In today's installment of "Consumed," New York Times Magazine writer Rob Walker shines a light on FIJI Water's attempt to paint itself green. It's not an easy task for a company that ships a heavy product in plastic containers many thousands of miles to market.

“Any time you see negative stories in the press, you have to figure out how to respond,” says Rob Six, FIJI Water’s vice president for corporate communications.

One response is to launch a site called FIJI Green, complete with a blog where fundamental tenets of ecological thinking are challenged head on.

We here at FIJI Water hear a lot of complaints about “food miles,” ours in particular. The concept is that the longer your food travels, the worse it is for the environment.

We think this is a load of hooey…and so do scientists who have studied lifecycle carbon footprints. The key word here is lifecycle - how a product is developed or packaged, what the transport mode is, and other factors can have a far greater impact for better or worse than the mere distance traveled.

People commenting on this post take FIJI Water to task. Luizhou says, "Fiji Water’s attempts to project a green image is nothing short of hilarious." But it looks like FIJI Water is getting the last laugh. Their sales volume was up 30 percent in 2007, and the company says the brand is experiencing double-digit growth this year.

Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus points out that Avenue A has no business claiming legal rights to the term "social influence marketing."

Brian Morrissey of Adweek, in response to this says, "i must TM 'digitalia' before someone else gets to it."

I don't remember if I ever bought anything at a Sharper Image, but I won't have much time left to do it. 'Cause they're going out of business:

Store closing sales have just begun at all 86 Sharper Image® stores as part of a major transformation of the Sharper Image brand. Over $50 million of inventory is being sold.

Discounts of 20% to 40% are now being offered on all merchandise in all stores. Consumers will be able to take advantage of deep discounts and important savings on electronics and toys as well as products for the home, personal care, the office and travel.

Will you miss Sharper Image? Will anyone? Are there retail brands that are gone now that you miss?

According to The New York Times, Discovery will introduce Planet Green on Wednesday, a new cable brand promoted as the first 24-hour channel dedicated to eco-friendly living.

“This is an eco-tainment channel,” said Eileen O’Neill, the general manager of Planet Green. “It’s a lifestyle and entertainment channel that’s designed to activate people in the green space.”

It is also intended to engage advertisers, many of whom have green-themed marketing messages to share with viewers.

But some of Planet Green’s advertisers could raise eyebrows. For instance, General Motors, maker of the Hummer, is the “exclusive automobile sponsor” of the channel.

Gawker, for one, isn't overly excited by the prospect.

The standard assumption is that his network signals a further mainstreaming of environmentalism, and therefore will somehow be good for the environment. This assumption is incorrect. Rather, it signals that environmentalism—a brand of activism that actually means something—has been transformed into "green," a vague lifestyle term that means nothing.

I too share some of Gawker's doubts. At the same time, eco-consciousness needs to become mainstream if there's any hope of making progress on the myriad issues facing humankind. If a cable channel can assist in this effort, I'm for it.

Ian Schafer has figured out a way to monetize his Twitter feed.

He's conducting an eBay auction, where the winning bidder will be allowed to co-opt the background on his Twitter page and turn it into ad space.

This one-month sponsorship includes replacing of the existing background image with the image(s) of your choice, as well as replacement of my handsome photo with another image of your choice (ie. brand logo).

I average about 8-10 outbound ‘tweets’ a day, and your brand would be represented in each.

The current bid is $405.

The amount paid by the winning bidder will go as a donation to The David Wright Foundation.

This seems like forever ago...

From the AP: Rock pioneer Bo Diddley dies at age 79.

Boulder's tda advertising & design is helping 1% For the Planet get the word out.

Members of 1% For the Planet donate 1% of their sales to a network of 1500-plus environmental groups worldwide.

It may be an oversite, but I don't see tda in the list of members. BTW, I just sent an email to the group to inquire if AdPulp might become a media partner, which means we'd run their ads and offer discounted rates to their members.

Fusebox, a brand communications studio in Lincoln, NE doesn't believe in entering its best work in award shows. And believe me, they'd win awards if they did enter.

Learn more about Fusebox principal, Tim Siedell, at Bad Banana Blog or via his Twitter feed.

Ad Age released its list of 2008 Women to Watch in advertising, marketing and media.

Two of the women I took note of are Karen Kaplan and Pam Hamlin, president of Hill Holiday and Arnold, respectively.

Kaplan's rise is particularly noteworthy.

In an industry where shop hopping is the norm, Karen Kaplan has ascended from receptionist to agency president in the past 26 years all under the same roof. To boot, she lives in the same ZIP code where she grew up, in North Boston, with her husband of 25 years, a son and a daughter.

She joined Hill Holliday in 1982 with a B.A. in French literature from the University of Massachusetts. "The year that I spent on the reception desk proved to be very useful, because it was the perfect place to study people and figure out what I wanted to do next," she says.

"She truly did it the old-fashioned way: She earned it," says Jack Connors, chairman emeritus of Hill Holliday and Ms. Kaplan's former boss.

FedEx Corp. plans to stop using the Kinko's name on its copy and office service stores.

The company said it will change the name of its FedEx Kinko's stores to FedEx Office over the next several years.

"The FedEx Office name better describes the wide range of services available at its retail centers and takes full advantage of the FedEx brand long recognized for excellent customer service, quality and reliability," says spokesman Jess Bunn.

[via Associated Press]

I just came across Creative Director George Tannenbaum's blog Ad Aged and there are some interesting thoughts there. Like this, The Advertiser's Bill of Rights. Of course, it's not exactly written from an advertiser's point of view, or let's just say a client would never write it like this:

1. You have the right to be spared the expense and time in having us attend endless meetings with people who can only say no. You have the right to have us present only to top decision-makers and take direction, in person, only from them.

2. You have the right to hear the word "no." No is harder to say than yes and more important. It is not necessarily what you want to hear. But it's often what you need to hear. In other words, and perhaps more precisely, we will be unfailingly, unflinchingly honest with you.

3. You have the right to disavow anything cheap. Cheap brands do cheap work. You are not a cheap brand, we will spare you from the temptation of cheap by simply refusing to comply.

There's more. It's worth a read.

I'm on a mission to stop environmental groups that I support from sending me direct mail. To that end, I've emailed both NRDC and Greenpeace about it. Thus far, neither group has responded. The sad thing is I won't give them any more money, until this is worked out.

My first reaction to this story is that if anything could kill off interactive marketing, it'd be this:

Some customers of Time Warner Cable in Beaumont, Texas, may soon end up paying more for their Internet access than other customers.

In a test of metered Internet access that's set to begin Thursday, subscribers who go over their limit for uploading and downloading material will be charged $1 per gigabyte, according to an Associated Press story, citing a Time Warner Cable executive.

The trial run for the metered Web use was expected. The company had said in January that it would test the new pricing model in Beaumont as a way to limit the use of peer-to-peer applications on its network. Cable companies and P2P services have long clashed over bandwidth demands, especially for the transfer of large video files.

The tiered pricing will work this way, for the Internet portion of subscription packages that also include phone or video use: At the low end, users will pay $29.95 per month for service at a speed of 768 kilobits per second, with a 5GB monthly cap. At the high end, users will pay $54.90 per month for service at 15 megabits per second, with a 40GB cap.

Web 2.0 applications and rich media websites are big suckers of space, speed, and downloading time. I get frustrated with any slow-loading site, and if it takes too long or needs to refresh, I'm outta there.

If the big ISPs go to metered or tiered pricing, the ad industry will need to react fast. Who would want to download extraneous marketing stuff if the meter's running? Is this as big as a potential trouble spot as I think it might be?

I recall a number of years ago a prospective student crawled into a wooden crate and had himself delivered to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Art Center didn't appreciate the stunt, but another, less prestigious art school did. They offered the guy admission.

Now, Adfreak points us to Mike Cessario, an Art Center student with an out of the box idea. He's selling ad space in his portfolio.

He's pitching photographers primarily.

Brad Kay and Adweek's Brian Morrissey have been IMing.

Turns out Morrissey isn't wild about PR practitioners.

I’m a reporter. If I had my druthers, I’d never deal with PR people. Nothing against them. I’m sure the vast majority are great people. PR, like the ad world, is still all about ‘impressions.’ That leads to spray and pray. The other half of PR is controlling access. Both parts of it inevitably rub me the wrong way. The best PR is the PR I don’t notice – the ones who make a connection and then stop trying to act like a middleman to “add value.” PR people don’t like to hear this, I know. Not all of them are like this, but trust me so many are. I’m amazed how many PR people there are. There must be hundreds of different ones that contact me. It seems like as media shrinks PR grows.

Thankfully, he does appreciate bloggers.

John Battelle, David Armano, Noah Brier, Umair Haque, Fred Wilson, John Furrier, Techcrunch. Among just ad blogs, agency spy was awesome until SuperSpy left. I enjoy AdPulp too.

Thanks for the vote of confidence (that sounds like an afterthought), Brian.

As for the PR peeps, I'd like to relay one of my own pet peeves. I regularly receive pitches addressed to Matt and Danny. But I'm not Matt, nor Danny. I'm David. Just to be clear, I receive the exact same email three times over, all three of which I immediately mark as spam.

[via Tangerine Toad's tweet]

[courtesy of Tom Fishburne]

How cathy catchy is this song?

I thought you had to be a septuagenarian to enter anyone's Hall of Fame. Guess not.

There's evil in our midst. An evil I, and most of my peers in this business, know all too well.

Compromise is the way of the world, and totally unavoidable in many circumstances. Begrudingly, I’ve learned to accept this fact of life. But I also know what a destructive force it can become. If you let it, compromise will eat you alive, cell-by-cell until there’s no you left, just a vacant shell that looks like you.

In the political arena, Bill Clinton gave compromise a decent name. He had to get things done, one way or another. So he moved his party to a centrist position in an already stifling corporate atmosphere. The nation may, or may not, recover from his practical approach.

On the environmental front, compromise leads to all sorts of compound problems. For instance, otherwise sane people are currently arguing for more nuclear power and the use of clean coal (an oxymoron, if there ever was one). I don’t believe we can stand much more compromise when it comes to the health of our planet.

In the ad industry, where client-service--not content, nor concept--is king, we eat compromise for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And snack on it too. We are so full of compromise that it’s no longer separate from us, it is us.

So what’s the solution? The best answer is don't do it. Don't compromise. Stick to your guns at all costs, even if it means pissing people off and being labeled "hard to work with." I've been stuck with that label from the beginning of my ad career and I don't imagine it's going to vanish anytime soon. Not because I like the label. I don't. But I live with it because it's better than the self-inflicted punishment that comes with compromise.

Fact is, I need to take my own advice, for I compromise way more often than I'm comfortable with. Which is what leads me to air this out in a post. I don't want to lose my creative soul to this business. I don't want to diminish my vision or sacrifice the work, just because that's the path of least resistance. I feel weak when that happens. And I don't want to feel that way.

I’d love to hear from you on this. What have you compromised in order to make a paycheck? And what do you do to rid the toxic residue from your psyche?

According to The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post's hyperlocal play, Loudoun Extra, has failed to attract its desired audience.

One reason: the team of outsiders didn't do enough to familiarize itself with Loudoun County or engage its 270,000 residents.

This marks the first stain on Rob Curley's resume. Curley is the newspaper industry's nerd wonder. We took note of his progressive doings a year ago, after Fast Company profiled him.

He now decamps with five colleagues to take on an Internet venture for the Las Vegas Sun. "I was the one who was supposed to know we should be talking to Rotary Club meetings every day," Mr. Curley said. "I dropped the ball. I won't drop it in Vegas, dude."

I'm interested in this story because "hyperlocal" is important to the future of marketing and media. As mass marketing fractures into a million pieces, hyperlocal marketing, enabled by the internet, is here to replace it.

I'm pleased to announce that our friends at Greenville identity shop, Brains On Fire, won a Golf Effie last night for their state of South Carolina anti-tobacco efforts.

Here's a wallpaper from the RAGE AGAINST THE HAZE site:

[via Spike's tweet]

Adweek has been offering a lot of guest columns of late. They're featuring one from freelance copywriter and creative director, Jim Morris, at the moment. He argues that it's tough being a CD today. His main point is CDs are doing their work and the work of hapless account directors.

As I see my creative director clients at agency after agency being stretched and twisted into unnatural positions, it makes me want to slap the fat cats at the top.

For Chrissakes, bigwigs, let 'em create, let 'em lead, let 'em teach and nurture -- but please stop forcing creative directors into suits and making them book their own flights.

In related news, Zeus Jones, refuses to employ account people. Rob White told the daily (ad) biz why.

The job of account people is primarily to manage relationships. We have set up our business to solve business problems on a project by project basis. If we’re successful that will build healthy relationships as a by-product. What this means is that the people responsible for the strategies and ideas have a direct, unimpeded relationship with the clients. Our clients like that. It may not always be the most efficient way to run the business but we like it.

In an animated discussion with Washington Post editors and reporters yesterday, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer offered his far-ranging views of upcoming changes in technology and the media. Here's a slice:

Q. What is your outlook for the future of media?

A. In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down -- my opinion.

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.

For more, see BraveNation.com.

For more from Planet Green, visit their YouTube page.

Michael Eisner, the former Disney chief and current head of Vuguru, speaking in New York yesterday, showed little interest in bringing brands into the development process of his firm's short-form online programming.

"I have never produced anything in my career with an audience in mind," he said.

[People] are saying the internet is made up of 13-year-olds, so gear toward them. But I just don't think you should. I like to make it, then figure out who to reach."

He also had a few choice words for the excessive use of pre-roll and mid-roll ads for short-form content. "You can't put a 30-second spot in front of a 45-second ESPN clip. We like to put our shows together in five- to seven-minute pieces. Pop-ups, overlays, some of that new stuff is interesting, but some of it is offensive."

[via Ad Age]

With gas prices headed north on a daily basis, people are rethinking their summer vacation plans, a fact which makes travel and tourism tough categories to promote right now. According to USA Today, many cities and states are responding with vacation ideas close to one's home.

See more videos at TakeMeFishing.org, a microsite from Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. RBFF's mission is to increase participation in recreational angling and boating and thereby increase public awareness for protecting, conserving and restoring our nation's aquatic resources.

Chad Rea is a man of multiple interests and talents. We recently reported on his 86ing 86theonions, in favor of ecopop. He also does public speaking, career coaching, voiceover work, philanthropy work and he directs music videos.

His career coaching business is called Create Your Happy. Rea explains the need for career coaching.

You might be surprised to learn that after working for some of the top creative companies in the world, and starting successful companies of my own, including unconventional brand communications agency 86theonions, that I would be left unfulfilled and feeling like I had becomes someone else.

I don't know Rea, but I'm not surprised. Advertising isn't the most fulfilling of careers, unless one's focus is on doing good things for great companies.

Rea mentions that Debbie Robins, Patricia McDade, Susan James and Tom Knowles, founder of Vedic Meditation Center, have been mentors to him and instrumental in helping him "create his happy."

Rea provides coaching by phone, for those not in the Los Angeles vicinity. You can reach him at thechad at chadrea dot com.

Here's an argument for being a lightweight.

Philadelphia's Derrie-Air is charging customers based on a sliding scale. The more you weigh, the more you pay.

After all, it takes more fuel—more energy—to get more weight from point A to point B. So we will charge passengers based on how much mass they add to the plane. The heavier you and your luggage are, the more trees we'll plant to make up for the trouble of flying you from place to place.

By the way, the Derrie-Air campaign is a fictitious advertising campaign created by Philadelphia Media Holdings to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens.

Philadelphia Media Holdings--the parent company for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com--is run by former ad man, Brian Tierney.

Visit Marketplace for the text version of this audio piece.

In 1894, an industrious Coca-Cola syrup salesmen named James Couden put down his order pad and picked up a paintbrush to create the first-of-its-kind sign.

Today, you can see this this "Main Street, USA" attraction at Young Brothers Pharmacy in the north Georgia town of Cartersville.

According to Not Atlanta, 25 layers of paint were removed during the 1989 restoration to reveal the original design.

We all know how important it is to have an ironic t-shirt or two.

According to The New York Times, even CNN has this trend figured out.

T-shirts as a buzz marketing tool for CNN.com video were the idea of the Barbarian Group, an interactive advertising shop.

According to Ad Age, content producers and the world's most popular video site are working together to become more successful.

Professional content producers -- those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams -- are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player. The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads.

YouTube is by far the largest video site, with more than 4 billion videos viewed in March, according to ComScore, but it has not been able to translate that audience into significant dollars. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said better monetizing of YouTube is priority No. 1 in 2008.

Revision3, the online-video-production company behind shows such as "Diggnation" and "Techzilla," is selling advertising on YouTube, starting with GoDaddy, a sponsor that's regularly integrated into the content of its shows. Many Revision3 shows have integrated sponsors, and the company's CEO, Jim Louderback, said the ability to pair companion YouTube advertising in and around the videos is appealing.

Looking for a chateau
Twenty one rooms but one will do
I don't want to buy it
I just want to rent it for an hour or two - Hunter/Garcia

Omnicom will pull creative out of the L.A. branch of BBDO West.

"It's not difficult to have a large office in L.A.," said Andrew Robertson, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, New York. "All you have to have is a car account or Apple. However, if you don't have one of those, then you need to decide where to have your West Coast talent center of gravity, in L.A. or San Francisco. We've chosen to concentrate our talent in San Francisco."

BBDO's move is only the latest example of a business trend that is nearly as perplexing and frustrating to locals as why the nation's second-largest city can't field a pro football team. In just two decades, agencies that once dominated L.A.'s advertising landscape have disappeared or diminished significantly. In the last five years, many once-giant network offices along the Wilshire corridor -- JWT, FCB, Grey -- have pulled out entirely or been reduced to shells of their former selves.

[via Adweek]

Hillary Clinton is known to knock back a cocktail or two. Now with her campaign debts to pay off, Svedka vodka is helping out:

Now that she's officially dropped out of the race, Svedka Vodka today will run a full-page ad in The New York Times offering a coupon that Clinton can redeem for a personal supply of the brand's vodka for the remainder of the election season. In memo form, the ad will thank Clinton for making the primary season so exciting, said a Svedka spokeswoman. It's part of Svedka's "Join the Party," marketing campaign, which parodies the traditional election by trying to elect a fembot named "Svedka_Grl" to the White House.

No word on whether Bill Clinton has hit on Svedka_Grl yet.

“Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.”
- Albert Einstein

We are presently witnessing an unprecedented drive for perfection in the field of marketing. Each and every day a plethora of new emails, articles, case studies and blogs promise to help us optimize everything from search engine rankings and viral video awareness to ad campaign engagement and direct mail response rates. Business books are popping up like weeds in a field (more than twenty new titles each day) expounding on how to be authentic, influence through social networks, create compelling blogs, spread sticky messages, and tell persuasive stories. There’s only one problem: Trying to perfect this growing assortment of marketing means is causing brand confusion, and thus a negative effect on the enterprise ends.

The end, the goal, of any organization, of any brand, is to create customers (or clients, users, members, donors, fans, etc.), and you accomplish that goal by continually innovating to add value to their lives. Everything the organization invests in, and works on, should be laser focused to that end. That may sound ridiculously evident, but I can assure you that it’s not. For example, ZenithOptimedia predicts that worldwide advertising expenditures will grow by a little over 6% this year to a whopping $473 billion! That’s not to say that all advertising is valueless in the eyes of customers. But I can assure you that most of that $473 billion is worse than valueless; it’s a drain on people’s time, attention, and sensibilities.

The Invisible Cognitive Force

So why do they persist? Why do marketers continue to fritter away their organizations’ valuable time, attention and money trying to keep up with, and optimize, activities that most customers find little, if any, value in? And I’m not referring simply to advertising: I’d toss most direct mail, sales calls, brochures, “branding” projects, and pr in the heap as well. What keeps people grounded to their outdated mode of thinking about marketing and branding; thinking that creates nothing but inertia, waste and confusion? I believe that I may have finally figured it out, and it’s so simple that it makes me wonder why I didn’t pick it up sooner.

It became apparent to me during a recent conversation with a passionate, yet utterly confused, executive about what marketing “means” to employ to achieve her particular business “ends.” See if you can pick it up: “So, here’s my most confounding question,” she began. “What message should we create to influence potential customers, and what are the best vehicles to use to deliver that message? What works today?” There it is! Do you see it? It’s staring you right in the face! But, much like fish are unaware of the water in which they live, you’re probably completely unaware of it. It’s as omnipresent and invisible as gravity, and just as powerful in keeping organizations bound to their great big balls of brand confusion.

Last week, AdAge revealed the invisible force in a 1,352-word marketing exhortation by the venerable marketing pundit Al Ries; an article that is all about the strategic imperative of slogans. Here are a few pieces of wisdom from the article: “If you want an effective, long-term rallying cry for your brand, you need a slogan that sticks in the mind. A sticky slogan can live forever.” And, “A sticky slogan is only half the battle. If you want your marketing program to be exceptionally effective, your slogan should contain words consumers can use to pass along your brand's message.” There it is again. Do you see it now?

According to Ad Age, Converse commissioned reclusive Strokes' frontman, Julian Casablancas, to help celebrate the brand's 100th birthday.

The home of Chuck Taylor is hoping a new song, "My Drive Thru," featuring Mr. Casablancas, Pharrell Williams and white-hot indie songstress Santogold, can renew the century-old shoe brand's status as the indie music scene's footwear of choice.

Geoff Cottrill, chief marketing officer for Converse, said "My Drive Thru" ties in comfortably with Converse's heritage of aligning with the independent minded. "We call them optimistic rebels," he said. "They're the core of what our brand stands for -- being an advocate and catalyst for creativity. ... We wanted these guys to come together, create a piece of music and share it with anyone who wanted it."

Added Mike Byrne, executive creative director for Anomaly, Converse's creative agency of record, "I think by having Pharrell produce the track, we knew we would get something that wasn't hip-hop or pop or rock. This year is the Converse century, and we're definitely celebrating our heritage of challenging the status quo in art, sports and fashion. It was a nice ode to all the people who helped build this brand."

Unfortunately, I can't locate the song on the Converse site. However, Stereogum is taking care of business.

WPP has yet another new name for its new agency created to handle Dell.

Here's the official press release.

WPP, one of the world's leading communications services groups, today announced that Project Da Vinci, the global marketing services firm being built with Dell Inc. as its first client, has a new permanent name and identity: Enfatico. In musical notation, Enfatico (pronounced en-FAH-ti-co) means play each note “with emphasis” or “emphatically.”

“As a next generation agency with a diverse mix of marketing services and talent – all uniquely orchestrated to drive value for Dell and future clients – we believe Enfatico effectively captures what makes us distinct,” commented agency CEO Torrence Boone.

Ken Segall, Enfatico's global chief creative officer, drove the naming process from within the agency. "We were excited to take on the important challenge of selecting a new name and graphic identity for Project Da Vinci," said Segall. “We believe Enfatico will become synonymous with a new standard for integrated marketing, insightful creativity, and collaboration in the client-agency relationship."

This script would not have been written, nor sold to a client, two years ago.