You can't teach taste. But you can improve it.

That's what I've long believed.
But it took the inimitable Ira Glass of This American Life to express the implications of that truth in words.




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Free PR!

Cheap, proactive, unobtrusive...and great! Not to mention inspiring. Some of my favorite clients have small budgets, and this tripped my "wish I'd thought of that" trigger.

The article is a good, quick read and includes links to a discussion. Old Navy apparently did something similar but gained none of the traction that this campaign did -- my guess is that they didn't partner with Goodwill in the same way, or at all; if true, this campaign provides an instructive lesson on the power of partnerships.


Apparel Tags Now Promote Caring For Clothes AND Planet Earth
by Amy Corr
November 2, 2009

This idea is cheap, proactive and unobtrusive.

Goodwill was looking for a way to increase its yearly donations through an initiative that costs nothing. Sounds impossible, but Goodwill's pro bono agency, BBDO West, came up with a way to use something already found in clothing -- care tags -- as a courier of Goodwill's message.

Levi Strauss, the first company approached for this program, signed on with Goodwill to create "A Care Tag for Our Planet."

The concept is simple: the tag suggests that, rather than trash unwanted jeans, you donate them to Goodwill, so someone else can wear them and less material is dumped in landfills.

According to Goodwill, roughly 23.8 billion pounds of clothing and textiles wind up in U.S. landfills every year. Starting in January 2010, Levi's clothes in the U.S. will feature the care tags; global tags will launch that fall. The project was 18 months in the making, according to Jim Lesser, executive creative director at BBDO West.

Levi Strauss and Goodwill will additionally promote the campaign using viral campaigns and in-store elements.

The care tags not only encourage clothing donation, but also push washing clothes in cold water, an effortless action that can conserve a great deal of household energy. All tags conclude with, "donate to Goodwill when no longer needed and care for our planet."

Additional clothing brands have already signed on to use care tags for Goodwill.

"Ultimately we want every manufacturer in the world to be part of the program," concluded Lesser.

FailCon

This sounds like a cool event and also is a good article. The article that this link goes to is all about how companies learn from there failures and the conference that they had in Silicon Valley to share ideas on failing productively.
Story about FailCon

So how much did this production cost?

Cheap @$$ camera vs. Cool concept.
Which do you think won?






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In honor of the release of Windows 7.

Sorry, I'm an unrepentant Mac guy. Here's why:



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User Generated Brilliance

You'll be hearing more and more about user-generated content around here.

This is what it is at its best.



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"Can you say Venn Diagram??"

Argh! Could this blog get any more techno/gearhead/geeky? If I log on and see that slo-mo bullet one more time...

This term, this Venn diagram thing, keeps coming up in client meetings. When it does I think, oh yah, the overlapping circles thing. I nailed that a long time ago, duh. We all did. We know that anything can be Venn diagrammed, that the world can be reduced, or expanded, to a Venn diagram. My whole life is a Venn diagram, especially my work life. Editors need copy, I produce copy. Demand, supply, meet profit. The client needs product, we have production. A big win-win lives in the merger of the two.

Except that it turns out I had been paying less and less attention to the importance of thoughtful, effective Venn diagramming. And its usefulness in all kinds of creative endeavors. I was happy to come across a reminder like this (very basic) article.

Mary E.