I came across this article in the New York Times almost a month ago and have been meaning to blog about it ever since. For those not familiar, a brief synopsis of the storyline at play.

For the past several years people in countries around the world have begun to purchase bottled water in astronomical numbers. According to some research 12,000,000,000 (12 Billion – that’s 9 zeros) gallons of water were sold in 16 Western European countries in 2007. For the North Americans in the audience your fact is that between 1997 and 2007 per capita consumption of bottled water more than doubled to 29 gallons.

As we have seen in most if not all of these countries, the environmental and economic impact of these empty water bottles is a huge headache for municipalities.  Now put yourself in the shoes of the Mayor of Venice. Beautiful Venice has no roads so trash must be collected on foot and while plastic bottles can be recycled, the process is not exactly perfected. Trash collection on the mainland in Italy costs $84 per ton. Collection in Venice where it is collected by men with wheelbarrows along the canals costs $335 per ton. Continue Reading…

As a marketing professional I like to consider myself a pretty creative thinker, I mean I can come up with an effective campaign and absolutely execute on it but I’m not sure if I would have been able to come up with this idea let alone believe that anyone in public office would consider it. Yet there it was in photographic form, the man we all know as the KFC Colonel had his face spray painted ever so nicely on a newly repaired (covered) pothole.

You see, Kentucky Fried Chicken has for some reason decided that they can tie repairing potholes across the USA back to greasy and fattening chicken. In a statement on their website it seems awkward at best, “For more than half a century, KFC has “filled up” its fans with the Colonel’s world famous, freshly prepared fried chicken. Today, in a marketing first, KFC is celebrating its continued dedication to freshness by launching a pilot infrastructure renewal program, becoming the first-ever corporate sponsor of “fresh”ly “filled up” potholes in up to five major cities across the U.S.”

KFC Missed An Opportunity

Now normally I am not one for gimmick marketing, but I will grant you that this has the potential to be a really fun campaign and one that if done right could be modeled after the brilliant Burger King Whopper campaign, it’s just that KFC has not done anything more than the gimmick leaving me scratching my head. Continue Reading…

As if he were not an inspiring enough speaker alone, at the end of his first speech to Congress Tuesday night Barack Obama did something that every CEO should take note of – he took the time to not only shake the hands of named Congressmen and women, but seemingly as important to him he stopped shook hands with and even engaged in brief conversation with the “pages” who had attended.

This is the leader of the free world and nobody had to remind him that those young pages were a huge part of the movement which elected him. Nobody had to explain to him what a thrill it would be to be 20something and have the President shake your hand and ask what you thought of his speech. Which is why it was both natural and so very classy when Obama took the time to seek out the pages. Continue Reading…

This post was originally published in Feb of 2009 but has gotten a lot of hits lately so bumping it up to a “sticky” post for now

Changing the culture of any business is a difficult task but try setting a policy aimed at changing the culture of your business when your employees are for the most part twenty-somethings each of whom is making millions of dollars a year in salary alone.  That was the task that faced the National Basketball Association three years ago when commissioner David Stern first implemented a NBA Player Dress Code.

Despite what you think of the NBA, the league was at a cross-roads after the 2004-2005 season.  It was a league that had not had Michael Jordan on the marquee for years, did not have a superstar to replace him with (even Kobe Bryant had suffered public indiscretions) and to top it off the Indian Pacers and Detroit Pistons were involved in a brawl which started on the basketball court but ended up in the stands. That incident caused nine players to be suspended without pay for a total of 146 games (which led to $10 million in salary being lost by the players), five players were charged with assault, and all five were eventually sentenced to a year on probation and community service. Five fans were also legally charged, and one fan received a lifetime ban from attending Pistons games.

For a business that was trying to attract large corporate sponsorships, television deals and have individual arenas sell off naming rights the image of NBA players as thugs did not exactly gel. Continue Reading…