It’s How We Live | BBMG | Brand Innovation for the New Consumer | New York

10 Things I Learned at the What’s Next Conference (#whatsnextdc)

January 25th, 2012
by Mitch Baranowski

Spent all day Monday shuttling between ballrooms at George Washington University’s Marvin Center to hear a range of speakers, some great, some meh. Thanks to the mad team at Green Buzz for hustling and pulling the event together, and for inviting me to co-present with Melodie Jackson from Harvard Kennedy School.

A few takeaways in no particular order…

Go native. Digital native. It’s about our capacity to adapt, to use information technology to engage, inspire and improve the world. Keep up or risk irrelevance! The landscape is littered with companies that can’t or refuse to pivot. Hand me a #Gatorade (Are you tracking me, Mission Control?) Courtesy B. Bonin Bough, Pepsico, @boughb.

Take the smartcut. Kids today. They want to game this game called life, but it’s less about shortcuts and more about smarts and resourcefulness. “So, how do I get to the next level?” “Wait, you just got here.” “So?” “So, this is a job, not a game.” “Oh. (blinks) How…boring.” Courtesy Allison Hillhouse, MTV, @mtv.

TV has always been “social.” What’s all the hype? In the age of Yoots and DVRs, appointment viewing is now a thing of the past, as precious as granny’s dusty cameo. Getting viewers to share and connect, independent of place, is bound to increase, and the efforts will be expensive. Courtesy of Sabrina Caluori, HBO, @sabrinacaluori.

Can we gamify everything? Should we? What if we gamified service design, education, the retail experience? Imagine the possibilities but anticipate gaming fatigue, natch. (Read the rest of this post and earn the blue badger badge to badgeville, which will unlock a hidden link to an exclusive, never-before-seen blog post, ha.) Courtesy of Max Clark, Vitrue, @vitrue.

Lunchboxes fail to motivate. Don’t try feeding the beast with sub-par boxed lunches. Step it up next year, please. Folks were, um, restrained in their Tweets, to say the least. Courtesy Green Buzz Agency, @greenbuzzagency.

The fix is in. Understand how the “screening of our lives” and this “culture of interruption” feeds our need for speedy affirmation. If getting a text is like a hit, how can we keep the real-world, in-person conversation one that’s worth having? (Overheard at the water cooler following the “Let’s Play” panel.)

Kan we kalculate your Klout? As we engage more consumers beyond insights generation toward innovation and influence, knowing their impact–and whether we can trust them– will get easier to track and gain import. That a job candidate will put his/her Klout score on said resume still has me scratching ye olde noggin. Brave new job interview, indeed. Courtesy Tim Mahlman, Klout, @tmahlman

Optimize thy video. The metrics are off, way off, as most campaigns fail to drive key brand metrics, favoring impressions and/or click-thru rates instead. Do not pass go. Go back and re-examine your campaign objectives first. Courtesy Mark Rotblat, TubeMogul, @tubemogul.

Brands of the future will be ‘sustainable brands.’ Twenty-first century brands will go to market with practical or functional benefits, but they will also embed into their DNA how they’re making the world a better place, and how they connect us to ‘tribes’ of like-minded and like-hearted consumers. Courtesy of me, BBMG, @whichmitch.

Visuals rawk! You know the cliché: a picture is worth a thousand words. So why aren’t more presenters following TED’s model: tell me a story, say it with dynamic visuals and video. Don’t torture me with 10-point type and undecipherable charts and graphs. Courtesy of Death by Powerpoint, no Twitter handle at press time.

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So what were your takeaways? Lemmeno. And don’t be a stranger. See you at SXSW Interactive.

Posted in Branding and Marketing, Co-creativity, Triple Value Proposition | No Comments »

The Journey to BBMG

January 20th, 2012
by Devon Douglas

Sometimes, the greatest opportunities are where you least expect to find them, and the intersection of business and the environment is no exception. In fact, I think this intersection represents the single greatest opportunity of our time, but I didn’t always believe this.

My sustainability journey began at a young age. I studied the causes of acid rain and frog deformities in agricultural areas. Industrial pollution and agrochemical runoff became dinner-table talking points. I pursued a degree in environmental policy, hoping I could address sustainability issues through regulation and policymaking, spending time in the U.S. Senate, at the EPA and a number of environmental NGOs. The work was important and rewarding, but something in my worldview was shifting. I was starting to look at the very industries and companies that we were working to regulate or campaign against as the key to driving positive impact on a large scale.

My first foray into the sustainable business space was at Seventh Generation. I was blown away by the passion and vision of Jeffrey Hollender and the company as a whole. After witnessing the positive impact consumer brands can have on the world, I had decided on a new career path.

I joined Walmart in 2008 and fully immersed myself in the world of corporate sustainability thanks to the retailer’s 200 million U.S. customers, mission to save people money so they can live better and bold sustainability goals. I created campaigns that educated consumers about the business benefits of renewable energy, helped introduce more sustainable products into stores and worked across the supply chain to better understand and quantify products’ total life cycle impacts. My tenure at Walmart solidified my belief that business embracing sustainability represents the greatest economic and environmental opportunity of our time.

Today, I find myself at home at BBMG, working at the dynamic intersection of branding, sustainability, technology and social purpose. Every day brings a new challenge and a new opportunity to engage consumers in a vision for making the world a better place. I still get to partner with the Fortune 500 set as well as with the bold visionaries at companies like Seventh Generation and Earthbound Farm. It’s a perfect fit.

Through this journey I’ve realized that there are many ways to do good work and bring sustainability and social equity to the world–and that it doesn’t matter if that mission is carried out inside the world’s largest company, at a small Vermont NGO or in the halls of government. What is important is finding the environment that excites me the most and feels the most authentic, and where I can leverage my strengths to make the greatest impact.

And, I’ve learned a few lessons along the way:

Passion is Paramount – A business case or new policy alone won’t cut it. If you’re passionate about the issue or the outcome you’re driving towards, you’ll be much more successful. You will use the power of storytelling to bring others on board and draw attention to your initiative.

Create a Coalition – Don’t try to go it alone; build a robust team of supporters along the way and keep them updated, engaged and excited. Share the work and share the success with your network at key milestones.

Stick with It – Having a great idea and a handful of supporters is just the start and, in some ways, the easy part. Follow-through and determination is what wil get results in the long run.

Posted in Branding and Marketing, CSR, Sustainability, Sustainable Marketing | 1 Comment »

The Making of an Infographic

January 11th, 2012
by Jess Oswald

Creating a flowchart to illustrate our employee engagement booklet, Green the Team, was no easy task.

Sketch
To help guide organizations on their journey, we started with a basic question: “Do you have a green team?” From there, we charted dozens of Yes/No follow-ups consistent with our experience and the interviews we conducted with leading companies, then we revised the fishbone and revised it some more.