A Wine Label For a Cause
In October  2007, Budge Brown released the first generation of Cleavage Creek wines. The label of each bottle of Cleavage Creek wine features the image of an actual breast cancer survivor whose story is told on the Cleavage Creek website.
“Putting a face on this disease and telling the stories of those who are dealing with it personalizes this and hopefully inspires everyone to take on the crusade,” said Brown. 10% of gross sales is donated to cutting edge research to fund a cure for breast cancer.
Brown died in a plane crash in 2011.

Woe The Arboreal Salamander -- A Parable For Our Time

The Farallon Islands , 27 miles off the coast of San Francisco, are crawling with nonnative house mice. The mouse population has  become  "plague-like" as  their population has grown to 60,000 or so mice - about 500 mice per acre.
"The goal is to have as healthy an ecosystem as possible," said Bradford Keitt, the director of conservation for Island Conservation.  Not happening when the mice eat  the food of Native species such as the Farallon arboreal salamander.
BUT — The issue, according to animal welfare groups, is that the solution might be worse than the problem. Federal regulators are considering a plan to bomb the island with pesticide pellets to kill the mice.  "Our concern is there will be non-targeted species that are affected," said Maggie Sergio, from Wildcare. "Anything that eats those poisoned rodents will die of secondary poisoning.”  …  Maybe even the Aboreal salamander?
The Farallons have been exploited by humans since 1579 when Sir Francis Drake landed and his crew gathered seabird eggs and seals for meat. The wholesale slaughtering began 1810, when New England seal hunters landed on the islands and killed between 75,000 and 150,000 Northern fur seals and Northern elephant seals. When the New Englanders left, Russians from Fort Ross moved in. By the time the Russians left in 1841, fur seals and elephant seals had been completely wiped out along the California coast.
Article by Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.

High Heat & Enthusiasm In Clean Tech

Seeking The Future At Three Trade Shows & A Seminar
Last  week I attended both the InterSolar show at Moscone in San Francisco and then later in the week the Cleantech Open National Investors Conference in San Jose. In addition, the previous week I went to a graywater seminar hosted by the BuiltItGreen.org.
Most disappointing was InterSolar. From a 10,000 foot view above Mosconi, solar technology still comes from Germany, plus a few isolated spots in the US. Meanwhile, China is striving to drive photo voltaic (PV) cells and panels to the commodity level. Besides, right now China is its own best market.
From the US vendor perspective, it was a pick-up-truck-driving contractors show, with solar system installation the  #1 business;  “We got panels; We got mounting systems.”
While InterSolar was 200 watts brighter than the nearby Semicon IC show, it there was little enthusiasm. Gone was the solar evangelism and solar fervor. Totally missing was anticipation for the next-big-thing in the industry. This is probably because the global solar industry is entirely dependent on government subsidies and in the current Western economy, you can pretty much guess that subsidy action is waning.
High Heat: A day later the Cleantech Open National Investors Conference was a ferment of enthusiasm and hope. Here the halls were alive with ideas, entrepreneurs, investment angels, VC and “future-tech” executives from firms such as Chevron to Gundfos pump to Walmart.
Leading off, author Geoffrey Moore exclaimed an analogy, comparing energy to healthcare in complexity. The difficulty for an energy start-up, he said, is that the buyer needs a complex system, not a product. Whereas most start-ups must aim for serious pain with their product.
As if to prove him wrong Reenst Lesemann of Columbia Power Technologies, talked about progress in ocean-wave energy converters for early adopter utilities in the EU. Other clean tech start-ups presenting included Grant Ricketts with a software tool to track and measure results and Derek Zobrist with a $2,000 valve for reducing energy consumption in hotel and apartment water heating systems.

Pualytics' Direct disassociation of contaminants
 by high intensity UV light, including
atrazine, amoxicillin, DEET, and all estrogenic chemicals.

The overall investors-choice for the conference was Puralytics, which designs and manufactures a water purification system that eliminates organic and inorganic material, including most toxic waste, heavy metals and the growing list of synthetic endocrine substances in drinking water. According to CEO Mark Owen, Puralytics is, “Way ahead of the FDA on the endocrine destroying substances now found in American drinking water.”

The previous week, at the other end of the technology scale was the gathering of graywater professionals. Graywater systems, most easily understood as reusing laundry water for garden irrigation, became legal and permit free for California homeowners with a change to the building code in 2008.
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For NGOs & Non-Profits Building Brand Requires Three Actions, Not Words

“You have to be able to describe your brand in three words,” some idiot said.

Not so. NGOs and not for profits must earn their brand. Three words don’t do it. Three words are a tag line, not a brand.

There are three ways to build a brand: Action, Achievement, Accomplishments.

In public perception of NGOs an organization that does represent Action, Achievement and Accomplishments is Médecins Sans Frontières.

Granted they are on site with the news reporters at the bleeding edge of disaster, but arriving first is part of there mission.

A terrific example of doing it wrong in the States is/was The United Way. They had everything:

• Fortune 100 corporate sponsorship
• Approved corporate withdrawal from paychecks
• Free advertising agency support
• Good three word tag line: Your Fair Share

What the never produced was accountability.  Then over time they became self centric, the campaign, not the clients became the center or the organization.

So here’s today’s free advice: Don’t sit around the table with the interns and the guys in suede shoes to figure out your brand. If you are an organization into Action, Achievement and Accomplishments, ask your clients, they know your brand best.

Embrace Video

Embrace Video With Humor & Originality,

Leverage YouTube, its. Free.
Does your organization have a compelling story to tell?
Do you want to connect with your supporters, volunteers, and donors but don't have the funds to launch expensive outreach campaigns? YouTube can help.
Video is a powerful way to show your organization's impact and needs, through the designated "Nonprofit" channel on YouTube.

Learn from croudsourcing,  Barbaro and I Am Fresno State

“Fresno State is getting national attention on the video-sharing Web site YouTube using student generated clips that promote the university with humor, sentiment and song. The school might be an education pioneer in its informational efforts on YouTube…. Other schools have noticed. Some viewers are raving about the videos. Some viewers have gushed over the videos. Fresno State created an account at MySpace and a [Web site] (iamfresnostate.com) to spread the word about the video contest and the videos. Consumer-generated advertising is a new trend. Marketing firms are using it to promote... big names... but Fresno State appears to be one of the first universities to use the technique.”

—Doug Hoagland, THE FRESNO BEE (June 11, 2007)

Branding for non profits: Does Your Brand Work?

Brand is a powerful carrier of values. 

To the painting on the caves in Lascaux, The oral history of the Inuit, 
The Dead Sea scrolls, 

Modern man will add Diana Ross singing,

"Baby love, oh baby love, won't you be my baby love…."  

Douglas Molitor 

Brands are a synthesis of 20th century communications. They are how our culture is recognized.  Marketers engage in branding to develop or align the expectations behind the experience, creating a brand that has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique.

 “Brand is the relationship with the product that customers 

have come to know and value” – Regis McKenna, Real Time

Brands that work start with a relationship with the mission or service. From that point, a brand is made of elements which come together to represent the organization. For example elements could include toughness, fairness, social justice, spirituality, compassion and a driving sense of mission.

Non-profit organizations and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) may find that their brand reflects the interaction with their supporter and donor community, rather than a recipient of services. The principals and actions of branding are the same.

A brand doesn't start out by declaring it's going to save the world or be lots of things to lots of people. For a brand to work, it starts by determining how to be one thing to a few people.

• Simplicity: The best brands make it simple to understand the mission. Don't complicate the brand. It doesn't work.
• Utility: Brand brings identification, decreases risk and embeds values of the mission. 
• Employees and stakeholders benefit from brands because they represent the values an organization consistently adheres to, in the face of obstacles. 
• Organizations use brands because it is the marketing tool that delivers across all media.
• Durability: The Young and Rubicam "Brand Assessment Evaluator" is a test (below) used to understand current brand strength and future needs, based on the inter-relationship of four brand pillars:

1. Differentiation -- The brand's point of difference from similar organizations.
2. Relevance -- How appropriate is the brand to the needs of the community?
3. Esteem -- How the brand is regarded?
4. Knowledge -- How is the brand seen or understood?

The architecture also determines what needs fixing. 

For a brand to work, it should be built one pillar at a time. Differentiation being the first step is the most critical step. Relevance asks, is this product relevant to the targeted base? Clean water, yes. Ice machines for Eskimos, probably not. Differentiation without relevance is of no value.

The other two pillars, esteem and knowledge, add to brand value and are perpetual works-in-progress. Organizations with a high level of esteem enjoy a good reputation, while knowledgeanswers the question, "What we do."

It's only after achieving the four pillars that an organization can begin to think about the branding.  Branding is often about engaging and building community.

Activity: Branding activities include education, packaging the organization for public display, fundraising, project outreach, events, retail encounters, film and video storytelling, building an online presence, public relations, advertising and public service announcements. Branding is the process by which brand images get into your head. 

Credibility: Every employee, associate and volunteer either contributes to the organization's brand or impacts it in a negative manner. Internal branding is crucial to an organization's success. Fancy branding initiatives are meaningless iunless employees and volunteers become  brand ambassadors. 

Superficiality: Occasionally an organization tries to compensate for weakness by inserting a wish list of core values currently not part of the organization's identity, into the brand statement. Such a tactic doesn't work because saying it's so, doesn't make it so.

In the end, brands are all about the organization, how it reflects and engages key constituencies, how it defines aspirations and enables attainment.

BioOf A Prototypical 1960’s Seeker &Social-Change Agent

Douglas M. Molitor is the prototypical 1960’s seeker and social-change agent, as an activist, technology advocate and authority on messaging. A graduate of the University of Florida, he has lived and worked in Manhattan, N.Y., Dorset, Vermont and for 30 years in the San Francisco Bay area. Molitor has always sought to work with smart people to advance big ideas.

The Journey
Molitor’s change agent career began naively as an advanceman with the 1976 presidential campaign for Jimmy Carter, singing, “Won't you please come to Chicago .. We can change the world.”

The highlight of his 1976 campaign was advancing Carter’s sister, evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, in a series of whistle stops through California’s agricultural valleys. In the final two weeks of the campaign season, by then a hardened political operative, Molitor was asked to direct the organization of over 30 press conferences for U.S. Senator John Tunney’s reelection bid.

After the excitement of political campaigning, Molitor turned to journalism as managing editor of two boating publications, the entrepreneurial American Boating Illustrated and later Peterson Publications’ Pacific Skipper. Sitting on his dock by the bay, writing about Delrin bearings, 2-part polyurethane and electronic navigation systems, he saw that technology might change the world for the better. So off he went to Silicon Valley where “revolution” was in the air.

In Silicon Valley Molitor collaborated with futurists and keen minds for the next two decades (1983 - 2005), first at Regis McKenna, Inc., and later as a consultant. The highlight was to work with Intel technology legends Ted Hof, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore who actually did change the world.

The journey in Silicon Valley is best exampled by his experience at start-up MIPS Computer where Molitor worked and learned from software gurus Skip Streeter and John Mashey and future Stanford University President, John Hennessey.
Often Molitor helped scientists and engineers take their ideas to market, only to find that the market wasn’t ready. Three ideas way ahead of their time were: MasPar a simple massive parallel computer similar to the computers Google builds for its datacenters today; David Systems, transmission of data over twisted pair phone lines (think Cisco); and PowerTouch, a wireless based dispatch hub for emergency services.

In the ’00s Silicon Valley became obsessed with consumer gadgets, while the best minds had moved to social entrepreneurship to change the world . Two examples are Karen Tse of International Bridges to Justice and McArthur Fellow, Jim Fructerman at Benetech. With these role models Molitor has taken-up the social entrepreneurship banner as a mentor with the Clean Tech Open, advising not-for-profits and NGOs and by serving on the board of board of VilageTech Solution.