Manufacturing
Leafy Green Viral Marketing
Nissan has been pushing its latest technological breakthroughs in lithium ion powered cars with a video posted on YouTube. The name of the car is Leaf. It’s an interesting move that will hit car lovers, environmentalists and the general populace with equal emphasis. I like the simple, creative way the message is portrayed and the heightened sustainability prowess it gives Nissan. Viral works, to prove it, watch the video.
Matching your advertising expenditures to your target’s media consumption habits
It’s that time of year… everyone’s planning their budgets for 2010. We all hope and pray that the recession will be over by then, but in the meantime most organizations are lean and mean. Just today eMarketer reported that in order to improve overall marketing effectiveness, 70% of marketers are moving budget from traditional to digital media.
So is it time for you to create a high impact online marketing program? You know that your targets are online, but where do I start?
Two primary ways come to mind – targeted media buys and search marketing.
Dark clouds of crisis have a shiny silver lining called alternative energy
There are strong signs of a rebound for the alternative energy sector, but how soon will green jobs start impacting the U.S. job market? Though the U.S is surrounded by economic, security, and climate crisis – can green technologies really save us from ourselves?
Some say alternative energy could spark the next “industrial revolution”. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get dirty. Click here for a must-read article from Manufacturing.net that just may provide some fuel for thought!
Charting a Green ENERGY Path for Your Business
Making smart energy choices now is more critical than ever, both from a budget perspective and an environmental one. As awareness of green solutions spreads, more consumers are looking for environmentally sound practices for personal use, and expect the same level of awareness in the businesses they support.
Increasingly, businesses are recognizing that using green energy is not only an effective long-term strategy that’s good for the environment, but it also resonates well with consumers who are increasingly looking for companies with environmentally-sound business practices. Here are top tips on smart energy consumption for your business:
- Participate in demand response programs available through your energy provider.
- Use localized power. Construction of on-site renewable generation for businesses can be a viable and potentially profitable means of limiting dependence on fossil fuels and ensuring reliability of power supplies.
- Maintain HVAC systems. Proper maintenance of heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment can maximize efficiency for the long term.
- Use compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). One CFL saves about 330kWh over its lifetime—a reduction of about 400 pounds of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. CFLs also generate 70% less heat than standard bulbs, reducing the need for air conditioning. (Source: Previously published in New England Hotel Magazine, March/April 2008)
- Use Energy Star equipment. Energy Star offers several office equipment solutions that may be eligible for tax breaks in addition to saving on electricity costs. An Energy Star labeled computer, for example, uses 70% less electricity than a standard model, and in sleep mode, the same computer will use only 4 watts or less. (Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewal Energy website: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/home_office.html)
I’ll trade you a cup of water for my new Prius?
At The Churchill Club of Silicon Valley’s Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate in May, five prominent venture capitalists argued about which trends are going to gain traction in the coming year. Joe Schoendorf, partner at Accel Partners, and past vice president of marketing for Apple, had the crowd nodding as he advanced the prediction that water technology will replace global warming as an international priority.
Schoendorf explained that the world is running out of usable water and that this is a higher immediate threat than global warming.
Energy production consumes large volumes of water…coal, nuclear and biomass gasification all require water. According to a report on theoildrum.com a 50 million gal/yr plant will use 600,000 gallons of water a day – much of it used to dissipate the heat of the process. Gasoline refining processes use about 3 – 4.5 gallons of water for every gallon of gas.
Do you have a plan?
EPA ruling has my phone ringing
Big news! The EPA has ruled that C02 is an air pollutant that they are “legally bound to regulate”. Andy Stone reports that it’s “a decision likely to have a vast impact on the U.S. economy and the way American companies do business. It is also a boon for cleantech, and may turn investors away from carbon intensive industries for good.”
So I just hung up the phone with a B2B client who wanted to know what my thoughts were on this. (She knows that I hail from an environmentalist enclave in the Pacific Northwest, and she teases me when I drop my gum wrapper in the recycle bin. What can I say – it must have been something in the artesian spring water I drank growing up.) Anyway, she’s concerned because several of her biggest clients may be impacted…I told her that now might be a good time for some targeted research to assess impact and opportunity. But now that I think about it, that’s good advice for any company at any time, really.
