Again, Where Are The Bottled Water Brands?

It’s plastic, but not.

It’s plastic made from corn, and they say it’s “completely compostable.”

Water bottles account for Carl-Sagan-sized amounts of plastic in land fills. It’s every water brand’s huge Achilles’ heel.

(For two manufacturers of these corn-plastics – cups, bottles, etc – click HERE and HERE. And a sales site, HERE.)

How big a deal is the plastic bottle problem? In marketing terms, two huge brands with huge budgets have staked their entire positioning around it. One is Fiji Water, promoting all the carbon offsets they buy to make up for their bad practices. They now claim to be the first “carbon-negative” brand. But that’s only thanks to all the carbon offsets they buy. (Wouldn’t it be better support for an earth-friendly position to not use plastic in the first place?)

This ad is HOOEY.


The other brand is Brita water filters. You’ve seen the ads. They sell against the whole category of water in plastic bottles.


The first water brand to adopt corn plastic bottles can lay claim to the true positioning of “good for the earth.” Lots of water brands cozy up to the earth – falsely. Here’s a chance to lead. A chance to use your package as media.

It’s not just about positioning. It’s about delivering.

What’s Pink And Goes On Forever?

a) the 3-Day Walk Against Breast Cancer
b) the Energizer Bunny
c) both

Spot-on sponsorship choice.

Quit Whining. Saving The World Just Got Easier.

So there you are, working on an ad campaign, and you think, “Hey, maybe the way to engage folks is by adding a charitable or green component in here.” Great. How do you do it? This site called Social Actions might be a good place to start.

(The following is re-posted from Triple Pundit under the Creative Commons license. Thanks TP. Good stuff.)


"One of the reasons cause branding campaigns work so well is because it allows consumers to make doing good part of their regular routine. Someone can buy a cup of coffee and feel a sense of purpose without having to do any extra leg work.

This ease of giving is magnified by Social Actions, a website that has aggregated literally thousands of charitable organizations and programs to connect users with causes, groups and volunteer activities. Through a sophisticated database, users can access a multitude of resources designed to link them with opportunities for taking action without having to labor over research to find the right charity or how to get involved.

Harnessing the power of social media and open source technology, Founder, Peter Deitz has made taking social actions as simple and targeted as a Google search with results as far-reaching as your desire to change the world."

Full article and interview with Social Action’s founder, HERE.

A Few Nice Sentences From Brandweek Lately

“Giving back has become a trend for marketers, including Starbucks, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and others that have centered their message around helping the community.” – 3/25/09

… “a perfect example of that rare and optimal occurrence when a company can creatively market itself and help local governments and everyday Americans across the country.” – 3/25/09

… “a growing field of brands placing the community at the forefront of their marketing messages. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Starbucks and Scholastic, in conjunction with FAO Schwartz, are just the latest …” – 1/31/09

“A focus on the community ‘is in the air,’ … Community service is bigger than green.” – 1/31/09

… “they (consumers) are asking themselves, ‘What am I passionate about in life? What is going to be meaningful to me?’ said Chip Walker, head strategist at Strawberry Frog” … - 1/31/09

Take a peek at this short, cool BrandWeek article HERE.

Honda Insight TV Spot: Green Car, Green Production?

From Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam comes this spot for the Insight hybrid. Here’s the “making of” video, with the spot itself at the end.

Initial response is mixed, with many folks thinking a 1,000-car commercial is a big waste of gas and electricity in itself.

AdRants says, "After doing the work to see what was possible W+K and Honda made the decision to look at a more environmentally friendly alternative. The result was a mix of Houdini 3-D modeling software for animation precision, a small number of Insight vehicles for scale and a few hundred Insight headlights." (Full article, HERE.)

As for my thoughts, I’ll refer back to an earlier post.

KFC and Potholes=Hungry for Strategy

So, KFC is launching a societal marketing campaign to fill potholes. When I first heard this, I thought, “with their chicken? Is it that bad?”

But no, their message is freshness. And so, as convoluted boardroom logic would suggest, they are “freshening up” the asphalt around their towns. (Full story in Brandweek, HERE.)

Huh?

Chicken and pavement? Is it just me, or is that really easy to misinterpret? (Insert chicken-crossing-road jokes here.)

They could take a lesson from Goodby and Quaker, and try addressing hunger. You know, because they sell food.

(I have to give them points for even starting to think about doing "good," though.)

The “Good” Awards

I’ve decided to start an advertising awards show. (I know, another one.)

I’m the judge, and there are no “entries.” Just the stuff I find. It’s not about cancer ads or save-the-endangered-species ads. Those ads are already going to heaven.

No, my awards show is for regular brands who decide to do some good in the process of their marketing. Coke, Pepsi, Bud, Miller, Tide, Cheerios, Levi’s, Ford, McDonald’s, and so on and so on.

The hard part in a category like this? Finding killer creative. (Why is the creative generally ho-hum with this stuff?)

Want to enter? Just send me a note.
I’ll let you know how it pans out.

Something Good In Those Diapers

Another Procter & Gamble brand does “good.” Pampers helps its customers help babies.

What I love about this is the simple math; one pack = one vaccine. It becomes very tangible for a shopper when they’re putting it in their grocery cart.

I’m not a huge fan of the creative here. I give it a B. A bit on the predictable/bland side, but I’ll bet moms like it.

And yes – here’s another example of “good” attracting talent. Salma Hayek lends her distinctive voice to the project.



Two questions:
Is this Saatchi again? My preliminary search says maybe. Can anyone confirm?
And, does anyone know how many vaccines they actually gave away? Do tell.

A Toast: Social Marketing Meets Good

Everyone’s all a-twitter about social marketing these days. It’s well-covered. The experts are emerging, and now you can hardly avoid the topic. They’re fantastic tools, giving us almost unlimited opportunities to created earned media and buzz.

So how can these things be used for good? Here’s one great example from Mullen.

The Bread Art Project.

Go online, create a slice of artistic toast, and share it with a friend. For every slice that’s created, a dollar goes to Feed America.

Try it, it’s fun.

(This is my creation, titled "SquareHead.")

Extra Credit

Anyone adding an element of “good” to their marketing can learn well from these veterans of cause advertising, Amnesty International. In this ad they do a very important thing. They give their supporters all of the credit.

It says, “Hundreds of thousands signatures preceded this one. Guantánamo Bay is being closed. Thanks to those who supported us.”

So, for example, if Diet Coke and its fans raise a lot of money and awareness for heart health, afterwards they have a chance to close the loop and strengthen the bond by giving all of the credit to the people who participated in a very public way.

It's like saying "thanks." They'll thank you back.

Trendwatch 2009: Everybody’s Making The World A Better Place

Creativity Magazine highlights the best creative work being done daily.

In today’s online edition, I couldn’t help but notice how many agencies are making the world better in some way. Or at least pretending to.

DDB Brasil asks you to “Think Globally.”

Y&R Tel Aviv fights for a baby sea turtle.

M&C Saatchi makes an Australian cable company seem whale-friendly (naked branding in “good” clothing).

TBWA/Chiat/Day creates a celebrity radio station for the Tap Project, HERE.

Rubin Postaer is pushing its hybrid, the Insight. (A green product, but not green marketing at all.)


And of course, people are still watching Crispin’s collaboration with the Coen brothers for Reality (“there’s no such thing as clean coal”), and Leo Burnett’s collaboration with Alanis for WWF’s Earth Hour. (Already covered in earlier blog entries.)

Not to mention the Boxed Water packaging, and Agencies In Action hunger-fighting campaign.

All in one week.

Some of this is pure Cause marketing, and some of it doesn’t do much “good” at all. But it’s all pushing to make the world a better place.

Now if we can just get bigger brands to use their big ol’ budgets and mobilize their big ol’ consumer bases behind this kind of thinking, imagine the kind of change that could bring.

The people are buying.

EarthDay.net vs. EarthHour.org

An excerpt from an actual conversation:

“Hey, Earth Hour is coming right up.”

“Yeah! I love Earth Day. I think it’s April 22nd, right?”

“Well, yeah, Earth Day is April 22nd. But I was talking about Earth HOUR. Totally different thing.”

As one of my idealistic friends says, “One day, every day will be earth day.” I don’t think this person knows Earth HOUR even exists.

Please, someone at Earth Hour call someone at Earth Day. Get on each others’ calendars. Until you guys get coordinated, we’re all confused.

For the record, Earth Day is indeed April 22nd. And they would like you to “plan an event,” which is a pretty big ask for a Wednesday.

Earth HOUR is Saturday March 28th. They want you to turn off your lights for one hour at 8:30pm local time. (Seems like this would actually be easier on a Wednesday.)

There are many fine companies planning campaigns around these events, or at least participation. Please comment if you know of some.

Saatchi S: the “Blue Movement”

Saatchi&Saatchi recently opened a new branch of their agency, Saatchi S. It’s the socially-conscious branch of the agency. They call their mission “blue.” (As in, “bigger than green.”)



Saatchi’s worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts has declared the goal of, “transforming one of the world’s great advertising companies, with 7,000 employees in 84 countries, into the world’s most powerful sustainability advocate… (to) radically dematerialize and de-carbonize the products they sell.” Wow.

Founder/CEO of Saatchi’s “S” group Adam Werbauch says, “Shopping gives us an opportunity, a platform, to reach more people than we can reach through traditional means of activism.” Hear, hear.

Saatchi S made at least one top 10 list of “most influential agencies of 2008.” The agency I work for has research outlining the 4 top trends of the coming year, one of them being "good" (i.e. making the world a better place).

I think there's a future in this stuff.

You can watch Adam Werbauch's launch speech about the Saatchi S vision - it's kind of long, but it starts HERE.

Alanis Morissette: If a Cause Can Become A Brand ...

Earth Hour is now so big, it's a brand. So, if a cause can become a movement, and a movement can become a brand, it makes you wonder. Can it happen in reverse?

Can a brand become a movement? Can a brand become a cause?



(Btw, if you want Alanis to be in your ad, it had better benefit a good cause.)

The Bottled Water Race Is On

This piece of creative packaging isn't for any particular bottle water brand, but it should be.
It's such an obvious idea, it's rings like a starting gun.

A lot of water brands claim to be "earth-friendly." I can't wait to see which one adopts this packaging first.

A Regular, Everyday, Award-Winning Ad Campaign

No dollars going to charity. No puppies, seals, or children in Africa being saved here. And yet, this is a great example of societal marketing. It’s just an idea from the agency. “Maybe the benefit of this cold-water detergent is that it saves energy.” And everybody knows that saving energy is good for the earth (and your wallet).

You can see the campaign in-context by picking up the 12/07 issue of Communication Arts. It’s the Ad Annual. Kudos, on a number of levels.


(Copy: If everyone in New York City washed their laundry in cold water for just one day, the energy savings could be 5.7 million KWH. Enough to power every light in the Empire State Building for an entire month. Save loads of energy. Tide Coldwater. – From Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.)

Could the ad you're working on have a benefit of a greater good? Maybe that's the ad.

Fiji Water: So Good, Yet So Bad

Do a Google search for Fiji Water.

The first two results are the official corporate website, which looks like this.

The third result, and at least two others on the first results page, rail into the company for bad practices. (Other results include benign sales-related pages, etc.)

What is going on here? Is Fiji Water good/green, or the opposite?

Their corporate website says: … well, it’s too much to quote. But it screams green. Deep green. “Sustainability. Saving the rainforest. Reduced packaging. Help by recycling. Water for Fiji. Investing in Fiji’s Future. Global Giving. Carbon Negative.” – wow.

But human rights segments say this … well, again it’s too much to quote. But basically the water biz on the tiny island seems guilty of denying its own people clean drinking water, lobbying against a water tax that would provide it, disrupting the region’s vital natural water cycles, using lots of oil to ship from far away, and other big bad business things.

As THIS article says, “Fiji Water exported about 130 million liters of Fiji water in the past year. To present a "green face" to the world -- Fiji Water returns a token amount of money to bring clean water to certain areas of Fiji.”

If I just look at the corporate website, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an overreaching green message from any company ever.

Sounds to me like Fiji Water is trying to compensate – read: Greenwash – some very bad behavior, in a very big way.
It’s their marketing budget vs. the citizen greenwashing watchdogs who are calling them on it.

Being Good vs. Doing Good

I was looking at a company called Innocent today. They make fruit smoothies, and other foodstuffs. The products are all-natural, and their corporate ethics are squeaky clean. They’re doing “good” simply by being good.

It’s an interesting distinction. Some companies operationally ARE good (i.e. have a conscience), and then there are companies that go out and DO good.

Companies that ARE good: Tom’s of Maine, Innocent (drinks), Method (soap), Icelandic Glacial water, Starbucks fair trade coffees, Kashi and other organic foods, etc. A Hybrid car may fall into this category. They make internal decisions about how they run their business with one eye on profits, the other on impacting the world. The sustainability movement pushes for this sort of thing, and it’s a huge part of “good” marketing. Their customers are fans because of the way they do business.

Then there are companies that DO good. Many of those are featured in this blog. Pedigree helping shelter dogs, Quaker feeding the hungry, Diet Coke advocating heart health, Tropicana saving the rainforest, etc. These companies aren’t necessarily “green” or operationally “good” at all. But they see the value in helping society – not just for the world, but for their brand.

Ideally a company will do both. They’ll BE good, and they’ll DO good as well. But heck, I’ll settle for either.
They’re both very real reasons to choose one brand over another, especially in a parity category. (“Would you like to buy the soda that’s two cents cheaper, or the one that saves babies, ma’am?”)

So while WalMart keeps tweaking it’s operations to become more “green” (thanks in part to the efforts of SaatchiS), shoppers will be looking for ways that part of their consumer buck can go toward making the world a better place in the regular course of buying dog food.

Hey, lazy people can save the world too.

Tide Loads of Hope: the Final Analysis (side B)

Tide's Twitter-thon has been blogged to death, so I will keep this brief and connect you to some insightful thoughts by others.

(NOTE: This is a dual-blog post covering two aspects of P&G’s “experiment in social media” for Tide; the social side (covered by my colleague Griffin Farley on his blog, Propagation Planning), and the charitable part of the campaign, which I’ll comment on.)

Of everything I've read, one dissenter’s comments stung, probably because of how true they were. Brian Morrissey, digital editor for AdWeek says, “Using charities as a guise for people to do marketing for enormous corporations gives me the creeps. … what happens when we commercialize those bonds?”

I agree. It’s a slippery slope. A conundrum. And I don’t know the answer. This may be the biggest lesson from this experiment. How do we not ruin a good thing by getting our advertising all over it? It’s the biggest danger with Marketing+Good; coming off like the disingenuous manipulators that we are.

It’s an icky feeling. Like when I’m listening to NPR and I hear several sponsorship mentions in a row, then they tell me I’m listening to non-commercial radio. I am? Really? ‘Cuz I just heard 3 ads. It sure doesn’t feel like it.

BMorrissey also asks about donating to Feed America directly, “Why is P&G necessary?” Answer: it’s for the exposure of course. One thing Tide has that Feed America doesn’t is a colossal marketing budget. Tide gets to shine a nice big spotlight on a good cause.

Last point: I understand Tide washing clothes for a relief effort (i.e. Katrina). I don’t get Tide feeding America. Not super strategic.

There’s a great round-up of online reporting of this event, HERE.

For Side A of this Final Analysis, read Griffin’s take on the Social Media aspect of the whole crazy thing, HERE.

The Gap Does A Chain Letter for Good

A great brand, a great cause, a weird tactic.

They call it “Give & Get.” In this good-hearted promotion, the Gap (parent co. of Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) extended its Friends and Family discount of 30% to “everyone.” (At least, everyone who got the e-mail forwarded to them.) At the same time, they would donate 5% of every purchase to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Fantastic.

I have two questions.

Is there any strategic relevance between The Gap and … leukemia? Not to take anything away from cancer research (my mom had breast cancer, and God knows we need the research). But this is a clothing brand.

What does The Gap stand for? Hip, comfortable fashions for all. There are lots of clothing charities that could use support from a retailer like the Gap. Help abused women dress for job interviews. Help homeless people with new clothes. Help struggling families provide clothing gifts for their kids at Christmas.

Suddenly The Gap’s core business has a mission, a greater purpose.

Imagine if they did an ad about that.

Next question. What’s up with the e-mail chain letter? If they really want to do some good, why not shout it out loud? Invite everyone. Or maybe, just maybe, is a chain letter the earliest form of social marketing known to man?

In any case, I hope the Gap and it’s friends and family donated tons of money to the L&LS.