After our “Cause Marketing Gets Bigger. And Smaller.” post from last week, a couple of subsequent examples popped that were worth passing along.
For starters, we mentioned that a number of cause marketing efforts were tapping the wisdom of crowds to generate unorthodox solutions to daunting social problems. PechaKucha, who we’ve profiled before, recently brought together [...]

Last week, Ad Age ran a brief article titled, “The Most Influential Cause Marketing Campaigns.” Much of the list is familiar; we’re all aware of the massive efforts like the Livestrong bracelets and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. However, some of the campaigns on the list took on a decidedly narrow mission, such as AmEx’s [...]

No need to dig any further – one glance at this package and you get the gist of Scanwood kitchen utensils. They’re wooden. They’re authentic. They’re natural.
(Of course, you can also zoom in a bit and see the “Designed in Denmark. Made by nature” tagline on the side.)
Scanwood’s packaging instantly drives the message home, especially [...]

In our 10 Trends for 2010 analysis, our fourth trend (Niche Networks and Micro Communities) claims that we should expect an explosion of smaller communities built around shared passion points in the next 12 months. From a marketing standpoint, this trend provides brands with ample opportunities to build exceptional relationships with smaller consumer groups through [...]

This season, if you want to be the envy of all your friends, perhaps you should slim down a bit. Shed some of those thick curves. Make it so your friends just can’t resist screaming, “OMG, that font is SOOO slimming on you!!!”
Wait, we’re talking about fonts?
Yup. Suddenly, we’ve noticed a number of posts on [...]

“Corporate social responsibility” and “crowdsourcing” are so ubiquitous in today’s marketing that even mentioning either term generally elicits more yawning than fawning. Of course, both tactics continue to resonate with consumers, so we can’t completely forget about them either. What to do?
How about shaking things up and spiking them with a bit of creative competition?
Take [...]

In our recent discussion about inserting games into everyday tasks, we called out Volkswagen’s “Piano Stairs” experiment as a simple illustration of this idea. Turns out, VW wasn’t done with the fun and games just yet.
Over at thefuntheory.com (thanks to Kristin Connolly for the tip!), VW’s building a collection of similar experiments, including the recycling [...]

All of our readers can benefit from taking three minutes to watch this video.
Creatives, you’ll love the way the infographics are integrated into the subject matter. Planners and account folks, you’ll dig the way that the presentation breaks down a somewhat complicated trend (locavorism, a.k.a. eating local) to easily digestible (yeah, pun intended) images.
The video [...]

Just because we’re finally enjoying a dry weekday amidst this rainy summer, it seems like a good time to encourage folks to hop on a bike and Ride the City.
A pleasantly stripped-down site, RtC provides point-a-to-point-b bike maps for Chicago, NYC, and Austin (so far). They also point out bike shops along the way, as [...]

Here’s another great example of applying The OOC to extremely practical ends. We touched on the Good Guide website many moons ago in a Potty Posting, as an impartial guide to the health, environmental and social impacts of products we purchase. At the time, the site was great if you had purchased items at the [...]