Kiwano Marketing » Sofia Ribeiro

Taking Your Sustainability Initiatives To The Next Level

Sofia Ribeiro — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:52:26 +0000

Kiwano Marketing Partners With EcoApprentice

You have a cool company. You made sure your eco and social values are deeply rooted into your organization. You are just getting ready to launch your next environmental challenge. How do you get the word out?

We’re very excited to present our newest partner, EcoApprentice. EcoApprentice helps businesses, non-profits and individuals promote their eco challenges by crowd-sourcing sustainability challenges. What does this mean?

The EcoApprentice.com model is pretty straight forward:

1. Businesses share their environmental initiatives, or EcoChallenges, on EcoApprentice.com. The goal is to crowd-source reliable solutions to their particular issue.

2. University and MBA students work to resolve those EcoChallenges with specific solutions (EcoSolutions), gaining real world experience and, in many cases, credit from their University for the project.

3. Businesses select their favourite EcoSolution and give the prize (if one is provided) to the winner.

One of the things I like the most about EcoApprentice is its potential for EcoChallenges to go viral. I’ve always been a strong supporter of using social media to communicate corporate environmental initiatives (check out this post). When a business posts an EcoChallenge, it has the ability to engage customers, partners and the whole community on its environmental initiatives and
learn how it can take them to the next level.

EcoChallenges can be categorized in 8 areas: Buy Green, Carbon Offsets, Green Shipping, Light Less, Recycle, Reduce Waste, Reuse and Think Local. Check out some of the recent challenges on EcoApprentice.com to get a better feel on how they leverage these categories.

Kiwano will be working with EcoApprentice to boost their website traffic while raising awareness to this fantastic platform among the business community. Watch out for further developments!

Bringing Personality Back To Your Business

Sofia Ribeiro — Tue, 17 May 2011 04:06:28 +0000

Today I was browsing the web and stumbled on There Is Grandeur In This View Of Life. It’s an hilarious blog written by Goofy Girl, where she tells us about her life and her thoughts on random things that tend to happen to most of us. What I specially enjoy about this blog is Goofy Girl’s tone: personable, unique and sometimes outrageous – basically, it’s a blog that you can immediately see that it’s written by real person. I guess you’re probably thinking “Well, all blog posts are written by someone.” But don’t you feel frustrated to see all these blogs using bland, general language so they won’t hurt someone’s values? This is particularly true for corporate blogs. How do we go around this? Is using insipid, nondescript language the only avenue for corporations?

I have to confess I have committed the same mistake. As a small business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to get your message to resound with the general audience. As a marketer, though, I know this is plain wrong. So how do you find the balance between genuine, personable communications and the formality expected from you?

Last year I read Rohit Bhargava’s book Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity. Rohit identifies four reasons for why businesses lose their unique feel:

1. Adding lawyers (used to) inspire consumer trust. The more successful the organization, the more layers you could expect to encounter when dealing with it.

2. Advertising (used to) define a company’s identity. Before social media, most interactions with the company were either at the customer support level or through media placements.

3. Consistency is (or used to be) a successful business practice. Companies wanted to provide a consistent experience no matter how many locations or how big that business was. Needless to say, consistency is the enemy of individuality.

4. Risk management is (or used to be) the first priority, or simply put, protecting the business from negative situations – such as an employee sharing a real perception and not the company’s boilerplate.

Obviously, companies that did manage to stand out from the crowd enjoyed great success (such as Coca-Cola in the ‘90s). But nowadays, brands ARE expected to be full of personality (thank you, social media!). We’re done with the corporate talk! Ban it from your vocabulary – it’s dead. It should have been banned long, long time ago.

How do you stop the corporate communications blandness and inject some personality into your brand? Here’s how:

1. Apply the UAT filter to your brand. Identify what’s Unique, Authentic and Talkable about your business.

2. Give a voice to your employees. Let them talk about your business on social media and actually identify themselves as employees of your organization. Don’t forget to have a social media policy in place, though – one that is flexible so it allows employees to express themselves. The goal here is to foster individuality vs the big (faceless) behemoth that is a corporation.

3. Tell your story. Every business has its unique story. What’s yours? What makes you (the business owner, the marketing person, the customer support guy) passionate about what you do? Show your enthusiasm and motivation – something that goes beyond profit.

And if you one of your status updates/brochures/ads make someone mad? Or what if an employee shares information that is confidential or simply wrong? Just apologize – you’re only human. It’s time to drop the corporate veil and let that unique personality come out.

As for me, I just glued a post-it in my home office that reminds me to drop the “marketing talk” from my corporate years and let people discover… well, me.

Join Us At EPIC, the Sustainable Living Expo

Sofia Ribeiro — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:15:58 +0000

It’s that time of the year again. EPIC, the Sustainable Living Expo, will take place this weekend in Vancouver starting today. This is a fantastic opportunity to browse through environmentally minded businesses and learn what more we can do to minimize our impact on the environment.

Details:

EPIC: The Sustainable Living Expo
Friday: 1pm – 8pm
Saturday: 11am – 7pm
Sunday: 11am – 5pm
Vancouver Convention Centre
1055 Canada Place
Vancouver, BC

What I particularly like about EPIC is that it’s tailored to the everyday consumer, in oppose to smaller green living tradeshows that target only a small percentage of the local community. At EPIC you’ll find toys, apparel, yummy food and even pet accessories that are high quality, priced competitively and… both socially and environmentally responsible. And the good part? Lots of freebies that you can enjoy in the moment or take home to your loved ones.

Some of the brands you’ll find at EPIC include:

- LUSH, the famous cosmetics brand that makes fresh, organic products from fruits and vegetables;
- Shoo-Foo, a local company that makes towels, bed linens and baby clothing out of bamboo;
- Me to We Style, a Toronto-based clothing line that gives 50% of its profits to the non-profit Free The Children, supporting development projects in rural and impoverished areas across the world;
- Ten Thousand Villages, a popular retail chain & non profit that links fair trade products with the global market demand.

Other attractions include George Stroumboulopoulos, one of the most admired and respected journalists in Canada and the host of the popular TV show George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight (previously named The Hour), who will be speaking on Saturday, May 14, at 5pm.

You can buy tickets online or at the conference. For more information, visit EPIC’s website at www.vancouver.epicexpo.com/.

About EPIC:
EPIC is a solutions-based, family-oriented event designed to educate, entertain and immerse the public in all things “green”. EPIC is about doing what you can, when you can…all you need is a little education and inspiration, and EPIC has lots of both! Join us for this three-day celebration of earth-friendly living and surround yourself with truly inspirational people, innovative ideas, and environmentally-responsible products.

Guest Post: SEO Tips To Boost Your PPC Performance

Sofia Ribeiro — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:11:28 +0000

My good friend and designer Jeanette Kwok has recently (re)launched her website, Jeanette Kwok Design, and decided to include a blog on SEO, design and web marketing best practices. She asked me if I’d like to be a guest writer and I jumped on the opportunity right away. This is the first of a series of guest posts on search engine optimization, pay-per-click and social media.

”Last month, I had the pleasure of meeting Geoff Geiling, one of the owners of Chaka MarketBridge – a social business that brings the power of the global market place to artisans in Nicaragua while providing them with a fair income. We connected because they’re looking to optimize their website. We exchanged a couple of emails on SEO 101 and something caught my attention: he wasn’t aware that SEO can actually improve their pay-per-click (PPC) performance. So here’s a blog post that hopefully will provide further information on this topic.

Perhaps the first step here is to clarify what optimization means. Website optimization means to adapt your website so that it’s more likely to get you the results you want. In most cases, using a combination of many optimization techniques together – such as improving your copy, tweaking your meta data, increasing the number of backlinks and identifying and embedding keywords in your website content – is the best way to improve the overall performance of your website and increase your Page Rank. By optimizing your website, you’re not just improving your organic search ranking; you’re basically rendering your website more relevant to your users – which is exactly what search engines look for when evaluating an PPC campaign.”

Continue reading this article on Kwok Talk.

If you’re new to the online marketing scene, check out our Internet Marketing for Rookies series.

Social Media Crisis Management: Best Practices and Horror Stories

Sofia Ribeiro — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:40:09 +0000

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of talking with Elisa Birnbaum, an established freelance writer and contributor at Charity Village. Elisa writes about social media strategies and tactics for non-profit organizations. This time around, she focused on social media policies – and what can happen when you don’t have guidelines in place.

”If you’re an avid devotee of social media, chances are you’ve already heard about this infamous gaffe,” writes Elisa on her cover story, Social Media: What’s Your Policy? ”A Red Cross employee uses HootSuite to send out an otherwise-innocent tweet about her alcohol-induced evening in the company of a specific beer. She thought she was sending it from her personal account. But she was wrong.

As we all know, mistakes like that are not easily repealed and once you’ve hit that send button it’s hard to take things back. But here’s the thing about the Red Cross and their reaction to the incident: no one got fired, nothing hit the proverbial fan and no one went into heavy crisis mode. In fact, they made light of the situation with an affable response.”

Elisa goes on sharing similar stories (with not so similar happy endings). After interviewing a handful of social media experts, Elisa compiled a list of top 5 tips for crafting your own social media policy:

1. Don’t forget it will have an impact on internal operations. For example, your hiring process may be affected and you may now need to re-evaluate who you hire and the type of qualifications they offer.

2. Make sure your policy is comprehensive, but yet easy to understand. Your goal is to get people to read and follow your policy (and not just scan through it).

3. Work on your policy with your marketing and sales team. Make sure your policy and your social media presence are aligned with your brand.

4. The policy should cover every possibility, including the likelihood of replacing your social media manager. People may be attached to a certain voice, making it hard for new staff to take over.

5. Keep in mind that your social media policy is always a work in progress. Social media is a dynamic, evolving medium and you want to make sure your policy stays relevant at all times.

Read the complete article at CharityVillage.com.

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Environment

Sofia Ribeiro — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:11:16 +0000

Yesterday I read quite an interesting article by Andrew Winston in the Sustainable Life Media blog, titled “Why Companies Keep Investing in Renewable Energy.” It goes like this:

” One of the big misperceptions about going green is that it always costs money. In reality, seeing your business through an environmental lens will greatly lower costs and risk. But of course, beyond the quick payback of eco-efficiency projects, managers face choices about more expensive investments that may take longer to pay off. At the top of that list is buying renewable energy, which is what many execs think of first when they think ‘green’ (thus the misunderstanding that ‘green equals cost’).

Yet many large companies seem to be accelerating their renewables investments, both for onsite generation and through buying renewable energy certificates (RECs) to ‘offset’ their carbon emissions. By my calculation, the total green power generation of the top 25 [Green Power Buyers] is up 14% since last year and has tripled over the last 5 years.”

Some of these companies include the Kimberly-Clark, P&G, IKEA and (believe it or not) Ford.

One cannot help but wonder… why don’t we see more companies investing in renewable energy? I believe it’s mainly lack of knowledge. And that’s why the latest CBSR event is so timely.

Join CBSR in Vancouver on Wednesday, May 18, and learn how local and international businesses have grown their organizations by providing services, products and knowledge that help create a more sustainable world.

When:
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
8:00 AM – 11:15 AM PST

Where:
Vancouver Convention Centre
1055 Canada Place, West Building
Vancouver, BC

Keynote Speaker: Geoff Green, Founder of Students on Ice, Adventurer, Explorer, Environmentalist and named one of the 25 Transformational Canadians

Leadership Panel:
Andreas Souvaliotis, President, AIR MILES for Social Change
David Demers, CEO, Westport Innovations
Stuart McLaughlin, President, Grouse Mountain Resorts and Whistler Water
Ben Packard, Vice President of Global Responsibility, Starbucks Coffee Company
Francois Taschereau, Executive VP, Weber Shandwick

*UPDATE*
This event has been canceled.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit CBSR’s event page.

Cleaning The World… While Cleaning Tushis

Sofia Ribeiro — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:14:29 +0000

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Marcie Weinstein Smith, the owner and brains behind Lovey’s Body Products. Marcie was a mother with an enormous challenge: none of the products available was compatible with her son’s skin. He’d frequently have rashes and dry skin, and every time she’d try a product for sensitive baby skin, he would just get worse. What does a mother do in this situation? If you’re a dynamic, passionate woman like Marcie, you create your own baby product.

Marcie’s first creation was Lovey’s Tushi Wash, a natural spray that gently cleans the baby’s tushi. With no parabens, sulfates or lavender & tea tree oil, Lovey’s Tushi Wash is sourced from natural ingredients, reducing the amount of harsh chemicals babies are daily exposed to.

“I was careful to use ingredients that didn’t irritate my baby’s skin, but instead offered soothing and calming elements, while still cleaning effectively,” says Marcie. “I prefer to use natural products and I didn’t want to expose my son to all the [aggressive] chemicals in the wipes that I was seeing on the market. Even the wipes that were for sensitive skin or supposedly ‘natural’ would give my baby a rash. Plus, I wanted to do my part by not contributing more environmental waste. Used with a washcloth or a disposable, bio-degradable cloth, Lovey’s Tushi Wash users will be reducing waste in our landfills”.

Personally, I was very impressed by Marcie’s energy. She literally took matters into her own hands and, without realizing, created a brand that is helping mom’s around the world take care of their babies while having little impact on the environment – hence partnering with Shoo-Foo, a local provider of reusable and biodegradable cloths.

Lovey’s baby products are regularly featured in the media, with mentions in The Vancouver Sun, YoYo Mama and Vancouver Mom, among others.

For more information on Lovey’s products and where to get them, check Lovey’s website or contact Marcie at info(at)loveys.ca.

Business in a Changing Climate

Sofia Ribeiro — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:28:31 +0000

It’s becoming more and more evident: the climate is changing. In 2007, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a notorious set of reports showing the extent to which climate change is already with us, and making disconcerting predictions of the future if we fail to take action. Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunami – followed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster – makes it all too clear that natural catastrophes have a hefty impact on how we conduct business. But how can businesses respond to climate change with strategies that build economic success and a better world?

Climate change presents both risks and opportunities. Much attention is being focused on managing the risks of climate change to both environment and business. However, leading companies are recognizing the opportunities to leverage and adapt their strengths to find the intersection between strong strategy and a better world.

Join the Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) in Vancouver on Wednesday, May 18, 2011, and learn how local and international businesses have grown their organizations by providing services, products and knowledge that help create a more sustainable world.

Keynote Speaker: Geoff Green, Founder of Students on Ice, Adventurer, Explorer, Environmentalist and one of the 25 Transformational Canadians

When:
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
8:00 AM – 11:15 AM PST

Where:
Vancouver Convention Centre
1055 Canada Place, West Building
Vancouver, BC

CSBR will also be providing afternoon workshops for business leaders who wish to get a hands-on approach on sustainability best practices. Workshop topics include Engaging Stakeholders To Improve Reclamation Success, Defining and Developing Employee Volunteer Programs and Sustainable Procurement: A Strategic Approach. For more information on these workshops and to register, please visit CBSR’s event page.

Our Journey To Sustainability – Part 1

Sofia Ribeiro — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:15:25 +0000

Exactly a week ago, we joined Climate Smart’s program with the goal of reducing our carbon emissions. What a journey so far! Earlier this month, I spent 4 hours with other business owners learning about the basics of carbon emissions, top sources and the most dangerous greenhouse gases to our planet. Now that I know the nuts and bolts of greenhouse gas accounting, I’m moving to step 1: identifying Kiwano’s emissions, so we can start planning our reduction strategies.

This is not an easy task. Since we’re a small, home-based business with no manufacturing facilities or major printing processes, we have quite a small take on the environment (when compared to other businesses. One can always argue if a polluting impact on the environment can be considered small or insignificant). So we’ve decided that Kiwano should look both upstream and downstream of what we’re doing and account for those GHG emissions from third-party organizations associated to us – such as our partners, clients and contractors. Our goal? To become carbon neutral by December 2012.

And to show that we’re serious about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, we’re publicly announcing our commitment to go carbon neutral in 21 months. There. It’s public!

I will also be posting frequent updates on the whole process, so you can see what goes into this plan and hopefully feel inspired to follow our lead.

Laying Down the Foundation

Where do our carbon emissions come from? Exactly where do they occur? Who are the biggest offenders?

According to Michelle Bonner, consultant at Climate Smart, we need to rate our greenhouse gas emissions according to their source. Each source should be rated scope 1, 2, or 3:

Scope 1:
Direct emissions. These can be natural gas or other heating fuel, electricity generated on-site, vehicle fuel (for the vehicles that you own) or refrigerants. Don’t include electricity here.

Scope 2:
Indirect emissions. It’s basically anywhere you use power that you don’t generate yourself, such as purchased electricity.

Scope 3:
Indirect emissions. In here you put everything else – anything you don’t have ownership or operational control over, such as commuting, paper use, waste, couriers, air travel and so on.

Where your reduction strategies will focus highly depends on the nature of your business. For instance, at Kiwano we don’t have significant scope 1 emissions, so we decided to take the process as far as we possibly can – and include scope 3 emissions in our reduction strategy. If you’re in the transportation business or you’re a product manufacturer, perhaps you should only focus on scope 1 emissions at this point.

We’re also following Michelle’s advice on using the TRACC methodology – principles to keep our company focused when dealing with GHG tracking and reduction strategies:
Transparency
Relevance
Accuracy
Completeness
Consistency

While doing this, we also had to answer a handful of critical questions that will help us establish best practices for the future. These include:

1. Who will lead the effort?
2. Who to enlist for help?
3. Where to store the inventory data?
4. Where to document assumptions and internal process?
5. When to schedule the annual inventory?

Finally, we needed to take into consideration which inventory period we’d be looking at. Since we’re in early 2011, and taking into consideration that our fiscal year starts in January, we decided to use 2010 to calculate our greenhouse gas emissions.

Step 1 – Mapping our Emissions

We’re still on the early stages of the process, but here’s a list of our emission sources and other considerations based on the information above:

Scope 1:
Home office.

Scope 2:
Fuel for our car (only bought in 2011)

Scope 3:
Commuting: skytrain, bus, bike (zero emissions), air travel, car (rental).
Waste: currently we recycle. Looking to compost and recycle electronics in the future.
Paper: minimal use, since we only print drafts of the materials we’re working on for our clients. Other paper usage includes our brochures (printed only when needed) and business cards. All paper has a high percentage of recycled material and/or is FSC-certified.
Other: events that we promoted or organized (5 last year); web hosting (100% wind-powered website) and data warehouse for database, CRM system and email marketing software.

As I mentioned above, this is just the initial list. Once we start gathering information on each of these emission sources, we may need to adjust our goals. As Michelle put it, we need to first focus on what we can track and then move towards a broader scope. Our goal is to include as much as possible, such as the emissions from manufacturing the computer I’m writing this post on to the recycling facility where they adapt the little amount of paper we use to produce new paper batches.

Check back in two weeks for the next step for us – calculating current emissions.

How about you? Are you considering tracking your greenhouse gas emissions? If you’re already doing this, what were your AHA-moments?

Tackle Shoreline Litter Issues… And Have Fun At It!

Sofia Ribeiro — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:02:29 +0000

If you live in one of the coastal provinces of Canada, you’ve probably heard of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup – an eight-day event to raise awareness towards shoreline litter issues by engaging Canadians to rehabilitate shoreline areas through… (you guessed it!) cleanups.

Although the Cleanup will only take place in September, the wheels are already in motion with some great events coming up. As a way to connect with locals on coastal litter issues, the Vancouver Aquarium has partnered with eeko Couriers, Kiwano Marketing and Capers Whole Foods to bring you an afternoon full of live entertainment, educational sessions and a silent auction featuring exciting goodies.

Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup Pre-Event + Silent Auction
Saturday, March 26, from 12pm to 4pm
Capers Whole Foods
1675 Robson St
Vancouver, BC

This family‐friendly event will feature live entertainment by The White Lies and a special appearance by the Vancouver Aquarium’s very own lovable mascot, Bee Bop. The street team will also be giving away children’s tattoos while educating the community on shoreline litter –and what you can do about it.

Some of the items featured in the silent auction include:

- Autographed Alexandre Burrows’ Vancouver Canucks jersey
- Justin Morneau’s autographed baseball bat
- MLS Vancouver Whitecaps tickets
- Animal encounter tour at the Vancouver Aquarium
- 2010 Canada Gold Medal Painting
- Gift baskets by Ethical Bean, Xtreme Promotions and Van Houtte Coffee
- Gift certificates by Cactus Club, eeko Couriers and Earls Restaurant.

All of the funds raised will be donated to the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.

A joint conservation partnership between the World Wildlife Fund Canada and the Vancouver Aquarium, the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is currently one of the largest direct action environmental events in Canada, engaging tens of thousands of participants annually in every province and territory. The 2011 annual Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup will run for a week, starting on September 17th.

For more information on the Silent Auction and how to donate, please contact:

Mike Shekhtman
CEO, eeko Couriers
T: 604.688.9500
D: 604.329.8744
mshekhtman@eekocouriers.com
www.eekocouriers.com

We look forward to seeing you on March 26.