($10).

Every little bit counts, only 3 weeks left.

Advertising on Broadway

2006-05-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Broadway patrons were outraged when a three minute ad for London's tourism bureau aired this week before their scheduled Stomp. It was the first time an ad has ever been shown on Broadway. Obviously, outrage was not the reaction the tourism bureau was going for, so it seems to be a failed experiment.

read it here

(courtesy of Political Gateway)

It might have been cool if the ad itself were acted out, with singing and a storyline and whatnot.

Any businesses out there want to try this on? I'll write a three minute musical for you.

Global Warming Is Our Friend

2006-05-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

Sustainability advertising has been turned on its head.

A series of TV ads will be released today in the United States to emphasize the benefits of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide.

The ads, sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, have been made to counter the bad press greenhouse gasses have been getting lately and are being produced just in time to poke holes in Al Gore’s new theatrical release, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Here is some copy from one of the ads:

"The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labour, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love. Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed -- what would our lives be like then?"

"[These ads] fly in the face of most of the science," Charlie Miller of Environmental Defence said of the institute ads.

Read more about it at this link

Red Hot Chilli LOHAS

2006-05-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

It appears that the lifestyles of health and sustainability movement has picked up some celebrity support. Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, after attending a LOHAS conference in California has insisted that his record label print their latest album on fully recyclable paper. He is the latest in sustainable celebrities including George Clooney, Daryl Hannah and Raquel Welch.

Nothing draws the eye or adds credibility faster than a celebrity. They are an advertiser's holy grail.

How Not to Blog - Coca Cola Zero Movement

2006-05-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking about launching a blog of your own to boost your business, take heed.

Coca Cola tried to break in, but they cheated, got caught and now people hate them.

Coca Cola Zero Movement blog

They posted fake comments, misrepresented their intentions and overall just acted really lame.

Don't make the same mistake. If you are going to try out a new advertising medium, you have to do it in a sustainable, ethical and transparent way.

Otherwise you get a pretty nasty reaction from the very people you are trying to target.

Enter a company's worst nightmare: a false site set up to hijack yours and tear it to pieces.

Zero Movement.org

Here are some things that people are saying about it:

Coca Cola lies, misleads with fake zero blog

courtesy of AdRants

Zero plus zero is still zeroM

courtesy of B&T

and my favourite The Zero Movement Sucks

The whole idea is to type in Coca Cola zero movement into a Google search engine and get a barrage of hip and interesting links. Instead, there is nothing but vitriol and flack.

Breaking News - Rejoice! Today is the Happiest Day of the Year

2006-05-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

It is the Thursday before the long weekend which kicks off the long days and summer months.

Good times. Rapture and Joy!

Creative Wonders TV

2006-05-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

I am excited to say that Diane and I are going to be taking a course at Emily Carr to learn how to video-edit Final Cut Pro.

Diane has over 25 years of production experience and I have a couple under my belt now and it looks like we are ready to go ahead with Creative Wonders TV via videolog.

Videologs are the wave of the future. Now, great content can be captured and distributed worldwide without the barriers of cost and coordination that typical TV requires.

There is an interesting talk about videologs on this link

Rocketboom Speaks

(courtesy of Rocketboom) <- you may notice I have started doing this, apologies to all those links I didn't mention earlier.

What are you fighting for?

2006-05-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

The next show on the list to Fight Leukemia is May 26th at the Marine Club.
There will be four great Indy bands helping us to reach our goal of $11,000 for leukemia research.

Right now we are at $7500, but we only have a month to go, so come on out and show your support.

Or you can donate online here or here.

Ethical Advertising - The Invasion of Public Space

2006-05-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

There is a big debate right now going on about corporate advertising in schools. In the states they have Channel One, or the twelve minutes of news sponsored by two to three minutes of ads fed to a captive audience of 10-18 year olds that has raised some ire, in Canada there is an estimated $185 million pumped into our school system through corporate sponsorship.

On the plus side, these schools are getting gym equipment, rennovations, and supplies that they could not have otherwise had, with no strain on the taxpayer.

On the downside it is further evidence of what advertisers call 'marketing creep' where advertisers find more and more creative and invasive ways of getting into our daily lives and turnng every available space into a billboard.

Here is the latest example from Europe: Breadvertising.

(courtesy of springwise.com)

Ethical Advertising - Feminism and the Depiction of Women in the Media

2006-05-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a website that has drawn the attention of tens of thousands of young teenage girls.

Sign up for the Plastic Assets credit card and get free breast implants.

Plastic Assets

The site was created to illustrate the dangers of breast implants and to criticize the media for pushing bustiness as the depiction of sexiness. But the hoax has also drawn a lot of criticism, stating that it is only spreading mis-information in the process of parading outdated feminist ideals on tax dollars.

We Once Wore Armour

2006-05-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

The big debate these days is how to market to the increasingly difficult to define male market. Marketers have thrown men into two bland polar opposite distinctions. There is the Metro, who is the moisturizing, salon-dwelling, cuticle clipping kind of guy and the Retro who sits around, drinks beer, drives a Charger and scratches a lot. Despite what people think, men are actually more complex than that. Dads in particular, have been stereotyped into being either the dumb clueless fool or the deadbeat. It seems as though the white, middle aged, domesticated father is the only one left that is safe to mock in our overly politically correct media environment.

Beer companies are having a hard time breaking out of the ‘let’s go off to the cabin and surround ourselves with buxom babes’ mould, and it has been done to death. Sure guys like cabins, and guys like buxom babes. But what is it about the emasculation by media that is not being addressed here.

Good ol’ KesselsKramer have a great ad to hit this nail on the head.

Call of the Wild

Pay attention, they make reference to every big name beer ad out there in the process, from Guiness’ Evolution to Carlton Draught’s Big Ad, as well as my favourite playstation ad -Golfers.

Some Good Ads

2006-05-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

These are funny.

Washington Lotto

Ethical Advertising: Studies show that CSR mandates go unrecognized

2006-05-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

Taken from this week’s Marketing Magazine.

Good Corporate Deeds Go Unrecognized.

The latest Ipsos Reid poll states that 68% of Canadians pay attention to issues related to Corporate Social Responsibility, however only a third are aware that companies that have made a commitment to CSR actually have official policies in place. 72% of companies have these policies in place, so how does one explain the discrepancy?

A lack of awareness…

Yet research does show that consumers do pay attention to these issues care about companies’ activities.

So what is a company to do? Advertise, naturally.

Ethical Advertising and Dove

2006-05-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting presentation on Friday at the BCAMA conference.

It featured Janet Kestin, who happens to write one of my favourite columns at ihaveanidea.org called Ask Jancy.

Janet is partially responsible for the Real Beauty campaign by Dove.

This is a campaign that I always thought was something of a sham until I heard them speak.

The concept is to show women's bodies as they actually are, not the size 0 or size 2 model body types that women apparently strive for, hence Real Beauty.

I always thought it was a gimmick to tap in to the most common insecurity of all: body dysmorphic disorder.

However, after speaking to girls about it, and listening to Janet, it appears that their are deeper issues at play, and that there is some genuine concern in place here. Women, it seems, love this campaign.

Just another example, I suppose, of how you just won't 'get' certiain ads if you aren't the target market.

The biggest thing I liked about the campaign after hearing the presentation was that they don't airbrush the models.

Pranksters

2006-05-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here is a great stunt pulled by a group called Improv Everywhere.

They rounded up 80 people and dressed up in the Best Buy employee uniform of royal blue shirts, khaki pants and a belt and infiltrated a Best Buy.

With 80 new Best Buy employees standing around, customers had plenty of people to ask for directions and help, which they were happy to give. When real employees asked them why they were there, they would say they were waiting for their girlfriend/boyfriend.

They snuck in video cameras as well to film the fiasco, it's pretty funny.

Improv Everywhere

Tonight is the Night!

2006-05-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

Doors open at 8. First band starts at 9:45. Tickets are $10 at the door. Come on out tonight and help us Fight Leukemia at The Media Club at 695 Cambie.

If you can't make it, don't be shy to make a donation online.

Ethical Advertising For Ethical Funds

2006-05-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

Did you know that most mutual funds go towards supporting some of the most horrific elements of human nature? Child labour and sweatshops in third world countries, Big Tobacco that pushes poison on teenage girls and companies that make bombs and guns to kill innocent people could all be funded by the mutual funds you invest in everyday. Indirectly, millions of North Americans are supporting the breakdown of the Earth through mining or forestry, and stand ignorantly behind Big Oil companies as they pillage the last of a limited resource. Do you realize that your money could be supporting warlords, and promoting genocide overseas? Do you realize that your CPP is invested in these kind of funds? Open your eyes to what is going on around you and ask yourself, “What are my investments up to?”

Freak Shows

2006-05-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

Advertisers have an uncanny knack of finding the strange and bizarre things happening out there and bringing them to the attention of the world.

Think of the Rogers ads with the street runners. Tony Hawk. Jim Rose.

But nothing compares to this:

Beard Growing Competition

God Is Our Biggest Client

2006-05-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

I went to see Faust the other night. I can't say I'm a big fan of the opera, but the story sure made me appreciate the fact that I am making the most of my youth, as it appears that when you get older, you'd be tempted to sell your soul to get it back if you have lived a youth unfulfilled.

It also reminded me that the arts have the same client relations as advertising agencies.

But back in the old days, the arts were sponsored either by rennaisance nobility, or the church.

Today, it's businesses.

To give you an example: Here is a beautiful ad, it could have been for anyone, but Crest footed the bill.

Catch

Ethical Advertising vs Journalistic Integrity: Using Advertising As A Reliable News Source

2006-04-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Is reality painted for you by advertisers?

I get people who ask me to write about their companies. Through this blog, and my online column at American Chronicle, I am happy to help sustainable or ethically inclined businesses here and there, especially if they are sponsors for good causes such as our fundraiser for leukemia. My column is heavily syndicated and can put a business into the google news within hours. It is a very effective marketing tool in this day and age of online news. However, I am really against the idea of working for free. Call me crazy.

This in its own right is a very ironic situation. I am not a journalist. I am a writer at an advertising agency. Yet we both spread information in the same way. The main difference? At the risk of alienating a lot of journalists, advertising puts its cards on the table. It fully acknowledges its bias. While the line between PR, advertising and journalism may be very thin, I have never made any false airs of being a traditional objective, non-biased journalist. And how many news sources can you say are like that?

I am here to promote certain values and ways of thinking and the businesses and products that stand behind them. Essentially, Sustainability Advertising is the bridge between the mainstream and the hardcore. It is a melting pot of ideas and ideologies and if it is a bit of an anarchistic mess sometimes, it is because it keeps it interesting.

The values of Creative Wonders are promoted on this site, thus the sustainable, spiritual and personal development bent.

And don't kid yourself. Every media outlet has its own agendas and ideologies. I just like to put mine on the table.

However, while journalists may print stories about companies for free. Advertising agencies do not.

Don't get me wrong. We do tons of pro-bono work. But if your company is looking to make a billion dollars in revenue by 2012, don't ask me to write about you glowingly for free. It's exploitive.

Here is where the ironic bit comes in. Although unabashedly an advertising medium, I find that a blog also has to adhere to certain journalistic integrity. If no one believes you, you might as well be writing ads.

This is where my belief in ethical business comes back into the fray. The reality is that everything in business boils down to REPUTATION.

You believe those who have earned your trust through a history of honest, transparent, and accountable behaviour.

My gentle readers, Sustainability Advertising is a sustainable resource about that which interests you, that being sustainability and advertising. Once it leaves me, it becomes public property for public consumption, write your comments, love or hate it, it is here for you.

If an advertising blog can offer you a history of truth, then why not an advertising agency? To take that further, why not an ad?

If a company earns the trust and goodwill of the population through accurate and honest communications, they have a very valuable resource on their hands, paid or otherwise.

That’s me (on the far left) touring the 1-800-GOT-JUNK Junktion.

White Stripes Killer Coke

2006-04-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting website worth checking out Killer Coke

It is a protest site to bring awareness of the kidnapping, murder and torture of union leaders and organizers in Columbian Coke plants.

In other news! Jack White of the White Stripes has agreed to write a song for Coke.

Jack White's Coke ad

(courtesy of YouTube)

There's a lot of controversy surrounding this ad in the music world. Did Jack White sell out? What happened to the integrity of the White Stripes? In other words, has be begun to make music for paying clients as opposed to for his own amusement and sense of expression? Has his artistic integrity been compromised? Well, possibly, if the White Stripes weren't such a mainstream band to begin with (at least since they have been adopted by the Wal-Mart Rock section). But the reality is, they are pop, the mainstream like a lot of their music, and ideally, it is music that he would be producing on his own anyway. So it isn't like The White Stripes are changing, or sacrificing their own artistic vision and stance, because they never really had much of a stance to begin wtih. Whether or not this is the White Stripes selling out I really don't think matters. Yes, it is a commercial venture and yes, he made gobs of money in the process. But who cares? The music he makes for himself happens to resonate with a certain group of people, and they buy it. He already has the formula down and the familiarity and the brand. The man is an artist who has work that sells because people like the pretty songs. It's just how it goes.

Now, if Jack White had once been the front man for Rage Against the Machine, then I could see some hypocrisy.

But let me know what you think, this ad touches on a lot of issues across sustainability, ethics and advertising.

Here's another great one along the same lines: The Rolling Stones doing a song for Rice Krispies in the 60's.

Rolling Stones Rice Krispies ad"

Ethical advertising vs Irresistible Poison

2006-04-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

There are certain ads that catch attention because they play upon an insecurity that is omnipresent in the mind of the target market.

If you have seen 'How to Get Ahead in Advertising' you will know what I mean. There they scheme around how to sell boil cream, by first making it cool to have boils and then horrific.

Viagra plays upon this in their ads. As does Frisk mints of all things.

Their latest campaign 'But Honey, I've been faking it for the last ten years'

I watched Hostel last night. It was terrible. But I couldn't help but wonder who was paying for the production of this thing. Besides the glaringly obvious use of cell-phones there seemed to be a certain American anti-insurgency sentiment to the whole film.

The lesson to young Americans was: Don't trust anyone in post-communist Europe, learn how to use your cellphone properly, when travelling abroad don't admit that you are American, insurgent children can be turned against their parents and tradition through bribes of American influence (in this case bubble gum), people away from home hate Americans (this is somewhat true, but not enough to symbolically slice open their achilles tendons after scaring the wits out of them), and it is to your advantage to know another language when travelling abroad, especially German. Other themes revolved around heroism in the face of escaping, and that you can't go wrong with a handgun. In Conclusion- don't travel in post-communist Europe if you know what's good for you.

What was this movie conditioning the American young patriot to be? And why?

Ethical Business Is Good Business Practice

2006-04-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

Most entrepreneurs have the best intentions when starting a business. However, there are a lot of terrible businessmen and women out there. No one is perfect, but the world is filled with people who don’t return phone calls, misrepresent their capabilities, cheat their clients, steal from their shareholders and in general, those who over-promise and under-deliver.

Businesses should be accountable, transparent and responsible to their clients, suppliers and employees alike. This is just good business practice.

A business can never succeed in the long run if they lie, fail to take responsibility, or are disrespectful of others and their environment. In short, a business must be true to its word. These are the hallmarks of good business practice, and consequently ethical business. To many, the two go hand in hand.

Creative Wonders considers itself an ethical advertising agency for those very reasons. It is an agency that follows, as closely as possible, the 4 agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word – don’t lie or make promises you can’t keep
2. Don’t make assumptions
3. Don’t take anything personally
4. Always do your best

It is a simple, but effective manifesto for a solid business.

In recent years, social-consciousness has become a buzzword, and ethical business practice more lip service than a philosophy. The strong demand for accountability and transparency from the Enrons, Exxons and Nikes 80s and 90s has left a certain demand for corporations to be responsible and honest with the public.

Ethical, sustainable, socially-conscious and organic became words and stale and co-opted as Extreme and Fresh and New and Improved. Basically, they stopped meaning anything.

This is something that Creative Wonders is up against constantly. Diane Lund, owner and Creative Director of the company has been working the Cultural Creative angle for 13 years because it closely reflects her own personal belief system. This was before the trend really took off.

Ethical business to those at Creative Wonders means maintaining honest and accountable business practice with everyone they interact with, from suppliers to clients to fellow staff.

Businesses that should be commended for walking the talk of ethical business practice are Ethical Funds, who have recently launched a website for ethical and sustainable living makeadifferencenow.ca and 1-800-GOT-JUNK who are reputed for having one of the best benefits programs for their employees in Canada.

Guerrilla Advertising at the Vancouver Sun Run

2006-04-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Over fifty thousand runners, walkers and strollers made it out for a sunny Sun Run in Vancouver yesterday. The ten-kilometre route weaved through the blocked off streets of Vancouver and thousands more watched from the sidelines as throngs of white shirted runners moved like a stampede through the downtown core.

This is a massive captive market, yet surprisingly, very few advertisers capitalized on this fact.

HSBC was the main sponsor, as was the Vancouver Sun, but it was the more subtle, guerrilla approaches that caught more attention and generated more talk power.

Taking a page from 1-800-GOT-JUNK’s marketing strategy from years past, GOT SPA adopted orange wigs and gloves and waved from buildings and ran in the race. The name is not so original, nor is the approach, but it worked.

Used Vancouver.com had signs every hundred meters or so. It was hard to miss.

My favourite, however, was the handouts in the shape of a sun given out by Ethical Funds. The handouts were printed on seeded paper, so that as soon as they would be discarded they would grow trees. This is a brilliant marketing strategy for a company interested in sustainability and ethical treatment of the Earth.

There were also street banners, corporate running teams with their logos on the backs of the shirts and a blimp or two, all in all, however, it seemed like a wasted opportunity for hundreds of shop owners, participants and the owners of buildings.

Street Art vs Vandalism

2006-04-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across an amazing artist the other day.

Someone that makes you question what art is in the first place.

He has made himself notorious by running into galleries such as the Louvre and the Museum of Modern Art and hanging pictures of his own work.

And breaking into the London Zoo and scrawling on the wall of the elephant's pen: "I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells. Boring, boring, boring."

Banksy

My Adventure at the Recycling Depot

2006-04-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well, my plans to set up a proper recycling program here at Creative Wonders finally bit me in the backside as it was made clear that it was I who must take care of the heaps of pop cans, pickle jars and cereal boxes overflowing from the blue box and heaping up by the door at the end of the hallway. So I packed it all up. Then I headed to the recycling place under the Second Narrows there.

It is a strange place the recycling depot. But it taught me a lot. Actually there was a watchful guardian who made sure the green glass stood apart from the clear glass, that paper ended up in its place and that tin stayed separate from aluminium. He pointed out a thing or two in his rather brash and impatient way.

You don’t get any money for pop cans and beer bottles at the Recycling Yard, those you must save for the liquor stores and supermarkets respectively. This is a huge pain and if anything needs to be done about the recycling system in this country, that is it. However, I did find out that you do get money for Tetra-packs, such as Sun Rype apple juice containers, who would have known?

The surly guardian of the recycling heaps explained many things to me. You can tell the difference between tin and aluminium lids by their magnetic properties. Tin sticks to a magnet. They have one set up there for you to make it all the easier. They don’t like it when you leave lids on olive and pickle jars. Labels neither. There are also numbers on the bottom of just about everything so you can tell what bin to throw it in. This comes in handy. You can’t recycle soy milk or paper milk cartons. Apparently soy is considered a cooking product and not a beverage, so it slips under recycling laws, who would have thought?

Either way, the reckon the recycling adventure proved to be quite eventful and if it taught me nothing, it taught me to put out separate piles for paper, glass, metal and lids for the future, so it doesn’t have to be me doing all the sorting all by my lonesome next time in the white hot sun. Me and the Guardian of the Recycling Heaps, that is.

Measuring Ad Effectiveness

2006-04-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest difficulties faced by advertising agencies is how to measure the effectiveness of their ads.

How can you tell if an ad is moving someone into awareness, acknowledgement, acceptance or action?

How do you measure the levels of consciousness in the face of the tangibility of sales?

By honing in on one variable, the expectancy placed on an advertising agency is made a little easier.

These ads, for instance, are great examples of ads centred around the variable of recogntion.

1-800-GOT-JUNK - RATS.

Rethink are the masters of Talk Power. Get people talking about the ad itself and as a byproduct the name of the brand is shot to top of mind. It's effective for a new service. When you get people talking about your ad, familiarity will soon follow.

Familiarity and Talk Power are also great ways to build new business for an advertising agency.

The only problem with Talk Power is that advertisers come from a bit of a biased perspective. We all work in advertising, so we talk about ads constantly. We love ads. Truth is, we are even kind of obsessed. But how much does the average Joe talk about the stacks of money in the transit shelter or the infamous Boardroom Kiss?

I don't know. Once people are prompted to talk about advertising, they talk about ads freely, especially when they find out that someone at the table works in the industry. But it is hard to find a setting where the ad men remove themselves from the control group. But regardless, there is no doubt that SOME ads become a part of our everyday conversation, and they can become stables of our culture. However, the degree to which these ads are discussed amongst housewives and grandmothers when ad men are nowhere to be seen is questionable.

There are certain measurement tools used by academia: brand/ad recognition, recall, purchase intention, brand/ad liking or hating etc. Personally, I think that the only way to measure effectiveness is sales, making advertising one of those nearly impossible to measure variables as a part of a bigger equation.

Recognition, effective at driving sales or not, certainly can't hurt business.

Oil Slicks, Birds and Soap

2006-04-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

Proctor and Gamble have signed a three-year deal with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research to teach people how to wash birds after an oil spill. It is estimated that up to half a million birds die in oil spills every year, but with proper knowledge on how to clean the birds, thousands could be saved.

It turns out that when they clean up after the oil slicks that volunteers have found Dawn detergent is the best to clean the dirty birds. They have been using Dawn for over 20 years now, including during the Exxon-Valdez spill.

A portion of the proceeds of every bottle of Dawn sold will go towards Saving a Duck

Fight Leukemia!

2006-04-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

May 4th will be a blast at the Media Club, come on out and show your support for our fundraising effort to raise $11,000 for leukemia.

Immortality Through Advertising

2006-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

Muhammed Ali has sold 80% of his name to a marketing company to use as they please for $50 million US.

Muhammed Ali Sells His Soul

Now he can live on forever in ads for Pepsi, McDonalds and DARE (to keep your kids off drugs). The likenesses and names of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley have already been bought by private marketing companies....and they still appear in ads.

German Coast Guard

2006-04-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

This ad is just too good to not be included on this site.

It's been around for a while, but it's still funny.

German Coast Guard

Water bottles are filling our landfills

2006-04-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

Water bottles are deadly for the environment. Right now there are billions of bottles sitting in landfills that won't bio-degrade for hundreds of years. It's not a good scene. But where there is a problem, a solution is often not long to follow.

A new type of bottled water is now on the market: BIOTA Colorado Pure Spring Water.

Unlike conventional petroleum-based plastic bottles that never decompose, BIOTA bottles are made with a corn-based polymer. The material breaks down in landfills in about 75 days.

Now it is just a matter of time before these bottles spread to soft drink manufacturers and other bottlers and eventually other packaging as well.

Once in a Lifetime Time Phenomenon

2006-04-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Tonight, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

The One-Tonne Challenge is no more

2006-04-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

The new conservative government has made it one of their first priorities to shut down the One-Tonne Challenge that has been advertising sustainability to Canadians for the last few years.

sustainable advertising put on hold

Was 9/11 a trick?

2006-03-31T16:32:00.000-08:00

This is the most incredible documentary on 9/11 I have ever seen, it basically explains, in intricate detail, how 9/11 was completely staged to fool the world. It claims the Twin Towers were demolished as a controlled explosion (and has the footage to prove it), planes never crashed into the Pentagon, and that the entire affair was an elaborate ploy by the American government. Watch it, it is intense! It will make every paranoid hair in your body stand on end.

Loose Change

Pardon Services Canada

2006-03-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Pardon Services Canada for being our first partial corporate sponsor for our Alaska marathon. Pardon Services Canada has generously donated $2500 to our fundraising efforts to raise $11,000 for leukemia in exchange for online public relations.

If you are a business interested in supporting our marathon to raise funds for leukemia, lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease, please click on Mike's fundraising page or Maria's fundraising page

In other fundraising news, Maria and I will be putting on two concerts in May.

May 4th - The Media Club (695 Cambie St)

There will be four great local indy bands - don't miss it.

the bluegreydots
The Parallels
The Spinoffs
Jesse Weigand

$10 at the door, or call 604-987-8401 to get tickets in advance.

May 26th - The Marine Club

Bands TBA

See you there!

Seal Clubbing: The Thin Edge of the Wedge

2006-03-28T11:50:00.000-08:00

It’s all over the papers right now, the annual cull of seals in the Maritimes to keep the population in check, obtain pelts, create jobs, or whatever reason they do it for. There has been a lot of back and forth, but the reality of the situation is a baby harp seal pelt goes for as much as $70, and brings some $20 million to the economy. What has most people worked up is the increased limit from 5000 seals last year to 325,000 this year. It’s a touchy issue, primarily because seals are cute, and no one likes to see cute animals get clubbed, particularly pop icons like Paul McCartney, Bridgette Bardot and Morrissey. Morrissey (of the Smiths) has refused to come to Canada to play any dates on account of the annual tradition.

It has been called a ‘cull’ because it keeps the population of both the seals and the fish it feeds on at a sustainable level, however, I heard an interview with a spokesman from WWF WWF this morning who denied this, claiming that the impact that seals have on the fish stocks is negligible.

But the question still stands. Why do cute animals have any more rights than ugly ones? Cows have traditionally been killed in a rather barbarous way, as have chickens with the de-beakings and all. Fish die in rather torturous ways. Why the seals? Because they are cute.

To some this is hypocritical, to others a brilliant publicity opportunity.

From an animal-rights activist point of view, seals make for a great focus point. If the public can get stirred up about cute little seals it is the thin edge of the wedge to get them more concerned about other animal rights atrocities. Even this can be argued to be the thin edge of the wedge for humanist issues as well. If one is opposed to the torture of animals for fun and profit, what about the treatment of humans? Regardless, it is a kick start to a certain compassion for living creatures that can possibly be extended into a wider humanitarian view. Of course this does assume that animal rights activists are looking to preserve all life as we know it.

Save the trees with wooden chopsticks

2006-03-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

The Chinese government has introduced a tax to wooden chopsticks in an attempt to save their forests. Chopstick tax

The idea is to both protect the environment and reduce the discrepancy between the rich and poor.

It is estimated that 200 million people in China live on less than $1 US a day!

Sustainability Fear Campaigns

2006-03-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

It appears as though even the sustainability movement is not above fear campaigns.

Train

But does this ad work? Maybe. But it doesn't make the topic something you want to talk about, it doesn't open the door to discussion about the topic in an accessible way.

'Did you see that ad about the train?'

'Yes, we have to do something about this global warming, our children's lives are at stake!'

It just isn't a realistic seque into normal conversation.

I always like to imagine a family, or a group of people sitting in their living room watching TV. They are tired. The hockey game is on, or the news, or a cooking show. They are sitting and watching and no one is speaking. Then the ads come on. It takes a second or two before people realize, hey, these are just commercials, so it is safe for me to speak without feeling like I am disturbing the enjoyment of the program for the others.

Ideally, the initial comment will be about the ad itself. Usually an ad, being interruptive, sets itself up for derision. But if it is ironic, or derisive enough as well- the interrupter can become welcome.

Here is an example of an ad - although it is for vodka - that I think does a better job of opening the door to discussion about sustainability than Train.

Eristoff - Pretty honest for a vodka

Graffiti Campaigns

2006-03-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to a recent graffiti campaign by adidas that really hits the mark. adidas gets it right with adicolour

It's a smart way to incorporate real street art into ad design.

Sony Playstation tried the same thing late last year, but blatantly spray painted walls in poor areas and managed to infuriate the public.

All in all it was seen as not at all cool, which is exactly the opposite reaction of what they were going for.

30 days of sustainability

2006-03-22T15:19:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across the website for 30 days of sustainability today.

30 days of sustainability.

It looks like I just caught the tail end of it, though. It's just down the road - check it out!

Corporate sponsorship in our parks and playgrounds

2006-03-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

Corporations are more than willing to put money into the development of just about anything as long as it offers them a chance to advertise.

Hockey rinks, stadiums, university buildings, parking lots and libraries are no exception.

In the Infinite Jest, the book suggests that in the future corporate sponsorship could go as far as renaming the years of a calendar (most of the book takes place in the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarmet).

There are few places left that are not fair game for advertisers - and this poses a diemma for those who have space to sell, namely parks and playgrounds.

With financial pressure, it is tempting to take sponsorship in exchange for supplies. But perhaps it wouldn't be such a dilemma if the there were a thorough screening process for the type of companies that could advertise.

If sustainably-inclined companies were allowed the opportunity to shoulder even a portion of the cost it could help, as long as there were stipulations in place to ensure their advertising does not come across as marring to the landscape or awkwardly intrusive to the mental environment. This could be as innocuous as restricting sponsorship information to the areas that have already been infringed upon (although beneficially, arguably) by humans such as signage, picnic benches, fire grates, and outhouses with the communication limited to a small sign, plaque or stamp (such as in the benches outside of libraries).

There is probably a formula somewhere that relates to the amount of government favouritism in relation to sustainable business incentives and development vs that of corporate involvement in terms of kyoto penalties, future development, BC PR prestige and the economy.

Bringing Sustainability to the Mainstream

2006-03-21T13:50:00.000-08:00

Internationally, the sustainability movement is a wake-up call. The world as we know it will not support human life for much longer and actions must be taken to stave off imminent self-destruction brought about by climate change, overpopulation, the depletion of resources and what have you.

Vancouver is a city that is very much immersed in sustainability. We started Greenpeace, and Adbusters, and one doesn’t have to look far to see that we live in a pocket of mountains, trees, oceans and blue sky. This city, more than any other I can think of, is synonymous with environmentalism.

But sustainability is also a culture. Like skater culture, or fashion culture or punk culture, it is founded on an ideology. With an ideology comes a certain rigid set of values that one is obliged to maintain to be pure, hardcore, legit etc.

Like any established culture, sustainability culture does not want to have their values co-opted by advertisers once their issues become marketable. They don’t want to sell out by bringing their value system to the mainstream where it will be damped and watered down by the trend-setters and wannabes for the sake of fickle profit dollars. It will turn sustainability into a fad.

And the problem with fads is that they fade. They lose their allure and cool and are as quickly dropped and dismissed for the next marketable ideology to take its place.

Saving the world may be sexy today – but tomorrow it might be opulent consumerism and the fat-penguin-suit-look with monoliths to one’s own accomplishments that is all the rage.

So, it is easy to understand the resistance a sustainable company would have with anything that could come across as attacking its own integrity. To some, even making a profit is frowned upon

Ironically enough, I write about the intersections between sustainability and advertising almost every day, and Creative Wonders as an agency works as much as possible with sustainable companies.

It’s an interesting position to be put in. Our job is to spread sustainability for the sake of awareness and profit for the businesses involved, but the very movement is reluctant to do just that. We like to work with companies that are about bettering the earth, because, well, it beats hawking cigarettes and hamburgers to ‘tweens. Why not work towards something positive?

This is where there is a bit of friction. Sustainability as a whole is pretty much opposed to advertising because they don’t want to make their beliefs accessible, however, sustainability just happens to be an issue that is bigger than preservation of a lifestyle.

At this point in human existence, it is not enough for sustainability to be a fashion alone, it needs to be legislation, policy, and paradigm shifting. The more information is spread, the more likely it is to reverse some of the damage that our Earth has suffered since the Industrial Revolution. By making sustainability accessible to the masses, it may soften the edge of the vigilant, but even diffused, it can spread, and then grow in the minds of the mainstream.

Scratch and Sniff advertising

2006-03-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to enter our mindspace on a more pervasive level - advertisers have introduced scented advertising for dogs.