Marketing | Advertising | Digital Media Thoughts and Observations

Energy Efficiency Jobs

March 15, 2010

Unemployment nationally is hovering just below 10% but there's one bright spot on the jobs horizon: energy efficiency jobs created by various "cash for caulkers" schemes.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) estimates that a total of 333,000 jobs will be created in 2010 by manufacturing energy efficient products, implementing President Obama's recently announced HomeStar residential retrofit program and by BuildingStar, a similar program for commercial retrofits.

Three-hundred-thousand-plus new jobs are certainly not enough to please all 29 million unemployed among us, but a healthy step toward reducing our dependence upon Middle East oil and midwest coal.

Need to know more? Energy Efficiency News has the full report (http://bit.ly/9tWMa8).

Empire Efficiency

March 9, 2010

Early in my career I spent a few years hanging out on the high reaches (72nd floor) of the Empire State Building, working for a small B2B agency.

Besides the spectacular view north to the then Pan Am building (now MetLife), I recall the paint-encrusted, creaky steel windows that actually opened, if only a crack.

Well, now those windows are headed for the recycling bin. According to a post at Triplepundit (http://bit.ly/9tJRHX), the landmark building, finished during the depths of the Great Depression, is about to undergo a significant energy efficiency retrofit, including thin-film, inert-gas-filled windows, new lighting, and a new HVAC system.

Triplepundit reports that the retrofit team (Rocky Mountain Institute, Jones Lang LaSalle, Clinton Climate Initiative, and Johnson Controls) estimates a remarkable 38% reduction in energy consumption. Not bad for 79-year-old Art Deco spire.

Once the world's tallest building, today the Empire State Building ranks as the __ tallest in the world today. (Make your guess in the comments section.)

Homestar

March 2, 2010

It's good to see President Obama touting a new proposal to spend $6 billion quickly to encourage homeowners to insulate their homes and take other energy-saving measures. The President visited a technical school in Savannah, Ga., today to announce the program.

Here's the Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Williamson's report (http://bit.ly/dzxIJN).

The obvious advantages are jobs for the hard-hit construction and home-remodeling sector and future energy savings and carbon reduction. Also, homeowners stand to see some instant green, up to $3,000, for taking action.

Now all we need is Congress to act. Not the easiest wish in the ever-contentious Washington.

I'm a step ahead of the president on this one, though. I'm the proud owner of 18 inches of cellulose insulation in the attic of our 108-year-old Vermont farmhouse and four inches of sprayed foam insulation between the joists and on the old stone foundation in the basement. I'm feeling warmer already!

Smart Meter Learnings

February 23, 2010

Smart meters and the so-called smart grid are getting a lot of attention--and money--these days.

Vermont electric utilities, for example, have recently won a $69 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to roll out smart meters statewide.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a special energy section, "The Long Road to an Alternative-Energy Future." One of the stories, by reporter Rebecca Smith, "What Utilities Have Learned from Smart Meters...And why they aren't putting those lessons to use" (http://bit.ly/acyDN1), suggests that utilities are still trying to figure out how the new smart meters will affect people's electricity-consumption behavior.

A number of smart meter pilots, including one by Pepco Holdings in Washington, D.C., found, not surprisingly, that people cut power consumption the most when faced with higher peak-hour rates. Rebates had less of an impact on consumption. The stick trumps the carrot.

You would think that the greatest challenge of smart meters and the smart grid would be technical. And you would be wrong. Never underestimate the challenge of getting people to change their behavior, especially with something as invisible and taken-for-granted as electricity.

Clearly, there is still much for utilities to learn about how people will react to having more information about their electricity consumption. Stay tuned.

Low-Tech Marketing

February 22, 2010

Sometimes a good idea is in plain sight.

How do you educate people visiting a resort about all of its offerings, especially when said resort has transformed itself from a mere ski resort into a world-class destination?

That was the challenge we faced for Stowe Mountain Resort. The resort is well into a ten-year makeover that is fundamentally altering its character. Of course, the mountain remains the same with its steeps and deeps. But now you can complement your tree skiing with Swedish massage and five-star cuisine.

We chose a simple solution: small weather-resistant signs attached to the ubiquitous ski-and-snowboard racks that sit outside the day lodges. And we chose a variety of messages to both amuse and inform. And cross-sell, too.

The sign pictured here at the base of Spruce Peak promotes the spa. Others promote ski school ("A school where students actually look forward to their assignments."), real estate ("Should we arrange to have your mail forwarded?"), and the resort's courtesy code ("There's plenty of mountain to go around. Stay in control.").

One of our parameters for the project was don't oversign the environment. Did we succeed? You can view all 16 signs by clicking below.

Download StoweRackSigns

Bankrupt Whistler?

February 18, 2010

Silly of me to be pondering the fate of the Whistler Blackcomb brand in my previous post when the real news is a potential Whistler bankruptcy or foreclosure or auction this week before the Olympic flame is snuffed.

No sooner had I written about the wacky weather affecting the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games than up pops a story about Whistler's mountain of debt. You can get the details from this AP story by Joji Sakurai (http://bit.ly/btCcMX).

The short of it is that hedge fund Fortress paid $2.8 billion for Intrawest, the company that operates Whistler, and now it can't come up with the cash to make its payments on $524 million of debt. It's yet another example of the excesses of the aughts.

One irony is that much of the money is owed to Lehman Brothers. Remember them? They helped precipitate the financial crisis with their bankruptcy back in September of 2008. Now Lehman is trying to recoup as much green as possible to settle its other commitments.

All of this sounds as exciting as Lindsey Vonn's gold-winning downhill run yesterday. But there's no gold in this run, only red ink.

Wither Brand Whistler?

February 17, 2010

It feels like the weather, not athletic endeavor, is the leading news story from Vancouver this week. Which got me wondering about the impact of all that negative weather news (warm temps, rain, too little snow, too much snow) on Whistler Blackcomb, the venue for Alpine events.

I love Whistler. It's over the top in so many ways. Huge acreage, big vertical, plenty of snow most of the time.

I have to believe that the folks who own and run the mountain resort embraced the Winter Olympics as the mega brand-building opportunity that it is. But now, with all the tough weather news, I'm wondering if the Olympics for Whistler will provide a bump to the brand or not.

Also, it's ironic that the weather challenges have included rain and no snow at Cypress Mountain and too much snow at Whistler.

Will the Whistler brand get tagged with Vancouver's warm temperatures and Cypress's snowless mountain?  What do you think?

Googled

February 15, 2010

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of Ken Auletta's Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, do it. Now.

I'm about half way through and it's a sometimes riveting, sometimes too-much-inside-baseball account of the rise of the feared old-media killer.

That a company has risen so far so fast--and instilled so much fear and loathing along the way, despite their motto "Don't be evil"--is testament to the brilliance of its engineer founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and their hired-management-gun Eric Schmidt. Their company has disrupted so much of the old media world, the lives of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. of the New York Times Company and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. will never be the same.

Unconvinced? You can read an excerpt at Amazon. Or download it to your Kindle.