USDA's proposed BioPreferred eco-labeling program that will identify "bio-based" (i.e., made out of agricultural, forestry, or marine-based ingredients) products and packages.

The USDA "BioPreferred" list includes "BioPreferred" list include PLA-based plastics, vegetable oil-based cleaning fluids, and soaps made from natural ingredients--but not food or fuel.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is making it easier for consumers to identify biobased products through the release of its proposed BioPreferredSM labeling rule. USDA's BioPreferred labeling program, published today in the Federal Register, intends to create a product label that would appear on qualifying BioPreferred biobased products. When final, this regulation will allow biobased product manufacturers to participate in a voluntary labeling program to identify biobased products on retail store shelves. "Increasing the purchase and use of biobased products is a priority of the Obama Administration because it helps increase our nation's energy security and independence by using American agricultural products, while spurring economic development in rural areas," said Vilsack. "Consumers want to make more informed product choice decisions and BioPreferred will help them. This label will help consumers, businesses and Federal government purchasers easily identify biobased products." Manufacturers will be able to utilize the BioPreferred label, when finalized, to help customers identify their products as biobased. Currently, USDA has identified more than 15,000 commercially available biobased products across approximately 200 categories, from cleaning products to construction materials. Biobased products are available to consumers today and the new label will help make these sustainable products more accessible and serve as a valuable marketing tool for manufacturers and vendors of biobased products. Biobased products are products that are composed wholly or significantly of biological ingredients - renewable plant, animal, marine or forestry materials. A BioPreferred designated item is one that meets or exceeds USDA-established minimum biobased content requirements.

This Federal Register notice announces the program's intent to create and make available a voluntary product label for increased commercial and consumer promotion of biobased products. USDA, through the publication of this draft rule, seeks to notify and gather feedback from interested groups and the public-at-large on this process. More information about BioPreferred's proposed labeling rule can be found at www.biopreferred.gov or contact BioPreferred at biopreferred@usda.gov. BioPreferred encourages interested parties to submit comments on the proposed rule until Sept. 29, 2009. To submit comments go to http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-17610.htm. The BioPreferred program was created by the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (2002 Farm Bill) as a preferred procurement program to increase the purchase and use of biobased products within the Federal government. The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (2008 Farm Bill) expanded the program's scope to promote the sale of biobased products in other sectors.

BioPreferred is comprised of two programs: a preferred procurement program for Federal agencies and a voluntary labeling program for the broad scale marketing of biobased products. A complete list and detailed description of each BioPreferred designated item, and items for future designation, can be found at www.biopreferred.gov or follow BioPreferred at http://twitter.com/BioPreferred

Sun Marketing

GrEEnCollarEdu.net, a service of HVACReducation.net

Mercier Corporation

Carlstrom Productions, Inc.

Green Mary

Orangehalo

Republic Flag

Community Environmental Services, Inc. (CES)

Native Springs Nursery

Oster and Associates

Macus Trade

Atlas Embroidery

Echo Paper Store

Green Career Tracks

Starting Up Green

Cliff Allen Consultant

Michael Lemke Consulting

HVACR Education

The fourth annual Industrial Marketing Trends Survey conducted by GlobalSpec shows that 48% of industrial marketers are shifting a greater percentage of their budget online, but less than one-third of industrial marketers are allocating more than 50% of their budget online.

Based on GlobalSpec research, here is a look at today's top trends in online marketing:

The economy is impacting marketing approaches and objectives.
In light of the current economic climate, customer acquisition, lead generation and customer retention have become more important than ever before.

• 44% of respondents to a recent survey stated that customer acquisition is their primary marketing goal,
• 29% indicating that lead generation is most important.
• 13% indicated that customer retention is their primary goal in 2009, up from just five percent in 2008.

Companies are still focused on gaining new customers, while maintaining their current client base.

Measurement is key.
The demand for marketing accountability is stronger than ever, with smart marketers devoting resources to programs that can be measured.

• 69% stated that they will closely evaluate the performance of marketing options and reduce or eliminate non-performing programs,
• 53% are choosing marketing programs that are measurable.

Online programs naturally lend themselves to measurement, as they allow you to track exposure, clicks and conversions -- demonstrating the performance of your marketing.

Lead quality trumps lead quantity.
Respondents to our survey stated that the quality of leads is the most important factor when deciding where to allocate their marketing budget.

Lead quality scored 9 out of 10 in importance, while lead quantity scored 7.3.

Sales would rather have a handful of highly qualified leads than a long list of anonymous Web clicks. Target online programs where prospects are searching for information, products and services, delivering quality leads with contact information -- offering your company sales opportunities instead of anonymous clicks.

Meeting Your Goals with Online Marketing
It's important to continue to market to and stay in front of customers and prospects, despite the realities of the current economy.

Ask media partners how they can specifically help you meet your marketing objectives, whether they are lead generation, brand visibility, penetration of new markets or all of the above.

 

ULE will soon test a number a range of products in line for environmental certification, including sunglasses, wind turbines, dishwashers and televisions

UL Environment, or U.L.E., new subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories that is launching global environmental-standards, has awarded its first product certification to EcoRock, a recycled drywall.

UL Environment gave Serious Materials in Sunnyvale, Calif., an environmental certification that will help the company sell EcoRock panels for building projects aiming for LEED certification from the USGBC. 

The company will soon test a number of other products in line for environmental certification, including sunglasses, wind turbines, dishwashers and televisions, said the vice president and general manager of U.L.E., Marcello Manca.

RESOURCE: UL Environment

UL Environment's Database of Environmentally Sustainable Products
Manufacturers may submit their products for UL testing and environmental claims validation.

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

First The Association for Downloadable Media or ADM just announced best practices guidelines and standards to address some of the real obstacles that exist regarding scaled ad buys in the downloadable media space, particularly in measuring downloads and ad unit standards. They were formulated in tight coordination with the advertising industry through our organization's Ad Council.

Recent data shows podcasting is actually making a considerably large mainstream impact and that the business model is well underway towards profitability. Nope we are not completely there yet (think banner ads five years into public adoption of the internet) but these recent activities and new data suggest you might want to take a second look at this space.

The members of our trade group, comprised of RSS media host providers , big and growing content publishers (who are making money now, including my music discovery network IndieFeed, as well as shows that have significantly lower audience counts but with great loyal audiences), ad intermediaries, interactive agencies, and big brands including Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Real Networks, Discovery Networks, Turner Broadcasting, MTV, Arbitron, Neilsen, NPR, PBS, PRI, Comcast, and in total well over 200 members, believe we can help address the clear hurdles to translate to effective, wide-scale ad-supported monetization.

If you take IAB and ad banner development as an example, we believe best practice guidelines have developed far quicker than other technology adoptions in the past. They are the first public step in a coordinated effort to create cross-system apples-to-apples and low friction commerce between publishers and advertisers. We are moving forward to secure funding for primary research to help bear out the power and immediacy of subscribable and downloadable media at the niche level.

Second, The Arbitron Edison Research Internet and Multimedia Survey of 2008 just came out, showing a roughly 39% growth in audio and 45% growth in video podcast consumption from last year. Nearly 54 million Americans have consumed podcasts (more than one in 5), predominantly 25-54 age bracket, 53% male 47% female, consumption occurring predominantly at the desktop. I encourage you to speak to Tom Webster at Edison Media Research for more details, he can be reached at twebster at edisonresearch dawt calm.

TWITTER

We all love Twitter but podcasts dwarf Twitter usage, in substance, unit production, and most importantly, reach. I'm not clear why this comparison needs to be made. Sure they are two emerging user-generated social technologies. Where Twitter is a growing, vibrant micro-blogging medium, primarily link and text based, how it delivers direct revenue generation for twitter publishers remains to be seen. It sure is a great amplification device to an extremely small group of 2.0 influencers.

BLOGGERS

As for commercial viability, the stratification of bloggers to commercially viable bloggers is likely the same as podcasters to commercially viable podcasters. You've seen the graphs, it looks a lot like an iceberg with the sea-level defining the monetization line. Today the focus is on the group above the line. 

Podcasting is not failing as a monetization model. Some publishers may never make money if they fail to deliver an opportunity to the advertiser, and vice versa. But many are and will fulfill this objective. It is not that RSS media enclosures are somehow a broken technology, it's tremendously powerful and monetizable. But systems will need to be adopted to accommodate scale and that is what our group is up to.

These recent indicators strongly suggest to our group that podcasting and episodic audio and video media is not only viable but a vibrant and exciting space for advertisers to reach loyal audiences drifting from traditional media.

Chris MacDonald
Chairman
Association for Downloadable Media
Wizzard Media
downloadablemedia.org

Shipping Services

"On May 12 the USPS will adjust prices for our shipping services — Express Mail, Priority Mail, Parcel Select, Parcel Return Service, and International Mail. For the first time our pricing includes commercial volume and contract prices, rebates, online price reductions, and other new incentives."

Mailing Services

First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, Periodicals, Package Services, and Special Services. The average increase by class of mail is at or below the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index.

A First-Class Mail stamp will be 42¢.

For more information, visit the US Postal Service Price Increase

In visiting with a green manufacturer recently, he hopefully asked, "How much more will people pay for green products?"

My answer, "Not much. They pay for additional VALUE, not GREEN."

This is the same challenge conscientious, conservation business people are facing: how do we translate the green benefits into VALUE propositions that people can get instant gratification from?

Some are taking the tact of "glamor". Others, prestige and innovator status with bragging rights among the in-crowd. Others are selling the concept of savings from energy use.

Others are waiting.

Waiting for what? For compliance to kick in. For carbon trading to kick in. For carbon tariffs. For carbon taxes. For prices of oil to rise.

Watching and planning and waiting is what constitutes a "chasm".

This marketing term was coined by Geoffrey Moore who wrote the book "Crossing the Chasm" in 1999 to illustrate how high technology's early bell-curve product life cycle was broken with hesitancy at a predictable point.

2007-2008 is that "Chasm" for many green business-to-business applications.

The Chasm "The Chasm is a pause of undeterminate length in market development, when the early market interest has waned and when there is no preordained or natural customer among the mainstream market for the technology owing to its immaturity and lack of widespread deployment."

The early adopters have been corporations who have bought "test" units and they are testing them. They are communities who have instant savings from long term energy glut applications such as street lights or potential litigation from health impacts such as schoolbuses.

They bought. They're testing and sharing the results with the rest of us. We're waiting for the rules of the game to become clear before we buy more.

But some things are different between the green revolution and the technology revolution in the desktop computer era. We ARE living in challenging times.

Early Market "The gestation period of any discontinuous innovation, characterized by both excitement and undcertainty in the minds of both vendors and customers. Technology enthusiasts (innovators and visionaries) seek out superior solutions, explore them adn pronounce them fit or unfit for general consumption. They are the first customers for anything new!"

Consumers Are Ahead of Business

Recent research showed that consumers are ahead of business in adapting green solutions. They are recycling. Changing light bulbs. Buying organic. Walking and biking. Buying hybrid vehicles. Buying Energy Star applicances.

Businesses aren't putting systems into place for purchasing greener products. They aren't collecting used paper. They aren't replacing paper plates with permanent servicewater. They aren't buying hybrid cars. They aren't retrofitting HVAC systems.

Businesses are waiting for legislation that will affect their tax credits and their compliance behaviors.

Businesses are going to seminars and searching for case studies and testing demo equipment. And waiting.

That's the chasm.

The questions that must be answered is "Then what happens...?"

After the Chasm

Employees are learning about green solutions at home. They are replacing faucets, recyling their trash, measuring their electrical usage, locating biofuel fueling stations.

These innovators will be the leaders in the workplace when it breaks loose...and then, Katie bar the door!

They will be ready. Will you be ready?

The Bowling Alley

The Bowling Alley "Resumption of market development in specific customer segments who are adopting ahead of the general market based on addressing specific problems and on vendors' willingness to provide segment-specific solutions."

The specific solutions in the green market include hybrid vehicles, PV solar energy and organic food, among others. Very specific solutions that are well defined with immediate results that can be demonstrated.

Other green and sustainable solutions, such as water conservation, zero waste, and green retrofits for buildings are harder, provide longer term or less obvious results -- and they will thrive in later stages of the technology life cycle.

Knowing which of your products can be attached to SPECIFIC market applications can help you tailor your marketing and your message to these "bowling alley" buyers.

The Tornado

The Tornado "A period of market hypergrowth caused by pragmatists adopting en masse a new infrastructure that renders the previous paradign obsolete. Remaining pragmatists now flood into the market, highly influenced by the market-leading solution and the company that sponsors it and will tend to behave as a pack."

Green building and development (NEW buildings) is a good example of one segment of the green space that has reached The Tornado stage.

Supported by the USGBC and other green certification and training programs, new green building technology has

• An infrastructure with deployable methods
• Is supported by architects and builders who provide third party endorsement and services
• Is supported by governments who mandate and will buy into the marketplace

New green building has crossed the chasm, has been applied to specific applications such as schools and colleges and state office buildings... and is now an accepted part of the architectural field with training, employment opportunities and materials suppliers all lined up for the ride back up to the bell curve apex.

Cities are strengthening the mandates across the entire development sector that all new buildings must meet tighter building codes that meet green building and sustainable community goals.

Translating "Computer Tech" into "Green Tech"

Times have changed. The challenge is different. Compliance issues are different. And the economic mix has changed. But the chasm concept is partly an observation about how people and how groups work when faced with new technology and CHANGE. And that doesn't change a lot over a few short years.

We will be bringing you more information about how green marketing fits this product lifecycle timeline in future articles and learning platforms.

Resources

The Chasm Companion by Paul Wiefels with a Foreward by Geoffrey A. Moore provides implementation guidance to "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado".

Ecolutionary Selling

Mary Hunt has authored a little, very helpful book on furniture marketing "Ecolutionary Selling".

She guides you through reducing the confusion in the sustainable furniture market and turn GREEN into GR$$N.

Environmental claims are regulated by the FTC -- and it is the manufacturer's and retailer's responsibility to provide credible information. This book about furniture can help you identify those credible claims so you’ll never be accused of "greenwashing" your product(s) when you know the rules.

And, since no one wants to go into new territory blind, Hunt has also included a sample of a Sustainable Standard application, plus a glossary of all the terms you’ll need to know.

Ebook Primer for Designers, Retail Sales, Buyers, Distributors and Manufacturers of Sustainable Furniture.

Most importantly you have the backbone of what makes up a Sustainable Marketing Data Sheet, and how to create your own.

The "Ecolutionary Selling" ebook includes:

• A snap shot of Sustainable Furniture Trends
• An overview of Life Cycle Assessment and why it’s central in a credible standard.
• 24 Criteria that goes into Standards
• Who’s doing what and why?
• A two page comparison checklist of standards you need to know about.

Sign up on her website for a 6 page Summary of what Life Cycle Assessments are and how they are used inside Sustainable Standards. (For anyone who has to guide their company or product line's future.)

SOURCE

Mary Clare Hunt
www.EcoLutionarySelling.com

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