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Solar powered bus shelters turn outdoor ads green

In an innovative public-private partnership, Fuel Outdoor has donated 600 Solar powered bus shelters to the City of Miami. It’s “a revolutionary model at work—corporate advertising dollars are being used to clean the environment,” says Miami Mayor, Manny Diaz. Michael Freedman, CEO of Fuel, describes their unique business approach: We have a triple bottom line [...]

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The new phone books are here! Oh, goody.

As a teen, one of my favorite comedies was The Jerk starring Steve Martin. It’s a classic filled with unforgettable lines: “You mean I’m going to stay this color?” and “I’ve found my special purpose!” come to mind immediately. Navin Johnson’s excitement when the phone books came was unforgettable: Navin Johnson: The new phone book [...]

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25 ways your business can help fight poverty

It’s Blog Action Day! The purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a worldwide discussion regarding an important issue. This year, it’s poverty. For this post, I wanted my post to meet three criteria: To bring value to readers, it must result in a list of creative ways business can help fight poverty To [...]

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Bite-sized Friday: Smart, smarter, smartest

____________ SMART An embeddable collection of Fortune 500 logos, tagged with words like “logotype”, “symbol” and “acronym” to make it helpful to sort through different variations and approaches to design. A useful tool for creative inspiration and competitive intel: Via Todd Andrlik on Twitter ____________ SMARTER In Brainy Brand Names Where They’re Least Expected, Stuart [...]

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Live from the jailhouse :(

I’m off to jail for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Here’s what’s happening: You can add to the above meme by using the #mda08 hashtag on Twitter. There’s still time to help folks with Muscular Dystrophy, bail me out of jail, feel good and get a tax write off.

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Bumvertising: Welcome to the Hall of Shame

Bumvertising is exactly what it sounds like: Advertising on the homeless. It started in 2005 when 22-year-old University of Washington grad Ben Rogovy was looking for a cheap way to promote another company he started. Here’s a quick overview: View this video on YouTube The Bumvertising debate has attracted local, national and even international media [...]

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Responsible or not? Ringling Brothers Circus

I was surprised how excited I was to take my kids to “The Greatest Show on Earth,” on Saturday. The last time I’d been to The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was at least 30 years ago, and I knew my four and five year old kids would be captivated by the show. [...]

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Kissing a frog to help the environment

Earlier this summer, Outsource Marketing participated in The Olympus Press Print Green Summit, an annual event attended by over 250 people from 150 companies to focus on ways to, well, print greener. Olympus sponsored an interesting origami-making contest. To enter, contestants created an origami character with special FSC certified paper, took a picture of it [...]

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How Responsible Marketing builds trust

Some people think trust is gained through integrity only. Not so, says Steven M.R. Covey in The Speed of Trust. Trust is equal parts character and competence. Here’s how character and competence are directly related to Responsible Marketing: It takes more than just doing marketing right. For long-term success, you really have to do the [...]

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Bite-sized Friday: Ads, an award and one bad video

Who needs a movie? If you have a website, video content can dramatically improve your conversions. Here are a few testimonial videos that we’ve produced for Gene Juarez Academy. The following video is a self-promo for a small video production company, and it’s so bad, it’s downright entertaining. In fact, it’s been viewed more than [...]

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Where the hell is the marketing?

A movie filmed in 14 months, across 42 countries with a cast of thousands. No, it’s not the second coming of Cecil B. DeMille. It’s one of the best examples of a viral video you’ll see: in 17 days, this video have been viewed nearly 4.6 million times. As crazy as it may sound, “Where [...]

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Cracker Barrel’s new promotion, and why context is key

From a contextual standpoint, I wonder just how responsible the Cracker Barrel’s Greatest Family Road Trip game is. While many are considering ways to cut back on driving, in this promotion, the more Cracker Barrels visited, the more chances a consumer has to win. Drawing heavier criticism is the grand prize, a 2008 Monaco Cayman [...]

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Are you amped for PodCamp? Join me in Seattle on June 21st

Responsible marketers know that social media is changing the business landscape and has become an integral part of the marketing mix. If you don’t know social media because you just haven’t had the time to figure it out, now you can get a good primer in less than one day—for free. PodCamp is coming to [...]

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Friends don’t let friends do drive-by marketing

The evidence of a recent drive-by marketing attempt in my driveway. Is it marketing or is it litter? I occasionally receive little sandwich baggies with a folded-up flyer and a few rocks in it. It’s not really a flyer, it’s more like a scrap of paper. The rocks are obviously there to make it easier [...]

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Pangea Day is tomorrow, Saturday, May 10th

Here’s the speech that made Pangea Day a reality, the TED prize-winning speech given by Jehane Noujaim’ to an audience of “the world’s leading thinkers and doers” at the annual 2006 TED Conference. If you don’t have twenty minutes to view her speech, here’s a synopsis from Pangea Day: Pangea Day taps the power of [...]

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Responsible or not? Unilever

I’ve mentioned Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty that encourages self esteem for young girls. It’s smart, it zags when everyone else is zigging, and as the father of young daughter it makes me want to stand up and cheer. But of course, Responsible Marketing is never black and white. Dove’s parent company, Unilever, has been [...]

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The Seven Keys to Responsible Marketing

Each month, we share marketing articles, links and information with the Friends of Outsource Marketing. This month, we added “podcast” to that list. My partner Bill Boyd has done quite a few podcasts for clients, and decided it was time to do one for us. Click play below to listen: Can you help me answer [...]

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Did Tyson’s ‘antibiotic-free’ chicken claims mislead consumers?

By Dan Murphy, Guest Blogger Back in June 2007, Tyson Foods, the nation’s No. 1 chicken processor, launched a new “Raised Without Antibiotics” natural chicken line. Along with a self-congratulatory ad campaign, the Springdale, Ark.-based firm touted its new product as the solution to the contentious issue of using low-level antibiotics as a growth enhancer [...]

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A long walk for a short, dirty drink

If your tap went dry at home, what would you do? If you were forced to walk to the nearest source of water—a river, a stream, a pond—on foot, how far would you have to travel? And how would it make you feel—deep down—if you had to give your children dirty water to drink after [...]

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Pampers math: 1 pack = 1 vaccine

Last year, Pampers teamed with Unicef to provide tetanus shots for mothers and children in developing countries. Their campaign was set to last three months, but I saw the above ad last night, so it appears they’ve extended the program. Everyone wins: The vaccination recipients–for obvious reason, P&G–because of the goodwill it generates, and the [...]

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