Fruitful

10 strategies for building a credible sustainable brand

I recently conducted a webinar on 10 Strategies for Building a Credible Sustainable Brand in conjunction with Sustainable Life Media. While I'll never again agree to develop an hour's worth of new content with 1 week's notice (!), I appreciated the opportunity to pull together a fairly comprehensive set of strategies that help brands build credibility from the ground up and minimize the risk of greenwashing. The 10 strategies include:

1. Be proactive

2. Be transparent

3. Know your limits

4. Be relevant

5. Borrow credibility

6. Leverage brand strengths

7. Create a brand strategy

8. Be consistent

9. Educate

10. Engage

This list gives some good fodder for future blog posts, so stay tuned.

Role of Retail in Sustainability

Just posted Role of Retail in Sustainability on my business blog. I'm surprised at how few retailers are stepping up to the plate and helping consumers make educated choices on sustainable products. Best Buy is a laggard, Home Depot is a leader. If you know what Wal-Mart is doing in customer education, would love for you to contribute a comment.  

Creating competitive advantage through sustainability

I just published a post on my business blog outlining the five steps to creating competitive advantage through sustainability. Go take a peek and let me know what you think. 

July newsletter: Sustainability business case

In addition to the email newsletter we send out every month (you can sign up on this page by entering your email address) we’ve recently designed an easier-to-read PDF.

This issue kicks off a series on connecting sustainability with top-line revenue, a topic of interest to many sustainability pros who want to move beyond cost-savings initiatives and build reputation and revenue (and also to marketers looking for additional ways to grow topline revenue). I’ll also be posting the articles here on my blog, and I’d love comments and questions so that I can address key concerns and questions throughout the series.

Click here for the FruitfulBusiness July newsletter. 

Extraordinary minds shaping modern thought

One of the coolest and most thought-provoking sites I've been on in ages... check out Sputnik Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture. I think the name's a bit misleading, as the site includes a lot of scientific thought that isn't connected to culture. 

Taco Bell green spoof

A great spoof by The Onion about Taco Bell's environmental efforts. "Taco Bell's new green menu takes no ingredients from nature." It's pretty funny. 

Leading a sustainable enterprise

IBM recently released its 2009 report on sustainable enterprises, and the findings were similar to last year's: "Develop new sources of operational, supply chain and customer information to gain new levels of insight for meeting strategic sustainability objectives." Astonishingly, 37% of respondents have done no research to understand their customers' expectations around sustainability. If you work for one of those companies, we need to talk. 

Proving values-based business is the most fruitful

I was recently interviewed for Gennefer Snowfield's Philanthropy In 5 series at TriplePundit.com on the subject of values-based business and aligning philanthropy with strategy. You can read my responses on my business blog. 

"First car I've considered crashing into a tree"

This has to be the funniest and -- sadly for Honda -- worst review I have ever seen in print. It's a review of Honda's new Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.
So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit...

Definitely worth a read.

Three types of meetings

Great summary of the different types of meetings from Rands in Repose:

Alignment meetings sound like this: “It’s red, are we all in agreement it’s red? Ok, swell. Wait, Phil thinks it’s blue. Phil, here are the 18 compelling reasons it’s red. Convinced? Done now?”

Creation meetings sound like this: “We need more blue. How are we going to do that? Phil, you’re our blue man. What should we do here?”

There are other meetings out there, but you will learn to avoid them. One being the therapy meeting. They sound like this: “Show of hands, who likes to talk about blue? Or red? I don’t care. Let’s explore our color feelings for the next 60 minutes.”

Very true.