Have you got a sustainability idea or initiative to get off the ground? You might want to take yourself a lot less seriously.
Less than two months ago, the Crazy Sustainable Commute was just a fun office idea in the head of Steve Unger, a Senior Director at SAP. The concept is now gaining momentum throughout Vancouver and may one day go even further. 
The event, to be held on August 27th 2010, is a campaign designed to inspire people for ONE day to rethink how they can commute to work in an eco-friendly way that is sustainable, fun and raises awareness. 
“Each small step you take to reduce carbon emissions is one BIG step closer to a healthier planet and a healthier you.” says Steve.

When the Crazy Sustainable Commute team called me I have to admit the idea was too fun to resist. Especially when Steve told me how he was planning to commute on August 27th. So Green Briefs and Unicycle Creative jumped on board by offering blog coverage, logo design and production of a YouTube video featuring Steve’s alter-ego, Canoe-Man.

The Crazy Sustainable Commute team has since been to the July Critical Mass ride and has started a web page for participants to share their fun commuting ideas at www.crazysustainablecommute.org.
If you have an event or initiative to get off the ground, remember that humour and quirkiness go a long way in today’s cluttered, serious world. A fun idea will attract more sponsors, marketing partners, media coverage and participants. (It may even get you a good deal on some creative!) So turn the wacky side of your brain loose. Joining the Crazy Sustainable Commute on August 27th is a great way to start.

When I see some of the big-money idiocy that passes for brand advertising these days, (Yes, the ad you see above is real) I want to throw this smart little book at marketing heads left and right. That’s one of the reasons I bought a box of them. The other, I must admit, is that Unicycle Creative (the agency behind Green Briefs) is featured as one of the brand examples.
Branding Basics for Small Business has a lot of information packed into its pages, from classics like 10 Key Questions for building your strategy to sections that address today’s issues (“I know my brand strategy… it’s to build a Facebook page!”) And author Maria Ross’ Brand Building Blocks format makes it easy for busy businesspeople of all levels to visualize a process that has stumped more MBA’s than a Sudoku with a typo.
I was proud to have been interviewed for the ‘Choosing a Name’ section. It was a chance to remind the world that a name with a good story behind it is well worth the up-front investment. It’s one step that, done right, can help market your business forever.
If you want a free copy of Branding Basics for Small Business for yourself, leave a comment below and offer up your best brand advice. If you miss this little promo (quantities limited, etc etc) is easy to order a copy online at Norlights Press (one of the friendliest virtual booksellers I’ve met) and it’s a bargain at only $15.95.

Maury McCausland and Dennis Dong from London Drugs, feeling the green display love.

Trade shows and networking events are a great way for sustainability-focused companies to spread their message. But if the display itself doesn’t share those green values, what’s the point?  When creating a display for London Drugs’ What’s the Green Deal program at the 2010 EPIC Sustainable Living Show, we set the objective of our booth to be 100% recycled, recyclable or reusable.

We had four main communication objectives: 1) Introduce the ‘What’s the Green Deal’ program, 2) Make people aware of our Bring Back the Pack styrofoam recycling, 3) Profile some of our green products and 4) Showcase our responsible electronics recycling.

Using a combination of custom-built displays and commercially-available ‘green’ booth components we were able to do all that and come pretty close to achieving ‘3-R’ status.

Sourcing ‘green’ stand-up displays.

Most off-the-rack booth systems we researched were more concerned with traditional variables of cost, weight and performance than the use of sustainable materials. One exception was the Panda Banner stand we discovered at Go Green Displays. The unit is made from 90% renewable resources (bamboo) and  the image is printed on cotton fabric utilizing low VOC inks. We ordered two – one for our introductory message (mostly type on white) and one for our responsible recycling info (type reversed from a darker photo). For both, we provided PDF files from InDesign and were very pleased with the crispness of the type and the rich colour of the images. The stands come in handy carrying bags and set up easily. My only complaint was that one of the two stands we ordered seemed to lean forward a bit more than the other.

To build a recycling display, start at the recycling bin.

Visiting London Drugs’ recycling partner, Genesis Recycling, is a fascinating experience. Their technicians can break a laptop down to its component parts in a matter of minutes and their styrofoam compressor turns a mountain of white blocks into polystyrene pucks with equal ease. To bring some of this directly to the booth, I had them give me one disassembled laptop and a minivan full of styrofoam blocks. It was then a simple matter of combining clean design with science-fair-project engineering to display what basically was a pile of junk without it looking like… well, a pile of junk. For the ‘exploded laptop’ display I spent an evening with zap straps and some pegboard, designing the panels to fold inward for easy portability. The Bring Back the Pack display was a cardboard box built around a tall table which held the TV/DVD unit which played some of our Green Deal YouTube videos. I surrounded this with an explosion of styro blocks held together with bamboo shishkebab sticks. All graphics were printed out on 100% PCW paper.

For the retail part of the display, we sourced some Green Deal products from the store and displayed them on a shelf that our client, Dennis, brought from his garage. The finishing touch was an area rug from the same source.

All in all, the EPIC show was successful for London Drugs. We spoke to a lot of people about What’s the Green Deal, and got TV interviews from Global and CBC. The client is setting up the display at their head offices and will use it for other community events in the future. And when it’s message becomes outdated, almost every component will be able to be kept out of landfill. And that’s a good feeling that lasts long after the tradeshow lights have dimmed.

There is something inherently sad in the idea of waste. So when London Drugs set up a partnership with FreeGeek Vancouver to help collect usable older computers and keep them out of landfill, I saw an opportunity to have a little fun and tug on the heartstrings at the same time. As part of a series of videos I host for LD’s What’s the Green Deal initiatives, I hit some of Vancouver’s lonely alleyways looking to rescue some down-and-out machines. Director/Videographer Don Barnard shot and edited the spot, giving it a slightly desaturated look that fit perfectly with the melodramatic tone. And while we were definitely spoofing the maudlin NGO plea formula, there is a very real issue at the heart of reducing e-waste. Much of what is carelessly discarded or irresponsibly recycled ends up in poorer countries creating toxic dumps. So have a look and pass the video around if you can. The more people we can have dropping off workable machines at London Drugs, the better for all of us. (Cue schmaltzy violin music….)

As @GreenBriefs on Twitter, I follow a number of sustainability and green marketing feeds. One of these is Granville Online – a Vancouver-based green lifestyle publication. On April 21st, I was checking my Twitter feed when this post caught my eye:
Because I know and like Granville Magazine, like music and am into recycling, I clicked the link. This led me to the Granville blog article and online video. From there I linked to the ScrapArtsMusic Facebook page where I watched a few more video samples of their work. There I found out they were performing two Vancouver shows, on the 22nd and 23rd. I was so impressed I bought two tickets for the very next night.

From Twitter to blog to Facebook to a $60 sale in less than 20 minutes. All for a group I had never even heard of until that day.

And the show was so good, I wrote my own blog review of it, including a review and critique of their marketing and brand. My GreenBriefs blog article was then re-tweeted and mentioned on Facebook by Granville and ScrapArts. I got two new subscribers to my blog and ScrapArtsMusic even contacted me to ask about my marketing services.
And I swear I didn’t do this just as an example. It wasn’t until afterward that I thought about just how revolutionary a purchase process this was.

So don’t dismiss Twitter as 140 characters of mindless drivel times 100 Million just yet. Get the right followers and the right network and you could be making real sales to new fans.

Quick – what’s the worst oil tanker disaster in recent memory? What company was responsible? Exxon Mobil and Valdez are irrevocably linked, and the stain of that event will rightly stick to that company for as long as the oil fouls Alaska’s once-pristine coastline.

But because BP (perhaps wisely) did not attach their corporate name to the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, they simply aren’t as front and center in this calamity. A scan of recent articles reveals just how weakly this major catastrophe has been branded. It has been called Gulf of Mexico oil spill (Washington Post), Deep Water Horizon oil spill (Wikipedia), Massive gulf spill (MSNBC), Louisiana oil spill (Huffington Post) and… well, you get the idea. Nothing that even sticks in the public mind, let alone attaches itself to the corporations responsible.  A decade from now, the culpable parties will have paid some penance and faded into obscurity, opening the door to more of the kind of lobbying that industry seemingly always undertakes to loosen regulations and increase profits.

If environmentalists, fishermen, heck, anyone living in the gulf region, wants this disaster to have any lasting positive effect, we had better give it a much more effective brand.

So, as your humble Green Briefs branding expert, may I suggest ‘BP Blowout’. This nicely frames the discussion both in terms of corporate ownership, as well as providing some nice visual cues for the explosive nature of the original event. All with, I would suggest, at least partially-accurate overtones of lax safety.

Join the Facebook Group!

I think I’ll start a Facebook Group for this idea. If you agree, please join ‘ReBrand the oil spill – BP Blowout – Tell the World’. Lets’ get some media attention.

Because who or whatever was ultimately responsible, we need to make the memory of this spill’s origins as sticky as the oil fouling the coast.

Hemlock Printers is one of North America’s most advanced print shops, having won numerous awards and being named The most Environmentally Progressive Printer in Canada. Yet when they launched  NameTag™ Print Response Marketing, we decided to make the message as simple as a whiteboard sketch.

Nametag™ combines the power of customized direct-mail with the sophistication and tracking of online response, working with mailing lists, customizing messaging and printing digital direct-mail with variable data almost anywhere on the material. A Nametag URL and password is then personalized for each recipient. When customers enter these online, they are welcomed with their own web page, branded with custom graphics. They can RSVP, order on-line, answer a survey… the possibilities are endless. (See what we mean about complex? Just watch the video…!)

If you use direct-mail, you should have a look at this service. Better response means less waste, and that’s always a good thing. Find out more at Hemlock.com.

Unicycle Creative came up with the NameTag™ handle and branding, and the video concept. Then shot the piece in-house with Lorne Craig’s steady marker hand at the controls. Sound design was provided by GGRP.

Not always. At least, that’s the message I’m trying to convey in this latest London Drugs video. I took a tour through my local store and helped the manager build a display of green products for Earth Day. These are products identified under the What’s the Green Deal program Unicycle Creative helped them launch more than a year ago. Have a look, and if you think you know anyone who likes to shop green, send them a link. The more, the greenier.

If there’s one thing any marketer likes it’s a client who can back up their claim. When I met Kevin Pegg from Energy Alternatives in Victoria last year, I knew he was the real deal. So I was pleased and honoured when he asked Unicycle Creative to build some magazine ads to tell his story.

Energy Alternatives has been designing and installing off-grid power systems since 1984. Yet with the recent focus on green energy comes a whole crop of equally green competitors. Our strategy was to simply tell his story, referencing the green movement yet not depending on it to sell our benefits. We stayed in the realm of reality for images as well. Rather than searching for sleek, shiny stock photography, we chose to use shots from Kevin’s own extensive library of installation images – colour tinted in Photoshop to give them a unique look and represent different periods in EA’s history.

We had one other ace in the hole. Energy Alternatives was chosen to create the power system that ran the Olympic rings lighting up Vancouver’s Coal Harbour for two spectacular weeks in February 2010. Without stepping on VANOC’s toes, we wanted to tell that story as well.

If you’re a green marketer with a history, now may be the perfect time to tell your story. Just be sure to do it in a way that is interesting, genuine and relevant to your customers.

The ads are breaking in local and national publications this month. So I’ll keep you posted on the response.

I’m ready for my closeup. Er, maybe a little too close. But it’s all for a good cause, namely the continued greening of one of BC’s great independent retailers. As some Green Briefs fans will know, I helped London Drugs brand launch their What’s the Green Deal sustainability program almost two years ago. Since then they have led the way in retail responsibility with programs like in-store recycling drop-off, free recycling for small appliances or electronics you replace with a London Drugs purchase, and of course, Bring Back the Pack – the only packaging recycling program that takes Styrofoam.

So now I’m leading with my chin to help spread the word. And I’m asking you to help. Tell me what I should feature. Ask me some tough questions. Suggest some on-camera stupid-human tricks. I’ll do my best to V-blog all about it.

And if you want London Drugs to continue getting even greener, don’t forget to tell your friends about What’s the Green Deal. That’s how social media works.

Many thanks to ace shooter and editor Don Barnard for cutting out most of my mistakes.

Gotta go now. They want me in the makeup truck.