The site was designed with an eye toward simplicity, ease of updating and with future expansion in mind. The design highlights Members and Grants, and it allows Members to update their own profiles and make offers to Members, Supporters and the public at large. There are now dedicated Members, Grants and News areas, where the proof of this incredible concept are showcased.

The launch of this new site comes just as 1% for the Tetons announced its new granting process. The new process involves two rounds for grant applicants and will feature an as-yet-to-be-released function of the new site that will allow Members and the public to cast their vote for potential grants by making pledges. This new function will be unveiled in the next several months. You can read more about the new grants process here.

At least some people are starting to wake up the atrocity known as bottled water, including the good folks at Brita who have had growing success with the “Filter For Good” program.

But many, many people still blithely buy into this scourge of the earth. Which is why I’m glad to see this infographic from the good folks at OnlineEducation. Don’t miss this. And you can put the graphic on your site with this code.

Presented by Online Education

"Where to Put it All" opens tonight, Friday, December 11, at 5:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts in Jackson.

My wife, Miga Rossetti, has been working hard for the past many months on a new body of artwork that is now hanging in the Center for the Arts in Jackson. Please join us tonight, Friday, December 11, at 5:30 p.m. for the opening reception in the Center Theater Gallery for her show, “Where To Put It All.”

Every spring a squadron of robins attempts to build nests between the rafters of our front porch. Some fail and some succeed, but each works frantically, collecting bits of all kinds of grasses and twigs, to build their potential new homes and rear a new brood of chicks. Regardless of their level of success, we’re left with a number of abandoned nests at the end of the summer. These nests have become the inspiration for Miga’s latest body of work, “Where to Put it All.”

There are birds and nests and symbols of all kinds in her new paintings. They reflect her desire to create order from the relative chaos that is the collective life of our family. We are freelancers, entrepreneurs, parents and fun-hogs (not necessarily in that order). We work in graphic design, art, marketing, writing, and we run a greeting card company. We have two beautiful daughters who are wildly active and creative and produce a never-ending stream of drawings, projects and whatnot. And we live in a place that allows us to be active outdoors, skiing, cycling, hiking, paddling and whatever else. How to get it all done and then where to put it all?

Special thanks to the Art Association of Jackson Hole for sponsoring this show and hosting this opening, which is hosted in part by The Liquor Store and The Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund.

Columbia Sportswear has done a great job of incorporating utility into their marketing on Pandora.

I love utility. My dad was very hands-on and could build or fix anything: a car, a plane, a house, whatever. Luckily, I got his knack for being able to fix things, and while I am no longer a “practicing” carpenter, I spent several years doing it, still take on my own home-improvement projects, have a shop full of tools and am a big sucker for hardware stores and Tool Crib catalogs.

I’m also a pragmatist and favor products and services that make my life better or easier, and that translates to marketing. There are all kinds of examples of utilitarian marketing strategies (though still far too many non-utilitarian marketing efforts), and with the interactivity of online marketing, these “utilities” are becoming more prevalent.

That’s why I was pleased to see what Columbia Sportswear has come up with in its marketing on Pandora. First of all, Pandora is a great example of radio letting us drive the bus, to a certain extent. We get to vote up or down songs within a particular strain of a genre, or “station,” in exchange for great free music of almost any type. A compromise for sure, but it is interactive radio at its best.

Now, because the reality of all this online content is that it actually costs money to produce (as much as we want to be in denial about that), Pandora has had to explore a few monetization schemes, and I give them kudos for introducing advertising in a way that isn’t too obtrusive.

I’m not enough of a regular listener to pony up for the paid account and, while I didn’t like it at first, the new audio ads they have aren’t all that obtrusive. It’s still better than what I have to put up with at my local radio station(s) where not only are the ads really annoying, but they’re almost all voiced by the same 4 or 5 local DJs who have been on the air here for almost as long as there’s been air.

But the beauty of Pandora is that their ads can be interactive, and smart brands are engaging listeners in ways that are pretty cool. Because Pandora encourages you to give the thumbs up or down to songs you’re listening to, you usually end up paying attention to the ads, at least a little bit. So here I am voting up a particularly good song when up pops an ad for Columbia Sportswear. And here’s where the interactivity impressed me.

The ad shows up with the current weather and forecast for my zip code, and gives me the opportunity to check on somewhere else by zip code. Then it gives me an appropriate piece of clothing for the weather (“Hey, you might like this piece of technical fleece.”) with an option to look at other equally appropriate pieces. Of course there’s a “Buy Now” button. Then I get the five-day forecast with more appropriate clothing. Finally, at the bottom Columbia has offered me a Pandora playlist for the day. And as if that weren’t enough, I can choose from the “Rainy Day,” “Sunshine” and “Winter Wonder” playlists. (And go figure, some of it’s actually music I like!)

While Columbia isn’t my favorite outerwear company, they’ve always had a knack for pretty good marketing, and they show here that they’re tuned in to what engages their potential customers.

And this ad engagement shows just a couple of the benefits and challenges of online marketing. First, it’s sticky. Because I was curious enough to see what Columbia had in their playlist. I now have their stations as part of my Pandora station list and might come back to it another time. The challenge is that there are so many social platforms upon which to engage customers (and I would consider Pandora a type of social platform) that brands need to even more carefully choose where to engage potential customers and then tailor that engagement to the platform. It’s like creating an app for the iPhone: it only works on the iPhone. I doubt that Columbia ad for Pandora works anywhere other than Pandora. But hey, it works. And they may even get some people to click the “Buy Now” button and go from potential customer to actual customer.

I launched MarketGreener just over two years ago as a way to dip my toe into the world of blogging. Since then I have learned a lot about blogging — including what it is and isn’t for me — and I’ve garnered a decent audience along the way. While not a huge following, there are some regular readers among you and a lot of others who have simply stumbled across this site. And since my focus from the beginning  has been to write about what I find interesting or helpful in the world of marketing and sustainable business practices, I’ve tried not to use it as a soapbox for my business.

But then, about six months after establishing this blog, I left the world of the gainfully employed to start Twist of Lime, a marketing and content services agency. My first site was built by me using Dreamweaver. And while I was confident with my DW skills and proud to have successfully built my own site, I have always known that design is not my forté and that the previous site was not the strongest calling card for someone trying to make a sizable chunk of  his income from building Web sites.

I’ve learned a lot in the past year-and-a-half, both from my clients and my teammates. The result of some of that knowledge is here in this redesigned site. Design was done by my wonderful wife Miga, who’s own skills in Web design are growing, and the development was handled by Alexis Sarthou, whom I have known and worked with since my Circumerro days and is very talented in the ways of building WordPress templates (yes, this site is powered by WordPress!), among other fine development skills. And, from time to time, some of what I do on the business side does and will continue to show up here on MarketGreener.

Please take some time to check out the new site. There are still a few tweaks to make and I welcome any and all (constructive) feedback. And I hope you continue to read the blog, and that you enjoy it enough to share it with others. Please bookmark it, join our email list or subscribe in a reader. And as always, enjoy!

You want me to take the stairs instead of the escalator because it’s good for me and saves energy? No thanks. You want me to take the stairs instead of the escalator because it’s fun? Sure! These people aren’t saving energy and burning a few extra calories. They’re having fun! And never mind the fact that there’s no car in the video. You’ll enjoy it so much that you’ll hardly notice. But then that’s part of the point. This is one of a series of videos in a new initiative by Volkswagen to try to get people to change their old ways by making the new way fun.

Engagement is a funny thing. While there’s definitely a growing, albeit small, number of people who will do the right thing because it’s the right thing, the reality is most of us are pretty selfish and want something for our sacrifice, no matter how small. Whether you’re selling a product or trying to get people involved in your cause, engage them in a way that will be worth their while. It’s not easy, but when done right will get people on board with you and put your brand well above your competition.

Enjoy the video, and when you’re done, check out more at thefuntheory.com.

Social media marketing is obviously very hot right now, and the interest Wyoming businesses are taking in this topic is understandably high.

Wyoming is a business-friendly state and one with a high number of small businesses. A big reason for this is that there just aren’t a lot of people in this fairly large state. The population is quite dispersed, even around some of the larger cities and towns, with many people being spread out around and between communities. And many of the state’s businesses rely on people very far away to be their customers. Some of these businesses are based here because they could be based anywhere yet the tax structure and quality of life are quite favorable. (That is certainly the case here in Jackson Hole.) And some of these businesses rely on tourism by people from all around the world. (Also the case here in JH.) And because of this, these businesses recognize the importance of being found online.

So, for someone like me, the opportunity to share my knowledge and meet people who are genuinely interested in what I do is a great one. As an added bonus, I was interviewed by a reporter from Casper’s channel 13 news. Thanks to everyone who worked hard to put on this event and to those of you who attended. It was a pleasure meeting all of you.

If anyone wants to view the slides from either of my two presentations (including my presentation on email marketing, which was not presented), you can view or download them at the temporary page on my dev site (to be launched very soon!): www.twistoflime.biz/seminar-presentations/.

And if you’d like to see the news report about the Idea Expo, you can view it below. Enjoy!

According to the Web site:

“The purpose of the conference is to inspire innovation in Wyoming businesses of all sizes. If you are a CEO, manager, specialist or have any interest in business, then you should to attend the Wyospace.com Idea Expo is not your ordinary business conference.”

I’ve never been and it seems like a great opportunity to meet other businesspeople from around Wyoming.

If you would like to view slides from any of my previous seminars, please visit the seminar presentations page.

First it was this one from Fast Company: “Will ‘Active Packaging’ Undermine Apple’s Quest for Sustainability?”

Then it was this week’s Marketing: Green column from MediaPost: “When It Comes To Packaging, Less Is More.”

I’m not sure which is most disturbing about these two articles, the fact that we’re still having conversations about the amount of wasted materials in product packaging today, or that Apple, while touting the new MacBooks as the Marketing: Green column points out what has become obvious:

Reduced packaging yields cost savings that go right to the bottom line, the perception of a greener footprint, and a potential lead marketing position in a highly competitive market.

The only thing I can figure is that Apple (a) has conceptualized packaging that even if they don’t ever create would be a good thing to patent in case someone else wants to use it, and (b) has enough money to burn that they don’t really care much about being green (good if it helps boost sales but not necessarily a way of life for them).

For me, when it comes to so many things—especially packaging—less is more. To see where we should be heading, check out this interview with Patagonia and 1% for the Planet founder Yvon Chouinard about how they increased sales of long underwear by reducing the packaging.

(If for some reason the video isn’t working, please visit http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/noah-robischon/editors-desk/patagonias-underwear-designed-exposure

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Areas to investigate
These are three areas which are worth looking at, because they can be simple to organise, can save money and don’t require much effort to operate as schemes.

1. Energy use

A few simple procedures can make a significant difference to how much energy the business uses and so pays for.  If it’s possible to introduce an energy monitor, it will be easy to show this.

Heating and lighting are simple to tackle, as it takes little more than a bit of thought to save energy.  Office equipment uses a lot of energy, so introducing a few simple procedures will make quite a change. Get people to:

• Turn off lights in empty rooms
• Keep doors and windows shut when the heating is on
• Turn off PCs, photocopiers and printers at the end of the day
• Use any power-down or sleep mode functions the PC has
• Unplug phone chargers when mobiles are charged

For increased energy savings:

• Leave plenty of space around radiators, as putting furniture in front of a radiator means it will need to work harder to heat the room
• Unless it’s really cold, try to keep the thermostat at 19°C.  Heating costs go up by 8% each time the temperature is increased by just one degree
• Don’t heat unused space, such as corridors or storerooms
• Turn off or reduce the heating whenever the workplace is empty
• Replace bulbs with energy saving ones
• Invest in ‘ecobuttons’ – for a few pounds, this gadget will put a PC into an energy saving mode with a simple press of a button

2. Recycling

Business recycling is growing.  A number of organizations are now accepting and even collecting recyclable waste from companies.  Find details of recycling services local to you.

Items which can generally be recycled at work very easily include:

• paper and cardboard
• plastics
• printer cartridges
• drinks cans

Find out what can be recycled by other organizations and arrange some collection points at work.  These might include:

• mobile phones
• old computer equipment
• textiles and clothing

If your business produces a significant amount of a particular type of waste, see if the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) or US Business Council for Sustainable Development (USBCSD) can find someone who can use it.

Find out what else can be recycled at Recycle Now.

3. Travel

Travel initiatives can make a significant impact on an organisation’s carbon footprint.  Ideas to include in a travel policy at work include the following plans.

Car sharing, where two or more people travel by car together for all or part of a trip, can cut down on travel costs and reduce carbon emissions.  On an average day on British roads, each vehicle carries 1.6 people, with approximately 38 million empty seats.  For many people, it may reduce the stress of the daily commute and other may feel an increased personal security when walking to and from the car.

Car clubs, which provide members with access to a vehicle on an hourly, daily or weekly basis. Vehicles are usually parked close to homes or workplaces. For some people, joining a car club and having access to a car means they don’t need to own one, which could be a consideration in saving money.

Cycle to work schemes, where employees are encouraged to cycle, saving money and getting healthier.  It may be possible to introduce a scheme for employees to buy tax free cycles through work. Cyclescheme explain how it works. For other ideas about cycling schemes, Wikipedia Community bicycle program has a number of useful links.

Alternative transport for business travel can be introduced.  Some companies in London give employees Oyster cards as a practical alternative to company cars.  Others give rail cards, which the employee can use for personal as well as business travel.

More efficient company cars could be used. These can help reduce carbon emissions and local air pollution, and will often save money on vehicle tax and other charges. A fuel efficient new car could also save the equivalent of three months’ worth of fuel over a year.

Awareness
Most people are happy to be involved in environmentally friendly initiatives.  If you can get schemes off the ground, you probably won’t need to convince most people to take part.  But you probably will have to make them aware that they have been introduced!  If you do, you will find a great deal of support and make a real difference to your place of work.

This article was produced by uSwitch For Business a utilities price comparision website aimed exclusively at business’s to help them save money on their electricity bills.