In just one week, the EU’s sweeping ban on animal testing for cosmetics and personal care products goes into effect.

"All personal care products, from high-end to drugstore brands, will be subject to the rules," and "final products cannot be tested on animals and nor can any of a given products’ ingredients."

The European ban starting March 11th is a hard-won victory impacting companies and brands worldwide, and follows two decades of campaigning by organizations such as PETA, public protests, phone calls, and more than 20,000 e-mails.

“It’s enormously important because it started out as an ethical stand—animals should not die for shampoo—and brought about a whole new era of non-animal science,” Kathy Guillermo, SVP Laboratory Investigations at PETA, told brandchannel. “This ban shows that once an animal test is rejected, scientists can and will come up with a new and better way. We need to put the same limitations on household chemicals, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.”Continue reading...

Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Meet Monty, Porter and Ginny — three dogs trained by Mark Vette to drive cars in a novel partnership between a local SPCA branch in New Zealand and the automaker that puts a whole new spin on "adoption drive."

The cruising canines were selected by SPCA Auckland as the first crew for the Driving Dogs campaign, and started training two months ago with MINI New Zealand's instructors. Beginning with mock car controls, Monty (the Neil Armstong of the group) graduated to a real car where he spent hours behind the wheel – much like any nervous teenager, practicing his driving skills, while accompanied by a human instructor.

This week, Monty drove the car on his own on Campbell Live on New Zealand television, and social media exploded.Continue reading...

There's good news and bad news when it comes to AIDS, and ONE wants to make sure the world's population is aware of both this December 1, the 24th annual World AIDS Day.

The ONE Campaign, the global advocacy organization co-founded by U2's Bono, just released a new report on the global fight against HIV/AIDS. The good news: Scientists now have the tools to "turn the tide" on AIDS, and the world should be heartened that the UN set targets for the "beginning of the end of AIDS" to be met in 2015. The bad news: Unless "sufficient funding, coordination and political will" are brought to bear in the fight against AIDS, it will be 2022 before the "beginning of the end of AIDS" can be reached.

With America mired in a heated national debate over how to fix the debt and the looming fiscal cliff, Bono has been personally lobbying U.S. lawmakers to urge them not to cut U.S. foreign assistance and aid funding. ONE is stoking up the urgency through a variety of actions in conjunction with World AIDS Day 2012.Continue reading...

It's been 20 years since Evelyn Lauder created the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, and brands continue to support the work in a variety of initiatives. Indeed, this year's Delta pink plane is adding Lauder's signature, as seen above, to honor the woman and her brands' contributions to fighting breast cancer.

2012 also marks Ford Motor Company's 18th year of involvement having dedicated more than $115 million to the cause so far, and this year’s Ford Warriors in Pink campaign offers a limited-edition T-shirt inspired by film and television actor James Denton. For every shirt sold, 100% of net proceeds go to the Pink Fund, an organization that provides short-term financial aid to people during treatment. "The last thing someone with breast cancer needs to worry about is how they are going to pay their bills," says Denton.

Go Daddy is ‘driving’ awareness with Danica Patrick donning pink gear for the GoDaddy.com No. 7 Chevrolet in Friday’s NASCAR Nationwide race in Charlotte. “It’s time to kick breast cancer’s butt,” Patrick commented. “So many women and their families have been impacted by breast cancer … if we all work together, we can definitely help find a cure sooner, rather than later.”Continue reading...

One woman, somewhere in the world, becomes a victim of sex trafficking, forced prostitution, gender-based violence, or maternal mortality every 90 seconds. Now, a powerful cabal of producers, NGO’s, gamers and celebrities have joined forces in a transmedia project of unprecedented proportion to address this heinous reality.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the acclaimed book by Pulitzer Prize-winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is the centerpiece of the project which includes a four-hour PBS miniseries (trailer above), mobile games in India and Africa, websites and educational materials, and a social action game coming to Facebook in November.Continue reading...

Brand-backed campaigns against texting while driving are starting to resemble the endless campaign against obesity: Most Americans know what's best for their health and safety, but they can't seem to help doing what they shouldn't be doing. It amounts to two huge strikes against the national willpower, and a race of sorts to see which — distracted driving or eating junk food — regulators will be quicker to clamp down on more thoroughly.

In a new AT&T survey, for instance, 97 percent of teens knew texting while driving is dangerous, but 43 percent of them admitted to sending a text while driving — and 75 percent say the practice is common among their friends. Among the reasons, AT&T (which won a Cannes Lion award for its "Last Text" campaign) found, is that teens feel pressure to respond quickly to text messages. Also, adults are doing the same thing and they mimic their behavior. Partly as a result, according to data provided by Ford, the under-20 age group also has the highest proportion of distracted drivers involved in fatal crashes.Continue reading...

Popchips' latest cause marketing effort comes on the heels of the brand's politically-questionable gaffe by "president of pop" and company investor Ashton Kutcher, who portrayed five lovelorn men looking for love in a cross-platform campaign based around a dating video in which he depicted one of the candidates in brownface.

Kutcher's caricature, of an Indian gent named Raj, “broke the cardinal rule of racial humor: If you're going to make a joke about a race other than your own, for the love of God be funny about it,” as Gawker quipped.

Now the brand is literally trying to change the game with Gamechangers, a cause marketing campaign that's centered on Facebook and Twitter with a full roster of athletes ready to help their local communities in a cause marketing campaign geared to brand redemption.Continue reading...

Causemedia Group’s Chris Noble discusses the positive impact of social media in the cause marketing world (above video), and the past year's developments, since retweeting and liking became seen as significant social actions. Brands and consumers are increasingly sophisticated ways to connect causes with marketing, and channeling "slacktivism" to more significant social good.Continue reading...