This week’s #FollowFriday recommendations are Fortune’s green reporter, Olivia Zaleski, and ReadWriteWeb’s Fredric Lardinois.
When it comes to following green people on Twitter, Olivia Zaleski should be included on any list. Olivia is the host of Fortune’s “The Business of Green” video series, which looks at sustainability, the environment and how businesses are successful in those areas. While she interviews some of the most well-known and interesting business people, Olivia makes time to get her Twitter pals involved by taking questions that people would like to see answered and working them into her interviews. So if you’re passionate about the environment and looking for a journalist that will engage with their followers – Olivia is a sure follow.
His bio may limit him to Web 2.0 but Frederic Lardinois takes a look at much more than that. From Microsoft and Yahoo to eBay, Frederic weighs in on most major topics on and off the web. But beyond the breadth and quality of his reporting, Frederic actively follows and engages with over 3200 placing him amongst Twitters most active reporters. If you’re not familiar with Frederic, he’s definitely worth a look… and a follow.
Last week TreeHugger blogger Jaymi Heimbuch stopped by our San Francisco office to discuss the environment, green washing, social media green technology and how businesses and people can become more environmental conscious in everyday life. Afterwards she was kind enough to answer a few additional questions for our blog. If you’re not already following Jaymi on Twitter you can follow her at @JaymiHeimbuch.
RaceTalk: We have seen interest in green technology continue to grow through the first half of this year. What should trends should we expect to see over the next 6-9 months?
Jaymi Heimbuch: I think that platforms for home energy monitoring are going to really proliferate and that’s pretty consumer orientated as well as for larger corporations. There are pretty amazing companies that are doing cool things – including start ups – it’s important to the economy and everything, like linking utilities to consumers and consumers to a broader understanding of energy consumption. The way that these platforms are designed, it’s going to be interesting to watch in the next six months, because it’s going to be important to make the information that the consumers can see is relevant, as well as have it be automated so that consumers don’t necessarily have to say, “Okay, well I see that I’m spending more carbon right now than I want to because of my energy consumption so I’m going to change my thermostat.” Instead they can set the level that they want it to be, or have it automated based on what the utility wants to see, that kind of thing. So that’s what I see for platforms for home atomization.
In terms of gadget stuff, I see a switch to smaller, lighter, more energy efficient devices. The netbooks are kind of a big deal right now, and over the next six months they’re going to continue to be a big deal, and having people become really comfortable with not having this big bad laptop or desktop but actually this highly functional, highly portable, useful device. I’m hoping that people will think that it is a cool thing to have and think, “I don’t need all of that stuff! What else don’t I need?” We will see where that goes, but I’m hoping that in terms of netbooks, something that we look at is disposability. So making it be this really cool, lower energy consuming device, but also not disposable where people think that it’s just like “Oh, well it’s so cheap that I can just use it for now and just ditch it in a year because I’ll get something better,” or whatever it might be. So that’s a worry that I have.
Another trend is getting gadgets off grid where you can. Solar integrated into chargers might become more consumer-friendly. Right now the trend is to just slap a solar cell on something and call it useful, even if it really isn’t. When someone puts a solar cell on the back of a phone and says “Here, charge it,” nobody’s going to put their phone in the sun for an hour to get five minutes of talk time. It’s ridiculous – but it’s a trend. So trying to figure out off-grid charging capabilities that people will actually use, that’s something that I want to keep an eye out for.
RaceTalk: What are some of the most impressive green technologies that could have a real impact on the environment over the next year or so?
Jaymi: I would say carbon accounting. So whatever is happening in the clean-tech sphere in terms of helping businesses – as well as the general population – track and accurately account for carbon. For businesses through the supply chain the big issue is, “How far down the supply chain do we go?” If you’re consuming it you do need to account for the ‘XYZ’ part of your supply chain. Having it be accurate and having it be measurable (is important) and we should have software that allows you to track water, energy, office products that you’re consuming, how that affects your carbon footprint, that sort of thing.
I also think that virtual technologies and virtual conferencing is really cool. I know that over the next six months people will realize that telecommuting is a pretty legit thing for businesses to look into. What technologies surround the ability to teleconference is important. Skype is one of the most invaluable tools I could possibly have in my artillery and it’s almost free. I pay $30 a year in order to have phone calls, but essentially it’s a free service and it allows us so much flexibility in working with this group of people spread out across the nation and across the world, and to be effective as if we were in an office together, so that’s a really big deal one. And then accurate carbon footprint calculators for people to do quick references are great, so that that they can know it’s accurate and can determine really quickly, “Okay, what’s my carbon footprint for this flight that I want to take? What do I offset? Is that an accurate amount to offset?”
RaceTalk: Do you use Skype for your editorial meetings?
Jaymi: Yes, we use Skype all day, every day. We even have a special chat room that, the name of it changes constantly, but it’s essentially our water cooler and we hang out all day long, and we’ll swap links and other things. We’ll just chit chat and it makes it feel like we’re in an office setting.
RaceTalk: So you’re communicating with your colleagues all the time?
Jaymi: Yeah, constantly.
RaceTalk: What are some of your favorite topics to cover?
Jaymi: I get really excited about big deal subjects like water issues and technology around water issues. I get excited about when technology will and won’t help, and talking about that. I get very excited about gadgets and the way consumer gadgets can be greener such as consolidation. I think about cool ways to do that, how can we fix them, how can we make them obsolete, how we can (get to a point where we don’t have) devices anymore, or just get away with one device. (I look at) How are they being built, how are they being manufactured, how can that be improved, or what cool designs are going on to be able to green up what we are doing. I get pretty excited about the big deal topics in clean tech which includes the smart grid – that’s revolutionizing how we consume energy. And once we have a smart grid in place, how that can get us off of coal energy and onto renewable energy.
RaceTalk: How do you think social media can play into creating green activism?
Jaymi: It’s huge! It can’t be understated how important online social media is to green activism. There are tools that we use all the time. For instance, within Twitter hash tags or something to help people filter in green information (is important to) having it spread really rapidly. We use Facebook to (connect with) people who are using it on a daily basis. The way that social media connects people instantly and connects them to (additional) people down the line instantly allows you to access really high profile people. You can just be twittering and all of a sudden you can get connected to someone who’s way high up on the influential chain. It’s huge. Charity Water is a really good example of how Twitter can help out with green activism. They had a “twestival” back in March and it was basically getting people, via Twitter, to get together and tweet about events and go to these events and donate. They were able to raise tons of money to help start Wells in Africa – direct results from social online media.
RaceTalk: Do you see Twitter and Facebook having the largest impact, at least right now?
Jaymi: Probably, just because so many people use it. Twitter is really for networking people who already care and have an eye out for it anyway. Sometimes it will reach other people, but sometimes not so much. Digg is a really good tool for getting stories out to people. Facebook is kind of a hybrid of the two, so you can get stories out to people and you can get it to be a little bit more viral, but you also have a stronger connection to the people who can leave comments about a story or who can fan something or who can spread it and track it. From a media side, being able to track what people are saying about the stories you’re putting out there and how it impacts them is really important.
RaceTalk: Do you use the Twitter trends to see which topics “green” people are discussing most?
Jaymi: I don’t use it terribly often. It helps sometimes, but I have a beat so it doesn’t really do much for me. It would need to be honed down into the trending topics for my specific area. Other people in our organization do pay attention to that, they’re like “Hey, this is what people seem to be really interested in. Let’s write about it, let’s talk about it. Let’s put some value-added into the conversation, somehow.” So we will grab things. Also, Google (can tell us) whatever word is being searched, so we have people who will monitor that and say “Hey! Everyone’s talking about this. We’ve got something important to say about it, let’s talk about it and have that be something that pops up on searches.”
Ben: So your editors definitely pay attention to it?
Jaymi: Oh, we pay very close attention to whatever the heartbeat of green is, or how we can take what’s popular right then and show people how it can be green, because our whole thing is making green feel very accessible and practical and inviting to everyone. We don’t want to say “Oh, that’s awful, that’s not green,” but we point out when it’s not. We like to say “Hey, look at this crazy concept! Yeah, it’s crazy, but it could be kind of cool.” And then everybody loves crazy concepts and they latch on to this weird concept idea, and then through us see how that can be green or how it could be improved or however it is.
RaceTalk: What online green communities do you find most valuable?
Jaymi: For me, Twitter is pretty huge. I used to think that Twitter was the weirdest thing you could possibly get involved in. I had no idea why anyone would care about me and what I’m cooking for dinner. Now that I use it as an actual tool to network with people I work with, it’s pretty amazing. I’ve met wonderful people, I have been able to solidify good relationships with peers within the industry, you can keep track of what’s happening really easily and people know about what you’re doing really easily, so it’s been a great social networking tool for me personally. Facebook I keep for my friends and family, but other people I know use it as a way to really spread and network with people and have thousands of friends so that they can spread information. That could be an important tool for a lot of people as well. Personally, that’s my one private area online.
RaceTalk: What should PR people know before pitching a story to you?
Jaymi: Okay, there are probably a couple of things. One, please, please, please know what’s green and what’s not! I got something in my email today that was about an electronic cigarette or something and it’s green because “people won’t throw away their cigarette butts!” I said, “Well, no, it’s not. It’s a thing, but it’s not necessarily a green thing. You’re trying to find this green angle to it and it doesn’t pull it off.” They could’ve pulled that off with really light green websites, but they obviously weren’t savvy to how serious we are about genuine green stuff. So that didn’t get past my delete button.
(It’s important to) know what my beat is and what I tend to cover. I am super impressed when a PR person has read what I’ve written before and has a legitimate opinion about it. When they can say “Hey, I read this and I thought it was interesting because of XYZ. This thing that I’m promoting ties into that, and I think that you would be interested.” Then (I like) when they have a really great press release and make it really quick to scan with the really important information up front. Sometimes they do these really flowery intros and it’s like, “What’s your point?” I need to know very quickly what your green angle is, what your product is, is it legit, and then let’s move on. So those are really important, and I really don’t like when they get too efficient so that it seems very impersonal. Sometimes people will say “I think this is of interest to you. Please see below.” Then it’s the press release pasted in. I will see below because I want to know what it is, but it doesn’t make me want to cover it for you. So (it’s important to) know that balance. There are some PR people that I’ve worked with who I think are amazing at what they do because they have that balance between being really friendly and wonderful, but never in my face, and they always bring me cool stuff. And part of it is, that’s who your clients are, but part of it is that they just know how to show it to me.
RaceTalk: So I’m guessing email is the best way to pitch you, but are you also into the pitching via Twitter?
Jaymi: I’ve never been pitched via Twitter!
RaceTalk: Really?
Jaymi: Yeah, which is very interesting! I wonder why I haven’t? Email is a big deal to me, because I’m online. I’m sure that there are other people who are used to being on the phone and stuff. Personally, I really hate phone conversations, they just are annoying. All I can think of is that I’m using my cell phone minutes, and I don’t hear well so I don’t even want to be on the phone, so I tend to be very short. Email is great because it gives me the time to see the information and prioritize it throughout the day. I might think it’s interesting but I can’t get to it right away, I’ll get to it at six o’clock tonight, so it gives me that flexibility and gives me time to read it. So when I do pick up the phone and PR person calls and says “I have something that I think would be interesting,” my reaction is always, “Okay, send it to me in an email and I’ll look at it, and I’ll see what we can do for you and if it’s something we want to promote.” But I always want to see it and to have some time to myself to know it’s legit. When you’re on the phone, you can pitch something that sounds awesome, and then you see it in writing and you’re like “Crap, I said I’d cover that, and I don’t really want to.”
RaceTalk: We have seen interest in green technology continue to grow through the first half of this year. What should trends should we expect to see over the next 6-9 months?
Jaymi Heimbuch: I think that platforms for home energy monitoring are going to really proliferate and that’s pretty consumer orientated as well as for larger corporations. There are pretty amazing companies that are doing cool things – including start ups – it’s important to the economy and everything, like linking utilities to consumers and consumers to a broader understanding of energy consumption. The way that these platforms are designed, it’s going to be interesting to watch in the next six months, because it’s going to be important to make the information that the consumers can see is relevant, as well as have it be automated so that consumers don’t necessarily have to say, “Okay, well I see that I’m spending more carbon right now than I want to because of my energy consumption so I’m going to change my thermostat.” Instead they can set the level that they want it to be, or have it automated based on what the utility wants to see, that kind of thing. So that’s what I see for platforms for home atomization.
In terms of gadget stuff, I see a switch to smaller, lighter, more energy efficient devices. The netbooks are kind of a big deal right now, and over the next six months they’re going to continue to be a big deal, and having people become really comfortable with not having this big bad laptop or desktop but actually this highly functional, highly portable, useful device. I’m hoping that people will think that it is a cool thing to have and think, “I don’t need all of that stuff! What else don’t I need?” We will see where that goes, but I’m hoping that in terms of netbooks, something that we look at is disposability. So making it be this really cool, lower energy consuming device, but also not disposable where people think that it’s just like “Oh, well it’s so cheap that I can just use it for now and just ditch it in a year because I’ll get something better,” or whatever it might be. So that’s a worry that I have.
Another trend is getting gadgets off grid where you can. Solar integrated into chargers might become more consumer-friendly. Right now the trend is to just slap a solar cell on something and call it useful, even if it really isn’t. When someone puts a solar cell on the back of a phone and says “Here, charge it,” nobody’s going to put their phone in the sun for an hour to get five minutes of talk time. It’s ridiculous – but it’s a trend. So trying to figure out off-grid charging capabilities that people will actually use, that’s something that I want to keep an eye out for.
RaceTalk: What are some of the most impressive green technologies that could have a real impact on the environment over the next year or so?
JH: I would say carbon accounting. So whatever is happening in the clean-tech sphere in terms of helping businesses – as well as the general population – track and accurately account for carbon. For businesses through the supply chain the big issue is, “How far down the supply chain do we go?” If you’re consuming it you do need to account for the ‘XYZ’ part of your supply chain. Having it be accurate and having it be measurable (is important) and we should have software that allows you to track water, energy, office products that you’re consuming, how that affects your carbon footprint, that sort of thing.
I also think that virtual technologies and virtual conferencing is really cool. I know that over the next six months people will realize that telecommuting is a pretty legit thing for businesses to look into. What technologies surround the ability to teleconference is important. Skype is one of the most invaluable tools I could possibly have in my artillery and it’s almost free. I pay $30 a year in order to have phone calls, but essentially it’s a free service and it allows us so much flexibility in working with this group of people spread out across the nation and across the world, and to be effective as if we were in an office together, so that’s a really big deal one. And then accurate carbon footprint calculators for people to do quick references are great, so that that they can know it’s accurate and can determine really quickly, “Okay, what’s my carbon footprint for this flight that I want to take? What do I offset? Is that an accurate amount to offset?”
RaceTalk: Do you use Skype for your editorial meetings?
JH: Yes, we use Skype all day, every day. We even have a special chat room that, the name of it changes constantly, but it’s essentially our water cooler and we hang out all day long, and we’ll swap links and other things. We’ll just chit chat and it makes it feel like we’re in an office setting.
RaceTalk: So you’re communicating with your colleagues all the time?
JH: Yeah, constantly.
RaceTalk: What are some of your favorite topics to cover?
JH: I get really excited about big deal subjects like water issues and technology around water issues. I get excited about when technology will and won’t help, and talking about that. I get very excited about gadgets and the way consumer gadgets can be greener such as consolidation. I think about cool ways to do that, how can we fix them, how can we make them obsolete, how we can (get to a point where we don’t have) devices anymore, or just get away with one device. (I look at) How are they being built, how are they being manufactured, how can that be improved, or what cool designs are going on to be able to green up what we are doing. I get pretty excited about the big deal topics in clean tech which includes the smart grid – that’s revolutionizing how we consume energy. And once we have a smart grid in place, how that can get us off of coal energy and onto renewable energy.
RaceTalk: How do you think social media can play into creating green activism?
JH: It’s huge! It can’t be understated how important online social media is to green activism. There are tools that we use all the time. For instance, within Twitter hash tags or something to help people filter in green information (is important to) having it spread really rapidly. We use Facebook to (connect with) people who are using it on a daily basis. The way that social media connects people instantly and connects them to (additional) people down the line instantly allows you to access really high profile people. You can just be twittering and all of a sudden you can get connected to someone who’s way high up on the influential chain. It’s huge. Charity Water is a really good example of how Twitter can help out with green activism. They had a “twestival” back in March and it was basically getting people, via Twitter, to get together and tweet about events and go to these events and donate. They were able to raise tons of money to help start Wells in Africa – direct results from social online media.
RaceTalk: Do you see Twitter and Facebook having the largest impact, at least right now?
JH: Probably, just because so many people use it. Twitter is really for networking people who already care and have an eye out for it anyway. Sometimes it will reach other people, but sometimes not so much. Digg is a really good tool for getting stories out to people. Facebook is kind of a hybrid of the two, so you can get stories out to people and you can get it to be a little bit more viral, but you also have a stronger connection to the people who can leave comments about a story or who can fan something or who can spread it and track it. From a media side, being able to track what people are saying about the stories you’re putting out there and how it impacts them is really important.
RaceTalk: Do you use the Twitter trends to see which topics “green” people are discussing most?
JH: I don’t use it terribly often. It helps sometimes, but I have a beat so it doesn’t really do much for me. It would need to be honed down into the trending topics for my specific area. Other people in our organization do pay attention to that, they’re like “Hey, this is what people seem to be really interested in. Let’s write about it, let’s talk about it. Let’s put some value-added into the conversation, somehow.” So we will grab things. Also, Google (can tell us) whatever word is being searched, so we have people who will monitor that and say “Hey! Everyone’s talking about this. We’ve got something important to say about it, let’s talk about it and have that be something that pops up on searches.”
RaceTalk: So your editors definitely pay attention to it?
JH: Oh, we pay very close attention to whatever the heartbeat of green is, or how we can take what’s popular right then and show people how it can be green, because our whole thing is making green feel very accessible and practical and inviting to everyone. We don’t want to say “Oh, that’s awful, that’s not green,” but we point out when it’s not. We like to say “Hey, look at this crazy concept! Yeah, it’s crazy, but it could be kind of cool.” And then everybody loves crazy concepts and they latch on to this weird concept idea, and then through us see how that can be green or how it could be improved or however it is.
RaceTalk: What online green communities do you find most valuable?
JH: For me, Twitter is pretty huge. I used to think that Twitter was the weirdest thing you could possibly get involved in. I had no idea why anyone would care about me and what I’m cooking for dinner. Now that I use it as an actual tool to network with people I work with, it’s pretty amazing. I’ve met wonderful people, I have been able to solidify good relationships with peers within the industry, you can keep track of what’s happening really easily and people know about what you’re doing really easily, so it’s been a great social networking tool for me personally. Facebook I keep for my friends and family, but other people I know use it as a way to really spread and network with people and have thousands of friends so that they can spread information. That could be an important tool for a lot of people as well. Personally, that’s my one private area online.
RaceTalk: What should PR people know before pitching a story to you?
JH: Okay, there are probably a couple of things. One, please, please, please know what’s green and what’s not! I got something in my email today that was about an electronic cigarette or something and it’s green because “people won’t throw away their cigarette butts!” I said, “Well, no, it’s not. It’s a thing, but it’s not necessarily a green thing. You’re trying to find this green angle to it and it doesn’t pull it off.” They could’ve pulled that off with really light green websites, but they obviously weren’t savvy to how serious we are about genuine green stuff. So that didn’t get past my delete button.
(It’s important to) know what my beat is and what I tend to cover. I am super impressed when a PR person has read what I’ve written before and has a legitimate opinion about it. When they can say “Hey, I read this and I thought it was interesting because of XYZ. This thing that I’m promoting ties into that, and I think that you would be interested.” Then (I like) when they have a really great press release and make it really quick to scan with the really important information up front. Sometimes they do these really flowery intros and it’s like, “What’s your point?” I need to know very quickly what your green angle is, what your product is, is it legit, and then let’s move on. So those are really important, and I really don’t like when they get too efficient so that it seems very impersonal. Sometimes people will say “I think this is of interest to you. Please see below.” Then it’s the press release pasted in. I will see below because I want to know what it is, but it doesn’t make me want to cover it for you. So (it’s important to) know that balance. There are some PR people that I’ve worked with who I think are amazing at what they do because they have that balance between being really friendly and wonderful, but never in my face, and they always bring me cool stuff. And part of it is, that’s who your clients are, but part of it is that they just know how to show it to me.
RaceTalk: So I’m guessing email is the best way to pitch you, but are you also into the pitching via Twitter?
JH: I’ve never been pitched via Twitter!
RaceTalk: Really?
JH: Yeah, which is very interesting! I wonder why I haven’t? Email is a big deal to me, because I’m online. I’m sure that there are other people who are used to being on the phone and stuff. Personally, I really hate phone conversations, they just are annoying. All I can think of is that I’m using my cell phone minutes, and I don’t hear well so I don’t even want to be on the phone, so I tend to be very short. Email is great because it gives me the time to see the information and prioritize it throughout the day. I might think it’s interesting but I can’t get to it right away, I’ll get to it at six o’clock tonight, so it gives me that flexibility and gives me time to read it. So when I do pick up the phone and PR person calls and says “I have something that I think would be interesting,” my reaction is always, “Okay, send it to me in an email and I’ll look at it, and I’ll see what we can do for you and if it’s something we want to promote.” But I always want to see it and to have some time to myself to know it’s legit. When you’re on the phone, you can pitch something that sounds awesome, and then you see it in writing and you’re like “Crap, I said I’d cover that, and I don’t really want to.”
More than 700 brand marketers, advertisers and communications professionals are meeting in Monterey, CA this week for the fifth annual Sustainable Brands conference.Today I sat in a few of the morning presentations from some of the larger brand leaders such as Clorox and PepsiCo to hear more about some of their successful sustainable marketing campaigns.
While Clorox touted the success of their new GreenWorks line of natural cleaning products and their number one ranking in a recent consumer perception study about sustainable brands, PepsiCo’s Director of Marketing for Sunchip Thomas Oh promoted the world’s first fully compostable chip bag (to be accurate, currently only the outer most layer of the chip bag is bio-degradable but the company is working to make the entire bag 100 percent compostable by 2010).
What I found interesting was that both companies focused a lot of their presentation on the traditional marketing campaign elements – TV spots, print ads and product tours – and while Sunchip’s Oh briefly mentioned how a tweet by celebrity Demi Moore stimulated hundreds of tweets in the Twitterverse and more than 115 million impressions in only three days, both presentations would have been far more timely and interesting if they had discussed the role and power of social media in their respective campaigns.While seeing touchy-feely TV spots of women and families munching on “solar-powered chips” may be entertaining, wouldn’t it be much more compelling if the audience heard about the actual consumer conversations that are now taking place around their products, and what key learnings are being applied to the improved ability to emotionally connect consumers to products via social media?
The two presentations that actually featured some compelling examples that highlight the power of social media came from Blair Shane, chief marketing officer of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and Steve Newcomb, CEO of Virgance.
Tasked with “reinventing” a 150 year old institution into a thriving, rich and relevant consumer experience for visitors of all ages, Shane is successfully using social media tools as the single channel to communicate to and attract more than 4,000 young adults to the Academy for Night Life, an evening of music, cocktails and science each Thursday night.
Newcomb presented a distinct vision for what he calls the opportunity of a lifetime to make sustainability our generation’s greatest achievement.By creating Virgance, a company that effectively combines capitalism and activism, Newcomb debuted his latest venture – Lend Me Some Sugar, an American Idol-like “TV” program for sustainability that will be produced on Facebook.With Newcomb mentioning data that Facebook will have roughly the same demographics and size as the mainstream TV audience in as little as two years (he estimated between 250-300M users), Newcomb is betting on Facebook as the new channel to motivate consumers and reward advertisers.
Last year we celebrated Earth Day with a rundown on what media outlets and companies were talking about. Here is a look at a few things that are happening on this year on Earth Day:
Fortune concluded their Branstorm: Green today with a big splash – an address from President Clinton. In fact, Twitter has been buzzing about the brainstorm all week long.
This is the second part of our conversation with Marc Gunther, which took place on Tuesday. Part 1 can be found here.
RaceTalk: Marc, I noticed one company speaking at Brainstorm: Green is Better Place. I also caught that you’ve written about them recently. They’ve had a lot of media attention and I was wondering if you could try explaining what it is about them that makes them so interesting. Especially with so many other start-ups in the green space competing for the same media attention.
Marc Gunther: They have a charismatic CEO ,who’s a great salesman for the company in Shai Agassi. They also have a mass model. So I’m more interested in Better Place than I am in, say Tesla. If you believe Shai he’s going to put cars on the road for a lower price comparable to today’s cars, maybe even less. Also his model is – if you’re interested in business – really interesting; because he wants to not only make the biggest change ever since the invention of the combustion engine or air conditioning, he also wants to totally rewrite the model of the automobile industry. Making it look like a cell phone model, where you’re basically not exactly owning the car battery – you’re kind of leasing it, paying for minutes. It’s a little hard to explain. He would do it much better than I would. But, it’s a very intriguing idea. I’m also really interested in other electric car companies, but more those that have the ability to scale up. I’m really interested in the Chinese company BYD. We’re actually going to have a major shareholder of BYD at the conference. A guy named Li Lu who is absolutely fascinating. Li Lu was one of the leaders of the Tienanmen square uprising twenty years ago this June, I think it was. Came to the US for school, became a venture capitalist and a private equity investor, and ended up being the guy who connected Warren Buffett to BYD. He hasn’t really spoken in public before, so he’s going to be a great addition to the event.
RT: So I know we talked about Bill ford. I was going to get your thoughts around Detroit. Going way back, you worked at the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press.
MG: But I didn’t know anything about cars then, and I still don’t know anything about cars.
RT: My question is around Detroit’s newspapers – do you have thoughts around the Detroit Free Press ending deliveries on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays?
MG: I don’t think it’s a good sign when any company tells consumers what day they can get its product. I mean it’s just not a good thing. Imagine if, pick a company, HP said we’re only going to sell you our computers on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays because that’s when we sell a lot of them and we’re just going to shut down the other days of the week.
RT: Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times had a good piece today basically saying that there were no newspapers delivered yesterday in Detroit on one of the biggest news days in the city’s history.
MG: If you say its kind of a transition to an all-digital model then you could think about what it means. But it clearly can’t be a – it doesn’t work as a long-term model. You’ve still got huge infrastructure, presses, all that kind of stuff. If anything, the model at work is the model where newspapers print their own paper and print the national edition of the Wall Street Journal and then they print some competitor’s publication. You know, you can’t – it can’t work long-term. But maybe it’s a way to get people used to the idea of reading online.
RT: Finally I caught that Google officially launched their VC ARM today with Google Ventures.
MG: That’s really interesting – isn’t it?
RT: Yes, they’ve pledged to make this their new venture arm for some of their Google.org interests and it sounds like they’re planning to invest at least 100 million in green tech and clean tech over this year. I was wondering what your thoughts around that are? With a lack of current exit strategies, VC’s strapped, is this going to be a big deal for the clean tech and green tech sector?
MG: I don’t think it’s financially a huge deal. It’s not a large amount of money and I don’t think they said all of it would go to clean tech. But it will be a part of that. The value that Google has is when they invest in something, they automatically make it cool because they’re just such a cool company. So, interestingly, in my blog, a week or so ago, I ran a story about Bill Gross’ car company called Aptera and the headline on it was “Google’s favorite car company”. The traffic was huge. If I said “Here’s Aptera”, the traffic would have been very small. So the value for Google – they have fascinating investments. They’re in this company call Makani Power, which is sort of some kind of combination of kite and wind power company.
RT: Yeah, high altitude wind power.
MG: Yeah, that’s what I guess they call it. When Google invested in geothermal that personally got me interested in geothermal so I think their cache is really worth a lot and that’s why Google interests me.
RT: So like you said, it could potentially create more buzz around these green tech projects and a bigger umbrella for them.
MG: Yea and also it’s possible if Google’s smart, that they’ll do what other VCs do and connect these companies up with one another. I’m sure they will do that. I mean Google’s energy story I think is one of the really interesting kind of under-reported stories out there. I actually did pitch it a couple of times to Fortune, and couldn’t quite get them to go for it. But I would really like to know how and why that’s happening and how they’re doing it all.
I was shocked (as was everyone else at Racepoint) last December when I found out that Marc Gunther was being let go from Fortune. At the time, Gunther had been with the magazine for more than 12 years. During that time he penned cover stories on the greening of Wal-Mart, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and spirituality in the workplace. He has also by-lined feature stories on CEO Jeff Immelt’s efforts to reshape the values of General Electric, the business of carbon finance, the rise of corporate social responsibility, the zero-waste movement, genetically-modified rice, environmental activism, corporate governance, AIDS and gay rights in corporate America. However, he became most well known during his last several years there for his weekly column on sustainability.
The timing of his exit was especially baffling given President Obama’s recent election, which foreshadowed green becoming an even bigger storyline for businesses and the country as a whole. While Gunther still contributes to Fortune from time-to-time he’s moved onto “greener” pastures in growing the online distribution of his stories on sustainability.
Yesterday, Ben and I got a chance to catch up with Marc, who is in the process of penning a likely cover story for Fortune, to find out what he’s up to these days, his thoughts the upcoming FortuneBrainstorm: Green show and how he’s utilizing his blog as a sustainable-news wire.
Here’s part 1 of our conversation.
RaceTalk: On December 16th you wrote an eloquent post for the Huffington Post, entitled “The Recession Hits Home,” in which you discussed being scooped on your own layoff from Fortune and the current perils of the media industry. The news came as a shock to many as the demand for news around green has skyrocketed – and Fortune had been leading the charge with you and Todd Woody (who was also let go as well, but still contributes). I thought you made some interesting points in your post, and I know one of the first bloggers , who scooped you on your exit, shed light on the possibility of environmental reporters being endangered. Wondering your thoughts, as it seemed to be a strange move on Fortune’s end with the focus on green stories only growing.
Marc Gunther: I mean, was I surprised that Fortune let go of the 2 people who had most focused on business and the environment? Yeah, I think it’s obviously a big important issue both on a kind of global, social level, which should matter, but perhaps even more importantly for a business magazine, I think it’s becoming a really core business issue as well. I also think it’s a job of newspapers and magazines to write about things that are really important and I don’t think there’s much that’s more important than the climate change issue. Even if the midst of this terrible economy.
RT: I guess one of the things that crossed my mind is, is that it’s obviously a horrible time for the media, too, so you know they’re thinking of their magazines as businesses. Do you think it’s still hard, to sell advertisers around leading edge, green, story-lines?
MG: I don’t get involved in the sales side of the magazine at all. However, I actually don’t think it’s that hard. I think there is advertising that’s ready to be paired up with reporting around environmental issues. That should be a help to people who want to write about the environment – the fact that there are advertisers out there who want to associate themselves with that. I do think there’s advertising interest in the topic and you can tell that just by watching even broadcast television, cable television or looking at magazines and newspapers. I mean look at the huge branding campaign IBM has been running for months around a Smarter Planet. I think it’s really a good campaign and fortunately for them it actually matches up with what they’re doing.
RT: It matches up with what the administration is saying, too.
MG: That’s the other reason it seems to me that newspapers and magazines should be paying more attention to this set of issues because of what’s happening in DC.
RT: Right, it’s on the front of the agenda.
MG: It really is. I mean in a way that it has literally never has been before.
MG: I’m not actually. I’m writing, speaking and consulting for a variety of people, but I do have a great relationship with Greener World Media. They’ve given me a title of Senior Writer and I’m doing some work for them, but it’s not my employer. I’ll tell you what the model is because there’s nothing secret about it. Basically what I did was, I went to Joel McCauer, who runs the editorial side of Greener World Media, and I basically said I’d like to license my blog to you because the blog is mostly now about sustainability. In exchange for having the ability to run my blog content I would like you to pay me $x per month. We had some negations and in both cases, we worked it out in a really good way where they’re paying me a certain fee per month to run my blog, and then I’m also going to do some original content for each of their sites. But, I’m not an employee of anyone. Other than myself.
RT: That makes sense.
MG: I’m actually hoping to expand the model and be as widely distributed as possible with anything I write on the internet and supplement that with some exclusive content.
RT: So you’re continuing to kind of choose your own beat. Are you trying to stay focused solely on sustainability?
MG: Yes, definitely. Not only trying to. I’m going to.
RT: How often are you still contributing to Fortune?
MG: I have what I believe will be the cover story of the next issue, because it’s an issue tied to the environment and the Brainstorm: Green conference in April. I’m still working on Brainstorm: Green as a sort co-chair of and helped to create the agenda. I’m really leading with Brian Dumane – the guy who is the environment editor there. Beyond this story though it’s not clear what, if anything, I’m going to be doing for them. We haven’t really worked anything out. I’m hoping to do more writing for them, but the challenge is, again, it’s a skinny magazine these days. They have a good staff of talented people and we just don’t know what the appetite will be for freelancers. We have a good relationship and everything – it’s just a question of what they need.
RT: As far as the conference this year, I was reading that you have Former President Clinton speaking as well as Bill Ford. Who do you think is going to create the big buzz there? What major themes for the conference should we expect?
MG: In terms of the big buzz, let’s just say I managed to avoid moderating the panel that comes on after Bill Clinton. That was my major accomplishment having to do with the conference. It was not doing that.
RT: Who’s interviewing him? Andy (Andy Sewer, Managing Editor of Fortune)?
MG: Andy is going to interview Clinton. Although I don’t think it’s really going to be an interview. I think he’s just going to talk. I mean I’m really happy with the event and how it’s shaping up. I think we have the right auto chairman in Bill Ford because Ford could end up being the last US automaker standing and I think they haven’t gotten as much recognition around environmentally friendly cars as they should have. I also think he’s a fascinating guy because he wanted to do a lot more with Ford than he was able to. So I’m hoping he will be able to talk about what the forces were that stopped him from making Ford more the green car company 5, 6, 7 years ago when it wasn’t just rhetoric on his part. It was a really sincere desire to make that happen and he didn’t make it happen and I want to know why. So that will be good. We’re going to do a lot of Washington stuff. We haven’t yet got confirmation, but I’m pretty confident we’ll have some administration people there to talk. I mean I’m interested in a lot of things. I’m doing a panel called Sustainable Consumption, which is going to include the CEO of SC Johnson, Smith Johnson, who’s a really progressive environmentalist; Carl Bass from Autodesk; the CEO of the big architectural firm HOK; Bill Valentine, who also is very passionate about the environment. I really want to dig down there into the question of how do you have growth companies that want to sell more stuff and do it in an environmentally sustainable way. That to me is sort of the core challenge for business, which is how do you mesh the growth imperative with the sustainability imperative? That’s what I’m going to talk to Paul Hawken about at our first night dinner. Sort of why going green isn’t enough. What the difference is between green, a term that really doesn’t mean anything, and sustainability, a term, which actually has a specific meaning, which should be the goal companies. That means, essentially using all renewable resources, all renewable energy, zero waste. That should be the model. Throw nothing away. Don’t use anything that can’t grow again.
While technology start-ups still point to the general weakness of financial markets as the reasoning behind not going public; new findings by the National Venture Capital Association may indicate a larger trend in where VC’s are allocating their investors’ dollars.
“In the second quarter of this year not a single company backed by venture capitalists has gone public. It is the first time that has happened since 1978, according to a venture capital industry group.”
According to Nancy Pfund, a VC at DBL Investors in San Francisco, the economic slump is playing the biggest role in drying up public offerings:
“Wall Street is being very selective in taking companies public, and blessing only those with particularly high revenue and growth projections. And venture capitalists are wary because they worry that their returns will be limited in a depressed market.”
Today’s Wall Street Journal story by Lynn Cowan echoes the decline in IPO’s and illustrates that industry experts don’t expect the rest of the summer to be any different:
“The Outlook for the rest of the summer is similarly grim. Major stock indexes around the world fell this month, and bankers believe worries about rising energy prices and inflation, as well as banks needing capital, will continue to spook investors, who tend to avoid new stocks during times of uncertainty.”
While the broad overlook for the IPO market may be grim there are signs that investments in “green” start-ups are growing. In fact the money now being allocated towards “GreenTech” or “CleanTech” companies may be one of the key contributing factors in drying up the current IPO market – as Richtel notes in his piece and Katie Fehrenbacher expands upon for her piece on earth2tech:
“The pipeline for public offerings has dried up in part because of the considerable shift in the industry’s interest in the last three years into “green” technologies, which was taking time to bear fruit.”
As business issues around globalization, sustainability, green IT and social responsibility become crucial for any corporate communications strategy, Racepoint Group is excited to announce today a deepening and expansion of our corporate and public affairs capabilities.
Racepoint has added David Whitmore as executive vice president of our new Washington D.C. offices.David will be heading a growing office that now includes: Brian Lunde, senior consultant of issues management and government relations; Timothy Binning, senior consultant of issues management and government relations; and Rich Blewitt, senior advisor crisis and issues management (who joined Racepoint several months ago).
The new Washington D.C. office will join our offices in Boston, London and San Francisco.
Using Racepoint Group’s expertise in digital and social media, the Washington D.C. practice will deliver a next-generation corporate practice to help companies enhance their reputations and navigate the challenges of 21st century communications.
For more information, read our press release on the new offering.
Bernoff, who focuses on social technologies for the research firm, got right to the point. “Concentrate on the people, not the technologies,” he told a crowd of about 200 public relations people during his keynote address.
Bernoff said that marketers and PR people need to understand that controlling the conversation on the Web is an impossible task. He said he wrote “Groundswell” with fellow Forrester analyst Charlene Li as a manual for using social technologies effectively. Bernoff said participation and a willingness to engage freely are the keys.
During his presentation, Bernoff outlined his four step process for engaging with what he calls the groundswell of people using social and digital technologies.
1. People. Companies first priority should be assessing their customers’ social activities. What technologies are their customers using? How are they communicating? Where can they be found online?
2. Objectives. Companies then need to decide what they want to accomplish with social and digital media relations. What are the goals? Is digital and social media the best channels?
3. Strategy. Thirdly, companies need to expend the energy up front to plan for how social and digital media relations with change relationships with customers. What are the short and long-term consequences of engaging on the Web?
4. Technology. Lastly, companies need to decide which social networks, widgets and tools are best for them and their customers.
While I was in the checkout line of the supermarket last week, I realized that I had forgotten to bring one of the reusable grocery bags that I had purchased recently. I settled for a paper bag and felt a little guilty about it while I was walking out of the store. As it turns out, I’m not the only one.
In 2007 about 20 percent of Americans surveyed said they were feeling guilty about not being green. This year, 22 percent are feeling some green guilt. While this number isn’t overwhelming, it’s now apparently significant enough for many companies to create a green image and support environmentally friendly initiatives, like Xerox, Coke, Marriott, and Sun Chips.
