Category — Social Entrepreneurship

This holiday season, as we gather with friends and family to mark the passage of time and toast the new beginnings of 2012, we give thanks for all those in our lives who inspire us and help make the world a better place in their own unique way. Seven years ago my love affair with documentary film began, and I have Camden IFF founder Ben Fowlie to thank for opening my eyes to an incredible craft that has come to mean so much to me.

Ben’s dedication to the festival is inspiring and contagious. We’ve grown from an idea to a full fledged 501(c)(3) with a dedicated Board of Directors I am proud to be a part of. If you’re thinking of supporting an arts organization before the year ends, make sure Camden is on your list. I can’t imagine our world without the priceless mirrors that documentary films offer back to us – let’s hope that we never have to.

”A country without documentary filmmaking is like a family without a photo album.” — Patricio Guzman

Check out this video from Jonathan Laurence for more about Camden IFF :

The second annual Small Business Saturday is coming up November 26th and I’m loving the promotional weight American Express is putting behind the concept. It is so important to remember that we vote every day with each dollar we spend. So next weekend, when you’re getting a jump on your holiday shopping, turn some of your attention to the local boutiques and artisans in your community, check out that friend’s new online site or etsy page you’ve been meaning to support. And if you’re a small business, visit AMEX’s Small Business Saturday site for great promotional resources and social media tools.

Because I’m both a Mainer and a New Yorker – here are some of my pics:

Hot Blondies Bakery: Without exception the world’s best blondies and brunettes (brownies).
Tin Mustard: The caviar of mustards.
Remade USA: Gorgeous recycled leather handbags.
Fiddler’s Green Farm: Wholegrain goodness from Maine – organic!
The Good Table: My favorite cooking supply store ever.
The Belfast Coop: Open since 1976.
Power Chocolates: Super nutrients from super foods.
Jerri Finch: Beautiful oils of Maine’s many landscapes.
The Reel Project: Using media to transform lives.

Where are your favorite places to shop local?

It’s always good to get out of the marketing bubble that is NYC and see what people in the rest of the country are doing. Out in Denver this fall I came across a POP display for a partnership Kashi and Bear Naked (A Kashi Company brand) launched with this great organization TerraCycle encouraging customers to send in their empty boxes and packaging. TerraCycle upcycles and recycles discarded products to help reduce the volume we are sending to landfills as well as saving the raw materials needed to create packaging and products.

They have “brigades” all over the world collecting trash and sending it in for points and cash donations ($.02/ unit!) to charities as well as collection programs at major retailers and venues. Some of their products are a little kitschy – Lays gym bag anyone? – but their thinking is so innovative in its simplicity and impressive in their scope of action. I love the eco-friendly fire log for my friend’s fire place (you know who you are), the bike rack for my imaginary back yard and the seed starter set who says it’s just for kids!

GOOD profiled the condom company Sir Richard’s in their Daily GOOD yesterday. Loving their branding and total embrace of socially conscious advertising.

They’re pushing a Tom’s model – donating one condom to a developing nation for every one purchased, sponsoring a plaid VW van touring college campuses to help open the dialogue about safe sex, and using their packaging to remind customers of the true value of their product. It’s a totally self indulgent parody of socially conscious trends but it works. Their tagline sums it up best – “doing good never felt better”!

Triscuit has teamed up with the non profit Urban Farming to help fuel what they’re calling the Home Farming Movement. The program’s mission is to plant fifty community-based home farms in twenty cities across the United States in 2010 which seem to be the core media generation tool to feed all ancillary outputs of the campaign. To keep the focus relevant to a broad consumer base, they’ve launched a website with a variety of community building and information sharing tools as well as integrating offline cross-over with “seeding” of basil and dill seed packages in select Triscuit packages.

It’s always promising to see a brand of this size taking such a strong step to support emerging social needs and the program does a great job of leveraging the brand’s innate resources to strengthen the home farming movement. What it seems to lack is just the final close of the loop to bring it back to Triscuit’s brand values. How, of all the causes and needs on the social landscape, did they pick this one? With some digging through the site it seems the alliance is with Triscuit’s commitment to simple, quality ingredients, but surely this connection could be made more core to the campaign to make it successful as both a philanthropic and marketing play.

The cross-over comes through really well on their TV spot (below), but somehow on the website and banner ads the connection gets lost a bit in execution. Regardless, the concept is strong and represents a type of thinking I for one hope we see more and more of in the years to come.