I attended the Association of Children's Museums' annual conference in Philadelphia this past April. The theme was "Declare Your Impact/Interactivity 2009." Here I am at one of the evening receptions hosted by the just recently opened Please Touch Museum. Davidoff Communications has consulted with the National Children's Museum on its fund-raising, marketing and corporation partnership planning. We also work for the world's largest children's museum, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

On April 17, 2009 Davidoff Communiations sponsored the first annual Wright Foundation For Transformational Leadership Award gala. The 2009 award was presented to Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy. It was an exciting night for me and a phenomenal team of people I worked with in my capacity as President of the Foundation and Producer and Emcee of the Gala. Stay tuned for information on a symposium we're planning for this fall with cutting edge human development and transformational leadership thought leaders. As you might imagine, we've also begun planning the 2010 Transformational Leadership Award Gala. Hope to see you there.

On a recent trip to New York City, I had the privilege of taking a detour from my packed schedule to visit with some teenagers whose inspiring stories and smiles of joy made me reconsider how I experienced the city that day.

The four teens I met were aged 16 to 19, and traveled to NYC from India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Little Rock, Arkansas, to attend the annual Youth Assembly at the United Nations. The youths were representatives for Children International, a humanitarian nonprofit organization and client of Davidoff Communications, that provides health, education and life skills building programs for more than 300,000 children and youth living in poverty in 11 countries.

As part of the UN World Youth Day, these four amazing teens offered a workshop on the successes of their Youth Empowerment Funds, a unique component of Children International’s Youth Program, which equip youth with grants to plan, implement, and evaluate their own projects to improve the education and environment for kids like them and their communities.

The highlight of my trip came when I arranged to host the four youth and their chaperones on a VIP express tour of one of NYC’s signature landmarks, The Empire State Building. We all enjoyed stunning views of Central Park, the Hudson and East Rivers, Brooklyn and even the Statue of Liberty, which the Children International teens had visited earlier that day.

As these youth had never ventured very far from their villages, their trip to NYC was a big deal…but it may have been a bigger deal for me to have spent part of the afternoon hosting these very ambitious, bright youth and seeing their beaming smiles as they gazed from the top of the Empire State Building. It made me more proud to not only have Children International as a client, but also to call myself a sponsor as well. (I sponsor a 9 year old boy from Calcutta, India named Bikrim through Children International).

Children International has applied our Mission-Driven Marketing methodology to the development of a brand new corporate partnership program. I would encourage any company, consulting firm or other organization looking to expand philanthropic initiatives to consider Children International as a partner. I would also encourage everyone to sponsor one or more children or youth. It just might make you reconsider how you experience your day.

Do the terms eco-efficiency or sustainability mean anything to you? Is your brand embracing the “green movement?” Do you even recycle?

If these questions don’t seem to have much relevancy to you, they soon will. That was the message of the Green Marketing Conference, “Good and Green” I attended here in Chicago a few weeks ago.

If you’re a marketing, advertising or PR professional in today’s “what does it mean to me” world, you’ve probably experienced how much harder it is to get someone to do something for the sake of helping the planet versus helping with a personal need. Consumers are being hit from every angle today with green marketing, and as they become more educated and concerned about the fate of their planet, they are demanding more responsibility from brands.

The inspiring words of Conference Chair Nan McCann are still echoing in my head as I recall the green marketing wisdom she shared. In addressing the “what does it mean to me” world, she said if we make the green incentives small and accessible, consumers will respond. “Green fatigue is real,” but we have the opportunity to move people into the modern green marketplace. McCann recognized the conference sponsor Discovery Planet Green, a new “24-hour television network exclusively for the environmentally conscious lifestyle,” as an emerging strong catalyst for moving people into this green marketplace.

Planet Green wants to get people talking by providing relevant content they can relate to, and to present it in an entertaining way that is engaging. McCann said their demographic is psychographic rather than demographic. The target audience consists of “bright greens,” people aware of the situation our world faces and who recognize that we need to address climate change, sustainability and other environmental issues. The bright greens are people in a life stage: the idealistic college graduate, a new parent aware of what she is feeding her baby, a baby boomer questioning the meaning of his life.

With programs like Planet Green, we’re seeing the beginning of a new era. One thing the conference harped on was how much education we have to do today. Green is the face of our future. It’s the “new black.” The implications of green marketing will soon be added to every marketing professional’s consciousness.

Our current perspective is unique in that we realize we are “in it together.” This green consciousness has created potentially the largest consumer interest group if we get it right. Bringing corporations, media groups and NGOs together to take small steps and do practical projects is the best chance we have to make steady, noticeable changes. It may be fashionable to go green, and many of doing it, but it takes courage to ask/demand that corporations change their environmental footprints, and to encourage those we do business with to do the same. (Take a page out of Walmart’s commitment to sustainability book).

As mission-driven marketers, I’ve always prided our firm on our ability to teach, not just sell. At the end of the day, it is not about who is perfect. It’s about collaboration toward the healing of our planet. Spread the word. Green is the new black.

YouTube, the leader in online video sharing, has announced a new way for people to kill time. In a good way, that is. Perhaps best known for costing companies millions of dollars in lost productivity to “educational entertainment,” YouTube will no longer just be the go to hub for the popular funny cat and exploding diet Coke and Mentos videos.

With the launch of the YouTube Nonprofit Program, the online world of video sharing is redefining “educational entertainment.” At the end of September, YouTube announced at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) the new nonprofit program that makes it even easier for supporters, volunteers and donors to connect with their organizations.

Wielding the title “Broadcast Your Cause,” the YouTube Nonprofit Program is a commitment from YouTube to the 2007/2008 CGI to enable nonprofits that register to receive a free nonprofit specific channel where they can customize a home page and upload videos, public service announcements and calls to action. The channel also allows nonprofits the option to drive fundraising using the new (and free) Google Checkout for Nonprofits.

To be fair, I will point out that several hundred nonprofit organizations did utilize YouTube to tell the world about their causes prior to the new nonprofit channel. But most of this content gets lost in the clutter. The new initiative provides a unique platform that opens new doors for nonprofits to reach mass audiences without even glancing at their budgets.

At its launch, there were a dozen nonprofits with a specific YouTube nonprofit channel. About a month later, it doesn’t look like very many nonprofits are jumping at the opportunity. Need some motivation? Currently, YouTube is in the range of 200 million video views per day (with about 200,000 new videos uploaded daily). By the end of 2008, it’s looking pretty likely that YouTube could reach the 1 billion views per day milestone.

We encourage all our clients to seize opportunities like these, and it doesn’t just apply to nonprofits. We’re working on mission-driven marketing campaigns that bridge the gap between nonprofits’ causes and for-profits’ corporate philanthropic initiatives. The world of cause branding is win-win and we’re striving to bring our expertise in mission-driven marketing to companies looking to take advantage of channels like these. Stay tuned.

I had the privilege of attending the 97^th annual conference of the Association of National Advertisers a few weeks ago in Phoenix, Arizona. 1,200 gathered to network and listen to some of the most powerful minds in marketing and advertising address the theme “Transforming the Marketing Landscape.” I took away several key messages about this transformation that I think are quite timely and have implications for anyone with marketing responsibilities.

Jim Stengel, global marketing officer for Proctor & Gamble, said building brand advocacy is the key to sustaining loyalty among today’s consumer. Stengel sees brand advocacy as action-oriented marketing. This is in comparison to traditional, but passive, brand awareness efforts. Turning consumers and customers into brand champions, enabling them to be the most vocal and visible advocates for your brand, is also a great way to create emotional connections between consumers and the brands they support. I was especially interested in brand advocacy as it is essentially the product of mission-driven marketing. It’s the heart of the work our firm is doing for many of our for-profit and not-for-profit clients.

Chuck Brymer, president & CEO of DDB, a firm I spent 12 years at, talked about the present challenges of today’s marketer to find ways to change the way people think and the best ways to influence people’s behavior. As we move full speed ahead through the 21^st century, technology has truly transformed the marketing landscape. Nontraditional media has exploded, creating what he calls “swarm behavior.” He related it to how fish in the sea move together even though there is no leader. The key is figuring out how we can influence the swarm.

Brymer added that not everything has changed. We still need to address “the herd:” to create awareness, build brand images and connect emotionally with a passive audience watching TV or reading a magazine. But more and more we will need to learn to work closely with a highly engaged, active swarm. It is not an audience in the traditional form. It is not looking to marketers to be influenced. The real new media, the swarm, is you and me, people talking to one another.

To engage the swarm, we need to move from creating communications to creating communities, increasingly focused on creating relationships with connected groups of people. Tying this back to what Stengel said about building brand advocacy, we need to think about the way we’re reaching out to our brands’ passionate advocates to help spread messages from peer to peer. By mobilizing and influencing the swarm to take action for the brands they support via conviction, collaboration and creativity, today’s marketer can begin to face the biggest challenge of swarm behavior: to get the swarm to move toward you.

Eleven pounds of trash. Just 2/3 of a kitchen-size trash bag. The result of my sons and me taking part in the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), an annual event produced by our Davidoff Communications’ client The Ocean Conservancy.

We were just three of the 50 or so volunteers at our Evanston, Illinois neighborhood beach, Lighthouse Beach. More so, we were just three of approximately 450,000 volunteers around the world who are taking part in the International Coastal Cleanup. I use the present tense, “taking part” because the ICC is more than just a one-time clean up. The nearly half million people who cleaned up beaches, rivers and other waterways Saturday are really part of an ongoing effort to help find solutions for reducing marine debris.

Other members of the Davidoff Communications team also joined the clean up effort.

Evan Terry and his friend, Colleen, picked up four pounds of total trash combing the sand of another Evanston beach for the small, unsightly items: cigarette butts, bottle caps and glass pieces. The highlight of their day came when passersby walking along the shore began to lend helping hands, picking up small pieces of plastic along the way. To Evan, it was an indication that the ICC was making strides toward the ultimate goal of changing people’s behavior.

Our third staff member to join the effort proved that the ICC is not just a beach clean up. Lynette Morris helped beautify a site without sand or rocky coastline. She traveled to the Lincoln Park Zoo to join 65 other volunteers on land and in paddle boats to clean up the South Pond. Lynette collected about five pounds of cigarette butts, broken sunglasses, aluminum cans and other “picnic leftovers.”

Last year, over 380,000 volunteers cleaned up almost 40,000 miles of coastlines and waterways, collecting over 7 million pounds of trash in 68 different countries. The data collected on Saturday’s cleanup including the official number of volunteers, pounds of trash collected, miles cleaned and a breakdown of what was found will be available in early 2008.

It’s a really impressive program and our firm is proud to be working with The Ocean Conservancy on expanding its corporate partnerships and cause marketing program support from socially conscious marketers.