Black Friday

3p is proud to partner with the Presidio Graduate School’s Managerial Marketing course on a blogging series about “sustainable marketing.” This post is part of that series. To follow along, please click here. By: Fergus McGrath I’m a big supporter of local economies because I believe doing so will help solve many of the social [...]

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At BSR a few weeks ago I was excited to have Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn directly answer my question “Is promoting Black Friday midnight sales contrary to social responsibility?” His answer was pretty straightforward: No, it’s not irresponsible, it’s responding to what the market wants. Best Buy’s competitors do it, people want it, and it’s a part of modern [...]

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Last Friday, retailers tried to convince you to shop as much as you can, opening their stores as early as Thursday at midnight and offering large discounts. Only one retailer seemed to be in a non-party mood. On that same day, Patagonia, the outdoor apparel clothing company, advertised a full-page ad on the New York [...]

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If you think Black Friday couldn’t get worse, you got it wrong. The biggest shopping day of the year is beginning earlier than ever this year with retailers such as Target, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Gap, Toys r Us and Macy’s opening their doors as early as midnight, or even earlier in the case of Wal-Mart. [...]

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Green Gift Monday, launched for the second year by The Nature Conservancy, encourages gift givers to consider environmentally and socially responsible choices around the holidays. It also presents a great marketing opportunity for the Conservancy and its partners.

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Black Friday is almost here, which means the holiday shopping season is just about to begin. Even if Black Friday is not your cup of tea, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that retailers, nervous about the economy, are hoping for a relatively strong holiday shopping season. One key to making it happen is [...]

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We’re pleased to announce that 3p’s own Jonathan Mariano has a brand new business launching today that is one part social experiment, one part start-up: your own opportunity to actually buy Nothing (with a capital N), come Black Friday. Enter Shop Nothing.com. Says Jonathan, “After sitting in on the 2010 Net Impact Walmart quick pitch competition, [...]

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Here’s a bit of cheer for 3p readers who duck their heads under their pillows on Black Friday: America’s conscious consumers will be shifting their focus to local, homemade, organic, and donations to good causes as top gift choices over the usual electronic crap this holiday season. The news comes from brand innovation firm BBMG. [...]

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Anne McCaig, CEO of Cafedirect, said in an interview by the Guardian that ethical consumption has its limits. “At the end of the day, ethical consumption can only drive so much,” McCaig said. “Businesses are good at picking the low-hanging fruit, like energy efficiency: anything that cuts costs. But the Government has to put the [...]

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It used to be that Energy Star was the de facto standard for knowing that a product was energy efficient. That was, until an undercover investigation involving the formation of fake companies with blatantly non efficiently products such as a gasoline powered alarm clock passed muster. It’s a credibility gap that needs to be filled, [...]

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By Elizabeth Dolge Like it or not, this time of year we are being bombarded by commercials encouraging us to engage in holiday cheer by buying gifts for our friends and loved ones. It all starts with Black Friday.  Better hope that turkey tryptophan wears off in time to so you can be one of [...]

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After enjoying your turkey and stuffing, do you read through the copious number of ads and sales flyers and plan your shopping route for Black Friday? Determine who’s open earliest and what deals run when? I know many people who go every year and wouldn’t miss it. The thrill of being among the first to get a [...]

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American Express is sponsoring the first ever Small Business Saturday on this coming Saturday, November 27. For every Facebook user who clicks “like” on Small Business Saturday’s page, American Express will pledge $1 to Girls Inc., a non-profit organization that works to empower young girls to become the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. American Express cardholders who [...]

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Where Were the Electric Utilities on Cyber Monday? I post this question drawing upon the following two data-points: 1. Almost 100 million Americans (certainly all of whom are electric utility customers) shopped via the Internet on Cyber Monday, the online retail event following Black Friday. 2. ALL of the top 15 products that consumers searched [...]

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The idea of waking up at the crack of dawn the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping for trinkets among hordes of what seem like crazed zombies strikes me as a horrible kind of torture. Nonetheless, millions of Americans consider “Black Friday” a kind of celebratory tradition, with this year expected to be the biggest [...]

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As you read this, someone close to you may be cleaning, stuffing, or slicing a turkey. Over 45 million turkeys were purchased for Thanksgiving out of the 265 million raised this year alone. The vast majority of these birds were grown on industrial farms. Perhaps your bird is organic, free range, or locally grown, but [...]

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The free-range turkey we bought for this year’s Thanksgiving was ordered through a local organic and natural foods store. And it was about three times the cost of the conventional turkeys they were selling at the mega-supermarket. But our turkey was raised naturally, without genetically-modified feed grown with synthetic, nutrient-depleting fertilizers. The feed wasn’t covered [...]

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As many Americans get ready to fly to their aunt’s house in Milwaukee or grandmother’s house in Syracuse for Thursday’s traditional Thanksgiving meal, many critics are chiming in again about the polluting and wasteful nature of the air travel industry. In fact, air travel has come under sever criticism this year not only for how [...]

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