“Advertising the Earth”
Advertising the Earth-
Walter Cronkite, spokesperson for the planet.
By Martha Shaw
Walter Cronkite: “We are here this evening, not only to protect our own interests in the bountiful sea — but to represent the interests of those who could not be here tonight. Creatures with eight legs, shiny scales, striped feathers, and funny-looking faces. We have a responsibility to represent the interests of other living things with whom we are sharing this planet.”
It was Walter’s fascination with the natural world that won the hearts of scientists. By luck, I had the honor of writing scripts like the one above for him that heralded the earth. In 1981, at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, we were delighted to hear that Walter Cronkite would produce the CBS Cronkite Universe Series upon leaving the newsroom for good. Greeting him in our lab, I met a talented gentleman who shared a passion for broadcasting the wonders of our planet. We coined it ‘Earth’ advertising.
Once on location for the Universe Series, Walter descended into the submersible Alvin to eyewitness bioluminescence in the sea firsthand. He paused on the ladder as I held up his script cards. It was then when I first noticed he wasn’t looking at the camera like most newscasters, nor did he appear to be reading the script. He poetically rewrote it in his head as he spoke from his heart. His mind was more of a marvel than his subject matter. The man was talking directly to the people of America. He addressed them as though engaged in lively dinner conversation, unaware that the world sat on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear what he had to say.
As a young radio announcer back in Kansas City, or elsewhere along his way, Walter became the one in a million, authentic voice that could cut through the clutter. Maybe it was when he met his wife Betsy, a beautiful quick-minded advertising copywriter to whom he often gave credit. As a team, they experienced the power of media to influence people’s thinking. Though he never got into advertising, he had a lot to say about it. Mainly that news had been cut to the bare bones to make more room for commercials. When they posed as content, it was an insult to our collective intelligence.
“The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed,” he wrote in his 1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life.”
Once, I gave Walter a lift to La Jolla from the Coastal Processes Lab where I worked at Scripps, and we stopped at the grad student weekly TGIF. It dawned on me at the age of 22 that everybody worshipped this man, not just my dad’s generation, but people of all ages, from all walks of life. We drove on up the hill and along La Jolla Cove in my old rust bucket of a car. Pedestrians swarmed us at a stop sign, but with a reverence I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t like the Beatles, or even a president. It was more like a pope.
Stuck in the traffic, our conversation turned to how we might best translate and prepare scientific knowledge for public consumption. How to engage Homo sapiens in the healthy future of all species, including our own. How to share the enormity and complexity of nature as a force to believe in, rather than reckon against. He was mesmerized by the planet, and the universe beyond. To the very end, Walter’s curiosity had the innocence of a little boy with a magnifying glass.
For the next 20 years, we’d make time to sail out of Edgartown harbor and brainstorm how to harness curiosity about the natural world, to keep up the spirit for seeking the truth. He believed that people would align with their belief system when it came to the environment if the path was laid out, and that advertising had to take that bull by the horns because maybe nobody else would. This is how Walter was with people. Some say it was his depth of conversation that spurned the Egyptian Israeli Peace Treaty.
The struggle between news information and advertising may be age old, but Walter got to see a shift, a new chaordic order. The great melting pot of new media leaves no place for information to hide from those willing to seek it out. This is why responsible brands will shine through the eco-darkness. There are signs all around us that “green” is now getting a little more popular, greenwashing aside.
A year or so ago, I called Walter to find out how he wanted to be listed on a project we were working on together. “How about ‘executive Producer’?” I asked. He countered with the word ‘journalist,’ and we pondered adding the title of ‘explorer.’
As Americans, we’ll always remember the newsman who was at once the keel of the ship, the wind in the sail, the tiller on course, and our moral compass for a time. We stand here on this humble shore, shining a lantern upon him as he disappears into the fog, out of our world and into that one frontier we all can’t explore together. Goodbye to Walter from the advertising world– we’ll try to keep it honest.
Written by Martha Shaw, President, Earth Advertising
Martha is founder of Earth Advertising and eFlicksMedia, an agency established in 1998 to represent the best interests of the planet. She is a member of the Explorers Club, recipient of top creative awards in media, and member of socially responsible business organizations, media panels and scientific advisory boards. She lives in New York and Martha’s Vineyard with her family.
Turn a New Leaf
Recently featured on their blog, here’s what Fast Company had to say about New Leaf Paper:
Since the Office Depot launch in fall of 2007, and an additional launch at Whole Foods in summer 2008, New Leaf has gone head-to-head with mainstream brands. An extensive new line of New Leaf products launched nationwide in Target stores this month including social stationery, art paper, premium paper, back-to-school notebooks, journals, fashion notebooks, composition books and products like the Foundspace journals and Karma Cards–none of it employing the “green guilt” that the designers saw so often in competing categories sharing shelf space.
Launching the new line put the team from Willoughby Innovation Lab in front of some of their most discerning consumers: Students aged 12-18. Working closely with New Leaf brand manager Winette Winston, the designers employed ethnographic studies and focus groups and the findings suggested that this age group was, in fact, not comfortable wearing green on their sleeves. “They wished to quietly support a more environmentally responsible product but feared blasting that to the world on the cover of their notebooks,” says principal Ann Willoughby.
In designing the brand, the designers took a fashion approach: They eschewed “green” notebooks for normal-looking ones that happened to be eco-friendly, then added cool designs or different colors to stand out on the shelves. Taking the iconic black-and-white splotches of the traditional composition notebook, the designers reinterpreted it using a macro crop of a leaf’s veins. The leaf-pattern composition became a top seller at Office Depot.
But for all its sustainable features, the price point for the New Leaf comes in a bit higher than conventional papers–more fashion than commodity. While this presented a challenge for the designers to deliver higher quality work at a lower budget, they took the opportunity to examine their own productivity and manage their time more efficiently while working on the project. “More proof that you don’t have to sacrifice style and convenience to make responsible choices,” says Willoughby. “That’s our favorite part.”
August 20, 2009 at 10:00 am socialventurenetwork Leave a comment
‘Create Beauty. Respect the Planet.’
SVN Member David Berruto is opening a new store in Atlanta’s trendy Westside Provisions District. Environment, also located in New York, Los Angeles, and Costa Mesa, considers environmental stewardship as their responsibility and privilege. Their unique furniture is made with reclaimed and sustainably harvested wood, as well as recycled or repurposed textiles. Most of their raw matieral is sourced from derelict houses and abandoned buildings in Parana, Brazil that are made from 100 year old Peroba Rosa wood. Any other wood is sustainably harvested or SFI certified.
In the past year they have made important progress in identifying and addressing environmental impacts. They passed stringent entry requirements to become a partner member of the TropicalForest Trust, a leading global organization working to promote sustainable forestry at the local level.
A favorite of eco-celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon, Environment’s contemporary craftsmanship coupled with their attention to the provenance of their raw materials differentiates them from other furniture makers. To see their collections and for more information visit www.environmentfurniture.com.
August 18, 2009 at 9:19 pm socialventurenetwork Leave a comment
Mentoring for All
The Capital Access Program (CAP) at Green For All seeks to create, sustain, and scale green jobs in the U.S. CAP works to build the capacity of green businesses and nonprofits, and to mobilize capital so that Green For All’s advocacy leads to real economic recovery and environmental restoration – particularly for vulnerable communities.
One central piece of CAP’s work is the development of an Incubation Program. This Program will pair seasoned businesspeople with green entrepreneurs, in an effort to help their organizations grow and achieve scale. Small businesses and nonprofits will be pulled from Green For All’s twelve target cities — Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Miami, Boston, Newark, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Seattle – and ideally linked with mentors located in their region. These organizations will be sourced via national conferences, social enterprise networks, webinars hosted on Green For All’s website, and personal networking efforts. CAP will also post notification of this program on the Green For All website, and accept applications submitted online.
The Business Incubation Program will run for one full year, with the launch date expected to occur on November 1, 2009. While the current expectation is that the Program will continue well past October 31, 2010, CAP will certainly take both mentor and protégé feedback into account when ascertaining the viability of the Program.
For more information and if you are interested in becoming involved contact Nick Flores at nick@greenforall.org. For additional information click here.
August 4, 2009 at 10:00 am socialventurenetwork Leave a comment
Bearing Witness: enewsletter
Social Venture Network member Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers are offering a free subscription to BEARING WITNESS: A Newsletter for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism. This e-Newsletter offers profiles, links and articles on the groups and individuals committed to this practice, emerging service projects and social actions as well as the history, ethical bases and philosophies comprising this multifaceted global movement. To subscribe, please visit www.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe. Bernie has also created two resource directories for this work, a Directory of Socially Engaged groups and individuals, and a directory of learning resources.
BEARING WITNESS profiles people and groups doing Socially Engaged Buddhism and features their creative service and activist projects. The newsletter includes articles on principles for the movement, ethical foundations, and special topics such as social service, social justice and activism, conflict resolution, compassionate care, prison work, ecological advocacy, social entrepreneurship, mental health, wellness and body-mind healing practices, and arts as social activism.
July 23, 2009 at 10:00 am socialventurenetwork Leave a comment
SVN IMPACT: Aggregating the stories, connections, and leadership from SVN 