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Founder and Director, Zero Emissions Research Institute, Gunter Pauli gives a great presentation on how nature can provide us the path to a world where green chemistry doesn’t just do no harm, but enables radical innovation opportunities; where waste is fed into closed loop systems that maximize social and environmental benefits; and where biomimicry enables us to free ourselves from toxic, complicated current solutions.

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Great and funny ad from the Environmental Defense Fund Canada and Forest Ethics. Employees of both organizations thought it’d be great to have their children take part in the video to stress the importance of their future.

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Awesome advocacy video from Method (stylish home cleaning products manufacturer). What I love about these new forms of advocacy is the raw focus on the issue at hand without a commercial tie-in to X amount of dollars donated per product purchased until this time period. Sure, it’s different…but we have to remember that for these campaigns to succeed they have to be rooted in the mission of the organization. When they’re particularly effective is when they’re the innovative underdog like Method and Seventh Generation are against P&G, Unilever, and J&J for example.

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“The Dow Chemical Company plans to work with Algenol Biofuels, Inc. to build and operate a pilot-scale algae-based integrated biorefinery that will convert CO2 into ethanol. This is one of many examples that demonstrates Dow’s commitment to develop new solutions to address the challenges of energy and climate change.”

Interesting video by Dow on the innovative activities they’re pursuing. What I totally love is how they’re using YouTube as a public relations tool to take their message beyond a lame press release. Well done, although they could have added more tags to the description like algae, ethanol, innovation, and energy.

Sustainability is a vast field covering multiple topics in operations, marketing, design, innovation, and new business models. While articles, books, and conferences (if you have the budget and time to attend) can be great, nothing beats having professionals giving you the inside scoop.

The creators of the Sustainable Brands Conference, with whom I work as their community engagement manager, are organizing an online training seminar for 13 weeks. In order to help further this movement along, we’ve recognized many smart business people need to get up to speed - and we’ve done so by getting some of the world’s leading practitioners to teach the subjects they’re passionate about for 90min - available live and on-demand for a very affordable price.

If you’d like to learn more, go ahead and check out the speakers, session descriptions, and dates here. I’ve included the titles of the sessions here for you to see. P.S. - I’ll be speaking on the last session in February on public relations and social media

1. Introduction to Opportunities in Sustainable Innovation
2. Innovation Opportunities in Response to Today’s Environmental Hot Buttons: Climate Change, Water & Waste
3. The Changing Consumer Marketplace
4. Organizational Models for Integrating CSR with Brands
5. Building a Balanced Sustainable Brand Strategy
6. Sustainable Product Design – An Overview of Prevailing Approaches
7. Building Collaborative Supply Chain Partnerships
8. Transforming Your Company Through Sustainability – and Engaging Your Customers and Employees in the Process
9. Introduction to Life Cycle Impact Assessment
10. Business Metrics: Dashboards, KPI’s and other strategies for Goal Setting and Measurement
11. Building Credibility/Avoiding Greenwashing
12. Designing Communications that Resonate
13. PR/Social Media and Alternate Community Building Strategies

Tim Leberecht of Frog Design gave a presentation earlier this year at the Next09 conference in Berlin on how societal changes in regards to both the economy and people’s interactions with eachother and brands online are creating a convergence of services offered by the marketing and design agencies, and why “Meaning” has become sought after and a key deliverable. The video and slides are available below. See also his table of 5 attributes of meaning and the mediums/tactics to address them.

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John Edson of Lunar Design discusses sustainable product design approaches and ideas within the context, in the introduction and ending, of bottled water. I saw John give this presentation live at Sustainable Brands 09 and must say that it was refreshing to listen to and experience, given his calm voice and diverse examples provided. Enjoy!

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Yes, it all comes down to communication and framing the topic in a way that’s relevant to them based on their values. For example, some people care about saving money in their actions; others may care more about doing the right thing. What are the triggers? Know your audience - or get a really great inspirational speaker

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IDEO recently built a new web presence with short articles and videos called Living Climate Change, that describes itself as:

“a place where the most defining challenge of our time is explored through design thinking. It’s also a place to show, discuss and share compelling and provocative thoughts and ideas about the future…[the site] invites you to imagine what life will be like in 20 or 30 years, as we move along a path toward reduced carbon emissions. Will the targets be reached? Which behaviors will need to change? Which will we choose to preserve?”

Tim Brown relays to us facts about climate change and the necessary social changes that will have to occur through scenario building and design thinking. In my opinion, the site acts as a good way for IDEO to share their thoughts on sustainability in a single-place (domain) without distractions of other aspects of the company.

Having come across a bookmark I saved with 12 tips on word of mouth marketing by Andy Sernovitz, I thought it might be a good idea to share them with you:

1. Happy customers are your best advertising. Make people happy.
2. Marketing is easy: Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers. They will do your marketing for you, for free.
3. Ethics and good service come first.
4. You are the User Experience (not what your advertisements say you are).
5. Negative word of mouth is an opportunity. Listen and learn.
6. People are already talking. Your only option is to join the conversation.
7. Be interesting or be invisible.
8. If it’s not worth talking about, it’s not worth doing.
9. Make the story of your company a good one.
10. It is more fun to work at a company that people want to talk about.
11. Use the power of word of mouth to make business treat people better.
12. Honest marketing makes more money.

Generalized rules, but good to take to heart. In the social media era, I’ll add that any opportunities you can design for allowing others to share their opinions with you (feedback/dialogue) or others (tell-a-friend tactics), will be especially useful for both passive and active WOM. However, points 7 and 8 will be two of the most important factors in encouraging conversation.