Issue 104, 071108

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In Other News

TrinityP3's 'AVOID BLACK HOLES IN YOUR MARKETING BUDGET' Workshop details to be announced soon.

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During a recent visit to speak at the Green Media Show in Boston, Chris Sewell met with a number of companies in New York and Boston to test the water with our range of environmental marketing solutions. In this edition of the TrinityP3 enews, Chris gives an insight into the way the financial crisis and the environment are still lock-in-step in the land of the brave and the free.

Greening the internet by the Americans

The big question is how far down the list has the green debate slipped within the now battered home of capitalism? With the first day of my meetings in the US corresponding with a 700-point drop on the Dow Jones, would anyone be interested in greening up their marketing spend in a strategically and balanced way when simply slashing the advertising budget would do the trick?

The answer is a definite maybe. The old adage of “if you cannot measure it you cannot manage it” was clearly understood so our offering of knowledge of the carbon footprint across all media channels was welcomed. However, it was interesting to note that the keynote speaker at the Green Media Show in Boston, Mr Michael Harrison Deputy VP of Brand Marketing Timberland, was able to attribute a carbon footprint to all areas of his business except the advertising. So he had his staff make some calls to the TV stations to get an idea and then doubled it. Not exactly a scientific approach if you wish to reduce. But perfectly fine if you only want to offset and claim the environmental high ground.

So who is doing it right?

The most innovative people I met where my fellow panelists from CO2Stats. In the world of carbon measurement and reduction software, this is the business. With the internet the 6th biggest user of electricity in the US, the data centres and servers that power ‘The Beast’ use over 61 billion kWH per year. That’s a lot of coal burning carbon just to allow your next pop up ad to appear on the latest green offsetting portal. CO2Stats has an application that sits on the website and measures the CO2 being generated by all the networks and the end users consumption of the data on their screens. Things like bad functionality leading to slow loading times will not only keep you off Google search, it will also lead to a higher carbon footprint.

There are currently over 28,000 on-line companies from around the world using this measurement tool to help understand the carbon impact of the web. And this figure is growing extremely fast. Unfortunately this carbon information is not being shared with us. It is being used to help reduce costs internally within on-line companies, which is fantastic. But just imagine how much quicker some advertising sites could minimize their carbon emissions if this information was in the hands of the media planners and buyers. Oh, and yes the advertisers who they are working for need to care about the environmental footprint when they sell their goods and services.

We need to get the advertising portals to fess up their emission information.

Until then it will be up to companies like TrinityP3 to give companies who have sustainability as a cornerstone of their future business planning a guide to the carbon impact of their advertising. So are the American’s interested in understanding the carbon impact of their advertising? Like us down under I would say it is on the list, no greater or lesser than it is in Australia. And in Australia, that is both sad and bad business - we should be taking this far more seriously as we have a major piece of Government legislation coming in called the Emission-Trading Scheme (ETS) that will increase costs. It's simple, the more carbon you use the more it will cost.

To quote Professor Ross Garnaut when he released his final ETS report amongst the financial turmoil "Financial crises are short-term phenomena ... climate change is a long-term structural issue”. To date, marketing has been largely overlooked in the business of environmental strategy and yet ironically it is the way most companies and organisations go about informing the public on their environmental achievements. Surely we can lead the American’s on this one?

To discuss your company's next move in planning to adopt the Government's upcoming Emission-Trading Scheme (ETS), contact Chris Sewell today on 02 8399 0922 or 03 9682 6800.

TP3 total marketing management

TrinityP3 now provide clients with a Total Marketing Management solution, featuring on-going maintenance and improvement in managing service providers.

The TrinityP3 Total Marketing Management solution is a 3 step process and can be applied across the entire marketing communications category, utilising all three core areas of our service:
1. strategic alignment,
2. process improvement and
3. operational assessment.

This is where you focus on flying the plane, and leave the maintenance to us, day in, day out. Typically over a two year period, the cost of this Total Marketing Management solution equates to less than one percent of the marketing communications budget, yet typically we are able to deliver a 15% - 20% sustainable improvement in value to the current marketing budget.

Contact Darren Woolley today to discuss how TrinityP3's Total Marketing Management solution can be applied across your entire marketing communications and make your marketing budget go further. Or click here to download the new TrinityP3 brochure for more information.

TrinityP3 global green services

TrinityP3’s Green Marketing is quickly gaining a global reputation for breakthrough ‘green’ services to measure carbon emissions across advertising and marketing communications, and providing marketers with specialist green auditing and compliant and traceable carbon offsetting programs.

Marketers can now have their media or production proposals assessed with an independent guide to the level of CO2-e that is being added to the atmosphere. Once we know your emissions, TrinityP3 can help with in-depth environmental audits, help you reduce and finally guide you through offsetting with certified carbon credits.
Green Marketing services include:
1. Environmental Strategy: Aligns marketing practice and impact with organisational environmental strategy.
2. Green reduction: Undertakes reduction strategies and reduces waste and environmental costs associated with your marketing.
3. Green Assessments: Assesses the current environmental impact of your marketing activities across media and production.

Contact Chris Sewell today for a confidential discussion on your current environmental strategy, in Sydney 02 8399 0922 or Melbourne 03 9682 6800.

Choy Lawyers blog

Expert intellectual property lawyer Trevor Choy has launch his blog: http://protectingbrands.com.au

Each story will be a short, plain English commentary on recent intellectual property cases, mainly covering trade marks, but you will also see stories covering copyright, designs, patents and related areas like confidentiality and defamation - in fact, anything relevant to the protection of intellectual property and reputation. Log-on and read stories on:
• How Mattel was awarded $100 million compensation for the theft of the Bratz doll concept
• Harry Potter and Hari Puttar - why Warner Bros are suing
• Apple admitting that it didn't actually invent the iPod
• What Louis Vuitton did when Britney Spears used their logo in her music video

Keep up to date on the latest IP stories in the news, and sort out the hype from reality. New stories published twice a week. Subscribe for free here.