As Kermit the Frog taught an entire generation, “It's not easy being green.”

Clorox’s Green Works is a case study in the steep learning curve of green branding. The line of environmentally friendly housecleaning products launched in 2008 with an endorsement from the Sierra Club, which helped boost its market penetration and credibility. 

That $1.3 million contract ends in December and the brand chose Earth Day to announce a strategic marketing revamp, including a new tone of voice (embodied by its new manifesto, posted on Facebook and its website) and the removal of the Sierra Club logo from all Green Works packaging, a clear sign of the times as green cleaning products have been forced to reduce their premium prices and re-position the sell to deflect declining sales.Continue reading...

Havaianas, best known to the world's consumers as the brand that represents the ubiquitous flip-flop, turned 50 in 2012. It was a year in which the Brazilian company made enough flip-flops to circle the world 50 times.

Carla Schmitzberger, who oversees the brand in her role as head of the sandals business unit at Havaianas' parent company, Alpargatas, said that until the 1990s, "mostly poor people wore" Havaianas. "However, there was a small group of wealthier people that were wearing the product, but they were wearing them at home, and they were embarrassed to be seen with them because they were considered a poor person's footwear," she shared in an interview in the latest edition of Interbrand IQ.

Indeed, the brand was launched in 1962 with the goal of outfitting Brazil's peasants — not by a Brazilian but by a Scotsman, Robert Fraser, who was inspired by traditional Japanese shoe design.Continue reading...

As brands around the world celebrate Earth Day, it is becoming more apparent that creative, effective marketing will be a vital factor in the adoption of green consumer products and practices. Years have passed since terms like "green" and "sustainability" became part of the lexicon, but little has changed when it comes to consumer behavior that effects the environment. Joel Makower, author and chairman of GreenBiz Group blames "half-hearted, humorless and uninspired," marketing efforts that push "underwhelming, overpriced, inconvenient, ineffective or unavailable," green products. 

Initiated in 1970 by Denis Hayes, 20 million Americans gathered for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform. Today, more than one billion people in nearly 200 nations recognize Earth Day and its goals. This year's Earth Day theme revolves around climate change and all those affected by it, from "a man in the Maldives worried about relocating his family as sea levels rise," to "the orangutan in Indonesian forests segmented by more frequent brushfires and droughts."Continue reading...

Saint Francis is the patron saint of ecology so it makes sense that San Francisco was one of the pioneers to celebrate this annual environmental event. Once a day that the conventional culture thought of as a time for hippies to hug the trees, it has transformed as the culture has continued to turn its collective attention to the damage humans have done to the earth and what can be done to repair it. Earth Day has become so much a part of the landscape that it now ends up being used as a kickoff point for environmental efforts by organizations and businesses of all sizes.

This year, Whole Foods has announced that it will mark Earth Day by beginning its effort to refrain from selling “wild-caught seafood plucked from depleted waters or captured through unsustainable methods.” The Blue Ocean Institute and Monterey Bay Aquarium label seafood “red-rated” if it comes from overfished waters or if the fishermen use methods that harm other sea life. Anything in that category, such as Atlantic halibut, gray sole, and skate, will not be available at Whole Foods after Earth Day.Continue reading...

A123 Systems hit with recall of batteries for electric cars.

Apple plans to make greater investment in China as CEO Tim Cook meets with Chinese officials.

AT&T and Verizon threatened by freebie services fueled by Clearwire.

BMW tabs 1.3 million cars in massive recall.

Chipotle recycles old billboards for Earth Day.

Coca-Cola supports Michigan tourism campaign.

Corona evolves beach campaign.

Enterprise Products and Enbridge plan rival pipelines to Keystone XL.

Google warms to advertising its new services.Continue reading...

Bill McKibben’s impassioned speech at Power Shift 2011, seen above, began with a call to arms: “All right, listen up. Very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing. That’s you, here, now.”

McKibben, the former New Yorker staff writer and author of The End of Nature, among other books, has been called "probably the nation's leading environmentalist" by the Boston Globe and described by TIME magazine as "the world's best green journalist.”

Nowadays, he's busy organizing 350.org in 2009 as a global grassroots movement to solve climate crisis, a name derived from the need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm.

With Earth Day more or less devolved into a day of appreciating the planet and far removed from the mass protest from which it sprang in 1970, McKibben and his cohorts are hoping, this time, to get the branding of an earth-changing (and -saving) movement right.Continue reading...

Trending today on YouTube: What do you get when you combine Afghanistan, Marines, Britney Spears, and YouTube? Give up? A lip sync version of Britney Spears' song Hold It Against Me by the US marines.

Posted to YouTube (following a teaser) on April 18th, and now boasting more than 2 million views, this video shows that even marines in Afghanistan can have a little fun in their free time.

The video features Marines in different areas of their camp, from their posts to combat vehicles, lip syncing the entire tune in a video edited in the style of a music video.

Below: Earth Day meets Friday and more.Continue reading...

After years of litigation between MGA and Mattel, with Barbie-maker Mattel charging copyright violation over the latter's Bratz line of dolls with a former employee, a court has finally found Mattel to be in the wrong.

The corporate espionage case has been brutal, with Mattel winning itself no sympathies with ad hominem attacks, referring to MGA as a "mediocre toy company."

On the (high) heels of news that it will be slammed by a $88 million court decision against it, Mattel is looking to positive areas, including playing nice with the environment with a new green initiative that was announced for Earth Day.Continue reading...