Bob's Blog

Greening the music industry

Based in Portland, Maine, Reverb is a non-profit organization founded by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her musician husband Adam Gardner of the musical group Guster.

Reverb provides turn-key greening programs for artists' tours and conducts outreach and education with music fans everywhere. Since 2004 they have been helping to green the music industry, working with artists like the Barenaked Ladies, Maroon 5, Coldplay and Dave Matthews Band. Check out their video feed to see how they do it.

Blog Action on climate change: a local retrospective

On the occasion of Blog Action Day 2009 http://www.blogactionday.org

I first became aware of the environmental movement in 1969. I was 19 at the time, living here in Canada's "Steeltown", Hamilton, Ontario. It was a genesis year for environmentalism in Canada. Pollution Probe was launched in Toronto that year, as was Hamilton¹s first environmental activist group, Clear Hamilton Of Pollution, known by its acronym CHOP.

Although its ostensible aim was to tackle pollution, CHOP embraced other environmental causes as well. In the early 1970s it organized a public walk through the Red Hill Valley, initiating what was to become an annual event for those who were campaigning to save the valley from becoming a freeway. It also published (irregularly) a newsletter that looked beyond the borders of the city and challenged the corporate greed that was often at the root of environmental destruction.

One of the local organizations that traces its roots to CHOP is the Conserver Society of Hamilton and District.  Incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 1984, the Conserver Society¹s interests reflect the widening scope of the environmental movement that was emerging in the eighties and nineties. The Society's local chapters in Hamilton, Dundas, Ancaster, Flamborough and Burlington have taken up many issues, from composting to bicycle paths, waste reduction and pesticides. They have also participated in regional waste-management, air quality and transportation initiatives, and worked to limit urban sprawl and the destruction of natural areas, including in the Dundas Pleasantview neighbourhood where I live.

Other groups also emerged in this period. In 2005, 22 of them banded together to form the Hamilton Eco-Net, a coalition of community organizations whose members are committed to protecting, conserving, restoring and promoting a clean, healthy, sustainable environment. Today, there are 35 organizations afffiliated with Eco-Net. Their interests range from cleaning up Hamilton Harbour to recycling, public transit, green energy, the preservation of the Niagara escarpment and climate change.

Looking back, I can't help but  think how far the movement has come. It started with a few people talking to a few people and, in little more than a generation, it has grown into a robust social movement that is a force to be reckoned with.

In the next few weeks, world leaders will be gathering in Copenhagen to discuss the need for "global action" on climate change. While our leaders debate, here in our own community there are many people who are already taking action. If you would like to help, here is a list of organizations who would love to have your support.

Hamilton area environmental organizations

• Bay Area Restoration Council <http://www.hamiltonharbour.ca/index.asp>

• Canadian Organic Growers Hamilton Chapter <http://www.cog.ca/>
• Citizens Opposed to Paving Escarpment <http://www.cope-nomph.org/>
• Clean Air Hamilton <http://www.cleanair.hamilton.ca/>
• Climate Action Now  http://www.climateactionnow.ca/
• Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE) <http://www.niagaraescarpment.org/>
• Community Beach Turtle Ponds Association, Stoney Creek
• Conservation Foundation of the Hamilton Region <http://www.foundation.conservationhamilton.ca/index.asp>
• Conserver Society of Hamilton & District  <http://www.conserversociety.ca/>
• Earth Day Hamilton <http://www.earthdayhamilton.ca/>
• Environment Hamilton <http://environmenthamilton.org/>
• Field and Stream Rescue Team <http://www.streamrescue.com/>
• Friends of Eramosa Karst <http://www.friendsoferamosakarst.org/>
• Friends of Red Hill Valley <http://www.hwcn.org/link/forhv/>
• Giant's Rib Discovery Centre <http://www.giantsrib.ca/>
• Green Venture <http://www.greenventure.ca/gv.asp>
• Hamilton Coalition on Pesticide Issues <http://www.hcpi.ca/>
• Hamilton Conservation Authority <http://www.conservationhamilton.on.ca/>
• Hamilton-Halton Watershed Stewardship Program <http://www.conservationhamilton.ca/environment/stewardship/>
• Hamilton Industrial Environmental Association <http://www.dofasco.ca/bins/content_page.asp?cid=1852-2309-2310>
• Hamilton Naturalists' Club <http://www.hamiltonnature.org/>
• Hamilton Transit Users Group <http://environmenthamilton.org/TUG>
• Hamiltonians for Progressive Development <http://www.progressivedevelopment.ca/actions/joinus.htm#contact>
• Hamilton-Wentworth Stewardship Council <http://www.ontariostewardship.org/ontarioStewardship/home/osHWSCIndex.asp>
• Iroquoia Bruce Trail Club <http://www.iroquoia.on.ca/>
• Keep Hamilton Clean Committee
• Land Care Niagara <http://www.landcareniagara.com/>
• Mac Roots and Shoots <http://www.macrootsandshoots.spaces.live.com/>
• MACgreen / McMaster University Students Union  <http://www.msu.mcmaster.ca/macgreen/>
• Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) McMaster <http://www.opirg.ca/>
• Positive Power Co-operative Inc. (PPC) <http://www.positivepowerco-op.com/>
• Raise The Hammer <http://www.raisethehammer.org/>
• Recycle Cycles <http://opirg.org/mcmaster/rc.html>
• Royal Botanical Gardens <http://www.rbg.ca/>
• Sierra Club, Hamilton Niagara Group <http://ontario.sierraclub.ca/hn/>

It's a Youtube world!

With all the twitter about Twitter and big social media channels like Facebook, it’s easy to overlook what is probably the greatest innovation in new media communications: online video.

According to media measurement companies Comscore and Nielson, YouTube currently streams 225 million videos per day – and is one of the hottest destinations on the net. The actual figures may be much higher. According to a source in Google, the total number of streams per day tops 1.2 billion.

Videos are  springing up on many websites as companies look for ways to draw in more visitors. In fact, every single website that Pier 8 Group has designed in the last year incorporates streaming video. 

Pier 8 Group uses video on this blog to showcase our discussions on branding and marketing. We also post videos on the facebook groups we’ve created. It’s so easy to do and it’s a favorite feature for people visiting our sites.

We’re seeing a lot more video these days on the web. I love how Canadian provinces are using it in their destination marketing. Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, have produced a series of slick commercials that showcase the incredible beauty of the land. Many people have viewed these on TV, but many more have enjoyed them on YouTube or the province’s tourism website.

I am even more impressed with the videos from B.C. Produced by the province’s tourism marketing agency, they feature the experiential side of west-coast life – everything from mountain biking to kayaking, visits to the local apple orchard or shopping at the farmers’ market. What is so compelling is the authentic character of the videos themselves. Shot with hand-held cameras and nicely edited, they are the epitome of peer-to-peer marketing. They work well because they are completely believable, unlike a lot of tourism marketing that seems so fake!

There’s something about video as a communications tool. Video connects you with real people, speaking in real voices, in a way that is much more engaging and compelling than the highly-polished prose of text-based marketing. With affordable production costs and a worldwide free video channel – the Internet – it is a wonder that every business isn’t already doing it.

 

Living in Jurassic Park

I have a tree from the dinosaur age.

I kid you not. Standing proud in my front yard is a Gingko biloba tree, about 12 metres tall and just a wee tree for its kind.

The ginkgo is a living fossil, with an ancestry dating back 270 million years. Today, the species is only found in the wild in a remote region of China. Even there it may not be a native species, as there is evidence it may have been planted and preserved by Chinese monks over a period of 1,000 years. Both in China and abroad it is cultivated by gardeners like me, but it has never really become renaturalised in the environment.

I did not always know my tree was special, until a couple of years ago when one of my neighbours stopped to chat while I was mowing the lawn. He asked if I knew what kind of tree it was, which I did not, and he told me it was a ginkgo. Last month, when the Dundas Valley Tree Keepers launched their Heritage Tree Hunt, I decided to contact them. I am still waiting to hear if they think my tree is rare, or at least worthy of note.

The ginkgo is a sturdy sucker. It can grow quite tall – some specimens in China top 50 metres. They are also long lived. A ginkgo in Shanghai is four centuries old and a 3,000 year-old ginkgo was reported in Shandong province. There are also four ginkgos in Hiroshima, Japan that survived the 1945 atomic blast, in an area where most other living things were destroyed.

None of this would I have known if the Dundas Valley Tree Keepers had not challenged me to become more aware of the trees in my community. I hope my neighbours take note too. The urban forest holds lots of surprises if we only take the time to stop and look around.

 

Stay Spot, Stay

 Where does the modern dog stay when he’s on vacation? Answer: some of the best hotels in Seattle.

Writing in the Spring 2009 issue of Modern Dog magazine, Elizabeth Gardiner gives us the scoop on several West Coast establishments that are rolling out the red carpet for our four-legged friends.

For a $60 fee, the Hotel Sorrento in downtown Seattle will provide Spot with a plush dog bed, organic treats, water and food bowls. On request, they will also arrange doggie daycare, onsite grooming and even the services of a pet psychic. The Alexis Hotel Seattle offers similar services (no fees), as does Hotel Max ($40) and the Arctic Club Hotel (no fee, but smaller dogs only).

The hotels aren’t the only ones getting into the act. Several Seattle retailers cater exclusively to the canine crowd. The Urban Beast offers the doggie basics  – bowls, beds and treats. For the ultimate experience, however, you may want to try the High Maintenance Bitch on 45th Street, specializing in canine apparel and "cosmuttics". Not to be missed is the Three Dog Bakery, which offers freshly baked treats, including doggie birthday cakes made with all natural ingredients.

In the rush to be seen as “pet-friendly”, hotels and other businesses are literally sitting up and begging for our business. It’s easy to make fun of it all, but in the face of the current economic crisis it sure beats rolling over and playing dead.

Celebrity Chefs serve it up in social media

They can serve it up with flair in the kitchen, but do they have any sizzle when it comes to social media? A survey by Pier 8 Group of ten celebrity chefs provides some interesting insight into the way in which social media is now being used to promote  television¹s culinary stars.

Topping the list is Jamie Oliver, star of The Naked Chef, Jamie's Kitchen, and Oliver's Twist. Jamie not only maintains a website, he also has a blog, Facebook page, YouTube channel and Twitter account. His home page offers links to Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon, indicating that Jamie really knows how to promote himself in the social media world.

Close on Jamie's heels is Emeril Legasse, the star of Emeril Live, Essence of Emeril and Emeril Green. With a website, blog, Facebook page and Twitter account, Emeril is  a busy social bee. Although he doesn't have a YouTube channel, he does have a slew of videos to promote his famous name.

Rachel Ray and Paula Deen tie for third place. Rachel has a website, blog and Facebook group, while Paula prefers twittering to a blog. There seem to be quite a few fake Rachel Ray twitter accounts, a good sign that her fan base reaches far into the ranks of the twitterati.

Gordon Ramsay, the star of Hell's Kitchen, The F Word, and Kitchen Nightmare, has a great website and a Twitter account. His website is contemporary and regularly updated, but Gordon doesn't seem to twitter much. His colleagues in the four spot, Sanjeev Kapoor, Mario Batali and Canadian Robert Rainford, each have a website and a blog, although Rainford¹s website is pathetically simple.

Bringing up the rear are Wolgang Puck and Canadian Christine Cushing, both of whom have websites only. Wolfgang's site is quite nice, while Christine's looks like it could use a little updating.

Food Network, Fine Living and W take note: the ranks of the world's celebrity chefs are getting pretty crowded. Time to pump up your stars in the media that's cool if you don¹t want to hear that your brand is old school.

(story compiled with notes from Medina Abdelkader)

Tom Hanks and Me

It started innocently enough. I was writing some copy for the home page of the Pier 8 Group website to encourage people to visit our new blog. I wanted to make a point about how the blog is a place where we can have a conversation. As writers often do, I tried a little lateral thinking to see if I could come up with an interesting way to say this, and my thoughts turned to Tom Hanks.

In the movie Cast Away, Tom is marooned on a desert island, where his only companion is a soccer ball named Wilson. He had found the ball in one of the FedEx packages he salvaged from the plane crash. While trying to make a fire, he cuts his hand and, in a fit of anger, picks up the ball and throws it, leaving a bloody hand print that vaguely resembles a face. Because the company’s name is stamped on the back, he decides to call it “Wilson”, and the ball become his new best friend.

At least, that’s how I remembered it.

So, I wrote a little piece inviting my readers to imagine themselves in Tom’s position, with only a soccer ball to talk to.  The conversation, I assured them, would be a lot more lively at the Pier 8 Group blog.

A few days later, after posting my copy to the website, our interactive guru Mark Wu, who is also president of 2gen.net, calls me to ask if the page looks OK. “Looks great”, I say.

“Just one thing though”, says Mark, “you know it’s not a soccer ball – it’s a volleyball.”

“No way! Really?”, I said, but in my confidence was quickly waning. Mark, you see, is not only a talented website guy, he also coaches children’s soccer.

“Yeah”, he says, “Wilson doesn’t make a soccer ball, but they do make volleyballs.”

And so they do. I checked on Wiki and found that Wilson was, indeed, a volleyball, created by screenwriter William Broyles Jr. In fact, you can purchase your own authentic Wilson Cast Away ball at Amazon.com for $14.99.

As it turns out, the Wilson Sporting Goods company did quite well with their product placement in this movie. Brand awareness jumped as the company launched its own promotion focusing on the fact that one of its products was “co-starring” with Tom Hanks.

The sport of volleyball, on the other hand, fared less well, at least when it comes to my own remembering. Oh well, as Freud might say, sometimes a ball is just a ball.

Bob Mills