By Jacquie Ottman & Mark Eisen Our economy is slowly but surely heeding the signal that carbon is the new watchword. During the past few years, a steady stream of so-called “biobased” products have been making their way to retail shelves — compostable dinnerware made from corn, plant-based laundry detergents, and bamboo flooring among them. [...]

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Building occupant behavior is the holy grail of energy efficiency. Environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr describes strategies for crafting behavior change marketing campaigns. Several college campuses have successfully implemented similar campaigns to induce their students to more efficient behavior.

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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 Griff Foxley In part 1 of this post, I explored some of the forces at play today that are creating a [...]

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Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo give social entrepreneurs a way to test product and service ideas, reach new audiences and generate marketing buzz with minimal risk and upfront investment.

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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 Griff Foxley On October 26th, a beautiful video was posted on Vimeo of a murmuration of starlings. It was a rare [...]

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With the rising number of people participating in the likes of “occupy wall street,” are consumers and investors ready to do more than embrace the change for social and environmental responsibility? This article is designed to make readers question themselves as consumers or investors in terms of pointing fingers at the not-so-responsible companies and the fundamental steps required by the stakeholders (consumers, companies and investors) to take to address social and environmental problems associated with the traditional management practices (financial bottom-line imperative). Investors are likely to be attracted in purchasing equities that will deliver the most profit. Companies will always focus on delivering financial performance to the shareholders. Consumers wil always look for the best deal. The less socially responsible companies would self-correct if both the consumers and investors turned their backs. The challenge lies in finding investors willing to support socially responsible companies at their typically higher price tags. Are consumers ready to pay a premium as well? What is your thought?

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1. Green is mainstream. Not too long ago, just a small group of deep
green consumers existed. Today, 83% of consumers – representing
every generation, from Baby Boomers to Millennials and Gen Ys – are
some shade of green. Moreover, there are now finely defined segments
of green consumers.

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Oh, if only polar bears weren’t white. I guess that was one of the thoughts that went through the minds of Coca-Cola executives, while putting the kibosh on the company’s special holiday white cans due to customer uproar. These cans were part of a joint campaign Coca-Cola initiated with WWF aiming “to raise awareness and [...]

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90 percent off for a skydiving jump? 75 percent off for a candle-lit dinner for two? It’s easier than ever before for consumers to find good deals offered by local merchants, restaurants, and businesses. But is this a sustainable business model?

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Both Nike and Puma adopted a strategy of creating a movement around reframing the word “sustainability”. Although both movements were targeted towards demographically similar markets, the respective target customers have diverging sensibilities. What will be most interesting to see is how the PR of 2011 develops into the actions of 2012.

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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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This post outlines key considerations for property owners to evaluate when leasing their land for renewable energy development. There are pros and cons to leasing your property to a renewable energy developer and/or owner to earn revenue. It is important to understand how to navigate the complexities of benefits and risks when dealing with newly emerging renewable energy development land leases.

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Will places like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter be the next stage where we can actually get uncensored news about the current events happening throughout the country?  In the past year, the world came to understand the power of communication methods like Twitter and YouTube from people in Arab countries such as Tunisia.

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To date, over a dozen colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada have campus-wide bans of the plastic bottles. A dozen more have partially halted bottle water sales to certain campus departments, and hundreds of schools have installed multiple “hydration stations”, where students and faculty can refill their own bottles. Some of the bans have resulted from student activism, while others have been a calculated effort by school administrators to save money.

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If you’re car shopping next month, you may come across the most user-friendly and informative eco-label ever designed. For 2012 model year cars, carmakers will have the option to place the EPA’s new Fuel Economy and Environment labels in car windows. Then starting next year, labels will be required on all 2013 model year vehicles.

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Instead of marketing “green-ness”, sustainable companies should focus their efforts on innovative design, and a clear message that is relevant to their customers’ experience. The fact is, for the truly successful sustainable companies, it’s not about being “green;” it’s about a superior product and a smarter message.

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Every time I turn on the radio these days, I hear Sungevity advertisements that, “Solar is not just for environmentalists anymore!” Instead, the Oakland-based photovoltaic leasing company invites prospective customers to “Join the Rooftop Revolution” by saving money, not the earth.

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Games are emerging as a high potential marketing path to reach consumers who increasingly ignore traditional advertising in their search for smart, healthier and greener product solutions. This opportunity exploded in 2010 with 53 million US internet users playing a social online game at least once a month. Current projections are for the social game [...]

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A Green Economic Revolution is accelerating among American consumers. No less than 73% of now say “it is important to buy from green companies.” This is one of many new findings from the recent Cohn & Wolfe 2011 consumer perception survey. The survey is one of the year’s most important studies on how consumers perceive [...]

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By Jacquelyn Ottman Many new green brands have been introduced over the years with what I’ve called “green marketing myopic” pitches (think GE’s “dancing elephants” and Conoco’s “cheering dolphins”), only to realize the opportunity to link environmental product attributes with the primary reasons why consumers buy (all) products in the first place.  Nissan fell into [...]

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The road to sustainable business now passes through a glass tunnel called “Transparency.” Consumers exercise their singular, unequivocal influence: their ability to choose the company that not only creates, markets and sells a product that is to their liking, but does so in a manner that is consistent with their values. And here, in this [...]

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It goes without saying that the tourist economy plays a key role contributing to the development and upkeep of local infrastructure including parks, museums, stadiums, restaurants, and additional city spaces open to the public. It is also a highly competitive industry from state to state, or even city to city, with each local tourism bureau trying to entice potential visitors to leave their homesteads and stay for a while.

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As a student in CCA’s MBA in Design Strategy program learning to apply human-centric design thinking to create sustainable innovations, I became curious about the human psychology and behavior aspects of gambling. Our society considers the phenomenon a taboo and the last thing you want to do if you want a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

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This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By: Lindsey Kauffman A commonly heard, and personally experienced, critique of the sustainability movement is the relatively high cost of green products compared to traditional products. I can spend .99 cents on [...]

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In a speech to be delivered today at the CERES annual conference, Levi Strauss & Co. CEO and President John Anderson will urge the apparel industry to adopt a new level of social, economic and environmental sustainability, moving beyond compliance with site-specific regulations to encompass improvements in the daily lives of workers in the global [...]

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By Pankaj Arora Last week I was at Freshness Burger, a Japanese fast food chain. Embossed on the stirrer given with my coffee were these words: “Use the stairs instead of the elevator”. What is the connection between stirring my coffee and using the stairs? This is one of the most subtle green marketing messages I’ve come across. [...]

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How many companies can boast of a 100%+ annual growth rate in customers, especially  in today’s economy? Would you be even more impressed if the answer was a solar company? SunRun is hot, hot, hot. They have grown in just a couple of years to a leadership position in residential rooftop solar systems with over [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Izabel Loinaz As it has been said, every challenge offers an opportunity.  This easily can be said for the professional sports industry in the US. The Challenge: Annually, millions of swag [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Jared Brick Three months ago I couldn’t tell you what a QR code was, how to use one, or why I ever needed to.  But, since I finally grabbed a smartphone [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Katie Schou The newly formed Mountain Riders Alliance is a grassroots movement committed to changing the way the ski industry conducts business.  Shifting the focus of resort development from profit oriented [...]

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