I originally came upon this at Advertising Lab

We’d like to give a big Thank You to the Ignite Portland organizers for selecting KEMO as a presenter. It was cool.

Check out the other presos here

Learn more about Ignite

Yesterday I attended the “How Sustainability Affects Consumer Demand” luncheon organized by the Portland Advertising Federation. It was time well spent, as all the panelists had experienced views on the make-up of and do’s/don’t for attracting the green audience. Here’s my takeaways:

Authenticity rules – If your going to claim green, make sure your value-chain is clean: ingredients, materials, labor practice, recycle policy, contribution to charity etc.

Transparency – Prove your greenness by sharing all information about your sustainable practices

Values alignment – Green consumers want to have shared values with the brands they buy and want those values to be meaningful and upheld

Local is the new organic – The most effective way to minimize your carbon imprint is to source locally

No downside to going green – Green is a powerful tie-breaker for all consumers

Certification matters – Third-party green verification provides instant creditabilty (i.e. LEED, Energy Star, Organic)

Panelists:
Jen Maxwell (Maxwell PR)
Christine Volden (SustainLane.com)
Leslie Carlson (Coates Kokes)
Nik Blosser (Celilo Group Media)

Thanks for insight guys.

Going through the NY Times blog on the California wildfires I was struck by the diversity of opinion and passion across the US. While I’m sure there are a lot more voices and views, I found myself caring more about the people, situation and social ramifications from reading these postings than from any other news account. Some excerpts are below. Click here for the blog

Here’s the irony: it was so beautiful in Los Angeles today. I live and work near the downtown area, and there was a golden tone to the light. The trees and grass glowed! Everyone at work commented on it.
— Posted by Jake

Help!
— Posted by Ian Bamberger

Would people stop calling this a tragedy? A tradegy by defninition is an event where a great person exerpeinces a reversal of fortune. This fire is a natural disaster, it can even be called an accident, but it is far from a tragedy. People and the media need to stop misusing words like tradegy for any bad thing that happens.
— Posted by Kevin

Californians fire victims are not Katrina victims. The scope of the fire in CA is not as big as the scope of the disaster in Louisiana.
Don’t compare the reactions of poor, uneducated and thirsty people who had to suffer through Katrina with the calm reaction of rich, educated, fitness crazed, sushi eating Californians who know that their lives are going to be just fine in a few weeks. There will be no California fires refugees.
California is a very rich state and can take care of itself. CA firefighters are the best on the planet.
Fires, earthquakes, landslides and California go together like peanut butter and jelly. Stop feeling sorry for California everytime something normal like a fire happens. People who live in California know the risk and take it because it is a great state to live.
The only downside to his fire is that homes who were becoming more affordable because of rising interest rates and foreclosures may find buyers and bring prices back up again.
Save the prayers for the Katrina victims who are still living in Fema trailers. Californians are staying in posh hotels and eating suhi while worrying about their property. They are going to be better than OK.
If you have to pray for someone, pray for the firefighters who have to risk their lives fighting fires to save rich people’s mansions.
— Posted by coolrepublica

So far, we’re safe, but the canyon behind my home in San Diego is filled with tinder-dry brush that could go up in a flash.
Im staying indoors as much as possible and I wore a protective mask when I took my golden retriever for a walk this morning. He stood up on his hind legs to get a closer look at my half-covered face. No doubt he thinks I’m nuts.
My point is this: If we want to avoid these holocausts we must have a long-term program for brush control. The current disaster was entirely predictable. It came as no surprise to me.
“The Fire Next Time” is a broken record in Southern California.
— Posted by Joe Schneider

I’m a sixth grader in San Diego and I think we’re very lucky. The fire hasn’t come to us but I feel so badly for all the people who have lost their homes. I feel so much safer knowing there are so many firefighters looking out for us.
— Posted by Leah M.

GodTube – “Utilizes Web based technology to connect Christians for the purpose of encouraging and advancing the Gospel worldwide.”

Yideoz – “Our vision is to rock the online Jewish world with awsome Jewish content from all over the world that makes you feel PROUD to be a Jew!”

EmPivot – “a video sharing website and a powerful aggregator of green-related media content for anyone and everyone to access on-line.”

“This shelf covers 70% of the base, holding the cereal above the milk; however it also has a section where the milk and cereal mix together. The shelf has a cliff that stops cereal getting underneath the shelf but allows the milk to flow freely.

And to make sure the crunchy cerealists form a tight community, there’s the EatMeCrunchy blog

It’s comforting to know aspiring cerealists are not alone.

Electronic Arts (EA) and British Petroleum (BP) have announced their collaboration on the development of SimCity Societies. During game play, “players can strive to create a greener environment and avoid hazards caused by excessive carbon emissions by choosing from a variety of BP Alternative Energy low-carbon power options.” To monitor and inform the player, the game includes carbon emssion ratings and “will issue alerts about the threat of the various natural disasters like droughts, heat waves and others that may strike their cities.” It makes sense that these strange bed-fellows have come together. BP can creatively reach a younger audience that otherwise would never give them the time of day and EA has a partner in increasing the Sim Citys real-world depth and complexity. As well, both brands may benefit from the green wash. Read the full press release

In addition to gaming being utilized as an advertising medium (in-game advertising is expected to reach a $502 million spend in 2007), the culture of gaming is being employed as a creative platform. Toyota has launched a broadcast spot which is a parody of the World of Warcraft game.

What should we make of the market study from Virtual Worlds Management that $1 billion has been invested in virtual worlds over the past 12 months? Without adding hype, let’s just say it’s an important benchmark – especially for marketers. Second Life is the most widely recognized virtual world brand and has been monitored as an indicator for the publics demand for virtual world consumption. While it has received mostly positive press from both the establishment and blogosphere, Second Life has recently come under new scrutiny. Last week The Yankee Group issued a press release reporting that “the growth rate of Second Life users has slowed since its peak in October 2006, while user engagement (as measured by average time spent per user) has leveled off at just 12 minutes per month.” The report goes on to compare this “engagement” metric with those of the latest media darlings MySpace and Facebook “which are seeing steady increases in both the number of users and the intensity of user engagement. Facebook’s average time spent per user, for example, increased 24% over 6 months to 186 minutes per month, equating to 15-times more engagement per user than Second Life.” Not wanting to go quietly into the night, Second Life issued a spirited criticism of The Yankee Group’s release in a blog post titled “Second Grade Math”.

“We respect Yankee Group as an analyst firm in good standing in its field. But their press release this week cited a figure that we just can’t figure out: they claim that the average time spent per user of Second Life is just 12 minutes per month.

Just this past August, users of Second Life spent over 23 million hours in Second Life. During that month, there were just over 974,000 user logins to Second Life – that’s an average of 23.6 hours per user!”

So who’s numbers are accurate? Who knows? But more importantly who cares? Second Life is a red herring. What marketers should understand is that virtual world/metaverse usage IS growing and trending towards mainstream due to its adoption by kids and teens.

According to eMarketer, “some 24% of the 34.3 million US child and teen internet users will visit virtual worlds once a month in 2007, according to eMarketer, which expects that 34% will do so in 2008, and 53% by 2011. In absolute numbers, that’s 8.2 million kids and teens expected to visit virtual worlds this year, 12.0 million in 2008, 20 million in 2011.”

Increasingly, our kids first exposure to the net will be of the virtual avatar variety. Sites like Barbie Girls, Habbo, Club Penguin and Whyville will reshape experiential expectations and force us to completely blow-up our understanding of usability. Amazon.com – boring, YouTube – give me a break, ESPN.com – are you kidding me! The generations nurtured on mixed reality will not tolerate the flat experiences that we engage with today. Virtual is becoming real. Real fast.

In other fruit recontextualization news there’s Chiquita’s Fresh & Ready Bananas! Packaged bananas that promise to retard rotting, extending the life and relationship between you and your banana. WZZM from Grand Rapids MI is on it!

AND…if you are really into fruit check out The Fruit Growers News

Ahh it’s Friday…

Be it in the form of handles, fake email addresses or avatars – society is going to have to confront virtual existence.

Forbes.com’s “Anonymity & The Net” does good job of exploring many sides to the issue:

The good – Criticizing the government in Zimbabwe is illegal so underground activists dissent via an anonymous blog

The bad – Sexual predators prowl MySpace, Webshots and SecondLife looking to connect with minors

The ugly – A California family is involuntarily forced too relive the gruesome drunken driving death of their 18 year daughter because images of the crime scene were leaked by authorities

Some say we’ll need to limit internet freedoms in order to gain protection while others feel any limits will have a “chilling affect”. read more

So what can marketers learn from understanding the effects of anonymity on the web? One answer may be that in order to see a return on online advertising, creditabilty will play a large role. While online advertising expenditures are exploding, there is sobering data from a recent Nielsen/Adweek study found “that the most popular forms of internet advertising score at the bottom when it comes to consumer trust.” Further more, “the older forms of ad messages – appearing in newspapers, magazines and on TV – far outscored the most popular forms of Web ads, search links and banner placements.” read more

Do you think there is a link between anonymity and the public’s mistrust of online advertising? That because we know how easy it is to hide our true identities we carry these feelings over to branded content? Hmm?