Latest Bookmarks on Ma.gnolia.com
Posted by ivanoats | Filed under Bookmarks
Here’s what I’m reading and bookmarking on the web
brandchannel.com | Sandra Taylor | Sustainable Business International, LLc | brand | brands | branding
Sandra E. Taylor, President and CEO of the new global consulting firm Sustainable Business International, LLC, talks to brandchannel and explains why corporate social responsibility nowadays is not just good for the brand, [...]
How to Green Your Swag
Posted by Web Design and Programming on NewsGator Online | Filed under Web Design
With an abundance of companies going green, and a corresponding explosion of green themed conferences sprouting up, this is to be applauded. And yet, there’s a remnant of the old paradigm that sticks up like a weed out of the smooth green path: Swag. You know, those little things that companies give away at conferences with the hope they’ll stay in your mind. Those little things add up to a lot. Multiply each attendee with a bag full of knick knacks, many of which are made from non renewable materials, are not recyclable, and you’ve got the potential for an enormous amount of waste, and resources used.
Eco Imprints shows a different way. Rather than being a quantity driven tschotske pimp, they are a company committed to sourcing and creating memorable, sustainable, and custom tailored eco friendly promotional items that will serve their clients, recipients, and the planet equally well. And they have a few tricks up their sleeve:
The founder, John Borg, has decades of experience in branding, marketing, and design, having run Wishbone Creative, a firm that has worked with some of the biggest names in business, including Electronic Arts, Levi Strauss and Kodak.
So what you get with with Eco Imprints is a company that has really done it’s homework to find the greenest, most high quality products, and combines that with a deep expertise in how to best leverage the goods you do give away for the maximum impact.
What does eco friendly swag look like? A particularly amazing example is their Custom Message Bean Plants. These beans can be inscribed by a laser with your company name, logo, or a simple message, and when they grow, that message reads on the plant, remaining for month, and the plant living for a year.
They also do the usual suspects quite well, too: That standby the pen can come in the form of sustained yield solid white birch. Bamboo. Or recycled plastic. Pencils can be made of recycled newspaper. They do larger, more complex items as well: the Eco Plasma Jacket is made from 100% recycled polyester. Several bags and totes are made from recycled PET (soda/water bottle) plastic.
Beyond just being a green promotional item purveyor, they also offer sustainability consulting, currently in the realm of discerning ways to green your marketing efforts, and creating green product lines for company stores. They’ve done the research to find the manufacturers of greener products, and can benefit you with that knowledge.
It’s clear that Eco Imprints cares about more than selling green swag. They also talk about it, and the areas surrounding it, in the entertaining, educating read, http://sustainableswag.blogspot.com/ . Subjects range from the recent move by major city mayors to phase out water bottles in city offices to having the courage to give kudos to competitors.
Eco Imprints is the real deal. Consider them next time you’ve got some promoting to do. I recommend their PDF catalog, it’s much more attractive and thorough than the site.
Readers: What are some of your favorite eco friendly promotional items? How have you creatively reframed what you do in terms of giveaway items?
Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. His overarching talent is “bottom lining” complex ideas, in a way that is understandable and accessible to a variety of audiences, internal and external to a company.
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Tags: webdesign
Video: Stabilize Carbon Dioxide at 350 ppm
Posted by Ivan Storck | Filed under Sustainability
via WorldChanging:
“The evidence indicates we’ve aimed too high — that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm,” says Jim Hansen.
Tags: capandtrade, carbon credits, climate security act, globalwarming, Sustainability
Online vs. offline word of mouth
Posted by Jackie Huba | Filed under Uncategorized
People who do a lot of online research are significant sources of advice about products and services compared to adults who don’t do much research, according to a new study of 15,727 people by BIGresearch.
"Do you give advice to others about products/services you have purchased?"
| Active online researcher | All adults | |
|---|---|---|
| Regularly gives advice | 47.0% | 29.4% |
| Occasionally gives advice | 49.8% | 63.4% |
| Never gives advice | 3.2% | 7.2% |
Source: BIGresearch, SIMM 11 (December 2007)
After searching, how do you communicate with others about a service, product or brand? (Check all that apply)
| Face-to-face | 72.7% |
| 63.2% | |
| Telephone | 55.0% |
| Cell phone | 35.3% |
| Instant messaging | 17.7% |
| Text messaging | 13.1% |
| Online communities (e.g. MySpace, Facebook) | 11.8% |
| Blogging | 6.8% |
| Other | 1.8% |
Source: BIGresearch SIMM 11 (December 2007)
Contrast those numbers with a new study from Keller Fay which says 75% of word of mouth occurs in person, 17% on the phone, and just 7% online using instant messages, chat rooms, email and blogs.
BIGresearch and Keller Fay both found that three-quarters of adults tell others about stuff in person. But Keller Fay’s numbers for brand conversations via the phone and online tools are markedly different than those from BIGresearch.
"Apparently, the value of eye contact, voice and perhaps even non-verbal communication provides a boost to credibility and the likelihood that we’ll do something about what we’ve learned," said Brad Fay, a study co-author.
Here’s what I consider a flaw with that thinking: The frame of credibility. Being credible isn’t dependent solely upon the medium in which a recommendation occurs. Credibility comes from an established position of trust, whether it’s in-person or online, or from a preponderance of independent evidence, such as a collection of reviews on a product site like Amazon.
When Virginia raves about Costco on her blog, I trust Virginia and her opinion. In my eyes, she’s a credible source regardless of the medium. Years ago, Amazon established the Real Names system, which attaches a person’s actual name to their review of a product, reducing the likelihood of widespread sock puppetry.
Conversely, I may regularly come into contact — online or offline — with someone whose taste is dissimilar, or has trouble with evidence. Their rave about a product or service is going to be less credible in my eyes, even if it’s in person.
When it comes to word of mouth, the medium is not necessarily the message. The person is.
RackSpace’s customers ‘won’t pay a premium’ for Green products?
Posted by Tom Raftery | Filed under Uncategorized
Photo Credit ignescent_infidel
Jon Brodkin wrote a piece in ComputerWorld UK about a survey of RackSpace’s customers which seems to suggest that they ‘won’t pay a premium’ for Green products. John goes on to extrapolate that they:
found some results suggesting businesses are losing interest in green technology.
There are a number of problems with this assumption. First off you have to realise that Rackspace don’t do co-lo. Rackspace only do managed hosting. So, if I am an IT manager I can’t put my equipment, no matter how energy-efficient, in a RackSpace Data Center, I have to use their equipment. What is not clear from the piece John wrote is what was the ‘premium’ the RackSpace customers were being asked to pay.
Again, if I am an IT manager, I can choose to buy, for example Dell’s PowerEdge™ Energy Smart 2950 III (SV22952), which is cheaper but slightly less powerful than their standard PowerEdge™ 2950 (SV22951). Realistically, the only reason I am going to do this is if it is going to save me money.
As James said previously – the wrong people are paying the electricity bill in companies currently (no pun):
IT doesn’t pay for its electricity. No, seriously, go to your FM manager or IT manager and ask who pays to power your IT properties. The vast majority of IT systems get a free ride on electricity bills, which is one reason its taken so long to fully consider IT carbon costs.
When that changes (and it will) watch IT managers suddenly become extremely interested in the energy ratings of their servers.
Going back to the RackSpace survey, fundamentally I think Rackspace are taking the wrong approach. What they should be doing is increasing prices to their customers across the board to reflect their own increased energy bill – except for those customers who chose to be hosted on energy efficient servers. If RackSpace took that route, suddenly you’d see a an about-face in the number of their customers who are apparently losing interest in green technology!!!
[Disclosure: I am co-founder a director of Cork Internet eXchange (CIX) an energy efficient data center based in Cork, Ireland. CIX charges all customers separately for their electricity usage.]
