Establishing a Carbon Strategy

So, its been almost 4 months since I have touched TREVORLANDIA, but here I am and with a new motivation to write here with a new topics at hand in creating green businesses, marketing green businesses, and just talking about what we can do in the business world to help decrease our carbon footprint. As we all know, and can see by now, what was once Al Gore's obsession is now a harsh reality for all of us. Just this year, we have seen way too many natural distasters (and human produced distasters - gulf of mexico spill) directly related to climate change.

I just got done attending greenbiz.com's webinar called Carbon Strategy, which is what I will discuss a little here today. And starting next week, I will be attending a two week course in alternative energy development provided by the Valencian Government here in Canet Den Berenguer, Valencia. I will be happy to try to share the information that I will be learning with the rest of the world via TREVORLANDIA: business and other cool issues.

In today's webinar, we received a brief overview of creating a carbon strategy. We started out by asking why? Well I guess the most prominent reason, other than the actual climate change, would be that there has been increased sustainability pressures. Those pressures have come from society in general and being part of the business community. Other pressures are coming from government regulations, although they are quite minimum. There are also marketing pressures because we are seeing more and more brands align themselves with green initiatives and those brands that don't may be frowned upon. Finally, investors are becoming more demanding. Mostly because it is more efficient to become sustainable and therefore secures higher returns over the long run.

So now that we have some good reasons to implement a carbon strategy. What are the environmental impact areas of business? And what functions of business affect those areas?

Surely we can say that energy, carbon, water, and waste are the 4 most relevant impact areas in operations and in products. So we must be aware of these four impact areas when we begin to study our operations and the products that we are making. Furthermore, those areas can be broken down into emision scopes. For example, scope 1 would be your business' direct impact (vehicle fleet). Scope 2 would be indirect impacts such as energy purchased from utility companies and your scope 3 would be other impacts such as in the supply chain to be able to provide your service or products.

Ufff....thats a lot to work on! Where does one begin. First, it is always helpful to have director support on project of this magnitude and if you are the director, excellent! It will now just depend on your own motivation to help save the planet. However, if you aren't keep bringing the topic to the table in your projects and meetings with the directors, talk with co-workers, and start your own internal movement without stepping on anybody's feet.

If you are your own boss or have a role like mine where you have a direct influence on the directing team of the business, get started by determining your strategy profile, set goals and objectives (try starting small first), then set up a structure to be able to manage these changes in the organization. Later you'll want to implement a reporting program by planning and measuring those plans with some sort of measurement tool. It always helps to make sure your right by hiring an external auditor. You might find it easier to go straight to optimizing your business activities by reducing raw material purchases, energy consuption or finding renewable sources and recycling all your waste in some manner. You might even be able to restore some of those materials or activities. Every business is different and only you can understand and apply these concepts. When you've been working on this a while, give it an evaluation. Identify your top emmitors and rate yourself on your performance.

On the marketing side and internal management side, communication and transparency is vital.

The webinar's case study was by AT&T but thier practices are quite new however applicable for every business. For example, they have started finding ways to green up the data center, which every business can do. They have also looked into finding alternative energy sources for facilities and thier vehicle fleet. You can, too! For more complex situations, managers can find energy saving software for machines and streamline real estate (whatever that means??).

Needless to say, there is a lot of re-directing investment that has to happen for all this to take place. Unless you have an endless bucket of money (if so, contact me because I would like to work for you!), it is probably best to start small and work in larger projects as opportunities arise or as your investors start aligning to your motivation if they aren't already. It was said that pay-back times vary depending on goals, objectives, and the scope of projects at hand, but most businesses can see returns from 18 months to 6 years.

Summit Energy is one of the leading companies that help businesses track their carbon footprint. Just tell them you saw it on TREVORLANDIA and ask for Bill Brewer.

Bono and the changing music industry

For quite some time now, Bono has been one of the main figures against ISPs and P2P file sharing. These two (relatively old) technologies put together have been the reason for music industry's dwindling income over the last 10 years. Personally, I have been using P2P file sharing since the birth of the original free Napster in 1999 (wikipedia.com). My sister downloaded the application on our family HP and digital music became the musical medium of our entire household. We then bought a CD burner and took those CDs to our cars, friends, and parties.

So here's how it works: about 10 years ago, Napster flew on the scene offering free file sharing - mostly music - between all connected users. This means that if I my computer is connected to the internet, anyone in the world can download from my shared file. Most of the content in my shared file could be music for example. Let's just say I have U2. Everyone that is searching U2 on a P2P file sharing software can find my files and download for free. Hence eliminating the need to go buy a CD.

Flash forward to 2001: iTunes. Apple launched its revoluitonary music application iTunes. It was the second statement that the music industry has changed. While Napster was ruled illegal in 2001, Steve Job's idea of selling music song by song for around $1 over the internet (Music Store launch in 2003), showed big label music that the internet will be the medium of the future (wikipedia.com).

Yet, somehow, they just don't get it.

Lets take an example from the Grateful Dead:

Back in the late 60s & early 70's the Dead began a subculture called "tapers". They let their devoted fans come to live shows and record the show, pass the tapes to friends as long as they didn't sell their tapes. WOW! What a concept! The Dead is one of the most successful bands in history and they promoted P2P sharing some 20 years BEFORE the internet. Thanks to thier "tapers", some of the most spectacular live moments in Dead history have been recorded.

So, what is Bono complaining about??

Here's a nice cut from Softpedia.com.

The music industry has been content with blaming everyone else for its lack of vision and has been issuing the same arguments over and over again without much proof on its part and without addressing the numerous critics. Many artists, even established ones, are starting to wake up to new opportunities and make the best of them, but there are those who see it differently. U2 frontman Bono is one of them and has stirred quite a few people with his op-ed in the New York Times, in which he goes after ISPs which, he believes, are getting rich at the expense of budding artists while doing nothing to stop the scourge of file sharing.

"A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business," he writes.

It certainly paints a bleak picture for struggling artists whose hopes and dreams are being squashed by the greed of the Internet service providers. But while aspiring songwriters are forced into a life of mediocrity and delusion and reduced "to write jingles," the ISPs are raking it in.

"Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world," he ends his plea. One can only hope.

Luckily, Bono sees hope yet and finds a great example in an unlikely candidate. By his own account, we should all be learning a thing or two in how to deal with troublesome pirates from China, who's "ignoble effort to suppress online dissent" proves "that it’s perfectly possible to track content." If China, home of the world's largest Internet population, can monitor and restrict access for its citizens to all manner of 'illegal' content, it should be perfectly feasible for ISPs all over the world to do it as well, despite their claims otherwise.

With more than two decades of successful songwriting for U2, it's to be expected that Bono would write a convincing piece of fiction. And, indeed, he doesn't let us down this time around. The only issue is that he's presenting his claims as facts even as numerous accounts show new artists embracing or at least coming to terms that piracy is now a fact of life and learning how to not only cope with it but use it for their own advantage by using peer to peer networks as great and free avenues for promotion.

Softpedia.com has hit it on the nail! P2P has become a way of life and in my opinion does not classify as piracy. Should the Grateful Dead tapers be called pirates? Are my family members music pirates? Free P2P music sharing has been practiced for over 40 years by law abiding citizens that contribute to their community. As far as I'm concerned Bono has become a greedy musician. He has made himself a rich punk (remember he started out playing punk rock) by recording and playing live music for big labels. His current statements show his lack of education in technologies and public trends. What's even more interesting is how recorded music has changed mediums over the years and how quickly it has adapt to those changes, until now.

Recorded music has been sold in many formats over the years - LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes, CD, and now, digital. The big labels have adapted well to previous formats because they could control the dispersment of recorded music. Now in digital format and internet/search technology, this content cannot be controlled. The big labels are having a hard time adjusting to the changing industry and creating a flexible business model to accomodate to free P2P shared music.

In my opinion, free shared P2P music is the result of a changing society based on technology. So to all those greedy musicians out there and those that wish to be great:

GO PLAY LIVE MUSIC!

Get out of the label bought studio, make a wicked tour, and be creative with your recorded music. As Bob Dylan says: "The times are a changing". Create live music with higher value buy decreasing the label recorded output, perhaps "tapers" are not a bad idea. Devaluate big labels (another words - don't sign to a label) create your own team to promote, record, tour, and produce. But don't expect to get rich like Bono. He's a label baby.

Guerrilla Marketing by Vodafone Holland

Something to laugh at, smile, and think about.

Facebook Junkie for Life - The story of the Y & Z generation.

Wow! I'm back. I know I have been away for a while. My relationship with by beloved blog is on the rocks. I'm cheating on her with another blog, maybe you know it. But I'm here and typing and I think I've got something good for my beloved blog today!

Today, I want to talk about how the Y & Z generations will be junkies for life.

(Photo:http://phillipian.net/image/3079/med.jpg)

Ok, so lets get the generations straight first.

Gen X 1964-1980
Gen Y 1980-2000
Gen Z 2000-

We are the digital junkies, us Gen Yers and our first drug was Facebook. You see, I ran into several articles today as I was reading around. The first, you may have seen me tweet about it. It's from MarketingDirecto.com. It is an interesting article suggesting that adolescents (Late Generation Y or early Z) are starting to create abusive behaviors with the obsessive use of technology. Obviously, this little piece was written by someone from early Generation X, right? You know, the hippy generation...?? Hmm..

The second article I came across was actually a slideshow on slideshare.net. Take a look at slide 6. I know its in Spanish but bear with me. The slide shows a green bar at the bottom that ranks each generation from Inactive at the far left in Gen X to Creators at the far right in Gen Z, passing through Spectators in Gen X, Affiliates & Recollectors in Gen Y, and Critics before Creators in Gen Z.

The slides also define each generation as follows:

Gen X
Live in an online world 24hrs.
Tend to be Individualist
Look for the Work-Life balance
Value informality
Look for challenges and feedback
Results-Oriented

Gen Y
Have solid technological knowledge
Hard to attract.
Optimistic and Pragmatic or concerned with practical matters (eg. "as a matter of fact")
Look for well-being
Time-management is crucial
Look for pleasure and fun at the office
Results-Oriented

Gen Z
Very connected
Live in a virtual world
Ultra-independent
Multitaskers
In High demand

Take a close look at the last set of descriptions. Gen Z live in a virtual world, ultra independent....and very connected.....Could that be confused with abusive behavior or drug-addiction like behavior? Or could it be the consumption of a new media?

What the slides don't remind us in relation to the first article that I found this morning from MarketingDirecto.com, is that the Generation X grew-up watching television. It was Generation X that made TV big business. TV was the X generations way of communicating and interacting with the rest of the world. It was and still is the main channel of communication. Meanwhile we are seeing TV advertisements fallout as more marketing budgets are geared towards digital media. Marketers are seeing the power of the digital junkie. The new buying generation, Gen Y and their kids (who really make the buying decisions), Gen Z. So we have to ask ourselves, what will be the new medium? Just last week we saw Twitter beat CNN to real news from Iran. As these online communication channels become faster and leaner, when will mainstream news and broadcast leave traditional TV?

To answer that question, our main online communication channels must become profitable first. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and MySpace are still very expensive businesses that don't make money building a bubble and we all know what happens to a bubble, right?

So the story of the Y & Z generations and their main communication medium comes down to whether they can understand and build a business model for online communication channels like social networks and video networks. Its the only way we can truly be Facebook junkies for life!

(Source: http://www.slideshare.net/NETINER)
(Source: http://www.marketingdirecto.com/noticias/noticia.php?idnoticia=33940&utm_source=MarketingDirecto&utm_medium=RSS)

5 Steps to Online One-to-One Marketing - Where relationships really matter.

(Photo: http://www.networkingwave.com/images/online_business_networking_groups.jpg)

If you have been by this blog recently, I apologize for not adding any recent reading material. I have not been posting to my personal blog because I have been posting material on the company blog where I work. But today, I wanted to share a marketing/lead generation strategy that I am using at my most recent project - one-to-one in online social networks.

The strategy is straight-forward, direct. The idea is to reach your clients online and engage them in a business relationship where customer service and transparency dominate interaction. This strategy consist of several easy but time consuming processes.

1. Research and gather data on prospective clients
In order to directly target clients, a good amount of research should be done to identify those clients that can really use your service. This helps keep your interactions relevant. In my case, I work for a supplier. I have researched my industry and have found around 200 clients that could use my products and services. I have gathered information such as website address, annual income, and client location. In many cases, there are contact names available on company websites which become useful when searching for contacts in social networks.

2. Identify contacts' professional profiles in social networks
Most contacts will be found in professional networks such as LinkedIn or Xing. Record whether your contacts have profiles in one, both, or several networks. As this strategy is still in experimentation, I hope to find that the more profiles contacts have online, the more engaged contacts will be in our interactions. At this point of the strategy, you still have not made contact with your clients. Just read profiles and get to know your contacts. Also study just how you are going to position yourself after you establish contact.

3. Establish contact
Since most contacts are in professional networks, it is easy to establish contact with most. A simple, "would you like to join my network?" should usually work. Or "Keep me as a contact in [insert sector]." Always keeping track along with way. Track how they respond. Do your contacts respond with acceptance and a message? This indicates upmost interest. Do they respond by simply accepting? Or is there no response? These behaviors are tracked so that you can prepare your next step.

4. Initial offering
According to previous records that you have kept, make some sort of offering. Here is where the customization comes in the strategy. I can't say too much here because this is where each contact will be different. You should make some sort of idea of how to communicate with each contact and personalize the message by keeping the content relevant to each contact's situation. Be creative and to the point. Too long and you lose the point - too short and you don't get to the point. The real goal in this step is to automatically engage the contact. Perhaps it is simply providing a link to the webiste/blog/FB page/twitter or perhaps your organization can develop a relevant tool to engage your contact on the initial offering.

5. Continuous content publication and relationship management
Once you have caught the attention of your contact, keep giving them something that can remind them of your organization. Always provide relevant content and give them content that they can learn from. If you have landed a contact as a client, manage the relationship by recording all the interactions. Meanwhile exceed the clients' expectations! If your client want 2 test releases, give them 4. All with the same quality and relevance. While you keep exceeding thier expectations, all the while educating them, they will never go away.

Have more input to this article? Leave a comment!!!

Marketing Conference Review: Hoy es Marketing Valencia (HEM)

In Valencia, marketers get few chances to attend conference events catered directly to marketers. Yesterday, the "Palace of Congresses" was packed with eager marketers for the marketing conference Hoy es Marketing.

The conference had a basic format. Eight speakers, sponsor booths, and a complementary cocktail afterward. No Q&A and no interactive function, which was a huge downer, but it was offset by great speakers and a wealth of information.

Javier Rovira started the show with a presentation of his latest read, "Consumering", which I found very similar to other publications by other American authors I wont name here. However, Mr. Rovira has his own way of explaining how marketing has changed from product-centric planning to customer-centric planning. He explained that marketing is about generating demand from your clients needs. He found that there are 4 elements to Consumering - Identity, Performance, Intensity, and Freedom. These 4 elements relate respectively to branding, need marketing, experience marketing, and marketing FOR the consumer. The latter carries the most importance, hence the name of the book. You can find Javier's publication here and here. I didn't take interest in buying the book, but if you would like a good read from a Spanish marketing stand-point, I would imagine that this would be a great choice.

After Javier Rovira's presentation, HEM took it up a notch and presented Google's marketing manager for Spain and Portugal, Laurence Fontinoy, BAM! With a strong accent that I couldn't place (by the name I would say French) and true to google culture, she gave us some real, data driven information with Youtube videos and applicable examples. She started off by showing us some relevant numbers like ..."51% of Spaniards have wide band Internet"..."22 million Spaniards online"..."Spain is the 2nd largest community using Blogger"...Cool stuff! Then she got into the first part of her presentation which showed the audience how companies are partnering with google and youtube to make cutting edge stuff. She exhibited some of google's work with the Prado museum as seen here. Also, she presented google's work with the "Orquesta Sinfonia" and "Mass Communication to One" (I didn't have time to jot down the links, sorry). The examples led to the conclusion that branding has been reinvented, implying digital marketing's role in the branding function. So with some good examples and the audience captured, Ms. Fontinoy began to talk about some solutions that google offers in the economic crisis. She gave us a great comparison of the Euribor and Web search, saying that if web search was the Euribor, we would have an increase of 170%. A smile came to my face as she hit home pointing to an impressive line graph showing the 170% increase in the last YEAR!!! If that doesn't get digital marketers in Spain excited, I don't know what will. She said that within this increase, trends show that eco-friendly searches are the most prominent. She used this example to tell the audience that it is time to redirect marketing online and ask yourself, "What are my users looking for?". Then build agility and efficiency around that vision using some of Google's tools like adwords and analytics. She put the whole digital movement into perspective. She also named some factors of success used in the Prado example, but I think they apply to virtually any project: innovation, access to information, speed, partnership, and public relations. Great presentation by Ms. Fontinoy!

Moving on, the conference then went through a very dull moment with presentations by Director of Aviva, Jose Fuentes Soriano and Telefonica's Director of Client Relations, Jesus Angel Pastor. I wont say too much about these particular presentations because they didn't present information very relevant to the audience. Mr. Fuentes Soriano spoke about his business and how its structured to position itself as a leader in the "bancaseguros" industry. I almost fell asleep. Mr. Pastor gave more data and information for the audience but related that data to Telefonica's products. I do have to say that Telefonica is offering something much different from other telecommunications companies, check it out here. Its sort of a customized communications pack for small business owners, an all-in-one bill. Not bad.

I managed to stay awake and alert for a true rock star in the Spanish market, Pedro Valdes, Director of Daemon Quest Spain. This was a no-BS kind of guy. Straight to the point and vulgar. Yeah, he slipped some questionable comments during the presentation (eg. "currar como un negro" or "como cono...?") but gave the audience the best information of the afternoon. He went through his 5 rules of survival. I'll go ahead and jot them out here.

1. Create new sources of income
2. Specialize in few segments
3. Reinvent the advertising budget
4. Reinvent the buying experience
5. Create an online strategy
6. Sell!

He went through each rule with very creative examples such as showing us how a outdoor equipment store has reinvented the buying experience by turning the store into a test area, letting customers test jackets with falling water and test sleeping bags on blocks of ice. He made his presentation super relevant and entertaining. He didn't sell Daemon Quest. He just showed that he was the bad-ass in the marketplace and proved himself a thought leader in the industry. Meanwhile he related back to a basic equation in marketing: clients+innovation=growth. Cool presentation Mr. Valdes pero no hace falta los comentarios tan chulos.

We had a short break, then we were back in the conference hall for the last part of the afternoon focused on experience marketing. This portion of the conference was opened up by a charismatic professor from ESIC, Jose Luis Pastor. He showed us how marketing the customer's experiences makes an invisible difference. He used examples such as Haagen Das' "Peace" icecream in Libano, Nespresso's elegant coffee experience, and Nike/Apple collaboration using software in shoes. It was a motivating segment that came to the conclusion that brands will end up telling the story of the product, transforming the brand into an experience.

The ESIC professor set up Vueling's CMO, Vicenc Marti. For those who aren't familiar with Vueling, you could compare it to Southwest Airline's culture. Vueling is an airline with an experience and Mr. Marti has help position Vueling as one of the top airline companies in Europe. He spoke extremely fast and provided an impossible amount of information about the company and its innovative marketing system. He showed us examples of how Vueling creates experiences in a boring flight by hiring world-class DJs for in flight parties to Ibiza, or in flight quartet concerts, or in flight fashion shows. Vueling has spend lots of money in using customer experiences to positioning its brand. Mr. Marti finished up his presentation by saying that the most important aspect of branding Vueling today is managing the efficient balance using online and offline channels. Even though Marti's presentation was focused around Vueling instead of the audience, he made his presentation relevant to experience marketing for all of us to learn from.

The last speaker of the day was a wine marketer, Javier Gandia, the marketing director for Bodegas Gandia. He showed us how his corporate communication plan is based in experiences. He relates his family wines to art, dining out, sporting events, and the movie theater - all very common experiences. His wines relate to each experience by positioning different product lines to the experience. A very interesting and creative approach to marketing a winery. He even told us that the industry shunned his ideas a few year ago, but now his work has paid off and reaps success in almost all product lines. Thanks to Mr. Gandia's work, Valencian wines are now greatly respected in the wine industry.

The conference concluded with a few glasses of wine and food over a light conversation between old colleagues. I greatly enjoyed the afternoon. If you were at the event and would like to share your experience, leave a comment!