Green Business

Thomas Friedman has seen the future of America and it’s green. He believes that a new green ideology, properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull the nation together and propel it forward. Perhaps Mr. Friedman’s vision can be used to sharpen our view of the world as well. As a group who can influence large corporations on their future agendas; advertising planners, strategists and creatives could work with marketers to take the lead and create new, earth friendly products and services that will soon become the norm. The man who sent shock waves across America with his book The World is Flat, how America is losing its competitiveness thanks to a flatter world, believes that America can regain its pre-eminence by embracing the green way and exporting it to the world.

TV Planning Game

Many of us in advertising have dreamt of getting a job in a TV station. Look around and you will find some friend or colleague who has recently moved to one such gig. TV Station Manager is a SIMS like game that lets you take control of a TV station about to go bankrupt. In this game, you’ll take the role of a new manager, just graduated, hoping that you’ll be able to fix the situation and maybe even raise the TV Channel popularity.

Animal Copyright

Gregory Colbert is an inspired genius. With Ashes and Snow, his epic work,he is working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. The stills, exhibition and documentary are pristine examples of pure imaging in a world that’s being over run by digitally manipulated images. He was one of the invitees at the TED conference, where he showed an eight minute clip of the film and spoke of how he plans to take his life’s work with animals and nature to the next level. Animal Copyright Foundation, where he wants advertisers to pay 1 percent of a media buy, including print, broadcast and Internet for all ad campaigns that use animals or nature as a “copyright tribute” for the image. He’s even come out with a graphic mark that will distinguish campaigns that contribute to this effort. Such a fund, Colbert believes, in three years, will be able to become the biggest contributor to animal and nature welfare projects. With the world’s largest corporations looking for causes to distinguish their messages, Animal Copyright may become commonplace, after all.

The Business of Social Networking

The Economist looks at business uses of Social Networking. How sites like MySpace and LinkedIn are being used by companies to do everything from informing people about promotions and events to creating dedicated places for recruitment and referral. In fact, the magazine thinks that the recruitment space is a perfect playground for social networking to thrive. A case in point is the success of Seattle based recruitment called Jobster. Now Jobster is a classic recruitment site with a social networking twist. Replete with tags, profiles, avatars, links, videos and more (Editor’s Note: To explore Jobster beyond the home page, you need to be based in the US). LinkedIn, the social networking site now has over 350 corporate customers which pay up to $250,000 to advertise jobs on the site. There’s another kind of company that tries to take advantage of the social networking phenomenon. Visible Path Technologies helps people within large organisations use contacts from within their loosely connected social networking group to connect up with potential business prospects. Check out the demo on their home page to understand how they operate.

Mobile Vs Internet Banking

A short run down by Hannes van Rensburg on Finextra Communities on why mobile banking is not internet banking and why the mobile phone could be the device that will ultimately win the hearts of customers. On parameters like security, immediacy, portability and more, the mobile scores. Another interesting story in ComputerWorld magazine on how the mobile phone could be your next wallet. Yes, we have written about this many times in the past, but this article is for ordinary consumers, which means even mainstream media is picking up on these stories.

Online Struggles

A new study from Datamonitor suggests that banks are struggling with online sales. The study – which covered Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Nordics – found that the number of consumers using Web banking grew by almost two-thirds between 2002 to 2005, from 39 million to 63 million. But despite the strong take-up and continuing investment, customers use the Internet as a servicing channel rather than a sales channel and switch to more traditional methods of banking when they need products. Therefore the potential of the Internet still remains unfulfilled by both providers and end-users, says Datamonitor.

Money Lessons

One of those ideas that’s up there on every marketer’s wish list, yet is rarely ever given the importance that it deserves because of issues like ROI. Charles Schwab has gone in and done it. Moneywise, a site that helps parents teach their teens children all about money. While the idea might have been right, the execution and the way the site is put together leaves a lot to be desired. Cliched stock images provide most of the visual relief. The navigation is so last century. And almost all the elements on the site have this, been there done that feel. For a generation that is growing up on MySpace and Facebook, Moneywise looks like a history lesson. As The Bankwatch puts it “Take a look at Changeeverything. Imagine a site with your premise, helping young parents educate children, but constructed as a social network. People helping people to discover the nuances and tips on budgetting, planning etc. Now that would be useful, and imagine the data, learning and brand spin-off benefits that would accrue.”

Customer Champions

1 to 1 magazine’s yearly Customer Champions issue is out on the web and a few banks have managed to make it in. Wacovia being the biggest of them in the list. Like most banks, 1 to 1 says Wicovia sees its customers purely as numbers. Wacovia’s representative on the survey, Dan Thorpe, has a designation that would fit a robot better than it would a customer service
specialist, he is: Senior Vice President, and Statistics and Modeling Director, Customer Analysis, Research and Targeting Group Wachovia. And most of what he does, seem to involve numbers, spreadsheets and data points, only the magazine feels that all this data is made to work for the good of its customers, and not just for the bank. Read more on Customer Champions, after an elaborate registration process.

Start Your Own agency

Not the kind of (cough) deep, insight laden stories that you have come to expect from this newsletter, but an interesting one, none the less. Especially at a time when real estate rates in this part of the world are going through the roof. Cubefigures have released a set of toys that help you set up your own agency on your desktop. Set up a meeting, recreate brainstorm scenarios. Maybe you can rehearse your upcoming presentation with a bunch of mute spectators. These playthings bring the drugery of cubicle life alive with a set of 2-3/4th inch posable corporate zombies. And just in case the morale levels are dipping, download a bunch of cube decorations and see the agency buzz with activity once again. Start your place now with same day shipping,
from Amazon.

Model Avatar

Marketers interest in the virtual world of Second Life shows no signs of abating. Lacoste is the latest to jump aboard seeking to cast an Avatar as its model in the online game. From the 4th of April to the 2nd of May, players can submit their virtual avatars to be voted by players from the 28th onwards. Earlier in this newsletter: The world’s most beautiful online avatars.