A Better Role for Brands in the New New Economy

This article describes how I became an evangelist for corporate social responsibility:

San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, May 21, 2001

I had been a brand strategist for 20 years when my father, a cattle farmer in upstate New York, turned to me and said “Isn’t brand dead?”  Read more

Harley-Davidson Signals Climate Change Is Mainstream

 Is there an answer to climate change? I believe there is, and it’s already underway. To borrow terms from technology, a distributed solution has moved along the technology adoption curve, through the innovator and early adopter phases. Now, we’re entering the mainstream.

6 Reasons 2014 Was a Good Year for Climate Action

When we heard about Federal cuts to environmental initiatives, we couldn’t help but think of the potential disaster when climate-denying forces really take power in Congress next year. We might yearn for just a little bit of good news to ring in the New Year, so here are six reasons to be optimistic under even the […]

What Gets Measured Gets Funded: A Call To Measure The Impact Of Brand On CSR

by Carol Holding and Jacquelyn Ottman; BrandChannel.com; January 2, 2007 Last summer at a roundtable in New York presented by Women for a Sustainable Future, Gerber’s Jim Thomas, Global Head of Health, Safety & Environment and Business Continuity, presented the results of his company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program. Thomas showed how Gerber was improving […]

Technology Branding for Consumers

San Jose Mercury News, Business Monday, October 16, 1995 As computers become ubiquitous in the home, advanced technology marketers are facing the cold hard truth: their rarefied province is being invaded by the technically downscale, the dread “consumer.” And consumers are changing life as tech producers know it, insisting that everything be simple, glorying in their […]

Creating An Office Space ‘Brand’ at Embarcadero Center

Text of speech given to the Urban Land Institute, San Francisco, April 2002 Remember when futurists were predicting that telecommuting would be the death of cities. Well, all we have to do to find out what happened is look at San Francisco – office towers are full and rates are soaring. Clearly, the futurists were […]

How Strategic Philanthropy Builds Brands

Letter to Harvard Business Review responding to Michael Porter and Mark Kramer’s article “The Strategic Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy,” available through HBS Publishing. Three cheers for “The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy.” Corporate managers have underestimated philanthropy’s benefits for too long. Porter and Kramer avoid the usual arguments about moral obligation and focus instead on competitive […]

Shell’s Shell Game

Unfortunately, most of the fossil fuel companies have since adopted Shell’s approach:

Native Americans Gain Standing in Climate Science

Update: Just this month, the Lummi tribe is credited with pausing construction of a coal part in northern Puget Sound.

Measuring the Impact of CSR on Brand

Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations, August 2007 Companies in almost every sector of American business say they embrace Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it strengthens their brands. They also recognize that a stronger brand is a more valuable one, which is especially important since the U.S. […]