Green or not? I am not a plastic bag

Eco-friendly used to be a byword for dull and worthy, but now it‘s officially fashionable, darling.

The product spearheading the trend is a bag made from unbleached cotton, which cost £5 at selected Sainsbury‘s stores and sold out within an hour of going on sale on Wednesday morning.

It might not sound A-list, but the bag emblazoned with “I am not a plastic bag” has been designed by the “queen of bagland” Anya Hindmarch. The aim is simple, to encourage people not to use plastic carrier bags. But how ethical is this bag?

I saw a well-dressed, fashionable woman walking in South Kensington the other day carrying a Anya Hindmarch ‘I am not a plastic bag’, you know, that same bag that got thousand of Sainsbury’s customers queuing from 3am at the beginning of May. That same woman was also carrying a couple of plastic bags whilst the Hindmarch bag was almost empty.

Observing this behaviour makes me worry that in becoming so mainstream ‘green’ becomes just another temporary and rather meaningless fashion statement with people saying but not really behaving ‘green’.

The launch of the bag appeared to have been successful in terms of media (except perhaps with the question production in China) and yet, if Hindmarch and Sainbury’s had wanted to challenge our behaviour, shouldn’t the bag have been produced for all of Sainsbury’s millions of customers?

One more thing… if consumers are so preoccupied with the environment, why are they selling their bags on ebay?

Totally thrilled!

 I just found out today that Blog till you Drop has been nominated in the Blogger’s Choice Awards in 3 categories!  

• Best Marketing Blog
• Best Blog Design
• Best Pop Culture Blog

 I am ecstatic!  Thank you! You can vote for me by clicking one of the banners below:

            

How green is your marketing?

 More and more so called ‘green’ products seem to have swamped the market lately, so I decided to start a series of posts about green marketing, looking at companies’ green strategies.

Green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe, thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising.

Climate change is relevant for marketers because it can spearhead brand innovation and generate differentiation. It is relevant because consumers think it should be. Even if you don‘t want to worry about how climate change is relevant to your brand, most brands now have to. Brands are recognising that proactively investigating and investing in this issue can create opportunities in brand reputation, differentiation and new product development.

The question is, how green is their marketing?

A picture tells a thousand words…

Carrying on with Web 2.0 social networking sites, I recently discovered a new online community called Imagini that offers a completely new way of communicating with images.

The site asks you a series of questions, the answer to which are visual. It then gives you a little folder that contains your visual DNA split into a number of categories: mood, fun, habits, love. Here’s my mood profile:

Click image to enlarge

The concept certainly is interesting and completely different from other online communities out there, as people can link up right away with people with similar interests in an original way.

Imagini also launched a feature that finds interesting travel sites that are matched to your VisualDNA - a gold mine for brands!  

This online community certainly has a lot of potential for marketers and researchers alike. Researchers could for example ask consumers to choose an image to describe a specific brand.  

How else could marketers use this type of technology?  

Mine’s half full!

C.B Whittermore recently tagged me in her post Half Full or Half Empty? Christine asked me to answer the following questions: 

1. How full is your glass?

2. What kind of glass is it?

3. What’s in the glass?

4. Reasons for #1, #2 and #3 

• My glass is always half-full and I’d also like a top up please! Mind you, if we talk about champagne, it tends to be half empty

• It took me a while to choose a mug as they all mean something different to me, and were acquired at different stages of my (short!) life. Besides, tea-time is a tradition in the UK and some Brits I know seem to be obsessed with using the right mug at the right time!

•  The mug I decided to go for is my university mug – it is a white mug with my university’s logo on the front. I guess it just reminds me of my student days and cheers me up in the morning (and I need it at the moment just looking at the awful weather we have over here at the moment!)

• I drink coffee in the morning – no milk, no sugar. If I have time, I’ll make proper Italian coffee otherwise organic instant coffee also does the job. I never leave my flat (apartment) without my morning coffee.

 My reasons for the above? Like C.B, morning for me sets the stage for the whole day. I am a morning person and coffee time is a creative moment where I think about my ideas and projects (work or non-work related) and how to make them come to life.  Now I’d like to tag:

• Katia Adams of ¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
• Chris Brown of Branding and Marketing
• Neil Perkin of Only Dead Fish with the Water
• Mike Wagner of Own your Brand
• Dan Schawbel of Personal Branding

 Let’s finish off with a projective technique. In Qualitative Research we often use projective techniques as a way of uncovering deep-rooted thoughts that may not arise as a result of direct questioning. My question is, if you were a drink, what kind of drink would you be and why?

My web 2.0 landscape

I recently discovered this excellent mapping of the Web 2.0 Landscape on Neil’s blog…   

 …and I decided to create my own personal mapping of the applications I use on a regular basis.   

    

This mapping exercise made me realise that there are still dozens of web 2.0 applications I am yet to discover! And dozens more will probably be created in the meantime!

In your opinion, what’s the next big web 2.0 thing? Let me know what you think

Humour in advertising

Has anyone seen the latest Bourjois’ Nail Enamel ad on TV? My first reaction was to get slightly irritated when I heard the protagonist’s very strong French accent but my South African friend thought the ad was in fact funny and memorable.  I asked my friend why he found the ad funny and memorable - he particularly liked the light-hearted tone used in the ad as well as the protagonist’s French accent make the product sound sexy, different and interesting. The ad can be viewed on the Bourjois website.  I also found a series of (old I believe) French Bourjois ads on youtube – the Monday-Sunday campaign i.e. one ad advertising a different product each day of the week. 

Again Bourjois are doing a pretty good job at using humour in their ads and keeping consumers curious and entertained with this series of ads.  

  The Bourjois ads remind me of Marmite – either you love them or hate them!

Interesting positionning…

I love this ad for Schweppes Straightcut - it really made me want to find out more about the product which does not happen very often these days.