October 9, 2008
01:58 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
If you've taken the subway, been to an airport or passed by a few billboards lately, you've probably noticed Dentyne's latest ad campaign, which launched mid-August of this year. It's hard to miss.
Attractive, twenty-something couples canoodling -- on the grass, out of taxis, exchanging minty kisses (and fresh breath). Friends locked in tight embrace or comfortably piled on a small couch, like a close-knit litter of puppies. Captions that incorporate online phraseology: The Original Voicemail (power down, pucker up, make face time), The Original Instant Message (hang up, listen close, make face time), Friend Request Accepted (close browser, open arms, make facetime), Send and Receive (log off, latch on, make face time.)
Make Face Time
The message is simple and strong: make time for the real world; make time to disconnect. Turn off your computers, shut down your cell phones and make the time to meet people in person.
"People are spending more and more time online, and less and less time face to face, together," says Craig Marcus, an executive creative director at McCann Erickson who orchestrated the campaign. "We're not saying technology is bad. It's great, but there are still some things it lacks -- it can't replicate what happens when people are in front of each other. Certain things can't happen online through social networking… All we're saying is be with other people."
In brainstorming, Marcus explains, his team automatically drifted towards using technology as the cultural backdrop against which to create the campaign for Dentyne. "Everyone immediately went to that place. Technology was the obvious thing to push against. But we realized quickly that we were kidding ourselves. We weren't being truthful. Bashing technology would just annoy people more than it would make them feel right."
Truth is something that Marcus brought up several times in his interview with Fast Company – to him a campaign that isn't based squarely on what's genuine, is setting itself up to fail. "We look for what's going on in the world that we can talk about and that's meaningful. It's important to understand that advertising is not a one-way communication anymore. People have more control than ever before. We don't have a captive audience. At the core of everything it's important to respect that and always look for something that's truthful. I can't boil it down to a science. I look at something as a human being and just say yes that works. But I won't stretch the truth of what a brand is."
So We Get the Tech Talk -- But Where Does the Gum Factor In?
McCann Erickson's Dentyne team correctly honed in on technology and new media being all that's hot right now. But what's the connection between gum and technology?
Gum, according to Marcus, makes those close, special moments that technology is cutting into, just a little bit better. "Gum's something you pop in your mouth to make those moments more special. There's nothing worse than talking to someone with coffee breath. Gum makes kissing better, conversation better, it wakes us up a little bit, refreshes our mouths."
We had a cultural insight about how technology sometimes provides barriers to people being together face to face. The moments where you would want a piece of gum aren’t happening as much with technology there," he says.
Dentyne's sales have suffered recently. Mintel, a market research firm, reports that between 2005 and 2007 sales of Dentyne Ice were down 9%, while those of Dentyne Fire were down 26%. " We needed to keep the brand fresh," explains Josette Barenholtz, marketing director for Dentyne. "From a business perspective it was time for Dentyne to evolve itself."
It's true that the brand is interpreting the world or using a trend to suit its own specific needs and Marcus in fact admits, "Sometimes it's about just reorganizing the world around the message you're trying to portray." But they've done it well. While gum is a competitive market and although it's too soon for any measurable results, it looks like Dentyne has been able to achieve relevance, within the larger context of what is perhaps the most pronounced cultural phenomena affecting youth (its target market) today.
The image the campaign is trying to convey: optimism, honestly, free spiritedness and youth, attractiveness (but not beauty). "I'd say it's more about a moment than a look though," qualifies Marcus. "It's about feeling like you're actually in those places with those people."
The brand's core message is a legitimate one, and they've made sure it's in your face. They have television ads, print ads, a "make face time" website, and are planning on a couple of short films they hope will go viral. The print ads are all displayed outdoors in busy locations: "We wanted the work to show up where people are face to face," explains Barenholtz.
Particularly tricky, explains Marcus, was creating a website for Dentyne. Apart from the fact that, as he puts it, "nobody in their right minds wants to go to a website for a gum," offering technology to promote a campaign that revolves around asking people to step away form technology, presented a challenge.
McCann Erickson's solution: to log you off the website down after 3 minutes. Apart from featuring Dentyne's products and its ads, the site also offers quirky, fun services all geared to making people connect in person. There's a "facetime request", which allows you to send a note to someone else requesting to Barenholtz make facetime. There's a map for people's areas that claims to show the best places to make facetime (although when I entered my own zip code nothing shows up.) There's also something called the "Smiley Chamber of Doom" where you can watch emoticons being put to death, were you so inclined.
The campaign, which is running across the US, and in Canada, retains the functional breath freshening element that previous campaigns adopted, but differs in the clear challenge it presents to technology, and the broadening of the relationships addressed to encompass those outside the boy-girl connection.
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October 8, 2008
03:42 pm | 4 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Tech columnist, Don Reisinger, minces no words in conveying his opinion about what the iPod's fate should be. In his blog entitled Why I can't wait for the iPod to die, he writes: "Although it may be difficult for Apple zealots and even CEO Steve Jobs to understand, the iPod is not going to be one of the most important devices forever, and if we consider the impact the Walkman had on the industry, the iPod should be moving to the execution chamber in the next 5 to 10 years."
While Reisinger admits that iPod revenue is up 7% percent since last year, and unit sales are up 12%, his reason for wishing the iPod into retirement is plain: "The iPod is the main reason why innovation is at a standstill in the PMP (portable media player) market and why we're not being satisfied nearly enough by the right devices."
According to Reisinger, Apple has no incentive to change its wildly successful tactics and has made insignificant changes to its portable music player: "Granted, the iPod Touch is unique in its own right, but the iPod Nano and Shuffle have been the joke of the iPod world for years now. The design changes look more like Apple felt it needed to do something to get people to keep buying them, so they went from long and thin to short and fat and back to long and thin."
And its currently feeble competitors are all just "countless iPod-wannabes" who aim to do exactly what Apple is doing in the hopes that they will become the next big thing.
Nothing will change, Reisinger argues, until Apple has one bad year. Then competitors will scramble to innovate and be different, and Apple itself will be forced to think outside its safety net. You can read his full post here.
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October 8, 2008
03:30 pm | 2 recommendations | 1 comment
Biofuel subsidies have long been a contentious proposition.
Advocates state that they are fundamental to developing cleaner energy alternatives and that, long term, biofuels will create new revenue options for farmers.
Opponents believe that biofuels contribute significantly to world food shortages, raise prices, are detrimental to the interests of the world's poor, and/or are in fact bad for the environment as poor farmers are converting forests into fields to grow crops.
Across many developing countries, new policies and procedures incentivize the production of crops that will be used for fuel, further compounding the problem of food shortages.
Between 2000-2007, the production of biofuels from crops that could have been used for food, increased by over 200%. Earlier this year, the World Food Program reported that there has been a 40% increase in the cost of food and asked for $755 million, to supplement its initial budget of $3.1 billion, in order to combat the increase in prices.
Industry experts state that over one billion people are now suffering from hunger worldwide. A report released earlier this year by the OECD revealed that biofuels have a minor impact on curbing the production of greenhouse gases and bolstering countries' energy security. They do, however, have a significant impact on world crop prices.
Most recently, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has joined the growing legion opposing biofuels.
Current policies must be “urgently reviewed in order to preserve the goal of world food security, protect poor farmers, promote broad-based rural development and ensure environmental sustainability,” writes Jacques Diouf, the executive director of the UN's FAO.
Are biofuels an elitist mechanism that ultimately raises poverty and should be ended until a better solution can be conceived of? Or are rising food prices just a temporary set back, one that will be compensated for by future benefits?
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October 7, 2008
04:25 pm | 6 recommendations | 2 comments
Sharing photographs is now easier than ever before. Gone are the days when you held your breath while images attached to the email you were mass mailing to friends and family. The last five years have given rise to a plethora of photo sharing sites like Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa.
Social networking sites have jumped on the bandwagon too -- Pownce was created around the very premise that sharing media should be easy, while Facebook, Twitpic and others are also popular places for people to share photos.
It's undeniable that there's a burgeoning interest in taking, uploading and sharing photographs. Recent statistics released by Mediamark Research reveal that about 25% of U.S. adults have shared photos via a Web site in the last 30 days. One company that's aiming to capitalize on this is a fledgling site called Phototrade.
Founded last November by photographer, Andrew Paradies, and still relatively under the radar, Phototrade's mission is straightforward yet comprehensive: allowing users to share and make money from their photos, while also protecting and monitoring their usage. Angel funded thus far, the site claims to be unique in that it's a one-stop shop for photographers to achieve multiple ends. The selling point: convenience.
"We offer the sharing and selling stuff all in one place. Rather than sending someone to different sites, we've combined different sites' functionality into one place," explains Paradies. "It's like going to a grocery store. You can go to a butcher, a dairy and a farmers market and it might be bit better, but the time saved by going to a grocery store is huge."
The site currently has about 15,000 users, with the average user logging on about 15 times a month.
Sharing and making money from photos
Why do people so willingly share their photos online without expecting any remuneration? Paradies doesn't necessarily believe they do: "If you took a swath of photo sharing users off sites like Photobucket and Flickr you'd find a strong correlation between the people who create the best content and those who think they should be compensated," he states. His target is just that – the semi-professional photographer, who'd like to disseminate content but doesn't want it to be misused.
Phototrade claims to have the most ways on the Internet for users to make money -- from print and merchandise sales to selling stock photography licenses. They allow users to choose their own prices and take a 20% commission on every photo sold whether licensed or merchandized. "If you look at percentage of revenues – we are among lowest in the industry," says Paradies confidently.
Although he hopes the site's model will self-sustain, Paradies admits that, in the future, the company may have to place a cap on the number of photographs users can share.
The company has a patent pending Adcosystem, which allows it to put a highly contextually targeted ad in each photo shared online. The ad revenue is then shared with the photographer. Ad-supported photos are free to use by bloggers and publishers with the photographer getting paid for every click. The system is different from one like that adopted by PicApp (a service offering images that can be free in exchange for an ad placement), because Phototrade does not use a flash based system. Their system was specifically built to allow search engines to pick up their ads.
Protecting and monitoring usage
It should be no surprise to anyone, that photography, like music, is widely misappropriated on the Web. Phototrade conducted a survey of about 1000 photographers and bloggers online, which revealed that 87% of people polled stated that protection of their content was important to them.
"One big issue is that of awareness: The average person isn’t even aware when they use Google image search that they are pirating," says Paradies. In the same survey, Phototrade asked bloggers whether they use legally licensed images for their blogs. While 80% said yes, about 60% of these then stated that they found the images through a Google image search.
Obviously photographers themselves want their content to be legally used, but on the publication side, the question inevitably arises: how many bloggers actually care about being legal? "A list bloggers want to be legal," says Paradies in response. "The more money you make from your publication the more concerned you are."
As for regular users, protection can often be in their best interests too. "Protection is one of those things you don't really care about until you get burned," says Paradies. He recalls a father in Cincinnati who uploaded a picture of his son flinching because someone was throwing a basketball at him. The picture ended up being downloaded by someone else off the father's website and turned into a widely syndicated "Fail" poster that says "That's why you always get picked last fatty."
Apart from promoting awareness about copyright issues, Phototrade deals directly with the copyright and licensing issues faced by online photo sharers by using technologies like LinkFind, LinkBlock and custom watermarking to give photo owners control over how and where their images are used online.
You can see who's linking to your images and shut down these links on a one-off basis, or even at a site level. You can also prevent the screen capturing of your images.
"We're not going to make the claim that our technology is going to stop the highly motivated cracker hacker guy," says Paradies. " But we want to make it really annoying to steal images and to make it really easy to use them legally. We want to make photographers feel safe, protected and have a sustainable revenue stream from what they do."
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September 26, 2008
12:02 pm | 2 recommendations | Be the first to comment
The iPhone, despite all the attention, is only a small part of how mobile is changing our work lives. Google's mobile team, which just unveiled G1- the new phone based on its OS Android -- has some ideas of its own.
Log onto Work Fast TV to watch Sumit Agarwal, Google's product manager, demonstrate all sorts of fun ways to improve your life with mobile phones.
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September 20, 2008
10:54 pm | 4 recommendations | 2 comments
The blogosphere is an increasingly crowded, complicated space to navigate. Everyone’s an expert, everyone has “great” content and everyone’s rabidly eager to be found. So how do you get Google to pay attention to blog posts?
Today, at BlogWorld 2008, Dave Taylor, author of The Intuitive Life Business Blog, Ask Dave Taylor, and the Attachment Parenting Blog, offered eleven tips for how you can maximize your blog traffic.
1) Optimize the title of your blog entry
Be specific. Your title is the single most important tool you can use to get your blog found by Google. Give your post a title that conveys the gist of what you’re saying. Avoid being cutesy or esoteric – while that might reel people in to buy a print publication, it doesn’t work on the web.
2) Keyword density
You can get a sense for whether you’re on the right track by using Google Adsense – if you see ads that are unrelated to your content, you’re not paying attention to how you’re writing.
Be specific and repeat your key phrases over and over again when you’re writing. Avoid using “it” to refer to the object and when you’re trying to link to something, use specific words rather than phrases like “Click here” or “link here.” Help the search engines out by offering clues.
3) Name your images (and other files) carefully
Name your images with keywords – eg: iphone-ipod-playing-song.jpg rather than DSCN06.jpg.
4) Pay attention to alt and title
Fill in alt (text or non graphical browers) and title (info that can title a link) with actual keywords.
5) Avoid using words like “more”
Using phrases like “read more” or “read the full post here” is a bad idea. Every time you link to a post, the hypertext reference (the blue underlined words you click) is really important. “It’s a really important vote for what the page you’re pointing to is all about,” says Taylor. Google, Yahoo etc don’t index websites, they index web pages. The way that you link from one page to the other is important. A good practise is to use the title instead of read more.
Another area you can apply this when building your own site -- don’t link users back to “home.” Link back to the name of your site.
6) Use savvy permalinks
Use the actual full link to the entry for your permalinks. Google ignores certain words – the, in, of, at. A good link is something like: How-keep-track-company-buzz-online.html. If you’re using something like WordPress, you can install a plugin that allows you to use better permalinks.
7) Use HTML too, not just CSS
CSS itself doesn’t give search engines any clue. Use H tags, in addition to CSS. This will attract Google’s attention, letting it know what the title and headlines are. “As you go more and more indirect, it’s harder for search engines to decipher what you’re doing,” explains Taylor.
Gorgeous websites in Flash are virtually ignored by search engines because they don’t understand them. Somewhere along the continuum of a beautiful page that nobody can find and an ugly page that’s totally searchable, try to come up with a happy medium that best represents your strategy and interests.
If you’re going to do a video blog, have a transcript on the page (use a site like Mechanical Turk). Same thing with podcasts. Without these, Google will skip right over you.
8) Minimize exit links
Taylor’s take is that blog rolls are bad. Every single link that takes people away from your page is bad. So many bloggers want to maximize their number of external links. It’s pointless. People are more likely to leave your page than they are to stay and read it. Minimize the number of external links. From a search engine perspective, the less links you have the more important the few links you do have are.” Taylor explains this relationship as being equivalent to big man on campus – your 3 friends gain more cool points than the person that no one likes. And if you have 300 friends, each friend gains much less from you than if you had just 3.
9) Use internal links to cross-promote content
Refer to earlier blog entries to drive traffic back and forth. It helps to use plugins that pull related entries for you.
10) Encourage easy commenting
Seth Godin’s blog, according to Taylor, sucks ( I don't necessarily agree.) The reason for Taylor's antipathy? "Simply because Godin doesn’t allow for users to comment. You need to make it as easy as possible to let people comment. More comments give the search engines more content to analyze. Comments are like fairy dust from heaven.” (Yes he actually said that last bit.)
The benefits of user comments - they add content to a page that you are no longer adding to, which makes what would otherwise be long dead posts gain new life for search engines.
According to Taylor, if you’re making people register to get a comment, you’re getting about 5% of the comments you would usually get. But what about spammers. He didn’t really go into that.
11) Don’t be afraid of keyword research
Use a site like keyworddiscovery.com or wordtracker.com to figure out whether you should use the word cellphone, cell phone or mobile phone for instance. You’d be surprised at how significant the difference is. “Cell phone” (2 words) is searched 20 times more often than “Cellphone” (one word.)
Using all these tactics to drive traffic to your blog “is like building a sand castle,” says Taylor. “Any one grain of sand is irrelevant but when you start putting them together right, you can really do something wonderful.”
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September 4, 2008
12:49 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
It's fall again and while summer's valiantly trying to extend its tenure, pretty soon our shadows will get longer and our days shorter. For bloggers though, while posts about drinking outside, losing iPhones on the beach, and walks through Central Park might have to be curtailed, all is not lost; what is perhaps the year's most awaited event is just around the corner.
In case you've never heard of it, BlogWorld, the world's largest blog and new media conference takes place through September 20th-21st in Las Vegas – (not a bad town to convene for a weekend.) As the only industry-wide event that focuses on promoting blogging, Blog World is a big deal. Literally. Last year the conference claimed to have had an audience of 98 million.
Every blogger who's any blogger, and any company that wants to successfully carve a space online, can't afford to miss this. Apart from the opportunity to network and extend your online relationships offline, you can learn about strategies and new developments in the blogosphere from an impressive roster of 130+ speakers –- including the likes of Guy Kawasaki - MD Garage Technology Ventures, Elisa Camahort Page - the co-founder of BlogHer (and an amazing, impassioned speaker), Edelman's Steve Rubel, Chris Alden of Six Apart, and a whole lot more. You can also check out a wide variety of exhibitors on the Blog World Expo floor.
There's also a pre-conference Citizen Journalism Workshop being held on September 19th -- a journalism training certificate workshop for bloggers seeking to deepen and broaden their skills. This workshop focuses aims to equip bloggers with the tools and knowledge necessary to improve the quality, and impact of their blogs.
The full schedule of events can be found here and includes: events for executives like the myths and realities surrounding corporate blogging, and how to find your new media voice; and events for entrepreneurs like social media strategies to generate traffic, and how to hire a professional blogger for your business.
Even better… You can sign up to be considered as an expert blogger for Fast Company. Just look for our booth at BlogWorld – we'll have a sign up sheet - or shoot me a message on the site.
Register online at www.BlogWorldExpo.com and save 20% with our discount code: FCVIP.
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July 25, 2008
03:57 pm | 3 recommendations | 1 comment
Since Coca Cola acquired a minority interest in Honest Tea back in February of this year, the organic beverage company has utilized the benefits of the partnership to come a long way, and according to CEO Seth Goldman, managed to stay true to its mission.
As of late September, Honest Tea will be available in far more locations – both geographically and across more channels – than ever before. The company has entered into an agreement with Coca Cola Enterprises (NYSE: CCE), by which all 9 flavors of the tea will be distributed in select markets in the Western US (initially in Northern California, Arizona, Las Vegas, Washington, and Oregon) and across all channels.
This gives Honest Tea the chance to really break into the mainstream, moving far beyond just natural foods -- a progression that most natural beverage brands strongly covet.
"We're being presented with great growth opportunities. CCE is the largest single beverage distributor in the world," enthuses Goldman. "This enables us to get our brand to so many more people and channels. With this account, our products will go wherever Coca Cola is sold. Now we'll get to convenience stores that don't specialize in natural foods. Consumers will come across our product as the first organic beverage there."
Honest Tea has simultaneously expanded its use of Fair Trade Certified tea leaves, and claims to be the only bottled Fair Trade Certified tea in the world. Two of its newest varieties, Lemon Black Tea and Peach White Tea, will contain Fair Trade Certified tea leaves.
Turning to Fair Trade is not the most directly lucrative venture – although obviously the right thing to do, it lowers the company's margins, which is why Goldman hasn't taken the whole line in that direction all at once. He says it will happen, but gradually. However, a burgeoning awareness about environmentally friendly products and an increasing conscientiousness about fair labor practices mean that, in the long-term, Honest Tea's Fair Trade certified status will hold the company in good stead.
In the meantime, it's unlikely that Honest Tea will have to struggle -- Goldman points out that the company aims to gain in other places, like buying bottles in bulk now that it can buy alongside Coca Cola.
By converting more of its teas to Fair Trade Certified, at the same time as he is creating a partnership with CCE, Goldman hopes to dispel any notions that his brand has been diluted.
"In fact, it's the opposite of diluting our brand," says Goldman. "Partnering with Coca Cola has accelerated our conversion to Fair Trade. We're running things like we always have. I've only gone to Atlanta once since Coca Cola invested in us, and that was to make the sale to CCE. We aren’t reporting in every day or anything."
However, some consumer's perceptions have soured after Honest Tea chose to link itself to Coca Cola. In response to a blog post I wrote a few months ago on this, one member wrote: "I was disappointed to hear they were joining forces with Coca Cola, will they be able to keep their honesty?" Shawn Graham, a Fast Company expert blogger, commented: "(This is) similar to Tazo Tea who is a competitor to Honest Tea and was ultimately acquired by Starbucks. As companies continue to jockey for position to be seen as 'green' by consumers, we'll continue to see socially responsible, environmentally friendly business being gobbled up."
Goldman himself acknowledges that consumers' perceptions after the change have been hard to deal with. The company lost its account an Oberlin College, after the student body protested its dealings with Coca Cola, citing the beverage giant's questionable labor practices in South America. Oberlin is well known for having an extremely liberal, eco-conscious student body and all Coca Cola products have reportedly been banned from its campus for some years now.
"I'm not a spokesperson for Coca Cola," says Goldman. "I come from an activist background so I don't just brush this stuff off. If you are concerned about labor conditions regarding the product you are buying, there's no greater protection than Fair Trade. Sometimes people like to just make a point without being serious about making change. You've got to want the largest beverage company in world to move towards making positive change rather than punishing them for their attempts to get serious."
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July 23, 2008
12:37 pm | 4 recommendations | 1 comment
Turns out that we as consumers can be easily manipulated -- and it's probably happening far more often that we'd like to imagine. A couple of studies released this year draw attention to this. The first demonstrates that consumers are prone to value high price tags – not always because of any intrinsic quality such as better taste, texture, performance or higher comfort levels that the products bearing these prices possess – but sometimes simply because the price is higher.
Earlier this year, Antonio Rangel and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology conducted a study that measured the relation between price and perception of quality. Twenty people (who weren't particularly experienced in drinking wine) sampled what they thought were five different Cabernet Sauvignons sold at different prices, while having MRIs of their brain activity performed. In fact however, they only tasted three wines, two of which were offered twice and were the same price.
A $5 bottle of wine was marked with its real price, and also marked as $45, while a $90 bottle of wine was marked with its real price and then again marked as being just $10. The results showed that the tasters' brains registered more pleasure at the higher priced bottles, even when they actually contained the same wine as the cheap bottles. In a nutshell: consumer happiness can be directly influenced by an expectation of quality, even if this level of quality does not actually exist.
Similarly, a recent MSNBC article by Robert Britt, reported the findings of a study in which participants were offered a range of products, presented in different ways, with some being presented as clearly superior. Consumers were found to blatantly prefer what they thought was the superior product, often regardless of the product's intrinsic qualities.
It's disquieting to think about how easily we as consumers can be manipulated. Britt lists several tricks of the trade that sellers employ in order to get people to buy: using a 50% off sign (regardless of the original price) works well; frequent but small discounts do better than less frequent but bigger discounts; asking which item a shopper prefers leads him to skip the phase of deciding whether to buy the product at all, instead focusing on which product he prefers.
Thinking about these studies led me to wonder about a broader question around branding – how much of a brand's appeal has to do with intrinsic quality and how much has to do with external influence (both intentional and unintentional.)
Of course, if people are buying a (designer) brand for it's aesthetic value, this is far more difficult to measure; although even here, one has to wonder whether perceptions about how aesthetically appealing something is can again be influenced by perceptions about fame and talent, regardless of whether these are in the slightest bit true.
My experience with this revolves around a friend who only shops at really expensive stores. But she only shops at these when things are on sale. I've never understood this mentality because, from the times I've gone shopping with her, it's usually the worst stuff that's on sale – not just in terms of the aesthetics but also just in terms of the quality. The worst of the "best" is definitely worse than the best of the "worst" (the $30 dresses from H&M) in my opinion. We disagree. She's always so enamored by the fact that something "branded" is on sale, that she'll buy it even if it looks like something you could buy at an H&M for quarter the price.
There are so many self-identified "designers" and artists who manage to get away with tacking on an extravagant price tag. They call their creations art and people pony up. Andy Warhol put it best: "Art is anything you can get away with." Today, what makes something art is just that – other people accepting it as art. And that's what's pivotal for a designer brand or a painting to become lucrative, having other people be willing to buy into or accept the value you (the designer) confer on it.
I'm not saying that designers and artists manipulate consumers into buying their products (if art can be called a product.) I'm just underscording how, in order for products to sell, consumers need to have a perception of value – whether that's tied to intrinsic value, talent or skill, or just to an overarching idea about the brand itself stemming from factors like the price, or the creator's fame. And here's where businesses have an open field to step in, mould (and sometimes, yes, manipulate) these perceptions.
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June 27, 2008
11:24 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Greenpeace International released its latest 'Guide to Greener Gadgets' this week. Nintendo came in right at the bottom, with a score of just 0.8 points out of 10, scoring zero on all e-waste criteria.
The quarterly guide ranks the top 18 manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change.
According to Nintendo, it scored so low because it did not voluntarily provide Greenpeace with any data. Greenpeace, however, told the BBC that Nintendo had decided "not to engage," refusing to answer requests and leaving the non-profit no choice but to draw conclusions based on information that was on the company's website.
Although Nintendo has the most energy efficient game console (better than Sony’s Playstation or Microsoft’s Xbox), the company still scores zero on energy efficiency.
Greenpeace says that its guide has made a tangible difference since it was launched in August 06, leading many companies (such as Lenovo, Sony and Apple) to pledge improvement to their recycling schemes and to remove the worst toxic chemicals from their products.
The ranking criteria reflect the ideas that companies must clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances, take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete and reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products.
Microsoft came in second last, with a score of 2.15 due to "some commitments on toxic chemical phase out but poor on e-waste and energy issue," while LG ranked third last with "some points on toxic chemicals and e-waste but zero on energy."
Sony Ericsson came out on top "with almost top marks on toxic chemical phase out but poor on recycling."
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