We tried out a little stunt marketing for a project with EcoSMART, which markets botanical pesticides that kill bugs as effectively as synthetic pesticides, but is safe for kids and pets. It works on a neurotransmitter that isn't present in mammals.
The product has been available in commercial and agricultural markets for several years. It's now available at select Wal-Marts, as part of that company's broader sustainability offering. This stunt was timed to coincide with retail availability in the SF Bay Area and was part of a media day with the founder of EcoSMART, Steve Bessette.
The goals were to provide interesting pitch fodder for social and traditional media and to have some fun with the public. Video and photos of the event are posted; please take a look and share it with those who’d be interested:
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9029668@N08/sets/72157600367845472/
Monday, June 25, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Green Media Explosion
Earth Week has everyone buzzing nowadays. Remember when it was just you that planted a tree or changed a light bulb in celebration? Iron Horse Vineyards even had a shindig; nothing like some bubbly carbon dioxide to celebrate. Glad everyone's making hay of the day, but it's a bit overwhelming. It'll take me another month to get through all the good writing on my favorite topic. I'm posting them here so I don't forget...
Robert Redford chats about the new green programming on the Sundance Channel | By Amanda Griscom Little | Grist | Main Dish | 16 Apr 2007
Lime Launches Eco-friendly Ad Network · MarketingVOX
Grist reviews the spring crop of green glossy mags | By Sarah van Schagen | Grist | Arts and Minds | 27 Mar 2007
Vanity Fair's Green Issue
New York Time Sunday Edition, April 22, 2007 had some good stuff. But they require registration and payment, so they'll have thousands of less reader of it.
And GreenBiz's GreenBuzz newsletter, which is always on the job.
Robert Redford chats about the new green programming on the Sundance Channel | By Amanda Griscom Little | Grist | Main Dish | 16 Apr 2007
Lime Launches Eco-friendly Ad Network · MarketingVOX
Grist reviews the spring crop of green glossy mags | By Sarah van Schagen | Grist | Arts and Minds | 27 Mar 2007
Vanity Fair's Green Issue
New York Time Sunday Edition, April 22, 2007 had some good stuff. But they require registration and payment, so they'll have thousands of less reader of it.
And GreenBiz's GreenBuzz newsletter, which is always on the job.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Bite Me
About six weeks into my efforts to build the the cleantech business, THUNDER FACTORY sputtered. Its business cycle hit a predictable trough. By my calculations, any upside, both financially and professionally, was far in the distance for those that stayed.
So, on March 16, I sent the agents out and starting turning over rocks. I had a couple of strategies: 1) join an agency that had/was building a cleantech practice; 2) go to the corporate side for either an established player with green designs or one of the startups that had secured a Series B or C round and were ready to ramp up marketing or 3) do my own marketing/communications consulting thing.
Group 1: these are folks I've listed previously, including A&R Edelman, Bite, Blanc & Otus, Antenna and Text 100. I had an in with Bite through Kristina Skierka, previously at McGuire & Co., which handles most of the Flex Your Power programs (uber resource efficiency program in California). I also found out about 463 Communications, which does tech policy and has some interesting partners. I also looked at Ecos Consulting and Resource Solutions Group (which broke off from a previous employer, D&R International), both of which are hybrid agencies/energy efficiency consultants.
Group 2: I checked out SolarCity, ecoAmerica (a non-profit where my old boss is the Executive Director), Business for Social Responsibility, Fat Spaniel, Organic Bouquet, and a handful of anonymous Craigslist postings. Surprisingly, all the previous networking didn't turn up many cleantech companies that were actively hiring.
Group 3: Building a book of business looked like it would need to be ad hoc clients, not just cleantech. Nevertheless, I started piecing together project options for a variety of sources.
Shortly into this sifting and sorting options, Bite Communications came back with a solid offer. The culture (flat, comfortable), reputation (friends of friends work there), clients (big brands and startups too), overall package (inc. 5 weeks vacation), and, very importantly, burgeoning cleantech and green products practice hooked me. I start on April 30, 2007.
So, on March 16, I sent the agents out and starting turning over rocks. I had a couple of strategies: 1) join an agency that had/was building a cleantech practice; 2) go to the corporate side for either an established player with green designs or one of the startups that had secured a Series B or C round and were ready to ramp up marketing or 3) do my own marketing/communications consulting thing.
Group 1: these are folks I've listed previously, including A&R Edelman, Bite, Blanc & Otus, Antenna and Text 100. I had an in with Bite through Kristina Skierka, previously at McGuire & Co., which handles most of the Flex Your Power programs (uber resource efficiency program in California). I also found out about 463 Communications, which does tech policy and has some interesting partners. I also looked at Ecos Consulting and Resource Solutions Group (which broke off from a previous employer, D&R International), both of which are hybrid agencies/energy efficiency consultants.
Group 2: I checked out SolarCity, ecoAmerica (a non-profit where my old boss is the Executive Director), Business for Social Responsibility, Fat Spaniel, Organic Bouquet, and a handful of anonymous Craigslist postings. Surprisingly, all the previous networking didn't turn up many cleantech companies that were actively hiring.
Group 3: Building a book of business looked like it would need to be ad hoc clients, not just cleantech. Nevertheless, I started piecing together project options for a variety of sources.
Shortly into this sifting and sorting options, Bite Communications came back with a solid offer. The culture (flat, comfortable), reputation (friends of friends work there), clients (big brands and startups too), overall package (inc. 5 weeks vacation), and, very importantly, burgeoning cleantech and green products practice hooked me. I start on April 30, 2007.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Turning on the Cleantech Biz Dev Spigot
About six months into my year stint at THUNDER FACTORY, I started actively building a cleantech practice. While working on the future of healthcare (McKesson) was very rewarding, and anything can hold my interest for a half-year (like Magliner hand trucks and the dynamic world of self storage through Extra Space Storage), my long-held passion for cleantech needed to be fed.
Seems everyone in communications was setting up shop. Those that I came across included A&R Edelman, Antenna Group, Big Think Studios, Bite, Blanc and Otus, Blue Practice, Clean Agency, Digital Hive EcoLogical Design, Matter Communications (www.matternow.com), Straus Communications, Text 100, and Weber Shandwick. Plus, the traditional agencies with big accounts that were diving into green/cleantech (e.g. Hoffman/Lewis with Toyota) were soaking up the new work as well. Our work was cut out for us.
I started going to all the events. Commonwealth Club had a cleantech event down at AMD HQ with the winners of the Cleantech Open, which included Adura Technologies, KiteShip and others. The Cleantech Forum was a couple weeks later. Then an Alliance of CEOs cleantech event, which included Fat Spaniel Technologies, Sun Light and Power, SolarCity, and CleanFish. Heading out to Green Drinks. Haunting Craigslist for any postings to see who was looking for marketing help.
Seems everyone in communications was setting up shop. Those that I came across included A&R Edelman, Antenna Group, Big Think Studios, Bite, Blanc and Otus, Blue Practice, Clean Agency, Digital Hive EcoLogical Design, Matter Communications (www.matternow.com), Straus Communications, Text 100, and Weber Shandwick. Plus, the traditional agencies with big accounts that were diving into green/cleantech (e.g. Hoffman/Lewis with Toyota) were soaking up the new work as well. Our work was cut out for us.
I started going to all the events. Commonwealth Club had a cleantech event down at AMD HQ with the winners of the Cleantech Open, which included Adura Technologies, KiteShip and others. The Cleantech Forum was a couple weeks later. Then an Alliance of CEOs cleantech event, which included Fat Spaniel Technologies, Sun Light and Power, SolarCity, and CleanFish. Heading out to Green Drinks. Haunting Craigslist for any postings to see who was looking for marketing help.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Is this thing on?
I had an epiphany back in 2001, when I had the luxury of time on my hands, that my personal and professional lives would have to--and should, if I was going to get anywhere--merge a bit more. I had always tried to keep them separated, figuring I didn't want to talk too much shop at dinner with friends or be passing out business cards at the local anti-war protest.
With the dot-com bust and my resulting free time (with severance), I did a brief recap of my life to date and saw a couple of common threads:
--green stuff (summer stint doing remediation, mostly at gas stations where "product" was floating on water tables; canvassed for PIRG in Chicago, mostly on wetlands restoration post Mississippi flooding of '93; brief stint at Demand Management Corp. right before it was bought by Honeywell, working on Greenlights, the commercial precursor to the ENERGY STAR program; volunteer chair of the SF chapter of Surfrider Foundation for four years; all into that recycling thing and a "small footprint," in part because that's all I could afford in SF);
--technology (six years in high-tech PR, four at Blanc and Otus, and ENERGY STAR was about energy efficient products, which is tech, if not high-tech); and
--public affairs (UNDP internship in '92; internship with Burson-Marstellar in '93, trying to stay away from missiles and cigarettes and steer towards green stuff with EarthShell and a local "green dump"; citizen lobbying with PIRG on renewable energy, national bottle deposit and wetlands protection; started working on an intro of the Bush admin to Silicon Valley in 2000 with Hill and Knowlton's DC office headed by Torie Clark, before she went over to the Pentagon and I was laid off).
On a plane over the Atlantic en route to a college buddy's wedding in Norway, I had the epiphany that "sustainable technology marketing" was my sweet spot. Upon returning from Europe, I grabbed a job working on ENERGY STAR with the Feds, which lasted four years. The company I was with, D&R International, never got it together to have enough to sell on the "Strategic marketing" front, most of that work went, deservedly, to Marketing Drive, sister company to Interbrand, which managed the overall ENERGY STAR brand. And I looked around at most of the companies we were working with, The Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears, Whirlpool, GE, Sylvania, etc., and while they took guidance (and a bit of brow-beating) on marketing plans from the Feds, it was still either in-house marketing folks or general marketing agencies that got to do the bulk of the "green marketing" work. So, I struck out for a general marketing agency, whose services I could sell to "sustainable technology" companies, which are now more commonly known as "cleantech" companies.
As a marketing consultant, I'm constantly consuming media and looking for spots to squeeze my clients into or trends to stay ahead of (or at least comfortably drafting off of others). What better way to keep my mind focused on my priority, cleantech, while still doing my day job that includes a lot of non-cleantech stuff.
This blog will be my public gathering place for all the things I come across that seem worthy of sharing or gathering for future reference.
With the dot-com bust and my resulting free time (with severance), I did a brief recap of my life to date and saw a couple of common threads:
--green stuff (summer stint doing remediation, mostly at gas stations where "product" was floating on water tables; canvassed for PIRG in Chicago, mostly on wetlands restoration post Mississippi flooding of '93; brief stint at Demand Management Corp. right before it was bought by Honeywell, working on Greenlights, the commercial precursor to the ENERGY STAR program; volunteer chair of the SF chapter of Surfrider Foundation for four years; all into that recycling thing and a "small footprint," in part because that's all I could afford in SF);
--technology (six years in high-tech PR, four at Blanc and Otus, and ENERGY STAR was about energy efficient products, which is tech, if not high-tech); and
--public affairs (UNDP internship in '92; internship with Burson-Marstellar in '93, trying to stay away from missiles and cigarettes and steer towards green stuff with EarthShell and a local "green dump"; citizen lobbying with PIRG on renewable energy, national bottle deposit and wetlands protection; started working on an intro of the Bush admin to Silicon Valley in 2000 with Hill and Knowlton's DC office headed by Torie Clark, before she went over to the Pentagon and I was laid off).
On a plane over the Atlantic en route to a college buddy's wedding in Norway, I had the epiphany that "sustainable technology marketing" was my sweet spot. Upon returning from Europe, I grabbed a job working on ENERGY STAR with the Feds, which lasted four years. The company I was with, D&R International, never got it together to have enough to sell on the "Strategic marketing" front, most of that work went, deservedly, to Marketing Drive, sister company to Interbrand, which managed the overall ENERGY STAR brand. And I looked around at most of the companies we were working with, The Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears, Whirlpool, GE, Sylvania, etc., and while they took guidance (and a bit of brow-beating) on marketing plans from the Feds, it was still either in-house marketing folks or general marketing agencies that got to do the bulk of the "green marketing" work. So, I struck out for a general marketing agency, whose services I could sell to "sustainable technology" companies, which are now more commonly known as "cleantech" companies.
As a marketing consultant, I'm constantly consuming media and looking for spots to squeeze my clients into or trends to stay ahead of (or at least comfortably drafting off of others). What better way to keep my mind focused on my priority, cleantech, while still doing my day job that includes a lot of non-cleantech stuff.
This blog will be my public gathering place for all the things I come across that seem worthy of sharing or gathering for future reference.
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