The award-winning show was based on Common Vision's  DVD "Planting the Vision." The special episode of "Natural Heroes" aired on PBS across the nation. This award is a huge tribute to programs like Natural Heroes and the featured groups that are working for positive change. We hope many more people will see the show and be inspired to plant a tree in their community!

Watch a 6-minute trailer for the DVD "Planting the Vision" below.

> Watch the Natural Heroes Fruit Tree Tour Promo on the Natural Heroes site

Finding new ways to use "short form" Internet marketing media is a challenge for green companies. Not all consumers buy green products as impulse items...but finding green products when the sink is leaking, the kids are hungry, or summer heat arrives COULD provide the impetus to search for a solution.

Cell phone messages save paper and ink, as well as distribution transportation. They provide consumer convenience and are available 24/7, wherever the consumer wants to shop. This is a great solution for local consumer businesses with national market and brand visibility.

Think...Mobile Phone coupons.

Carvel, the ice cream retailer will now let mobile phone users send text messages to company spokesmammal "Fudgie the Whale" and receive in return a coupon for a blended coffee drink and a chance to win a 42-inch TV.

Cell phone users who text "FUDGIE" to short code 78247 through July 31, 2008 will get a coupon for one of Carvel’s new Arctic Blender drinks.

OTHER Mobile Phone Coupon Applications: How about on-site, or "in the shopping mall" Point of Purchase mobile phone offerings?

Bath & Body Works announced it is offering coupons to its customers via mobile phone.

Cellfire

Cellfire Wins E-Tech Award For Innovation In Consumer Mobile Applications at CTIA Wireless 2008

Brent Dusing, CEO of Cellfire says Cellfire 3.0 is the latest version of Cellfire’s mobile coupon and discount offer service that enables consumers to easily find, store, and use many discounts across multiple merchants and locations directly on their mobile phones. Unlike text-based offers, Cellfire’s application-based service is like a coupon wallet that consumers can access on demand to discover and use discounts specific to their geographic area. New merchants and offers are added on a regular basis.

Features in Cellfire 3.0 include an enhanced user experience, external offer discovery, 1-to-1 offers, and the ability for consumers to save on groceries with mobile grocery coupons.

Cellfire is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information or to download Cellfire, visit www.cellfire.com.

AdReady is one of the new companies offering access to the display ad market on Internet websites.

AdReady promises to ease the headaches and guesswork and to lower the costs associated with buying display ads. A Ford dealership in California can pick from a pool of templates and customize an image of a revolving Ford car with the dealership logo and contact information. Then, the dealer can buy ad space through AdReady on major Web sites targeted to reach only Web surfers in California.

The AdReady system suggests tweaks, such as changing the ad background color, that have proven to draw more people to click on ads.

Advertisers can spend as little as $20, and AdReady is paid a cut of the ad buy.

AdReady and other services also give advertisers the ability to tie ad spending to response results that show how many people viewed a specific ad and how many people clicked on it. The car dealer could then decide it wants to turn off the ads that received the fewest clicks and run more of the ads that were more effective.

By drawing in new ad buyers, the self-service options also aim to address one of the nagging problems with the display-ad market: cheap prices.

As a flood of new Web sites compete for consumers' eyeballs, sites such as Facebook are having difficulty raising prices for ads. The cost for reaching a thousand Web visitors can be as little as a few cents on Facebook or MySpace.

Reaching the same number of viewers of a prime-time TV show can cost $30.

SOURCE: New York Times May, 2007

The Wall Street Journal updates us on how online advertising is becoming more of a Do-It-Yourself strategy. Is selling 250,000 impressions for $63 really sustainable for the advertising community?

THE CASE STUDY: ...the ad was seen more than 250,000 times. Quickly, Bonobos sold out of Clarks, at $120 a pop. Total cost for the ads: about $63.

Facebook is only one of a rising number of self-service ad options. There are new entrants such as AdReady Inc., AdBrite Inc. and AdItAll LLC. MySpace, like Facebook, is offering do-it-yourself ads that marketers can tailor to individual interests on the social-networking site. (MySpace, like [The Wall Street Journal], is owned by News Corp.)

Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit and Google have new self-service ad options for the opposite side of the equation -- for Web publishers who want to attract advertising to their sites.

The rising number of self-service options underscores the expanding market for display ads, the graphic- and video-heavy ads in fixed spots on a Web page. The market for display ads reached $5 billion in 2007, according to market-research firm eMarketer Inc. That is far less than the estimated $8.6 billion in spending for text ads tied to online search. But in coming years, the mix is expected to tilt in favor of display ads, thanks to the rise of online video and the increasing push of brand marketers such as car companies into the display market.

But for the majority of mostly small- and medium-size businesses, it remains too difficult and expensive to buy display ads. To create an ad, businesses have to navigate the 15 standard sizes and half dozen standard formats and design something that will be eye-catching. They have to pick which Web sites or networks to buy ad space from, test multiple ads, track which ones draw the best consumer responses and adjust marketing campaigns accordingly. Doing this alone is daunting, and paying an ad agency to do it might cost thousands of dollars. Sites such as Yahoo Inc. often require advertisers to promise they will spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on advertising. SOURCE: Wall Street Journal

As a publisher of original content and aggregated news, I cringe at some of the prices being paid for search ads...there comes a point at which publishers can no longer afford to create quality content that is supported by bargain basement advertising.  Hopefully, the ad networks will be cognizant of that fact and the plight of the traditional media who are now feeling the sting of cheaper online advertising will serve as a warning and guidepost for what can happen to online content development. 

We don't have to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!

TIP ONE for marketers:  Look at tips for consumers, and reverse engineer the themes and messages that appeal to consumers...for your retail and community clients.  For instance:

Sustainable tourism covers a variety of criteria, from low environmental impact and energy use to respect for the culture and well-being of the local population.

There is more than one way to travel green. Eco-Friendly travel (ecotravel) is tourism that promotes a sustainable environment. By its nature, travel can be both an opportunity for people to experience the environment they visit and at the same time is a threat to it. Destination Villas offers the seven sustainable travel tips.

1. Travel less and stay longer. Air travel leaves the largest carbon footprint than any other form of travel. If you must fly, do it fewer times per year and stay longer, or travel closer to home. 
2. Don’t fly at night. Dr. Piers Forster from Leeds University has discovered that trails of condensation from aircraft - contrails - have a greater warming effect at night, trapping heat but without reflecting any of the sun's rays back into the atmosphere as they do during the day.
3. Leave no trace. Enjoy the beautiful places on the plant but be mindful that your very presence damage it. Do not pick flowers, take rocks or break coral. Don’t liter. Be familiar with cultural mores prior to arrival be respectful of cultural practices.
4. All transportation requires the combustion of fuel, so the greenest thing you can do is use public transporation. When possible, try taking the train or bus instead of flying. If you're driving, try to get as many people in the car as possible, instead of taking multiple vehicles. Always rent a hybrid vehicle.
5. Visit eco-friendly destinations that use renewable energy sources: visit Burlington, Vermont, Dry Tortugas National Park or Vail, Colorado.
   
6. Choose eco-friendly lodging. There is a wide variety of eco-friendly lodging these days. Start with the Green Hotel Association and EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com or DestinationVillas.com.
7. Shop local: Head to local markets, where you can purchase fresh food from local vendors. This benefits the community by increasing their economy, and you will get fresh fruits and veggies and maybe even some handmade souvenirs. Never buy products made from endangered species.
   

Source of Eco-travel tips:  Destination Villas

"Engagement" is the touchstone for Web publishing in this Web 2.0 world.  How will your readers want to participate in your offerings, your community, your publishing content?

Penguin Classics set up a blog where anybody can post a review of one of their books. Well, not exactly anybody. The selection process is random because they have a limited number of books. But if you win their lottery, type away about how you feel about Virginia Woolf.

ABC.com hopes to generate as much ad revenue as it does from its on-air programming.  To keep viewers interested in ads ABC has found that ads should be created specifically for the Internet and not repurposed commercials from broadcast TV. ABC research that revealed better results for ads that promoted interactivity like casual gaming.

Slide.com layers social content applications on top of Facebook, Orkut, Friendster and more.  Slide enables you to make a slide show onliine, personalize your pics with stickers and graffiti, have a personal Guestbook, frame your YouTube videos with snazzy borders, upload your images, and get screensavers.  All designed for "engagement" so that you'll use their website and drive up their community engagement for advertisers who want comsumer eyeball time.

My question is...what do green consumers want?  Do they want to spend more time on their computers, just like their not-so-green siblings?  Do they want to belong to a virtual community with similar values?  What do YOU want from your green online media?

Seriously, I'd love to hear from you.  Send an email or call me.  I'm an approachable editor searching for common sense  ways to share green solutions around the digital campfire.  Carolyn Allen:  310-827-2510  or email at CAROLYN  (at)  CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com

... or add your questions, suggestions, observations in our COMMENTS.  Let's talk!

Comparing marketing channels helps farmers determine how to use each channel, as well as which channel can be most profitable for their specific kinds of produce and time commitment.

Comparing Farmers Markets, CSAs and Wholesale Profits

Where's the core of farm produce profits?

While farmers' markets have become increasingly popular with consumers, farmers themselves are beginning to ask how profitable selling at a farmers market actually is.

UC Small Farm Program director Shermain Hardesty is finalizing a case study of three farms that each market their products three ways: farmers markets, wholesale and through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, in which subscribers regularly receive boxes of food from the farm.

Net Revenue for Farm Produce

Preliminary results of research found that

• Farmers markets generated the lowest net revenue return for all three growers
• Wholesale provided the highest net revenue return.
• The net rate of return for CSA revenues was in the middle.

Farmers markets can also provide an outlet for produce unmarketable to wholesale channels and can support new farmers developing new businesses.

To help growers determine the cost and return of their different marketing options, Hardesty and student researcher Penny Leff offered use of their formulaic spreadsheets to workshop participants and walked them through tabulation of their costs and returns. "We want to show farmers how they can determine their actual marketing costs themselves," Hardesty said.

For more information, contact Shermain Hardesty at (530) 752-7774, sfpdirector@ucdavis.edu.

RESOURCE: UC Agriculture and Natural Resources

Marketing the agritourism business is a little different than retail businesses.

Retailers depend on repeat business. Agritourism operators depend on word of mouth between satisfied visitors who visit very rarely (if their visit is even repeated)...but who can tell LOTS of other people to come, see, enjoy and experience the adventure.

On-farm or on-ranch activities are diverse across America...and the globe. Options include

• bed and breakfasts
• on-farm camping
• farm vacation
• ranch vacation
• youth exchange
• Elderhoste
• wagon rides
• horseback rides
• U-pick fruit and vegetables
• on-farm processed product purchases
• on-farm agricultural craft and product purchases
• farm/ranch tours
• school tours
• garden tours
• winery tours
• technical agricultural tours
• historical exhibits
• petting zoos
• exotic animal farms

Potential agritourist visitors read the following types of media (in order of favorites)

• Newspapers
• Travel magazines
• Cuisine magazines
• Environmental magazines
• Internet

Tell Your Story...So That It's Repeatable!

But by far, visitors learn of agritourism sites mostly from FRIENDS and Word of Mouth (79%)! Additional sources include newspaper and magaizine articles, business signs, the Internet, fliers, agritourism map, tourism bureau and magazine ads.

Editorial Coverage is Better than Paid

Although newspaper and magazine articles (which do not typically result in costs to the operator) reached 38 percent and 28 percent of visitors, respectively, paid advertising in similar outlets was considerably less effective, reaching only 13 and 8 percent.

Word and Deed Make up the Successful Agribusiness

Since word-of-mouth advertising has consistently been noted as an effective publicity technique for agritourism sites, operators should keep in mind that a visitor is likely to tell her/his friends about a positive (or negative) experience.

Therefore, in addition to any formal advertising, attention paid to the customer service aspect of an agritourism operation is likely to enhance the reputation of the site and maintain a flow of visitors. After all, agritourism and on-farm nature tourism combine elements of farming and ranching with the service sector. Agritourism operators are thus likely to be most successful when they are able to skillfully manage both.

 SOURCE: UC Small Farm Center

Your Core Story

According to a three-year study by the Advertising Research Foundation and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, ads that tell a branding story work better than ads that focus on product positioning.

As reported by Brandweek, 33 television ads across 12 categories were analyzed by 14 emotion and physiological research firms, with tools that included testing heart rate and skin conductance to brain diagnostics.

Reported Brandweek: "The report contends that in many ways, advertising is stuck in the past. The 20th century was dominated by a one-way transactional focus where ads were pushed at consumers. Today, consumers interact with ads to 'co-create' meaning that is powered by emotion and rich narrative."

While facts and features are important, the authentic narratives become the platform that let a brand take on a life of its own. They create reason to believe, and help transform product utility into experience and connection.

While this phenomenon is particularly evident in smaller businesses, it holds true for many large companies as well.

As companies get larger, they typically use various mechanical media and distribution tactics to extend narrative virtue and achieve scale. We see this happening with virtually every large business, and it's a model many advertising agencies build their businesses on. Of course, the paradox is that with greater scale, the more institutional and faceless a brand becomes, making authentic narratives ever more important -- but challenging to maintain.

Read more about Green Marketing at CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com

Knowing your customer is the heart of marketing...but we get intellectually smug or arrogant or caught up in staring at a computer screen... and assume "THEY"  "just want something new."

Not so... even big companies like Ikea learn the hard way. And discarding wrong-sized products is just NOT green!

Green marketing is smart about right-sizing, right-coloring, right-thinking.

Julie Desrosiers, the bedroom-line manager at Ikea of Sweden, visited people's houses in the U.S. and Europe to peek into their closets, learning that "Americans prefer to store most of their clothes folded, and Italians like to hang." The result was a wardrobe that features deeper drawers for U.S. customers.

The American market poses special challenges for Ikea because of the huge differences inside the U.S.

"It's so easy to forget the reality of how people live," says Ikea's U.S. interior design director, Mats Nilsson.

In the spring of 2004, Ikea realized it might not be reaching California's Hispanics. So its designers visited the homes of Hispanic staff. They soon realized they had set up the store's displays all wrong. Large Hispanic families need dining tables and sofas that fit more than two people, the Swedish norm. They prefer bold colors to the more subdued Scandinavian palette and display tons of pictures in elaborate frames. Nilsson warmed up the showrooms' colors, adding more seating and throwing in numerous picture frames.

Ikea is particularly concerned about the U.S. since it's key to expansion -- and since Ikea came close to blowing it. "We got our clocks cleaned in the early 1990s because we really didn't listen to the consumer," says Kanter. Stores weren't big enough to offer the full Ikea experience, and many were in poor locations. Prices were too high. Beds were measured in centimeters, not king, queen, and twin. Sofas weren't deep enough, curtains were too short, and kitchens didn't fit U.S.-size appliances.

"American customers were buying vases to drink from because the glasses were too small," recalls Goran Carstedt, the former head of Ikea North America, who helped engineer a turnaround. Parts of the product line were adapted (no more metric measurements), new and bigger store locations chosen, prices slashed, and service improved. Now U.S. managers are paying close attention to the tiniest details. "Americans want more comfortable sofas, higher-quality textiles, bigger glasses, more spacious entertainment units," says Pernille Spiers-Lopez, head of Ikea North America.

SOURCE: Read the full story about Ikea's business experiences at BusinessWeek.com