“We feel that the majority of people in the UK still do not understand climate change and how it is happening or that it is a global issue and affects everybody. However the tide is slowly turning. As our commitment to you shopping through MoreEco.com we will offset your CO2 for you – free of charge.”

Click on the shirt to order your own.

For this tremendous achievement of being the top vote-getter, Mark will receive the all-organic, and brand new Water – Use It Wisely t-shirt.  Your victory has, indeed, made you “Shirt Worthy.” (Mark, just tell me where to send it.)

Now, if you want your own “Keep Calm, and Conserve Water” t-shirt that launched today for Water -Use It Wisely, you can WIN ONE through the campaign’s Twitter contest. Tweet WUIW in 140 characters or less why you’re “Shirt Worthy.” The most creative tweets as determined by some crack creative team will win a FREE shirt. But you only have one week.  The contest ends sometime on Friday, May 8.

Safety PSA

I’m proud of our agency’s work to help launch this milestone in Arizona’s history.

More than 200,000 people flooded to one of the 28 new stations along the 20-mile system to ride the sleek new trains, marking it the biggest light rail opening in US history. Nearly 4 years in the making, construction started back in February 2005, and became one of the largest public works projects in Arizona.

Some crowd members waited up to 2 ½ hours at some stations to board the trains on December 27, and many believed it well worth their time! With its first successful month of operation behind it, early reports show METRO are meeting and slightly exceeding their projected ridership of 26,000 boardings per day.

Park&Co produced a series of videos for public education purposes in the run-up to Light Rail’s Grand Opening, including a :30 PSA (featured below) using illustrations from local artist Jason Hill and animation from Studio 522, and a longer play Safety Video (also below) which has been shown in driver education schools and high schools across the valley.

Safety Video

It’s sort of like the mud room adjacent to an enormous clubhouse. “Come on in, hand me your coat, take your shoes off,  and sit out here while we party inside.”

Why has Tom’s of Maine been so successful with traditional consumer practices? The company bleeds green, from it’s all-natural personal care products to it’s environmentally-friendly manufacturing and distribution.  They’ve been this way since 1970, when Tom and Kate Chappell started their enterprise in Kennebunk, Maine.

The 165-person operation manufactures and sells all-natural toothpaste, deodorant, mouthwash, dental floss and soap to the tune of about $25 million in ’07 revenue.  You can buy their products through traditional and online retailers.  They have legions of product evangelists.

Their website does a great job of reflecting their brand. It features the requisite company history, philosophy, and products, and a host of really well done video clips that capture the people and the essence of the company. I was hoping to include one in my post, but you can’t find them on YouTube, or anywhere online for that matter, except their website. It’s a shame, because their videos are productions other companies could learn from in both green operations and communications, while demonstrating to the faithful that Tom’s of Maine continues its green tradition after nearly 40 years.  Here, I’ll give you a static shot of one.

And that’s my point.  Tom’s of Maine is missing a terrific opportunity to share its brand leadership with the world and leverage their product evangelists for what appears to be a lack of a social media strategy.

If I’m Tom, here’s just the beginning of what I’d with his green message using social media:

1. I’d set up a YouTube channel where I can serve up my excellent video content to anyone who cares.
2. My company would absolutely start conversing with my customers through Twitter and Facebook, offering coupons and other added-value goodies (like a new toothbrush with the purchase of my toothpaste) to thank them for being part of my loyal following.  I’m guessing the Tom’s of Maine target market is probably the mom’s and dad’s who grew up on the product, which makes them in the 35+ age range.  This social media strategy would introduce my product to the younger generation and allow me to converse with them on their terms.
3. My online club would also include a mobile marketing strategy that would allow me to deliver coupons to my opted-in customers’ cell phones.  They could show their text coupon on their phones at the counter and leave with additional savings on my fine product. Convenient, green, and value-added.  All brand attributes of Tom’s of Maine.
4. I’d also use these online forums to solicit consumer advice on product advancements, new products, and product line extensions, encouraging our customers to help us be a better company.
5. Moreover, I would use my new found social media voice to help propel the entire industry forward into greener pastures.  I’d share with my competitors and compatriots how we manufacture and distribute the most environmentally-friendly personal care product line in the world. I’d invite them to adopt these practices where feasible (like reusing the same shipping cardboard boxes over and over again, some for more than 10 years. I’d like to show you this video, but I can’t.  You’ll have to click on the above static image).

In addition to helping to educate us all about how to be better stewards of the planet, the online stragey just might lead to an uptick in sales to the tune of 10 – 15%.  A nice toss to the bottom line by simply following the same philosophy that built your extraordinary company over the past 40 years, only now with the cheapest and greenest form of sales and marketing there is: social media.

Water – Use It Wisely is a campaign we created in 1999 to help spread the word about water conservation through our arid Arizona backyard.  Since then, the environmental campaign has grown to more than 400 private and public partners using it throughout the world. We’ve seen some great results, some efforts that missed the mark, and everything in-between.

Last year, after nine years in the game, we realized that Water – Use It Wisely needed a refresh.  We took all of the necessary steps.  We examined our brand position, updated the creative materials, and redesigned the website.  But it wasn’t enough.  It was time to introduce water conservation to the social media world.

On the surface it seems like a tough sell.  How do we spark conversations about water conservation?  It’s not exactly the sexiest subject in the world.  So that’s exactly what we’ve set out to do – make water conservation sexy.

Social media is simple.  It’s about giving people a reason to talk about you in the right places.  Effective social media efforts are those that empower people, especially with green messaging. They provide a gathering place, a relevant piece if information and then the freedom to let someone take your message and do with it as they please.

So with these guidelines in place we were ready to give social media life to Water – Use It Wisely.

Our first step was a blog.

It might not seem very social, but the blog is the pyramid of coals on which the lit match falls.  It provides the foundation for all of our conversations.  But the blog isn’t simply a one-way conversation.  We use it as a tool to recognize friends, call out foes, and spark as many conversations as we can along the way. Check out our 12-days of Christmas water-saving device recommendations.  You will be surprised at what you find.

Next up we needed a place for our followers to gather.  The website is great, but that’s ours and everyone knows that’s ours.  We needed something that people could call their own.  Hence the WUIW Facebook page – the central gathering point for all our social media efforts.  From here we can start discussions, post media and do anything else we want, but most importantly, here is where we let go.  We give in to the mercy of our followers and ask that they take the conversation from here.  Conservation is only as successful as the number and vigor of its participants (something dually true for any social media effort).

Then it was time to fill in the blanks.  A place to send out short bursts of information – Twitter.  A way to put a face to the effort – Flickr.  New ways to spread the message – YouTube.   Putting the infrastructure in place was easy, cost effective, and a great investment in the people we care about most – those environmentally conscious, and unconscious, we haven’t yet started a dialogue with.

The Water – Use It Wisely social media effort in green marketing is an experiment that we hope everyone reading this will engage in alongside us.  Tell us what you like, what you don’t and your own ideas too.  That’s what this whole thing is all about.  Coming together to learn and share.  And it just so happens this confusing and ever evolving world of social media is leading the way.