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General Electric proposes the “Earth Rewards Card” that allows its owners to contribute with 1% of their expenses to large scale Greenhouse gaz reduction projects.

Each year, on “earth day”, Earth Rewards Card (ERC) owners receive a balance sheet showing their annual contribution to those projects.

Here is a screenshot of the website dedicated to this operation :

The website as a whole is clear and easy to read. The design is modern, clean, and highlights important informations. Browsing is easy and pleasant.

Commercial informations and ecological arguments are efficiently underlined, through the use of graphs and schemes :

To illustrate more precisely its initiative, GE proposes on its website different tools to calculate your carbon production, such as the “Carbon Calculator”, which allows you to assess your own CO2 discharge :

GE’s ecological efforts seem to apply to their whole policy, therefore placing this initiative in a broader frame (see : eco imagination.)

Only the bonus tips can make one smile ( “Switch off the lights when not needed.” , and don’t bring any added value to the website.

To bring in more scientific arguments, GE has worked with NGOs and other firms to create a standard that allows customers to calculate “carbon-credits” (how to measure the cost of a ton of CO2, and what kind of activity generates such a discharge?). This has clearly strenghtened the marketing of the operation, and has provided GE with an institutionnal credibility.

The bank card “My Earth Reward” seems to be an interesting offer which uses the ecological argument as different banks did before (Rabobank, Barclay’s, and soon Bank of America). These initiatives surely have a great future to come: GE estimates that the potential market for such cards amounts to 25 million americans
The efficiency of such experiments on global warming itself is still to be proven, and GE will have to show its ability to pursue its policy sustainably….

On October 4th, Olivier Marcheteau, head of MSN France , has set forth the group’s agenda for the coming year to the press and advertisers.

Depicting MSN as a full-fledged media (18 million readers), Olivier Marcheteau recalls that “10% of media time is dedicated to internet” and that more than 50% of internet users log on at least a blog a month.

Beyond the scheduled pursuance of its content and community entertainment strategy, which leads MSN to add new themes, the most interesting annoucement concerned the creation of a environnement dedicated channel, in partnership with Yann Arthus-Bertrand

LCV (the green channel) will be mainly dedicated to the fight against global warming. Its broadcasting on internet allows it to be more participative, thanks to MSN messenger and quizzes, but also to offer applications, such as the carbon calculator.

This announcement recalls that MSN broadcasted the Live Earth global event in 2007(which we covered here), and that it is working on a chat-charity programm (coming soon on theblong)

It is nevertheless interesting to notice that the creation of a new channel is the main aspect largely commented by media in their articles on MSN:

What can we say about this announcement?

In a global “green painting” context, this decision seems to follow the trend without bringing anything revolutionary. But MSN has a high visibility and an impact comparable to TV-media…

What kind of content will be broadcasted on this channel? There is no answer to this question yet, but there might be a opportunity for nonprofit advertisers. Unless one argues that these ads mainly aim at a non-specialist public.

Lastly, what audience will this channel have?

and you, what is your opinion?

To all Bloggers!!

In the “viral communication strategies” family, can I have theBlog Action Day organised on the 15th of october? The concept is simple enough: on a given day, each enrolled blogger will publish an article on a theme that crosses his job and the environment. Beginning of September, there were already more than 4000 blogs for a total 4 million readers.

The team which created this initiative is made of three entrepreneurs/bloggers : Collis Ta’ee(Eden, North-East), Leo Babauta (Zen Habits) and Cyan Ta’eed (Flash Den). All three belong toFreelance Switch(a freelance group) and here is their original idea:
“Only for a day, we would like to unite as much as possible the million bloggers throughout the world and talk about an issue: environment. We want to show the possibilities and the power enshrined in the blog community, a disparate but also incredibly big and diversified community. By gathering all these bloggers for one day, we can see what can be done and heard“.

• So whatsoever your blog’s theme is subscribe today andprepare your post on the protection of environment. In this post, it is recommended to keep your own style and syntax. For the theme, an article that crosses your subject and environment will be appreciated, since the goal of the project is to talk about and to prepare, together, a better world for tomorrow.

• Donate your daily income on this famous october 15th to partner NGOs (Greenpeace, NWF, Sierra Club…)

For such a important event, a special communication has been put in place:

• Blog action daywidgets have been made available for bloggers

• For Facebook users, a Blog Action Day group has been created. You will be able to follow the event and to meet the Blog Action Day community on this social network.

• Supplied with regularly updated informations, i recommend the blog section on which you will be able to follow the latest news for this event. You will also be able to watch video commercials of the Blog Action Day.

This is a creative and committed event, open to everybody and which uses the main web 2.0 tools (blog, widgets, social networks, video…). The device is light and scalable, and if it is successful, there are chances that it will occur regularly, therefore building participants loyalty and federating a community.

“Stop shopping down our ancient forests.”

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