Hilary Carrell

The power of marketing is all around us, yet somehow we fail to comprehend that we see an average of 3000 ads per day. Thinking about this, I realized that by the time I leave my room in the morning, I’ve already seen more logos than I can count, from cereal boxes, to my wardrobe, my room alone is covered in advertising. Many have taken an interest in counting how many logos they can see in a day, coined as “My Day in Logos” such as in a blog post from a bus ride in Sweden.

A common theme throughout my blog is the increasing adaptation of eco-sensibility throughout businesses. By targeting the growing “green consumer” market through this new competitive edge companies are able to increase their net income. One weakness of this large incentive that I was reminded of by an article today is greenwashing. Greenwashing is when companies merely appear sustainable through powerful marketing techniques successfully fooling much of the population through words such as “natural”, “green”, “eco-friendly”, and “non-toxic” that hold no factuality unless proved by certification.

I agree with Devin Spence who blogged the need to be able to detect when a brand image is simply claiming it is “green”. Further, I want to ask how, as consumers, are we supposed to distinguish which claims are viable? The issue is that there are far too many companies administering different certifications and therefore they become incomprehensible to the everyday consumer. I believe that these companies need to collaborate in order to provide a concrete certification and logo that consumers can explicitly identify as unconditionally sustainable. If consumers continue to be convinced by greenwashing, then where is the motivation for companies to instigate real sustainability, when they can still increase their profits by simply portraying an image?

Image Credit: Roselia Choi

Puma, a German-based, multinational sports lifestyle company, has fully costed its 2010 environmental impact, claiming to be the first major coorporation to do so. Totalling 145 million euros ($196m), the cost includes greenhouse gas emissions, water and land use, air pollution and waste from the actions of Puma itself, and those of its suppliers.

Today, placing a value on a company’s environmental impact in order to incorporate into the company’s annual accounts is becoming progressively common. Driving this is the realization that services and resources provided by nature will not be infinite, and therefore, cannot be counted as free.

It’s encouraging to see that after Puma’s “Dirty Laundry” was exposed earlier this year, as explained in my previous blog post, and in Lisa Wong’s Blog Post, Puma identified the need to clean up their brand imaging and any association with a large environment impact. Many companies are beginning to adapt long term strategies that focus on improving the future, such as the PumaVision, a “responsibility to contribute to a better world for the generations to come.” Despite these movements, I still feel that companies are leaving consumers in the dark as often as possible, but some headway is certainly better than none at all.

Image Credit: puma.com

Gurbaksh Chahal, an Indian-born American, created two companies worth over $340 million by age 25. Chahal started his first company in 1998 at age 16 titled ClickAgents. ClickAgents was “one of the first performance-based advertising networks in the industry”. Just two years later ValueClick purchased ClickAgents for $40 million.

In 2004, Chahal founded BlueLithium which was an online innovation for advertising space that had a network focused on data, optimization, analytics. BlueLithium targeted online viewers individually by knowing what sites they visited, what ads they’d clicked, and what ads others had clicked with resembling clickstreams. This was a pioneer of behavioral targeting because display ads online had previously been targeted websites, instead of the viewers. So, to no surprise, within three years Yahoo! Inc. had purchased BlueLithium for $300 million in cash.

Chalal’s ventures in entrepreneurship have been innovative, perilous, and extremely successful at an incredibly fast rate. You might ask the common question, “Couldn’t Google have done the same thing?”, but in this case Chahal had the disruptors advantage. The fact that he dropped out of school at age 16, had $40 million by 18, and another $300 million by 25 is astounding. Chahal wasn’t ready to let anything hold him back, and pursued his ideas until they became successes.

Image Credit: Impact Lab

Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS Shoes in 2006, after seeing many poor and shoeless children alongside few wearing simple, comfortable farming shoes in Argentina. He redesigned the shoes, brought them North, and for every pair sold, one is given away to a child in need.

TOMS’ business model holds many strengths; it’s seemingly recession proof as it continues to grow, the donating is built in to the price structure, it attracts passionately dedicated staff, and it’s fully sustainable. Mycoskie states, “Ultimately, I am trying to create something that is going to be here long after I’m gone.”  TOMS is able to be far reaching by being for-profit, and giving away a large portion of it’s profits, versus the limitations a non-profit would entail.

It becomes clear that having a customer feel good about their purchase and inspiring them to tell a story is a huge advantage that creates word-of-mouth spreading. I love how TOMS proves that net income doesn’t have to be priority number one in business models today, and that by putting giving, passion and sustainability first, a business can not only flourish, but inspire a brighter future across the globe.

TOMS; Reflection On Giving Video

Image Credit: Lee Loves Hot Trends

Women today face obstacles when public speaking of everything from their appearance to their boldness. Author Christine Jahnke, a well-established Washington, D.C. -based speech coach, suggests that women face not only the same obstacles as men, but also others that hold a large potential to backfire. Women are singled out due to their “relative lack of representation in business and government.” For women to be successful in business environments today, one of the main factors is likeability, rather than the old assumed need to exude a tough and confident persona.

Leah Eichler’s article in the Globe and Mail intrigued me because it proves how crucially important communication and presentation is in the business world. Women seem to be judged on more factors than men when it comes to public speaking. Men tend to speak up more often in the workplace; therefore they are more likely to have openings to promote themselves and their accomplishments, which can lead to better positions and incomes.  For women to rise up in business, they need to stop turning away opportunities since they feel they don’t “know enough”, because men will not hesitate.

Image Credit: CLM Mission

Sustainability in business is a topic growing in popularity globally. The importance and necessity in today’s business world to making your company “go green” is increasing steadily. The book titled, Green to Gold argues three major reasons for a company to add the “green lens” to their core strategy: upside benefit potential, downside risk management, and a concern that is value-based for environmental stewardship. The BC provincial government heightens the attraction for companies to go green by offering 38 incentives that range from tax breaks on research and development spending to energy conservation measures.

Taking this to the extreme such as Patagonia does, of placing values ahead of profits, may be too big of a risk for many companies today. However, I truly feel that in today’s world it is exceedingly imperative for a company to build a strong sustainability strategy that will not only have a positive impact environmentally, but also socially and economically. It is also not enough for a company to simply offset their damage (carbon neutrality) by supporting an NGO for example, but they need to be implementing procedures directly into their business model that will make their company sustainable from the inside out.

Video: Rethink Sustainability

Image Credit: Green Marketing 2.0

Occupy Wall Street is a diverse group of activists who stand against corporate gluttony, social inequality and other disparities between the rich and the poor. The loosely organized protest started on September 17, 2011, in New York’s financial district and now protests are erupting in over 1500 cities worldwide.

One major critique of the protest is that no specific policy demands are being made. An active protestor, Shawn Redden, stated that “[Occupy Wall Street] absolutely needs to make demands.” Redden hopes to inspire change by identifying specific actions to ask local and federal governments to implement.

Redden makes a firm point that actions need to be taken that are meeting some form of specific agenda. However, there are many that could generate demands, the larger issue is attaining enough people to agree. The number of protesters is growing at a staggering rate, and governments across the globe will seemingly have to take action, whether demands are being made or not.

Long time protester, Eric Lerner, 64, doesn’t agree with that process and stated last Monday “If we don’t make demands, the political parties will make them for us. We have to get it right this time.”

Image Credit: Robert Stolarik for the New York Times

Netflix Inc. has announced, via blog post, that it will no longer be separating its DVD-by-mail from its online streaming services. This may have decreased a small amount of customer outrage, but increased the questioning of recent decisions made by CEO Reed Hastings.

The decision to no longer start Qwikster as it’s own DVD-by-mail website was responsive to Hastings recognizing that it would be “more difficult” for consumers to manage two accounts on separate websites.   Consumers have felt that the 60% price increase in July was an outrageous leap, and the former plan to split left many considering switching to other up and coming online streamers such as Amazon.com or Apple Inc.

However, now that consumers have seen that Hastings was able to swallow his pride and quickly act on the cries in repsonse to the split, maybe customers will stick with Netflix a little bit longer. This decision has not only affected consumers positively, but also investors who have sent the stock up 9.6 per cent to $128.45 in premarket trading. Netflix seems to be doing everything in their power to show, despite the mess up, they are still improving their services at a fast and growing rate.

Image Credit: Globe and Mail

In July 2011 Greenpeace released a report entitled Dirty Laundry that exposed two particular textile factories in China for major environmental flaws. These factories are allegedly using various hazardous chemicals that are tainting clothing from reputable brands such as Nike, Adidas and Puma. These concerns are not only dangerous to human health directly, but are also damaging to the environment and water supply in China.

It seems clear that it has been easier to keep production costs down and therefore have a more appealing price to the western consumer by using textile companies such as these.  However, even when both parties are saving money it still cannot be ethical to be allowing the discharge of hazardous chemicals throughout their supply chain. Nike’s Code of Conduct for their suppliers claims that they will take the right steps towards mitigating any type of “air emissions, solid/hazardous waste and water discharge”. Not following through with their policy is a large issue especially when these companies are supposed to be leaders in sustainability. What Greenpeace is really looking for is a Right to Know policy where there is full transparency about the chemicals being released from their suppliers’ factories.

Image Credit: Tomat3, Flickr Creative Commons