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Neat short film I found from Germany that discusses carbon footprints. The original description says, “One of the three winners of the Germanwatch screenplay competition about Climate Justice. In this four-minute movie produced by Peter Wedel the CO2 intensive lifestyle of an urban dweller (played by Benno Fürmann) is put in contrast to the people in developing countries which are affected most by Climate Change. Further information on this topic: www.germanwatch.org”

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From the Nokia Conversations blog, comes this great piece of creative that tells the company’s sustainability story in Beijing. The film style has a journalistic feel to it; for some reason to me, reminiscent of the BBC. If Nokia were to make similar videos throughout its global operations, it could have a nice library of stories that communicate the values of its brand.

This type of storytelling is what we call in German “die Oberfläche”, and is meant as a gentle snapshot of a company’s operations without much detail. For reporting purposes, it serves as an excellent tool when looking closer at specific markets (in this case). For an extreme example of video reporting done well on a budget, see this HKBN CSR Report.

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From French automaker Renault comes this great piece of creative that goes through what cars have provided us over time, asks some social critical questions, then elaborates on the values of the company before gently introducing its upcoming range of electric vehicles.

What I love is how they (or rather the agency responsible), has been able to combine these different topics together into a flowing narrative that, while promoting its upcoming electric vehicles, isn’t pushing a green or eco theme. It’s focused on people and values, things which the mainstream public can relate to.

Now if only Ford can also weave together a similar concise message.

via Futerra

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Christina Wodtke speaks at Interaction 09 on defaults, sharing mechanisms, updates, notifications and even SEO as holistic elements of a viral system that is currently driving the popularity of social networks and social media successes everywhere. Over the last three years she’s been working on understanding social collaborative behavior and viral loops, and asserts that interaction design is key to an applications ability to promote itself.  Additionally, she speaks on the underpinnings needed to devise a successful social system as well, touching on identity, reputation, and relationships in digital communities.

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Produced by Xplane for an Economist magazine conference in November, this video brings together a variety of facts and figures around climate change using animation and music, in what I can only call a creative confluence of hope and a subtle call to action.

- via Cool Infographics

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Neat integrated campaign apparently from TBWA France, that uses creative art to bring about awareness of carbon footprints while asking people to cut back on certain activities. Started earlier this year, the campaign was supposedly spread around to other French offices, but doesn’t seem to have been taken up by other international agency offices. The potential could have been neat for a major agency, although they’d probably need to have more employee-generated art, tips, and photos to have REALLY taken off. [http://www.carbonfighters.org/]

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Awesome advocacy video from Method (stylish home cleaning products manufacturer). What I love about these new forms of advocacy is the raw focus on the issue at hand without a commercial tie-in to X amount of dollars donated per product purchased until this time period. Sure, it’s different…but we have to remember that for these campaigns to succeed they have to be rooted in the mission of the organization. When they’re particularly effective is when they’re the innovative underdog like Method and Seventh Generation are against P&G, Unilever, and J&J for example.

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“The Dow Chemical Company plans to work with Algenol Biofuels, Inc. to build and operate a pilot-scale algae-based integrated biorefinery that will convert CO2 into ethanol. This is one of many examples that demonstrates Dow’s commitment to develop new solutions to address the challenges of energy and climate change.”

Interesting video by Dow on the innovative activities they’re pursuing. What I totally love is how they’re using YouTube as a public relations tool to take their message beyond a lame press release. Well done, although they could have added more tags to the description like algae, ethanol, innovation, and energy.

Sustainability is a vast field covering multiple topics in operations, marketing, design, innovation, and new business models. While articles, books, and conferences (if you have the budget and time to attend) can be great, nothing beats having professionals giving you the inside scoop.

The creators of the Sustainable Brands Conference, with whom I work as their community engagement manager, are organizing an online training seminar for 13 weeks. In order to help further this movement along, we’ve recognized many smart business people need to get up to speed - and we’ve done so by getting some of the world’s leading practitioners to teach the subjects they’re passionate about for 90min - available live and on-demand for a very affordable price.

If you’d like to learn more, go ahead and check out the speakers, session descriptions, and dates here. I’ve included the titles of the sessions here for you to see. P.S. - I’ll be speaking on the last session in February on public relations and social media

1. Introduction to Opportunities in Sustainable Innovation
2. Innovation Opportunities in Response to Today’s Environmental Hot Buttons: Climate Change, Water & Waste
3. The Changing Consumer Marketplace
4. Organizational Models for Integrating CSR with Brands
5. Building a Balanced Sustainable Brand Strategy
6. Sustainable Product Design – An Overview of Prevailing Approaches
7. Building Collaborative Supply Chain Partnerships
8. Transforming Your Company Through Sustainability – and Engaging Your Customers and Employees in the Process
9. Introduction to Life Cycle Impact Assessment
10. Business Metrics: Dashboards, KPI’s and other strategies for Goal Setting and Measurement
11. Building Credibility/Avoiding Greenwashing
12. Designing Communications that Resonate
13. PR/Social Media and Alternate Community Building Strategies

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Yes, it all comes down to communication and framing the topic in a way that’s relevant to them based on their values. For example, some people care about saving money in their actions; others may care more about doing the right thing. What are the triggers? Know your audience - or get a really great inspirational speaker