I’m happy to announce a new initiative called PHD Sustain that I and the Green Team at PHD have been working for the last ten months. The project has finally taken off so I can now share it with all of you.

PHD Sustain is our agency’s commitment to our people, our clients and our planet in becoming more environmentally friendly, and thereby more sustainable. This commitment will be lived out in two main ways: where we work and how we work.

Where We Work – Greening Our Offices
We’ve started making a few changes to green our offices, such as printing on recycled paper, reducing our energy usage, etc. However, our big push starts in April, when we will have a consultant come in to help us measure our environmental footprint, set goals and an action plan to reduce that footprint, and educate and inspire our employees to partake in fully greening our offices. We hope that these efforts will allow us to get ISO 14001 certified later this year.

How We Work – Developing and Using the Environmental Media Sustainability Index
After the release of An Inconvenient Truth and when it seemed like every company was coming out with some sort of green message in their advertising, we began to think about green media. What could green media be? How could we help our clients not only say they are green, but act green as well?

With the help of our Green Team we researched and brainstormed all of the different green media options out there, such as magazines printed on recycled paper, low energy billboards, etc. However, we still couldn’t tell which options were better for the environment than others. Luckily, during our research we stumbled upon Yale’s Environmental Sustainability Index, which numerically quantifies the impact of every country on the environment. This inspired us to create our own index for different media channels and vehicles called the Environmental Media Sustainability Index or EMSI. This online system will not only help us measure the impact of our media plans on the environment, it will also help our media planners source and use green media options for our clients.

So far we’ve hired and had a great kick off meeting with Dr. Horvath of UC Berkley, an expert in the study of environmental lifecycles. Together we mapped out the life cycle of each media channel, such as TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, radio, cinema, online, mobile phones, bus shelters, and direct mail, from post-production to disposal. Right now he is helping us by researching and measuring the impact of each media channel and will report back to us in late April. We’ll use this data to develop the EMSI.

Overall, we are very excited to rollout PHD Sustain and the EMSI over the next year. Please continue to check back here for updates.

Here’s a very cool read and an interesting case for the power of word of mouth, creative channel and partnership selection, as well as a stellar example of Connect strategy. That and there’s a whole lotta love for the co-op model and its ability to breed powerful and effective brand communications. That is, from the inside out. All wrapped up and delivered to your door. I like.

Read about Dabbawalas

In the past, marketing communications have largely interrupted otherwise valuable media-based experiences (e.g., that Chia Pet ad in the 80’s which interrupted your enjoyment of Jack Tripper’s comedic fumblings).

The emerging media paradigm, however, casts marketing communications AS valuable experiences in their own right (think Office Max’s ‘Elf Yourself’).

Add to this the idea that we’ve clearly moved from passivity to activity in our interactions with media over the last two decades (i.e., from passive receivers in a 3-4 network world, to active RSS-feed-establishing/YouTube-content-creating mavens).

(This move, incidentally, is consistent with my generation’s fascination with technology. TiVo, instant messaging, iPods; while fascinating to children of the 80’s and earlier, are largely unremarkable to younger consumers, who see technology as a given [the way we see toasters]…They seem only to ‘notice’ technlogy when it fails them.)

The upshot? I believe that we are headed for a NEW PASSIVITY in media; with the Googles/iLikes of the world anticipating what we want to consume (based, clearly, on our searches and tech-facilitated interactions with people, places and things) and serving it up for us in easy, non-intrusive, easily-configured contexts.

In the future, we’ll turn it on (whatever ‘it’ is) and it will just deliver loads of customized content (plus contextual ads and/or sponsorships, of course).

From passivity, to activity…to the ‘new passivity’.

By Emily Smith

America’s youth is more ambitious, over committed, and competitive (both with themselves and their peers) than ever. It is getting increasingly impossible for a high school senior with a 4.0 and perfect SAT score to get into one of America’s top colleges or universities unless he or she also single handedly founded an orphanage and helped run it on the side. (That’s not even a hypothetical situation—I actually have a friend who did that). In my college dorm common room this year, underneath the typical mess of old pizza boxes, beer cans, play-station controls, and cable bills were also my friends’ subscriptions to The Economist, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. The point being, many college students are regularly investing in both booze and business tips with the same fervor.

A recent New York Times article sites a study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor that found an unusually high business start-up rate among its 18-24 year olds (more than ages 35-40) in the United States compared to other developed nations. “American children play a much more influential role in society and enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy. Teenagers receive higher allowances, have greater access to credit cards, and have more money to spend on culture, or, in some cases, to spend on starting a business.” In fact, just seconds ago, my friend emailed me a link to a belt company she started when she was fifteen that is now extremely developed and successful.

Today, the college student’s hero is more likely to be Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard sophomore/creator of the popular website Facebook.com than Will Ferrell’s character in Old School. In other words, it’s cool to have a brilliant idea, and the cool kids with the brilliant ideas are getting younger and younger and want you to notice. As a generation, they feel slightly entitled to non-entry level positions, raises before they are necessarily deserved, and an elaborate social life all at the same time.¹ What I feel is important to learn from this is that America’s over zealous teens are serious about wanting to be taken seriously. Advertisers could use this to their advantage by playing to their egos, treating them as sophisticated consumers, and being aware that, yes, eighteen year olds are reading The Economist, but still playing Grand Theft Auto.

 ¹ Source: CNNMoney.com “Gen Y at Work” May 15, 2007

The May ‘07 issue of Creativity opens with a POV from Brian Collins - former head of Ogilvy’s Brand Integration Group - in which he criticizes a common metaphor in the development of communications; the rampant use of ‘us vs. them’ heuristics in the development of marketing communications.

“War is the wrong metaphor for marketing. How can we think we’ll inspire hearts and minds when we drive “penetration” by launching “campaigns” against “target demographics”? When I go around agencies and see conference rooms rebranded as War Rooms, it makes my teeth hurt.”

While Brian makes this statement in defense of a larger observation about changes taking place in the agency world, I feel that he’s made a very important point here. One that we - as communications professionals - should take to heart.

“Disruption,” “The Promise to the Viewer,” “roadblocking”…why do we feel that we must be so forceful and contentious in our efforts to persuade? When’s the last time you distrupted or roadblocked when trying to get a friend to join you at a concert, or when asking someone out?? When we engage in acts of interpersonal persuasion in our own lives, we typically use subtle, gentle overatures. We are gracious, thankful, complementary and seductive. More likely to tempt, tickle or tease…not beat someone over the head with it!

Just think of the door-to-door salesman who changes his tone of voice, language and body language when attempting to make a connection with a potential customer. Why should we be any different? And while we have typically used the blunt tools of mass marketing in the past, the Internet is changing this everyday.

The point is this: If you want to affect someone positively (as 99.9% of marketing communications are intended to do), then speak to them with respect and choose your words with the kind of nuance that comes from knowing something about them. If your approach to marketing communications is wildly different (in principle) than your approach to everyday interpersonal persuasion, than you should probably re-examine your assumptions.

A bird’s eye view of the current consumer mindset shows that there is a large focus on the individual. The ‘me’ generation is in full force and finding more and more ways to nurture themselves, express themselves, adorn themselves, promote their own agenda, and take care of their own needs. Another movement consuming consumers these days is that of the greening the planet. Interesting that the impetus behind the green movement has very little to do with propagating the ‘self’, but is rather an effort by the individual to benefit the entire world. Is the green movement a selfish plot beneath the gloss of community goodwill? Or because of the cooperation and critical mass required to effect any change, are we seeing a shift towards unification?

Today’s marketers are in a mad scramble to identify what motivates consumers. The first brand to get in their heads, wins. And with the marketplace being what it is – consumers in control, access to information a right and on-demand a given – the challenge is becoming evermore insurmountable.

I think you’ll all agree that the ‘right now’ consumer is embracing the functionality of technology and continually pushing the web’s potential. With blogs, podcasts, social networking, online video, and consumer led marketplaces. The corporate knee-jerk reaction to staying competitive is to offer these consumer-loved platforms on their sites to generate interest and loyalty.

Before jumping on the bandwagon and enlisting one of these technologies, it’s valuable to determine if it’s the right way to connect with your consumers. Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you should use it. Each of today’s most successful Internet concepts have had previous success in an offline form. Consider what has worked in the past to evaluate the probability of it working in the future. For example, if it wouldn’t have made a good radio show, then it probably won’t make a good Podcast.

Though in all this, don’t forget that there is definitely room for innovation. The right creative solution is rewarded and some risks are worthy – just stay on track and look to solve a problem your customers actually have.

Radio was once TV without the moving images, only we didn’t know it. Once TV came along (with the pictures) it didn’t seem like there’d be a place for Radio. Yet, when TV was just taking off, FM was introduced. Car and transistor radios started to become commonplace. Radio went from a medium of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy to Wolfman Jack in ten years.

Today we have iPods, cars with iPod jacks, cars with MP3 players built in, satellite radio and coming soon, HD radio. We can listen to terrestrial radio on the web, or radio-ish sites like www.last.fm and www.pandora.com that string together music to match our tastes.

Does the trend of content disassociating itself from the medium spell the end of radio as we know it? Recent posts on two blogs might make you think twice. A VC posted recently about how radio still fits in life. At the site, Zatz Not Funny, Fred Zatz talks about FM receivers embedded in a Nokia N800 Internet tablet and the forthcoming Motorola SLVR L9, and also the choices he’s making on radio listenership.

Disappear? Probably not. Morphing again.

The technical protection of content through Digital Rights Management (DRM) arguably isn’t working for anyone; not the consumer, the hardware manufacturers, the MPAA, the RIAA, not even the content creator.

Well, today Steve Jobs posted a plea to the record companies to end their insistence on DRM. Say what you want about Jobs’ previous positions on DRM, it’s a significant event and worth a read:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Über lifestyle automotive brand Scion will be marking a first in the virtual Goliath known as Second Life, by holding an “in-world” press conference announcing the debut of two brand new vehicles: the next generation Scion xB and the mysterious Scion xD, which has so far, successfully avoided the online fiascos centered around embargo violations that have plagued automotive companies over the past year.

While the debut of the vehicles will take place in the real world, at the Chicago Auto Show, Scion will also stage a simultaneous press conference on their Second Life sim, Scion City. The vehicles will be introduced via computer-simulated versions of the two all-new 2008 vehicles. To participate in the virtual press conference, media must be a member of the Second Life community and register at http://www.scion.com/secondlifemedia by 5:00 P.M. CT on Friday, Feb. 2.

It’s an interesting concept, I can’t help but wonder if Scion will hold a snazzy Second Life afterparty complete with virtual Red Bull and catchy techno spinning DJ’s. I kid, I kid…