|
|
|
|
Global Warming Campaigns: Dell and Clif Bar
With the 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore demonstrated that there’s an audience responsive to the message of global warming and resource conservation. But is the message ready for its close-up in front of actual paying customers?
Two very different companies… Dell Inc. and Clif Bar… are betting the answer is yes.
Clif Bar is currently touring ski areas in western North America with its “Save Our Snow 2007 Winter Roadtrip,” a mobile education campaign to encourage energy conservation so as to ensure the future of snow and by extension, skiing.
The Dell campaign, called “Plant a Tree for Me” asks for a modest donation to plant a tree which is calculated to offset the carbon released to power your new Dell desktop or laptop computer.
As befits their target markets the Dell campaign is the more ambitious, while the Clif bar effort is ‘cooler,’ pun intended.
Dell is talking about “minimizing its impact on the environment at every stage in the product lifecycle,” as a corporate goal. The "Plant a Tree for Me" program joins an existing energy efficiency movement and a two-part computer recycling program.
The Clif Bar SOS campaign website offers five tips to do now: go hybrid/carpool; eat local/organic; reduce/reuse/recycle; use compact fluorescent bulbs; and, buy a $2 ‘Cool Tag’ online or from the Roadtrip van. Each tag generates a $2 investment in NativeEnergy’s Windbuilders program, which helps the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota build a wind farm.
An Inconvenient Truth is walking the walk, too. They purchased ‘renewable energy credits’ and ‘carbon offsets’ from NativeEnergy to reduce the carbon footprint of making the movie and promote the fact in their press materials.
Corporate customers make up a huge share of Dell’s business. It will be interesting to see if Dell can move B2B customers to pony up a few extra dollars to plant trees is an open question.
|
|
|
FREE
Cause Marketing Today
Newsletter
|
