Seth Godin has posted about why the ‘marketing’ of the global warming problem has failed. He’s got some good points about the problems:
1) that the words in the name - global and warming - both inspire good, warm feelings - we think that ‘global’ is good, and warm is, of course, good. BUT GLOBAL WARMING IS BAD, DUMMIES! (The same problem arises with ‘climate change’. We’re told all of our lives that change is good’ and we know all about climates. Mmmmm. The thought of a warm climate makes me green with envy at the moment, but that’s just the northern Canadian in me.)

Seth proposes the name ‘atmosphere cancer’.

Alternately, what about ‘death by choking’ or ‘poisonous air’ or even “air flu” (given the ’success’ of ‘bird flu’ in raising global fear) - making the problem personal to each of us so that we can’t think, “atmosphere cancer? Poor guy. But cancer will never happen to me. I don’t smoke. It doesn’t run in my family.”

But ‘death by choking’ is personal. I can envision that. It’s terrifying.

2) that global warming is happening too slowly and with not enough visual impact to make good tv. How true! Yet how pathetic we as a people are! It’s all about fast moving images and bright lights.

Seth Godin is so right. This is a huge marketing challenge. It would be awesome if the best minds in the advertising business would get behind this and try to change our thinking about this issue. What about turning global warming into a reality tv show? I hear they are all the rage.

My friend Phil would like this I think - if only he lived in London. I think he’d like the mapping / running / sharing parts of this site. I am not crazy about the actual interface and while has been an attempt at added content, (such as training schedules), this stuff is pretty weak. There’s such great opportunity here - for a global running site full of visitor submitted maps, localized info and good content. I love that this site is lightly branded - seems very appropriate, value-add, yet at the same time, there’s no mistaking who is ’sponsoring’ the site.

I realize that there are a few similar, often non-branded sites on the web, such as this one, or this one or this one, but I think this RunLondon is interesting from a marketing perspective - there’s a lot of potential in this site.

Oh, this is good. So good. This is why I often hesitate to tell people I’m involved in ‘marketing’. Because this is what they think I do. Yikes.

1) Throw a hissy fit about the actions of CARTOON CHARACTERS (a cheetah and a hare) in a television advertisement that supposedly represent your company, and your competitor.

2) Sue said competitor over the fact that their CARTOON ‘cheetah’ eats (and vomits) your CARTOON ‘hare’, claiming it’s dispareging and tarnishing your brand.

Rogers and its wireless company yesterday filed a lawsuit in Federal Court against BCE and its wireless arm, alleging the spot with the cheetah and other ads “disparage, denigrate, discredit, tarnish, diminish, and otherwise depreciate” its brand.

The ad is here.

I am confused. Is it the the barfing part that is disparaging and tarnishing to the brand? Would have it been ok if the chetah just beat the hare in an ‘honest’ race?

Note to Rogers: the ad depicts CARTOON CHARACTERS, man. Chill. Your lawsuit only serves to get more people to see the ad, reinforcing the ad’s message - that Bell beats Rogers. Can’t you beat the actions of cartoon characters with actual facts? That your service is faster and stronger? No? Then maybe the hissy fit / lawsuit is your best weapon afterall.

Me, I hate them both and would love to watch a full out bloody brawl. And I’m not talking CARTOON CHARACTERS anymore.

Oh the meme de jour. Not my favourite thing really but I hate to be the party pooper. And I like Derek, and he tagged me. So here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had:

* Indoor playground developer
* Sailing instructor
* Lifeguard
* Mom

Four movies I can watch over and over:

* I have movie attention deficit disorder
* None, I have movie ADD
* Have I mentioned my ADD?
* I like puppies.

Four places I have lived:

* Vancouver, British Columbia
* Geneva, Switzerland
* Kingston, Ontario
* Wakefield, Quebec

Four television shows I love to watch:

* Grey’s Anatomy
* What Not to Wear
* Bob the Builder (hey, they built a straw bale house!)
* Miffy! Cute little Bunny! Miffy! Smart little bunny!

Four places I have been on vacation:

* Delhi
* Isla Mujeres
* Chicago
* Borneo

Four of my favourite dishes:

* Swiss chocolate anything
* Hot Corn-lime chowder
* Cheese Fondue
* Marinated flank steak

Four websites I visit daily:
* Google
* Bloglines
* CBC.ca
* Worksongs.com

Four places I would rather be right now:

* Isla Mujeres
* The dog beach in Vancouver
* Snowshoeing in the Gatineau Hills
* On a beach in Baja, travelling in a camper van with my husband, my daughter and my dog

Four bloggers I am tagging:

* Sorry, this thing has made the rounds looooong enough. Time to put it to bed. Yes, now I am being the party pooper.

Today we (and most especially our poor pooch) find ourselves in the unfortunate position of getting to participate in what is quickly becoming one company’s PR nightmare.

A little background - our dog Micah has been sick for the past couple of months, vomiting nearly every day, seeming to suffer from a high amount of acid in his stomach. We sought veterinary advice, spending many hundreds of dollars on testing, drugs and advice. All of the tests came back as negative - the vet couldn’t determine what was making Micah so sick.

Sometimes Micah would even refuse his food. He’s a lab, who eats everything with gusto, all the time, so we knew there was a serious problem.

Perhaps it was bowel / stomach disease, the vet suggested. Eventually, after deciding there weren’t really many options left (other than exploratory surgery to try to determine the cause), we decided to change his food - which was Royal Canin LOW FAT. This was food that was recommended and sold by the vet to help prevent any stomach and pancreas problems that had caused Micah illness (and us the cost of a Harvard education - seriously) a couple of years ago. But as a last resort, we figured, why not - lets try to give him new food. We started this change a couple of weeks ago, phasing in the new food to limit any more distress (!!) and only 1 week ago, had changed his food 100% to a new brand.

Almost exactly to the day we were giving Micah only the new food, he completely recovered. He was not vomiting, ever, and he was bounding around outside through snowbanks with energy and enthusiasm we hadn’t seen in months. We were happy - he was well, finally, after months of daily retching and suffering.

Yesterday, I received a voice message from one of the vet techs at our excellent clinic (Pretoria Pet Hospital), asking me to call because they had received a memo from Royal Canin, that said that there was a “formulation problem” with the LOW FAT food that we had been feeding our dog. It turns out, from what I understand from our vet tech, (and note that I haven’t actually seen the memo, nor am I an expert in chemistry, or nutrition or dog food….) that for the past “few months”, there was an undetected “forumulation problem”, resulting in large amounts of vitamin D3 being added to the food during the manufacturing process. It seems that the acid that was making Micah so sick, every day, was (or at least may have been) from the very food that was supposed to be keeping him well. We now feel that we may have been effectively feeding our dog ‘poison’ - even getting up at midnight to give him one last feeding, hoping to keep the vomit at bay.

OH. MY. GOD.

The vet tech was calling to ensure that I was no longer feeding Micah this Royal Canin LOW FAT food, and to let us know that Royal Canin would, on a case by case basis, assess whether any compensation for medical expenses incurred as a result of this “formulation problem” was warranted. I searched the Internet to find some mention of this “formulation problem” or any notice from Royal Canin to pet owners who may not be so lucky to have vet clinics as good as ours who were able to contact dog owners who bought the food. Nothing. Nothing on the Royal Canin itself, nothing anywhere else that I could find. I know a few things about searching (being an online strategist and search marketer) and I know a few things about the dog community (producing TorontoDogs.com and RainCityDogs.com) - but I couldn’t find any information online about the problem.

Here’s the thing - a few times during Micah’s illness, we debated just how sick we’d allow him to become - wondering how much he was suffering, how much pain he was in on a daily basis - how much we would force him to endure? In the worst moments, we allowed ourselves to think about the possibility of putting him to sleep to end his suffering. And all the time, we were making it worse by giving him more and more of the ‘poison’. I hope to the highest powers that there isn’t a family out there who did put their pet to sleep to end suffering that may have been caused by this problem at the Royal Canin factory.

I look forward to hearing from Royal Canin and wonder how they plan to compensate the dogs and families who suffered as a result of their manufacturing problem.

A friend yesterday wondered what would have happened had this company been manufacturing baby food, and not dog food. While there really is no difference, I only hope that the problem would have been noticed earlier, and that full, public, accessible notice would have been given, and remedies would made available quickly. I wonder if there are any long term implications of having ingested high levels of vitamin D3 over a few months?

UPDATE as of March 2nd 2006: We’ve received some compensation from the dog food company related to this incident. I am not completely satisfied, however. They say their dog food is 100% guarenteed. Well, then, I think they should also compensate us for all of the dog food that made our dog vomit over the past few months. This is expensive food! Of course, they did not offer to do this. They did, however, pay our vet bills for the treatment we sought for vomitting.

I am amazed at how impossible I have found it to be to communicate with this company online. And any contact to date has been from them VIA OUR VET. Never directly. Their website has no contact information at all. Their letterhead has no email information. In the letter itself, they suggest that if we have any questions or concerns, that we work through our veterinary hospital or (as a second resort), call them. Transparent? Hardly.

I’ll be mailing them a letter with my thoughts.

An article in Business Week lets us in on the agency pitch process at MINI USA:

The first deviation from the norm came when McDowell organized a “boot camp” for the four finalists: a weekend immersion into all things MINI at a Rye Brook (N.Y.) hotel. There was plenty of face time and driving but the agencies were also required to perform in front of one another as each tried to impress the client-to-be, an unheard-of concept in the notoriously competitive ad world. “You don’t expect the client in these situations to be creative…that’s what they want us for,” says Scott Goodson, president of Strawberry Frog, one of the four contenders.

First, each team had to introduce themselves and create interesting name tags on the spot. The team from New York-based Mother put pictures of their actual mothers on tags. Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) of Sausalito, Calif., in a nod to socially correct recycling and frugality, they riffed, reused plain name tags from a meeting the previous week.

Then each team took turns answering questions that tested improv skills. “If Arnold Schwarzenegger runs for President, who should be his running mate?” went one game question. (Strawberry Frog’s team was divided between Sylvester Stallone and Papa Smurf.)

They also were sent out into nasty rainy weather to drive MINI Coopers and go on a kind of scavenger hunt for ideas and props to be used for a scrapbook. The book would tell a MINI story that the agencies and the client would all review over cocktails.

Maybe I’m just no fun, but I don’t see how these improv, quick on your feet, ‘oh-la-la lets show our creativity in 20 seconds’ - type contests prove that you’ll be even mediocre (at best) at solving genuine business problems. They sort of take me back to frosh week, which was a great time when I was eighteen and drunk. Now I just feel sort of nauseous thinking about competing for gainful work in the same (metaphorical) way that wet t-shirt contests are won.

Granted, the idea of spending lots and lots of time (weeks even) with a prospective client / agency is awesome - to really get to know each other’s strengths and challenges - actually courting each other, versus the speed dating (1 hour pitch) process which is the norm. But could we all just grow up a bit? I know, I know, I am just no fun.

McDonald’s has launched a blog. It’s actually pretty interesting, well written, and informative. It’s written by Bob Langert, Senior Director for Corporate Social Responsibility at McDonald’s. Here’s how he introduces the site:

I want to use this blog to introduce you to some of the people, programs, and projects that make corporate social responsibility a reality at McDonald’s–to take you along with me as I engage with some of our internal and external stakeholders in various parts of the world and to highlight our accomplishments, as well as the challenges we continue to face.

We want to hear from you because we are always learning and trying to improve. And you can’t learn–or improve–without listening. We live in a constantly changing world where the issues are complex and solutions anything but simple. With such complex issues, we may not always agree on the root causes or best solutions, but we can have a conversation.

Incredibly, comments are open and so far, are all supportive. I don’t know how closely the comments are being monitored (as monitoring comments in itself can be a full time job) but I am impressed with the (at least perceived) transparency. Of course the Terms & Conditions outline their thoughts on Comment ownership, censorship etcetera, but of course they would - I don’t fault them for this -it’s most definitely a corporate site. I’ll keep my eye on this blog to see its progress. It will be interesting to see what topics they tackle and how the blog is received. One to watch.