Today, I updated the Business & Marketing links in the right column to include some additional trend spotting sites that I think are important to note. 

With the changing landscape of marketing, keeping up with the global culture shifts can be overwhelming. Last week, I talked about “New Marketing” which focuses on cultural insights, sustainability, responsibility and innovation. Because of this trend, new types of design and marketing firms are popping up all over the globe.

One major player in this organization of thought is PSFK. Recently, the PSFK Conference was held in New York and Alan Chochinov from Core77 spoke about this issue.

Here is the video: The Dumbest Smartest Design Problem - (Why Shit Matters To Design)

Here are some other links added today:

Anomaly

“Blurring the borders between providing traditional marketing services and working as a business development partner” - Business Week 2007

Peep - Insights and Revelations

“A new research based company created especially for today’s and tomorrow’s marketeers and innovators utilizing proprietary methodology filtered through the lens of experienced socio-cultural researchers and consultants.” - peep

Spring Spotters

The world’s largest idea-spotting network.  

Let’s make sure we can keep our beautiful balance of life.

Want to know what Earth Day 2058 might be like?

Read this article featured on the Environmental News Network from the president of the Rainforest Alliance, Tensie Whelan.

Some people have asked me why I write this blog and mostly it is because I want to develop better writing skills, but I also have an insatiable appetite for knowledge and that includes understanding people, cultures, art, etc. With this information, I try to make connections. The benefit of this appetite is that I have a good grasp of marketing and advertising, which helps me in design and business. See … full circle, right?

It is obvious from the subject of my posts and the website links I have listed, that I am becoming more passionate about sustainability and what it means to us as a nation and throughout the world … but also, what does it mean to marketing and business? How are all the connections being made?

Ultimately, the marketing climate is changing and there is a need for products that appeal to people’s want of sustainable products so they feel like they are doing good for the earth, but feeling good and actually doing good are two different things. As design, marketing, advertising and business people try to sell you something, they really have the power over the truth. Right now, the need to advertise and market your product as a sustainable one is growing at an alarming rate. As consumers, we still have to watch out for frauds and as marketers, we have to be sure that we are actually giving good information to consumers.

I have found two good articles on this subject that I wanted to share. The first one is from Laurie Lamson, a professional writer and filmmaker, who emailed me her article titled, Cutting-Edge Marketing for Cultural Creatives. This article addresses the push versus pull style of selling that we have been seeing more of lately.

The other article is a free download from a management consulting firm called ReCourses. The title of this article is “The Sad Fade of Branding, and When Sustainable Isn’t.” To read this article, you need to sign up with your email address, but there are many other valuable articles for creative businesses to learn from here. Link to free position papers.

A friend sent this ultra hip website link to me today … Feel More Human.

I love the idea of combining a blog with a shopping site featuring well designed products. The site offers some eco-friendly products for home (lighting, furniture, decor) and life (jewelry, bags, health and beauty). On the blog side, there are resources for green living and even a place to sell your stuff in the classified section. Feel More Human also donates 1% of sales to a network of 1,469 environmental organizations worldwide with a program called 1% For The Planet: Keeping the earth in business.

Jill Stalowicz, a founding partner, really hit the mark on this one. 

  

Hundertwasser (December 15, 1928 - February 19, 2000) was a visionary Austrian artist, architect and environmentalist with a mission to reconnect humans with nature. His work was bright and organic…always staying away from straight lines. You can see the green roofs with trees in the photos above. He also incorporated vegetation on the inside of structures, with trees coming out of windows. His stance on the environment was clear in 1990, when he made this statement:

“There are no evils in nature. There are only evils of man. When man thinks he has to correct nature, it is an irreparable mistake every time. A community should not consider it an honour how much spontanous vegetation it destroys; it should rather be a point of honour for every community to protect as much of its natural landscape as possible.”

To read the rest of this statement and more of Hundertwasser’s philosophy, click here.  

Photo credits: Top image: Joachim S. Müller, Second row, left: rytc, Second row, right: Crystalline Radical, third row: diwan, fourth row, left: marcelgermain, fourth row, right: scottpartee.

Over the Easter holiday, my husband and I were able to explore some of the wooded walking trails in our hometown. The Tennessee Valley Authority Nature Loop is a good trail for bird watching and wildflowers. Over the past two years, the Tennessee Valley Authority and volunteers have removed the privet hedge that grew along the trail to allow more wildflowers to bloom this season. For more information on this trail, visit Local Hikes.

 

The People’s Grocery was started in 2002 to coordinate a local food system and provide a source of healthy foods to the people in West Oakland, California. There are about 30,000 residents in West Oakland with no grocery store, but there are 53 liquor stores. Many of these residents have diet related illnesses and do not have a source for healthy foods. Brahm Ahmadi, co-founder and executive director, calls it “food justice - the principle that all people, regardless of economic and social constraints should have access to the best foods available in our society.” 

The goal is to keep the wealth within the community. The People’s Grocery grow organic food in urban community gardens to educate and reconnect people with their food source. They also provide healthy cooking classes and a produce box distribution program, so the residents can get fresh foods in their homes.

To find out more about this project, visit The People’s Grocery. 

This is the featured story on the Global Oneness Project, which is a “web-based video initiative exploring how the simple notion of oneness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.”

They work by these principles:

- We are responsible to each other, the earth, and future generations

- There are enough resources for us all, if we share

- Free exchanges of information allow for greater, collective creative potential

- Love, care and compassion have the power to transform the fabric of society