Archive for the ‘Green Technologies’ Category

The Marketing of “Revolution”

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

I was enthralled at the Tax-Day tea-parties held around the country for a number of reasons.

One reason that this was interesting was due to something that I feel is happening more and more around the country - words and phrases have been inducted into marketing campaigns, often without regard for the true meaning of the words.

I want to focus on “Revolution is Brewing”, which I heard a number of times on April 15th, 2009. The word revolution is a strong word, probably one of the strongest words in any society. According to dictionary.com, the number one meaning is “an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.” Now, is that really what was happening? No. Is that really what was intended? Probably not. Some people may have felt that way, of course, but there is no accounting for every opinion.

What does it really mean then? It’s obviously a play on words - “tea” and “brewing”. Get it?

We say strong things these days without really meaning them because we are just so used to it. This is because marketing is prevalent in all areas of our lives - including everything from cola makers to political lobby groups. The words sound good. The words sound tough. Because of this, people use them with a certain abandon. Was a consensus really preaching a revolution? Or was it made to feel “old-timey”, complete with our forefather’s garb and ambiance to create a particular mood?

The point here is that this may be another case of manipulation of the market by a large organization with a particular agenda. The agenda is irrelevant and the organization is as well. This is not about any particular stance on politics - just an observation of the collective unconscious and it’s affect from marketing campaigns.

I feel that we need to step back, separate ourselves from advertising campaigns and slogans (really, they are everywhere) and learn to say things in our own way. Our collective conversational skills will hopefully grow to a place where we can communicate with each other with the respect that we all deserve.

Posted in Green Technologies, Personal Feelings, Thoughts on Marketing, User Experience | 2 Comments »

Organic, Schmorganic

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Note: I welcome comments, re-posting of this document following the terms of my Creative Commons license, digg.com diggs or yahoo.com buzzes.

My family tries to eat organic food. I would say that we are in the 75% range of organic foods vs. non-organic. We aren’t perfect, nor are we doing all that we can. But I wanted to talk about something that recently bothered me regarding an “organic” item that I rather enjoyed.

I used to get these Chewy Granola Bars that were USDA organic. One day, they were taken off the shelf of our local supermarket. They were removed because of the recent peanut salmonella scare. I walked around the store to get my other items and I noticed something that I felt was strange - that many different products were removed from the shelves because of the Salmonella scare. This was due to the supposed deplorable conditions at the Peanut Corporation of America plants. Many of the other items that were off the shelves were not organic.

How could it be that organic and non-organic products would be using the same peanuts? Organic peanuts could end up in non-organic products, of course. But, why would they not label their products as containing organic peanuts, when it is such a marketable item these days? It just did not make sense.

I wanted to inquire with the company that made these granola bars. I found that the website for this company touted “Organic since 1972″ and “…is also a real place — a working, active, productive farm dedicated to bringing wholesome organic food to your table.” Now this at first led me to believe that the farm pictured in their advertisement was the actual farm to produce their product.

When I decided to email this company, I was taken to a huge company’s website contact form. Huh…

A little further research led me to the information “…said it has no reason to believe there is a safety issue with these products, but that it is taking the action, as a precaution, because peanut pieces in the products may have been sourced from the Plainview, Texas, plant of Peanut Corporation of America.”

Is this company that owned the Peanut plant really an organic farm? At the very least, is it a clean organic farm? Who certified this farm as organic? It has been said that the farm did not properly supply documents regarding it’s organic farming. And as the bottom line, aren’t the products from the farm listed on their website?

The response to me was essentially that only these few products were at issue and everything else was OK. Now, I want to point out that the few products at issue, were products that I consumed almost daily. I wonder if that counted as a bad thing in their eyes?

My point with this is that the term “organic” seems to have been diminished and compromised, especially by large corporations that generally care about their bottom line. If “organic” is fashionable now, then these companies may want to grab onto the term without really doing the leg-work involved in truly being organic.

I believe this to be one more account of marketing replacing truth. In fact I think that our country is slowly and systematically being conditioned into believing that “something” is actually “something else”. This is done, often enough, by creating laws, often through lobbyists, that dictate “truth”. In the example above, does the term “organic” really get us just that? Does the USDA standard of organics actually measure up vs. true organic farming? I fear, in the account above, it does not.

We, as a people, might do better if we start to understand the difference between “moral” and “legal”. “Legal” does not necessarily mean “good” nor does “good” always become law.

Posted in Green Technologies, Personal Feelings, Thoughts on Marketing | 5 Comments »

Our Green Hosting Initiative

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

As owner of a web design agency, I feel guilty about the toll on our earth made by servers and computers. This ranges from the chemicals and resources used to produce said computers to the power consumed by them. At the same time, we need to run our businesses and personal lives in a way that allows us to be functional in today’s society.

Computers are a reality that are here to stay. So what do we do? What can we do as businesses?

Let’s start with web servers - think about it, they are always on. And when we say “server”, there is really more to it than one computer. There are usually routers, firewalls, switches, T1’s, fiber optics, etc. all required just to keep that server online.

That is a serious amount of electricity used. Most large web hosts utilize data centers which can have multiple (sometimes hundreds) of computers, routers, firewalls, etc. all running 24 hours a day. In the web world, they are all necessary requirements to serving websites.

My company has tried numerous green hosting services, including solar powered. We must say that we love the idea of solar powered server farms! However, when it comes down to it, we could not recommend most of them to our business clients with mission-critical needs such as ecommerce sites and really any large site that a client relies upon to earn a living.

We used Rackspace in the past and felt that they were honestly the best dedicated hosting company that we have ever used.  We decided on using their Greenspace servers for a client and had a great experience with the whole process. Now, let’s be straight here - our hope is that Rackspace goes solar, but in the meantime, we felt that this was a great trade-off in terms of business server needs.

So we decided to become a Rackspace Partner and after numerous conversations with them, we felt that we were on the same page. Not only in terms of promoting only their Greenspace products but of our need to provide zero heavy-sell techniques. Seriously, who has time for that?

Our green hosting form is at http://www.agencyeight.com/green-hosting/. Keep in mind that this is for dedicated hosting only. We have an excellent host for shared servers, but more about them later. When someone signs up for dedicated hosting here, we are able to take some of our commission (not all - we need to market the initiative and still have enough money to eat) from the referral and donate $100 to the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation (or other ones as we see fit). Now before we get all “we are enviro-angels” on you, we understand that this is not the perfect eco-conscious solution. However, we feel that this is the best business-class, yet as green as we can be solution, that provides the flexibility and professionalism that we desire.

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