Despite recent analyses to the contrary (Has Wal-Mart buried Mom and Pop?), it is legend among both media and public alike that Wal-Mart has negatively impacted numerous small businesses. In Iowa alone, it has been estimated that the opening of Wal-Mart stores resulted in the failure of no less than 555 grocery stroes, 298 hardware stores, 293 building suppliers, 161 variety shops, 158 women's stores and 116 pharmacies - for a total of 1581 business failures.

From the cries of small natural food suppliers on the Coop America listserve to websites like Wal-Mart Watch to the numerous "Why I hate Wal-Mart" blogs and postings, Wal-Mart's role as a disruptive force, particularly in the American food system, continues to reverberate.

Yet in all fairness, there are signs of positive change, particularly on the environmental front. More recently, Wal-Mart improved the fuel efficiency of their fleet, launched a campaign to reduce packaging and is promoting “sustainable” products to customers: selling energy-efficient light bulbs (100 million sold by October 2007), or concentrated detergents that use less water (saving 400 million gallons of water). The environmental savings numbers are testimony to the resounding impact the company has when it changes even one small policy.

But what of its role in our U.S. food distribution system?

Is Wal-Mart’s story changing – as on the environmental front?

Certainly fundamental changes underly the US Food system itself.

Watershed Changes in the US Food Industry, Distribution & Consumers

Over the past five years, and particularly recently with the U.S. economic turmoil, changes are afoot that have not escaped Wal-Mart’s corporate intelligence. In particular, several events in the 2007-2008 time frame are combining to make local growing using clean sustainable farming techniques extremely popular and local distribution economically appealing. These include:

Growing Food Safety Concerns. In recent years, there have been a number of food crises, starting with 2007’s E. Coli outbreak in spinach, contaminated pet food from China and, more recently, the finding of salmonella in tomatoes, sickening 228 people in 23 U.S. states. More people are aware of the distressing statistic that less than 2% of imported food is inspected by the FDA. The multiple food crisis events are taking their toll: A 2007 study by the Food Marketing Institute shows that only 66% of U.S. consumers are confident that food is safe, down 82% form the year before.

Price of Oil/ Rising Gas Prices. Although on a short-term downward hiatus now, there is consensus that the price of oil and gas is likely to stay high long-term. The concern of "food miles" is spreading out of the environmental population to the broader mainstream. U.S. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the absurdity that the average salad travels 1500 miles before reaching their table. By the same token, rising prices put increasing price pressure on food retailers – even Wal-Mart.

Food Price Inflation Over the past two years, with food stocks like corn and soy being repurposed for the new biofuels, combined with increased energy and transportation costs, U.S. food prices overall have soared. Food prices, which had taken the biggest one-month leap in 18 years in April 2008, rose by a more moderate 0.3 percent in May, but that still left food costs rising at a 6.3 percent rate so far for the year, well above last year's increase. People are paying 10.2 percent more for milk than a year ago.

New Generation of Consumers: Locavores and the Growth in Community Supported Agriculture

Related to the above trends, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), where food buyers support their local harvester through development funds, has especially mushroomed: According to Local Harvest, the number of CSAs in the U.S. was estimated at 50 in 1990, and since grown to over 1000. That's a 20-fold increase over 18 years of a CAGR of 18.1%.

Reviewing these trends, a large retailer like Wal-Mart can see the emergence of the locally grown food movement and, more importantly, its confluence with its corporate imperative, i.e. low price leadership.

Wal-Mart's Insertion Point in the Sustainable Food Movement

In July, Wal-Mart pledged to source more local fruits and vegetables. In that same press release, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest purchaser of produce, noted that 20% of the fresh produce in its supercenters in the summer was already local.

Is this mere environmental lip service? Maybe not.

In a relatively obscure press release issued from Fayetteville, Arkansas, today it was announced that the Wal-Mart Foundation has given a $549,976 grant toward the Agile Agriculture Program a program that seeks to create a sustainable food system that links small producers with large markets. What's more notable is that the Sustainability Center was established in 2007 with a $1.5 million gift from the Wal-Mart foundation. What’s even more notable is that this center was “founded on the belief that sustainability is one of the 21^st century biggest business challenges and opportunities”.

But does Wal-Mart mean it?

Wal-Mart: Resurrector of Agrarian Agriculture?

I started skeptically but re-read this press release no less than three times. De-constructing portions of the release reveals that there is not only excellent intelligence of the trends described above, but that the Applied Sustainability Center has people that understand the core issues in America’s food crisis.

The best way I can illustrate this is by parsing portions some important highlights of today’s Wal-Mart press release.

From the press release:

“The current reality is that most of this market need […a safe and reliable supply of food from a sustainable local food system] is unmet because small-and medium scale agricultural producers and processors do not have access to facilities to aggregate their products to provide scales needed by larger markets.”

My Translation: This refers to the size mismatch between the food capacity capabilities of local farms and retail food demand by U.S. consumers. (This is part of the reason Whole Foods, otherwise a great supporter of local farmers, relies heavily on its (owned) United Natural Foods, for the bulk of its organic produce supply).

From the press release: “In addition most small producers don't have necessary insurance, product traceability, documented food safety systems and other food distribution programs needed by larger distributors.”

My Translation: This is the market reality that only a handful of local farms have the food safety, legal and business infrastructure to interact with large-scale distributors.

From the press release: “Numerous local and regional efforts exist to fill the gaps…….but there is a desire to greatly expand these efforts”

Translation: I believe this a reference to the laudatory efforts of the Organic Consumers Association, Local Harvest and other NGO supporters of organic farmers, CSAs and local farmer’s markets. As admirable as their efforts are, and as much as these groups have singularly lifted media consciousness of the safe food issue, these groups do not have the capital resources to solve the problem nationwide.

But here's the coup de gras: the convergence of Wal-Mart's price imperative with the local food movement is captured well in the quote from Michele Halsell, managing director of the Univerisity of Arkansas' Applied Sustainability Center.

 

"Distributors and retailers are motivated by rapidly increasing transportation costs and the desire to reduce waste of expired produce and other perishable products."

 

Ay! There we have it. She put her finger right on it: The interests of local farmers, the American public’s demand for fresh, safe and competitively priced foods are also in the interests of Wal-Mart. Jim Mackey of Whole Foods once pointed out, "Wal-Mart spills more milk in one day than we move all year". Well- you can imagine how much Wal-Mart spills. We're talking alot of brusied, damaged produce carried over those 1500 salad miles.

The Actual and Possible Evolutionsof Wal-Mart

The crude drawing above shows an admittedly primitive populist view of Wal-Mart’s history in the relatively centralized American food distribution system. But it also shows the promise of its role in future distributed local sustainable food systems.

While Wal-Mart’s first 40-year stage of "creative destruction" of small retail outlets might have some truth to it, it is tempting to think: If the Wal-Mart Foundation's work with the Sustainability Center can be extended throughout its vast 3,550 U.S. store matrix, Wal-Mart might serve as the critical agent in bringing the nation back to local farms. (Note in a CSR sense, this would be akin to a Marshall Plan, rebuilding the local businesses lost due to its presence in a community.)

It remains to be seen whether the corporate giant will indeed make good on this potential. It certainly will take more than the $2 million investment in the Sustainability Center and require going far beyond sustainability speaker series, training, executive education programs and other academically oriented activities. It will require serious financial spreadsheets demonstrating the capital infrastructure costs of moving from moving from today’s fairly centralized food distribution systems to a highly distributed one. (Hint: It's not anytime soon, folks. And it's not realistic at all as a final endpoint for all Wal-Mart Centers, particularly those in high density population areas.)

We’ll know it’s a real corporate vector when a real Wal-Mart store, say a Neighborhood Market, becomes a test bed distribution point for local produce from local farmers and when the executives being trained in sustainable agriculture and distribution are Wal-Mart’s own divisional executives.

Oh yeah- and when the press release comes from Bentonville ;-)

But as Stephen Colbert might say, “[Food] Nation, this is not a bad thing! This is a good thing!”  Wal-Mart's moves toward sustainability should be applauded.  Wal-Mart may be an alien in the local food movement, but it alone has the capability to resurrect America's local agrarian food industry - better for our health, local farmers and not a bad idea for national food security.

In doing this, we are setting a firm stake in the ground, solidifying our commitment to furthering the Environmental and Energy messaging throughout our client projects.  We're proud to serve clients in the Renewable Energy and Green Building industries and, with this name change, we believe we better affirm not only the need for transformative changes for net environmental gain but what Martin Luther King referred to as " the immediate urgency of now".

On the plus side of recent news events, we note that the most recent bailout bill includes tax credits for Renewable Energy industries, including solar energy getting an 8-year extension on the 30% tax credits for residential and commercial installations as well as removal of the $2000 cap on residential and utility installations of solar.

On the negative, here in the state of Florida we have reason, however, to reinforce still more the urgency of the need to move to alternative energy resources.  Recently the Florida Renewable Energy ruling has been criticised as one of the weakest in the nation. The Florida Energy rule calls for Florida to get 20% of its electrical energy from renewable sources by 2041. Yes, folks - that lags most other states goals by over 30 years.

Florida's current use of renewable energy sources stands at a mere 3.5 percent.  Often cited as one of the likely first victims of the deleterious effects of global climate change, yet bringing up the nation's rear in visionary alternative energy policy, Florida seems not to have moved far from the "D" report card given to the state by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory some years ago.

Sources:

Bailing out Renewable Energy Tax Credits in CleanTechnica.com

Florida Renewable Energy Rule criticised as too weak in Forbes

On June 19, I leave for Petrapavlosk in the Kamchatka peninsula in Siberia where I am promised  "mountains raising their gleaming white heads into a cerulean blue sky, of hillsides covered in a profusion of wildflowers, of stretches of Siberian "raiga", of rivers fringed by reeds and woodlands, of forest of birch and conifer". Only accessible by land or by sea.

Surrounded by 100 volcanoes,68 of which are active (comprising 10% of the total Earth's active volcanos----hence the Russian's have their Institute of Vulcanology here) this truly is a place for those seeking TNRIs (Totally New Retinal Images) as well as  those of us who might just be a tad jealous of John Muir's wintering in Yosemite Valley. For this is a most volatile region of the Earth called The Ring of Fire--part of the high tectonic shifting along the Pacific Rim, it comprises part of the string of volcanoes that mark this rim of the Pacific Ocean.

Unlike San Francisco quakes and Mt St Helens, these do not make the news: They are too frequent and obviously too remote.

From PBS' Siberia's Ring of Fire: Forbidden Wilderness...

 A region of Kamchatka called the Valley of Death has been especially lethal to animals. Numerous vents in the Valley release a heavy, odorless, toxic gas. When the wind blows from a certain direction, the entire Valley is filled with this gas, suffocating any animals (and humans) present. During one recent year six bears, four foxes and three hares perished, along with dozens of crows and assorted rodents.

All of the above may have you asking: Why am I going there?

Then of course there is Gorely Lake - in above photo. No,that's not photoshopped. That's a lake of pure hydrochloric acid.

This too may have you asking: Why am I going there?

Loaded into zodiac boats with Russians (and hopefully a good supply of caviar and vodka on occasion, given the risks and consequences of being here) I cannot think of a place more remote and free from civilization and pr agency discontents.

And a place to meet surely one of the 120,000 remaining walruses in this region (see map above).  As impossible as it is to envision this from my desk here in Orlando, I do hope shortly to blow a puff of air into a walrus' face -- a gesture  they apparently appreciate. And to hear them sing. This all seems quite wonderfully eccentric to me for a 2,200 lb "perverse lump" as a Times writer dubbed walruses.

But sad to say, to those of us who track global warming data, I'm afraid the geologists in our group will be pointing out that the ice caps on the mountains, in previous years an everpresent fixture of the landscape, will not be so thick or everpresent. 

My greatest fear is that I'll actually see walruses fighting over the few scant ice floes they leave their young on when they hunt. After all, I've read in Imaging Notes that scientists have been studying the recent exposure of over one million square miles of open water, as measured through remote sensing satellite monitoring. As reported in the New York Times (Andrew Revkin, Oct., 2007), satellite and buoy data show that winds have been pushing think old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland, leaving behind only thinner ice that melts more rapidly under summer conditions. (Note being a PR person - I love satellite data as it is relatively difficult to "spin".  It is not that the data cannot be visually biased to omit a scientist's bias, eg. setting the threshold value for pseudo-coloring to be high or low,  so much as the peer group which guards this easily dispells such a bias.)

 The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center had previously projected a 2050 or 2070 ice-free summer ocean in the Arctic, and now have moved that projection forward to as early as 2030. 

Since it's 2008, well, I have my concerns.

So I've come to see if the dots connect between what we witness in this remote place of ice and what is projected to come, far closer

 to this desk I sit at in Orlando.

Sea-level  rise simulations by Jared T. Williams Copyright (c) Daniel P. Schrag. Source: Fueling our Future, Harvard Magazine, May 2006

To read more why we are going to this strange remote place, check out this great NY Times piece on the walrus.

And though we're a bit south of this, we're greatly inspired also by Imaging Notes, The Need for Mapping Polar Bear Habitat Collapse written by Timothy Foresman, President of the International Centre for Remote Sensing Education.

Yours truly- speaking for the walrus and polar bear - the only PR I'll be doing for the next two weeks is Planet Reverence.

lisa

Yes, we have a lobby.

A great conference room.

High security (okay, a surveillance camera & a shredder)

A utility room (no more expensive restaurants, we're crunching away on client projects)

Oh -  but when you visit us,

the BEST sushi restaurant in Orlando (perhaps even outside Tokyo ;-))

And there's more....

The Orlando Executive Airport for you to fly your private jet in. (We're on their property.)

.

and for the rest, here are driving directions.

FROM:
Address or Intersection:
City:
State:	ZIP Code:
Country:
CanadaUnited States

Recently, PRWeek and Burson-Marsteller published their annual survey of 144 CEOs, asking them about their attitudes and actions on a number of public relations fronts. (Note 70% of those surveyed ran a company with an annual revenue of $10 million or more.)

Below we present six key findings that  you can compare against your own company's PR initiatives.  Many of their views  and PR investments should not be surprising.  However,  if you,  as a CEO yourself, find  many surprising -- well, that's possibly a warning signal  for a midcourse correction.

Key Findings from The 2007 PrWeek CEO Annual Survey Findings

Being an Industry Influencer

No surprise -some 85% of CEOs believe it is "extremely important" to be perceived as an influencer in their industry. (We've provided an iconic example in our photo. Mr. Jobs and his iPod epitomize the advantage of calling out new rules for competitors. After all, defining new rules is the height of "influence".

Speaking of Speaking...

  79%  of CEOs include the following two tactics to increase influence: Speaking at community events and personally communicating with top customers.

72% of CEOs speak at conferences, participate in corporate sponsorships and use opportunities to  network with other CEOs.

68% state they provide online tools for their existing customers to tell  others about the product or service experiences with the company.

          

55% collect information on which customers operate within larger social networks that might be leveraged.

 

Nearly  51% state they have designed a marketing program to generate word-of-mouth.

How Does Your PR IQ Compare?

While we do not suggest that the answers to any one question from this multi-industry group of CEOs  represent a standard, we do believe the entire group of answers provides a useful benchmark.   Minimally, if your own company's actions diverge markedly from not one, but  several of the majority opinions and actions here, that may well indicate unexploited PR opportunities (best case) or competitive exposures (worst case).

Certainly,  not making time for speaking opportunities, not outreaching to peer CEOs to match perspectives and not investing in word-of-mouth marketing programs --- all these co-occuring in one company -should cause a CEO to reconsider and revise his/her PR strategy.  With increasing consensus that we are heading into a recessionary business period, better communications with key customers is a corporate "nutritional supplement"  that few can afford not to take.

WOM as a Sales Supermagnet

Within the past three years or so, there's been a growing awareness of the role of Word of Mouth or WOM as an influence  in customer purchases. And it isn't just any mouth that matters. There's a growing mass realization that WOM in the form of recommendations and testimonials from friends, family and co-workers may serve as a form of sales supermagnet, pulling forward a customer buy decision.

Here are some examples of data supporting the view of WOM as a sales supermagnet:

•  According to a 2006 survey of by the Annenberg School of Communications and PR firm Ketchem, advice from friends and family is used by nearly half (43.7%) of consumers, while nearly one out of four (or 23.2%) follow advice from co-workers. The slide shows the strong impact of friends and family across a wide range of buy decisions (though significantly, not your cousin Harvey's stock tip to you)

• A study by e-marketing expert, MarketingSherpa, cites that 86.9% of consumers say they trust a friend's recommendation over a review by a critic.
• As described by the Center for Media Research, a recent survey by Deloitte Consumer Products Group finds that 62% of consumers read consumer-written online reviews - and significantly- 7 out of 10 pass this information onto family and friends.

As of a few months ago, the most popular application on Facebook was ilike. iLike’s music application enables Facebook users to:

• Learn when one of their favorite artists is going on tour in their area, and see who among their Facebook friends will be attending.
• Search and add streaming music from their favorite artists to their Facebook profile.
• Discover new music by following what their friends like and via personalized recommendations of free MP3s.

Today's Rule-Changer: BazaareVoice's ShareThisTM

Enter: The WOM Supermagnet, tunneling customers from product review spaces to product sales.

In an Oct 19th press release, BazaarVoice launched ShareThis, a new service complementing their enterprise social commerce  platform. (BazaareVoice's software enabling product reviews is already in use by the likes of Dell, Macy's, Overstock.com, PETCO, QVC and Sears.)  In a nutshell, ShareThis is an app that integrates onto a retailer's product page within the review summary, as well as with each specific reviews. Consumers can click on a ShareThis icon to publish any review - their own or some else- to Facebook, Digg or del.icio.us. The published review includes the retailer's logo and the review itself, as well a direct link back to the retailer's web site.

What Rules Will It Change?

Applications like ShareThis and other social media apps promise to change the boundary between reading reviews of a product and purchasing it, directly transporting a reader from awareness and education into the purchase experience.

And indeed there's a lot of market. Only 25 percent of online retailers have incorporated customer reviews on their e-commerce sites, according to a January 2007 Forrester Research report. (The low adoption is because many e-tailers fear losing control over their marketing messages.)

Exactly What will it Change?

We believe apps like ShareThis, or more realistically, the open source clones that will follow, have the capability to trigger a host of market changes.

• Proliferation of Consumer-generated Product Reviews. It will become common for an online purchaser, post two weeks after a product purchase, to receive an email including a widget,  inviting them to post a review, enticing other prospective purchasers to cross the line.
• Review Sites lose Ad Revenue. Because of this fundamental sea change, there will be less necessity for sellers to solicit formal expert reviews, forcing a contraction in the advertising spending on formal review sites.
• Ecclipse of Blog Punditry. In this not-so-distant future, with so many genuine customers now enabled to post their reviews, we anticipate lower influence for blog pundits who currently hold much sway in product reviews.
• Rise of Authenticators. Related to the above, we believe there will be increasing necessity to establish the authenticity of posted reviews, hence we expect the market for 3rd party clearing houses providing authentication systems verifying the credibility of reviewers, making transparent the identity of 'paid for' commenters. (To a certain extent,we have already seen this emerge in systems like the Technorati 'authority ranking' of posters - still vastly unexploited yet.)
• "Blink and It's Gone" Product Cycles. Finally, with the  capability for the "real scoop' on a hot new product or service being so widely disseminated, sales cycles of products are expected to shorten.  (The good news is faster uptake and market penetration; the flip-side is still newer, hotter competitor's products also come up on the radar more quickly).

But We Already Knew All This!

In some ways, there is nothing new here. The buzz is on that buzz is working. Readers of Gladwell's The Tipping Point are familiar with the concept of 'mavens', people who set cultural trends, who know what's cool before the rest of the world even knows it exists. Or 'connectors', people with immense rolodexes, who can spread a trend extremely widely and quickly. And of course, the sales power behind "people like me" reviews has been well appreciated since Amazon's succcessful software feature, "People who bought this book also bought...". Simply put, consumers have a keen interest in what people like them (or who'd they like to be) are buying.

 In a social media network setting, the viral spread of purchasing excitement has in fact become a core goal on online retailers. The success of Woot.com and Stylehive.com amply demonstrates the point: When surrounded by a community of "think-alot-alikers", a pre-purchaser's uncertainty and doubt can be gloriously swept aside in a wave of enthusiasm, a rapid flow of information including knowing "what's truly cool", all culminating in a purchase partially motivated to be cool too. For what some of these retailers have learned is that there's a double cachet: Buy a cool product and you can  turn your friends onto the product. (Voila- you're a maven!)

For marketers, what is different  about the new conversational marketing tools and what promises an exciting new e-commerce future is simply this: The space and time between learning about a product and buying it is contracting rapidly.

Related Links:

Bazaarevoice ShareThis^TM press release

'Reinforcing the Blockbuster Nature of Media': The Impact of Online Recommenders (Knowledge@Wharton)

Action is necessary now before climate change grows beyond man's control."

  Source: Last sentence of the announcement of the  2007 Nobel Peace Prize

In the Norwegian committee's official statement on the award, they wrote

"Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. . .....Action is necessary now, before climate change moves  beyond man's control."

Sadly, the WSJ article goes on to comment that  " the award's affect may prove more rhetorical than substantive". Ever mindful of this reality, on receiving notice of the Nobel award, Gore commented, "We face a true planetary emergency…''

It comes as no surprise that the event catalysed the DraftGore movement to publish a full-page entreaty in the NY Times.  For environmental idealists, it all inspires exhilarating thoughts:

To think, as a presidential candidate, Gore actually might run his entire multi-million dollar campaign to be carbon-neutral -- a great boost to the green tags or tradeable renewable energy market.

To think, as President, Gore would be in the position to instill the IPCC May recommendations for mitigating climate change directly into U.S. Energy Policy and other required policy areas. (see the IPCC May 2007 Summary Report here.)

To think, even while running for President, Gore would expose so many more Americans and American businesses to the IPCC recommendations. This alone has tremendous education value in terms of the necessary machine adjustments to the U.S. economy to become less fossil-fuel dependent

To think, if elected President, in one fell swoop, America once again regains its position as a visionary super-power, leading in thought and action on world energy reform.

Alas and alack- Gore's running and winning is not likely.  It is not a matter of campaign funds or the closing time window so much as the extreme unliklihood  that the Democratic Party could back as wonderfully uncompromising a stance on global warming as Mr. Gore's.

In the end, Mr. Gore's best stage for action is  indeed a global one - shared with the 2000+ scientists of the IPCC.  It is from just such a (relatively) politically-unfettered, scientific platform - in a sense, serving as Chief Marketing Officer for the IPCC -  that the world will most likely benefit from IPCC's progress.

In what sense is Environmentalism Up 169? As reported by Neilsen Buzzmetrics, the total amount of online buzz on the topics of "sustainability" , as used by the Brundtland Commission's definition, has risen 169% over the past year. The chart shows the overall level of mentions of this term in online blogs, discussion groups and forums. (The  peak in February is associated with 'the buzz' surrounding Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Sustainability- keyword -share What does this mean this chart mean? Neilsen analysts believe the overall "baseline DC shift" in the discussion level augers that terms like 'sustainability' and 'green'  are becoming part of the ongoing  mainstream business conversation, not the mere whisperings of fringe element tree-huggers. To those of us who have tracked sustainability over the years, this comes as no surprise: From the early writings of Paul Hawken (author of The Ecology of Commerce) to the landmark sustainability book, Mid-course Correction Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model, by Ray Anderson of Interface, the economic benefits of adopting sustainable business practices have been well described. Perhaps no where has the shift been more prominent than in the building/construction industry. Based on a 2006 survey of NAHB home builders by McGraw-Hill Construction, up to 10% of the homes to be built in 2010 - representing a $40 to $50 billion market - are expected to be "green". As a broader indicator, the Social Investment Forum reports a record number of companies filing social and environmental shareholder resolutions, a doubling of the level over the last two years.

Neilsen's report notes that the paradigm shift is led by an entirely new group, relatively lesser-known (i.e. no tv commercial) brands. In the Consumer Packaged Goods arena, companies mentioned include: Ecover, gdiapers, Greening the Cleaning, Method, M.O.P., Seventh Generation and Shaklee.  For larger companies leading the charge, we suggest checking out  Clean Edge or this relatively fresh list from Kipplinger's.

Marketing Take-away.     Should your company worry about being part of 'the sustainability movement"? The answer, particularly if yours is a public company, is  undeniably "yes". First, it should be recognized that there are significant moves afoot: As reported by MSNBC, the SEC is under considerable pressure to force all public companies to assess and disclose their financial risks from climate change and legislation. Industries like insurance and shareholder-owned utilities are first likely to be affected by this change. Second, according to the  2007 Cone Consumer Environmental Survey  93% of Americans believe companies have a responsibility to help preserve the environment, and a large 85% stated they would consider switching services if they found out about a company's negative corporate responsbility practices. Third and finally, the media value is immense: Even beyond the online blogging community, the press have seized upon the topic. writing copious articles under the umbrella topics of the environment and business, "green consumerism",  and energy efficiency and energy independence. From the rise of organic (sustainable) food goods to renewable energy suppliers, there are a host of industries and markets affected by these topics.

There is no better example of the connecting of the corporate dots between the SEC pressure, environmentalism in the media and PR efforts than Dell Computer's recent announcement to go carbon neutral, during which the company will take inventory of their greenhouse emissions and implement strategies to reduce and eliminate those emissions. As another indicator, even Sam's Club, the division of Wal-Mart, has announced it will offer among its 'Once-in-a-Lifetime Holiday Packages' a lithium smart car, an earth-friendly zero-emission vehicle. More broadly, the rise in consumer interest in owning hybrid cars, solar-based technologies for the home and 'green' household goods carries the message deep into everyday household purchasing decisions.

In the end, we believe sustainability will have as profound an impact on customer perception and brand appeal as "the Customer Service" revolution of the late 80's and early 90's. Sure- you can choose to ignore it --- but not if you want to retain a sustainable competitive advantage. And if legislative pressures prevails, you'll have to report the risks to your shareholders.

With product sampling all the rage these days, here's one consumer marketing campaign with sweet societal benefits.

Kicking off  on Sept 16, Kashi Company is letting  1 million people trade in their junk food snacks (pork rinds? nachos, anyone?)  for a choice of natural nutrition Kashi snacks, from granola bars, crackers to cookies.

In how many ways is this marketing campaign way-cool?

• Promoting 1 million snack trade-ins  provides a heathy hands-on messaging antidote to both adult America's ongoing obesity habit, while aiming a smashing pre-emptive gesture against supersized kids.
• FACTOID: Between 1962 and the year 2000, the number of obese Americans grew from 13% to an alarming 31% of the population.
• FACTOID: Childhood obesity in the United States has more than tripled in the past two decades. (Source: National Center for Health)
• The campaign runs via pr, event and, significantly, "anyone-can-get-one-immediately" web promotions, the latter associated with a quick survey, giving Kashi valuable marketing data on these potential convertees.
• The "Snack-ometer" - what a great way to show both your impact and scurry conversions.
• If as one "try-advertising"  expert source says is correct, that 25% will buy product after a sample, this represents a minimally 250,000 one-time customer increment, suggesting there's going to be a great ROI on this.
  

Okay okay -- so I know you just want to  just go get the free goods.

(And Better hurry too - that's today's Snack-ometer, only 516,972 left and it's only been up for a bit more than a week!.)