What I am talking here is a matter of green. We in the jungle strive to work with socially and ecologically conscious businesses or those trying to be. We’re not perfect, heck, nobody is, so we’ve been told. But, there is a difference between just capitalizing on the green movement and really walking the walk.

In the jungle, we believe in a little thing we like to call ‘captivism’. As the name implies, it is the implementation of socially conscious business practices which are both sustainable and profitable. Being green can make dollars and sense, when it’s done right. We’d like to make ‘captivism’ part of your vocabulary as well.

So, how does one captivate through capitalism? It’s quite simple, really. You can be big, small and in between, so long as you make an effort to promote, practice and implement good business practices. And by ‘good’, we mean simply socially and ecologically aware philosophies and means of doing business. If you walk the walk, we can help.

This is the question posed by Digital Family Reunion (DFR). jungle [8] has taken on the task of bringing the molecular level into a unified visual field. It began with Creative Director Lainie Liberti giving the visual interpretation of what a tech holiday party would want to stir in the consciousness of its attendees.

You will not find images of dreaded Christmas sweaters from grandma nor will this party leave you cringing from the onslaught of lackluster, forced, and drunken conversations about office politics and gossip. The goal of DFR is to synthesize 1.0 + 2.0 and create a platform for collaboration, discussion, and innovation for our communities, while of course, having a great time in the company of like-minded individuals.

One look at the website and invite for DFR and you will know this is not your typical holiday party. As with all things jungle [8] takes on, causes run the gamut of our affections. We aim to unite, to create, to empower, and leave in our wake a trail of limitless possibility.

On a cellular lever, we are molecular energy working in brilliant formation. The visual depiction created by jungle [8] for DFR is a flow of energy created by the visible light spectrum. Each of us vibrates on different energy levels, and we merge to create a community reflective of our unified energy. Out of this energy field, bursts of solar power emanate indicative of our social selves, active, powerful and radiant.

The task of translating this image into a live installation rests on the design concept of jungle [8]’s graphic designer Tuan Vutran. With creative genius beginning a steady knock on the door of perception, the installation takes on an earthy form. A week from today, at 8:15 PM, DFR will begin a yearly tradition known as the Business Card Installation Ritual.

Tuan is piecing together the Business Card Installation one Styrofoam ball at a time. Like planets, connected through clear, plastic umbilical cordlike tubes, reflecting prisms of rainbow light, the balls will appear to take flight with wings made from 2000 business cards from the original dot commers. The molecular representation symbolizes all of our talents fusing to herald a new year, a year of collaboration, change, and interconnectedness.

All in attendance for DFR will be asked to add their business cards to the Card Installation and become immortalized in a tangible reflection of our ever changing molecular bonds.

Be sure to see: Magnifying Connections: creating an installation, episode 1

from Patrick Davis Partners, the six priorities for the post-agency market:

1. Find your voice.
2. Engage with the semantic marketplace.
3. Return to humanist marketing.
4. Live the renaissance.
5. Champion social agenda marketing.
6. Build brand integrity.

And if I were to add a seventh priority, it would be to simply cultivate each of the previous six.  Finding, engaging, returning, living, championing, and building are wonderful starting points, ideas to help shift a brand in the right direction, but without cultivation, care, attention, and sustainability ideas can and will die.  So, hold true to the future of a more honest, more conscious, more open environment for us all.  Cultivate that ideal.  We can make it prosper.

Barack Obama has changed the entire scope of not only how an election is run, but who is running the election.  Barack Obama is contemporarily one of, if not the most recognizable brand worldwide and has one of the most fervent followings domestically.  Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, “[The Obama Campaign] made sure the message machine was providing the message where people were already assembled. They’ve turned themselves into a media organization.”  And Brand: Obama, as a media giant and community, is extensive and pervasive.  So, what of the community if, say, Obama is elected President?  Can the President have such a community of followers?  Will he? Will his face continue to be emblazened on t-shirts, hats, sweaters, sneakers, dish towels, contact lenses?  In a word: no.

The Commander and Chief is, by necessity, a secretive and walled-off position.  And after an election, especially an election of such length and venom, all parties concerned are bound to have a much-required drop-off.  But Brand: Obama is most likely going to see its demise come November 4th IF Obama is the victor.  However, much like Al Gore in 2000, with a loss (please! don’t let it be a loss) Brand: Obama could be leveraged to an even greater extent in the interest of worldwide change.  Sadly, such a large community, in my opinion, can only see growth if the reason for the community in the first place fails.  Bizarre.

Fitting the world into a box: Branding “collaboration” to enable first-of-its-kind global alliance

LOS ANGELES (October, 2008)-
The creative minds at jungle [8] aim to change the world. Social, economic, and environmental movements beat the heart of jungle [8]. It goes without saying that when it came to branding something as paramount as the unified global voice of The Global Summit, jungle [8] aimed to find its message a home in the heart and intellect of the world community.

jungle [8] provided (gratis) brand development services to The Global Summit, creating their brand platform, brand messaging, and identity. In keeping with the guiding principles of the company, jungle [8] founder and principal, Lainie Liberti, annually welcomes pro bono work for non-profits that feature unique social and environmental consciousness.

“jungle [8] hopes to inspire others by setting an example of stewardship, going beyond merely expressing a desire for engaged and socially responsible communities, and directly help co-create them,” says Liberti.

The Global Summit and jungle [8] ask for your voice, your experiences, your visions, and your collective hopes for the future. The future demands that we become the active instruments of change today.

The Global Summit will echo the voices of global leaders, community representatives, environmental change makers, artists, and business leaders worldwide. We all are now the active participants in world history where social responsibility is no longer a future ideal, but a sought after milestone. Largely due to the marketing efforts within the green movement, non-profit and government organizations, the dire need for social awareness and individual responsibility has taken its place at the head of a worldwide table of conscious empowerment. There is no easy means by which to address the world and remind it that without a definitive drive toward change, we will stall and be consumed by global demise.

The Global Summit and its branding agency, jungle [8], have come together to fuel this drive. Both have brought the socially conscious movement to the forefront of the minds of all the people it affects – namely, everyone. If The Global Summit is recreating an entire business system – blowing the top right off the proverbial box – then jungle [8]’s challenge was to put The Global Summit right back into one, packaged for the world to embrace.

The Global Summit was created out of a need for a unified, integral structure to connect worldwide movements working toward social justice, environmental sustainability and global security. Overcoming logistical and political hurdles, The Global Summit coordinates efforts, facilitates cooperative sharing, and provides a platform for collaboration through an online community and eight-year global conference series to begin this November in San Francisco.

This year’s three-day symposium will launch seven forthcoming annual events in seven world regions from 2009 – 2015. The Global Summit will focus on creating a shift from representative to participative democracy. Simply stated by Melanie St. James, founder and director of The Global Summit, The Global Summit is “a once in a millennium opportunity to change the world.”

Unknown among the common people but influential in the global economy sphere, Nooyi is no one else but the chairman and CEO of Pepsico. She symbolizes the voice of the Indian woman, perceived as the engine of growth within the Indian society, with altruistic ideals (development of sanitation in the world, improvement of sustainable agricultures) expressed on the stage of the world.

A better place for corporations and its loyal subjects. For their project to be viable I guess either you adopt affordable prices following their third world markets (initiated by Bill Gates) or you increase their propensity for consumption. For the later to happen, Nooyi (through Pepsico) has provided readily available treats (fortified nutritional products) to distribute among poorer economies.

In Nooyi’s “Business call to action” campaign, she promotes innovative business models. In her action program, she advocates passionately conservation of natural resources (especially water) as a guiding goal. In the back of her mind, Pepsico’s interests.

So we should stay aware of our surroundings when Mrs Nooyi speaks with the business jargon. It’s one thing to address a patronizing message with “we understand you” to the local population, it’s another thing to articulate growth in percentage. Associating humanistic concepts with rates, volumes and percentages is indecent and antisocial.

Pepsico made a conscious choice by choosing a woman to lead, praying on the cultural “mother figure”, an equal right recognition in quest of the third world market domination. In business every decision has its rationalization. Nooyi is ardently encouraging rigid sanitation and conservation of water in those markets. Does this respond to her conglomerate’s needs? Firstly because 90% of soft drinks are made with water, secondly because when Pepsico exports its holding to foreign markets, it has to supply itself from the markets’ resources and adapt its policy to the governmental directives. Go figure…

To refer to Nooyi’s native country, let’s just underline the fact that Pepsi was denounced to carry in its soft drinks 35 times more pesticide residues in India than in Europe, what must we conclude?  A laxer safety policy when it comes to deal with the health of poorest countries?

Just a thought…

Isn’t the choice of Nooyi to represent Pepsico, their best asset to any controversial outbursts in one of the fastest growing markets?

This is where the newly launched website Causecast.org steps in. Causecast is an educated, savvy idealist’s playground. Imagine Myspace, YouTube, and CNN with a splash of celebrity advocacy. Causecast is a cause based social networking website committed to providing video feeds, world and local news, and the pairing of 30 non-profit organizations with you. Time to meet your world conscious community.

Creating a profile on Causecast is very similar to Myspace or Facebook, complete with pictures, quotes, and friends. The most important difference being that if you are watching a celebrity on Causecast, it is because they are involved with a social movement ranging from clean water to financial literacy.

The first person to greet you is Jenny McCarthy and this time she’s not introducing videos on MTV. She is talking to us about finding out her son was diagnosed with autism in 2005 and beginning her research into finding out not only about the condition itself, but ways to go about regressing it. What she found was Generation Rescue, one of the many organizations on Causecast.org. Generation Rescue is an international movement of scientists, physicians and parent-volunteers researching the causes and treatments for autism and mentoring thousands of families in recovering their children from autism.

There are 30 organizations to reach out to every humanistic endeavor. Join Global Angeles to offer children around the world a way out of poverty and into schools. Learn how the Diamond Empowerment Fund is raising money for education for children where diamonds are being exported from Africa. Watch the telling documentaries of the lives of refugees and displaced people as presented by the I Live Here Foundation.

Should time not permit for hands on volunteer work, Causecast will take your loose change because “change is in your pocket”. It’s that simple sometimes, right at your fingertips rests the ability to change the world one dollar, one person, and one charity at a time. There is an option to donate anywhere from $5 to $500 or more to your favorite charity. No excuses anymore for your good deed of the day, week, or year having gone undone.

Help and change gather momentum through repetition and a supportive community. Choose the organizations that speak to you, and you in turn will be heard on a world wide level through your posts, you videos, your pictures, but most importantly, through the simple act of becoming involved.

Google has, since its conception by co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, positioned itself as both immensely socially conscious and wholly philanthropic.  Seeking solutions to our world’s greatest issues — climate change, global public health, and global poverty — Google started the for-profit philanthropic subdivision Google.org with the initial funding of one billion dollars.  But Google, as they’ve become more and more ingrained in the purveyance of the vastness of all-encompassing, readily accessible information, has realized that, well, it’s simply the idea that makes the difference — and that idea can come from anywhere and anyone.  Google knows that they don’t have all of the answers, but what they are sure of is that the answers to the world’s largest problems are, in fact, out there.  It’s just a matter of finding them.

So, welcome to Project 10 to the 100th.  Take a moment and give this a watch.  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

As Google puts it, “helping helps everybody, helper and helped alike.”  Truer words do not exist.  So here’s the gist.  Google is committing ten million dollars to set up to five of the best, brightest, and most far-reaching ideas into motion.  It’s up to all of us, however, to put our collective thinking caps on and submit those ideas.  Anyone can submit as many times as he or she wants with the Project 10 to the 100th Submission Form.  The deadline for submission is October 20th 2008.  That’s a mere 18 days, people!  After submitting, Google’s leaving the semi-finalist decision in our hands.  A public online poll starting January 27th 2009 will determine the top 25 ideas from around the world, which will then be narrowed to up to five by Google’s own board of advisors.  Sounds simple, eh?  Well, it is!  Start submitting!  And remember, helping the most people, for the longest amount of time, in the most encompassing way possible is the paramount goal.  But, let’s just let Google fill us in on the rest, shall we?

Criteria:

• Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
• Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
• Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
• Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
• Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

Categories:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

So, from Google, from jungle [8], from Earth, good luck, and may those who help the most win.  Because when they win, we all win.

It’s official now, the new niche to carve targeting the masculine gender lines, products is… to sexually charge the product!  No more effervescent brainstorming on a future catch-eye design, no more competing emulation around a memorable tag line, after Ford, unknown Cachaca, Gillette as other non creative brands decided to take the easy road to recognition or maybe the safer way against an increasing competition during a declining economical conjuncture.

Whatever their reason it’s inadmissible! I can only be an offended woman!

Now no more appealing to our imagination, no more challenging our intellect, the new marketing tool to flatter the sales department is as the oldest job of the world, sex.  Is it news? Sex and food may say marketers, and they won’t be wrong, will always sell, isn’t it the issue?

Moreover, isn’t it a subtle marketing maneuver to gain a maximum viewers browsing on their “swimsuit” interactive video? In a networking booming communication context, isn’t it the ideal, the more adequate weapon to launch their campaign with?

With a soft voice, the associate director of Starcom Mediawest, Jason Temming argues that “the challenge was how to make the mashup compelling” and Stacey Vollman, general manager at SI.com to tone down the controversy by ingeniously stating “SI.com also monitored language profanity wouldn’t get uploaded along the video…”.  By giving them the power to rate the video, they “innocently” invite the manipulated (the viewer) to complete the reading of Gillette’s message that is… What is it by the way?

In my confusion, my head still on my shoulders (unfortunately for the originators of the campaign), my question is : where is the challenge in addressing to a young male population by erecting its phallic fantasies, by rising their juvenile over reactive hormones?

The only rational and plausible solution to my dilemna is expressed through generous figures, 100,000 viewer-ratings, 5,900 videos born from the “swimsuit” video, a 60% higher rate on Facebook, an average 19 minutes spent front of the video….. Isnt’it what’s it’s all about? What companies generate in matter of traffic on the net? Quality or not? To be present and visible at whatever cost?  Opportunistic sell outs!

Since Gillette aimed the 47 million men interested in the issue by manipulating their libidos, I advise the corporation to forget the opposite side of the spectrum the female population! No more pink Gillette in our cabinets! That’s the beginning of a new era of manipulation-emancipation!

If you’re female, and have watched TV within the past year, or gone to see the recent Sex and the City movie, you’ve most likely been urged to get a new vaccine called Gardasil, marking the first time most of us experienced being targeted by a drug company when sitting in a movie theater.

Pharmaceutical company Merck has taken drug marketing to a whole new level with its new campaign for the drug Gardasil, marketed as a vaccine for cervical cancer. Their campaign, launched on a massive, multi-media level to consumers and aggressively promoted within the medical community has taken the nation by storm, and created a buzz among women almost phenomenal.

While fear-based advertising had numerous harmful effects on the moral and values of a society when used to promote clothes, food, cars and other commodities, the bad effect is multiplied to a whole new level of irresponsibility when used within the healthcare system.

What the campaign communicates conveys a massive lack of social consciousness, on several levels.

Even while the drug was still in testing, before it was approved, Merck was paving the way for it’s next best-seller. The drug was expedited through the lengthy FDA-approval process in 6 months, a process that usually takes years, and before tests could reveal the long-term effects of the drug. Merck went to great lengths to cultivate support for the product within the medical community, hosting sponsored lunches and paying doctors and nurses up to $4,500 to simply lecture about the drug’s functions.

Merck hit all media to pack it’s punch, using Facebook, TV, print, and even a theater ad that played before the Sex and City movie. Merck’s efforts for Gardasil earned a them numerous awards from….. guess who, Pharmaceutical Advertising and Marketing Excellence awards, and Gardasil was named best brand by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.

Pharmaceutical companies traditionally haven’t marketed vaccines as aggressively as other drugs, because they weren’t as profitable. Gardasil is their golden ticket, currently going for the whopping rate of almost $400 for the drug, not including doctor fees. Many health plans don’t cover it, kicking it into the women’s luxury item category, which is known for distorting the true value of something, according to who and how many people want it.

But should a medical vaccine really be the next “it” thing to have, or give to your children?

More cautious mothers are starting to realize they were wise, as new facts about the vaccine come into the light. Consider these not-so-obvious facts about the product itself: the vaccine was rapidly rushed onto the market, and long-term effectiveness is still undetermined. Some tests have revealed the vaccine’s protection to wear off after only 3 years. And Merck recommends giving it to girls as young as 10 or 11. Which means it might very well wear off twice before a girl even became sexually active. And at around $360 a pop, what does that mean? Merck just made almost $1,200 to protect that girl against something she never was exposed to. 

Merck’s marketing for Gardasil cashes in on the power the term “cancer cure” holds, and doesn’t accurately communicate the true function of the vaccine. Consider these facts: the drug prevents infection from two of the main cancer-causing strains of HPV. There are over a hundred, and it doesn’t protect against those.

Cervical cancer takes years to develop, and regular PAP smears make it easily preventable, as long as it’s detected early.

Commercials neglect to mention that over 95% of the deaths caused by cervical cancer are in developing countries, where women aren’t able to get Pap smears, the simple preventative measure. In the US, due to the increase in regular testing, the rate of cervical cancer is currently decreasing at a rate of 4% a year.

Some states are considering the vaccine mandatory for middle school-aged girls, and Virginia has recently made it law. Considering how cancer is easily caught and treated through regular check-ups, shouldn’t the state instead mandate routine Pap smears when that girl reaches puberty?

If immunization becomes mandatory, everyone will be feeling the high cost of the drug, through their wallet. The high cost of the drug will raise the cost of healthcare, already a major burden in our current economy.

One of the things we consciously support here at jungle[8] is the move away from fear-based marketing within the advertising industry. As we have said before, the old adage of “ you’re not good enough”, or “quick, hurry, buy this or something bad will happen to you” is no longer relevant within a socially-conscious society.

            So, the point is to think twice before being swept up by the latest fad product. Or stop and think when you’re told you should be afraid. Because, in this case, the scariest part is how Merck is expected to make over $1.6 billion this year, not just from medical necessity, but from fear.