April 22 will mark Earth Day, an annual event celebrated around the world as the greenest of holidays. Established in 1970, it was created to call attention to the environment.

Earth Day coverage has grown exponentially over the past decade and will get substantial coverage in most media outlets — including national television, radio, newspaper, magazines, blogs, etc.

Earth Day creates an excellent opportunity for companies to promote their environmental activities and concerns to a broad base, as well as to their local community.

What will your company do for Earth Day to stand out to its base and capture the attention of its public? How will you let your customers, prospects, employees and/or shareholders know about your efforts to reduce carbon emissions, use more eco-friendly materials, reduce waste in packaging, start a recycling campaign, cut emissions, etc?

My suggestion: Don’t forget the kids. Children are Our Future.

A national research study commissioned by the National Environmental Education Training Foundation noted that children placed the environment third in a list of 10 issues behind only AIDS and kidnapping. This contrasts greatly with adults, for whom the economy, crime, and drugs are of greater concern. Children worry about long-term issues such as damage to the ozone layer and destruction of the rain forest.

Did you know that 99% of children in America today have access to environmental classes in school, and 31 states require schools to incorporate environmental concepts into virtually every subject in all grade levels?

Reach out to children. Children have influence over parents’ buying habits. as well as being an influencing force for recycling and conservation activities.

If you have a local business, work with a school district and get imprinted eco-friendly promotional items, which are educational, into the students’ hands. Try to target elementary or middle schools for best response and maximum impact.

Many of my clients have given out live tree seedlings in imprinted recyclable bag to the local elementary school principals to be handed out to the classrooms during their Earth Day discussions. The students will take the trees home with them and plant them—reminding the entire family of your company’s kindness and desire to re-green your community.

Other great eco-friendly promotional items for students include: reusable backpacks or cinch bags, biodegradable water bottles, pencils and pens made from recycled material, coloring books about recycling and even magnets made from recycled cardboard.
If you are a regional or national company, work with your distributors or regional offices to get your products placed.

Bonus Tip: To save money, contact some non-competing businesses in your area and try to split, or co-op, the cost of the imprinted gifts. You can split the size of the imprint two or three ways—depending on imprint area, which will cut your costs dramatically.

Earth Day will be celebrated and discussed in nearly every school on April 22nd. Don’t miss your chance to promote your business in a green-friendly way.

Happy Earth Day!
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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

Business people who spend money on advertising and marketing will be surprised to learn that advertising one’s name on a reusable tote bag is over 15 times less expensive per impression than any other form of advertising.

People who receive an imprinted reusable tote bag use them an average of 9 times per month, according to the June/July 2008 survey of 618 businesspeople on behalf of the Advertising Specialty Institute. Since the bags have a large imprint area and are displayed in a visible location, the advertising message will be seen an average of 1,038 impressions per month; nearly 12,500 people will see that message each year –per bag. Give out 500 imprinted bags, and in one year, over 6.2 million people will have seen your imprint.

At an average cost of $3.00, a tote bag imprinted with a logo and message on it will be viewed 12,000+ times in a year –making the cost per impression (CPI) only $.00025, which is about one fifteenth the cost of an average city billboard ($.003), and 1/28th the cost of an average cable TV commercial ($.007) and the 1/76th cost of an average half-page black-and-white newspaper ad ($.019).

Because imprinted bags, such as totes, are a useful item, they are kept for an average of 9 months, according to the survey. It also points out that 53% of those who received an imprinted tote bag indicated that their impression of the advertiser had become either significantly or somewhat more favorable after receiving the item.

Reusable bags are good for the environment—as they prevent plastic bags to be used. Those made from recycled materials or from natural cloth or jute, are even more eco-friendly. Plus, they are traveling billboards for your message. Imagine the impact of 500 or more people carrying your mini-billboard around –wherever they go.

Reusable imprinted bags are both good for the environment and good for your budget—it is a winning combination.

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Notes:
1) The ASI survey was a series of interviews conducted in June/July 2008 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users’ purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media. Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the non-wearables sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older. Research provided by the Advertising Specialty Institute, Copyright ©2008, All Rights Reserved.

2) The CPI of billboards and cable TV rates came from Los AngelesMobileBillboards.com and the CPI for the other forms of advertising came from The Nielsen Company for 2008.
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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

The results are in… and the June/July 2008 survey of 618 businesspeople on behalf of the Advertising Specialty Institute prove that imprinted promotional products return the best return on investment of any advertising medium.

A summary of the conclusions of the report are:

• Instant recall: More than 8 out of 10 (84%) respondents remembered the advertisers of the promotional products they’re received.

• Very impressionable: 42% of respondents had a MORE favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving the item. And nearly a quarter (24%) said they are MORE likely to do business with the advertiser on the items they receive.

• It’s all business: Most respondents (62%) have done business with the advertiser on a promotional product after receiving the item.

• User-friendly: The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

• Staying power: More than three-quarters of respondents have had their items for more than 6 months.

• Bag it!: Among wearables, imprinted tote bags were reported to be used most frequently with respondents indicating that they used their bags an average of 9 times per month. They also deliver the most impressions: Each bag averages 1,038 impressions per month.

• Most impressive: The average CPI of an advertising specialty item is $0.004; as a result, marketers get a more favorable return on investment from advertising specialties than nearly any other popular advertising media.

With budgets tight this year, doesn’t it make sense to utilize a proven medium to keep your name and message in front of your clients and prospects?

Imprinted advertising specialties, from tote bags, pens, shirts, caps, USB’s, mugs and other imprinted gifts can help you to increase and maintain business during this tough economy. While some of your competitors are cutting their promotional budgets or spending their money on more expensive forms of advertising, your company can gain top-of-mind market penetration for pennies per impression through proven promotional products—delivered in a way to maximize its impact.

Promotional specialties can be used as a gift with purchase, as part of a customer loyalty or incentive program, as a thank you gift or as part of a trade show campaign.

Choosing the right imprinted gift, and the proper distribution of it, can help you maximize sales and gain more referral business this year – at a fraction of the cost of other forms of advertising.

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Note: The survey was a series of interviews conducted in June/July 2008 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users’ purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media. Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the non-wearables sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older.
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Robert Piller, president of Eco Marketing Solutions, is experienced in green marketing campaigns and recycled promotional products.  He has worked with thousands of retailers across the country to get them to offer reusable imprinted tote bags for their customers, to help reduce the landfill waste caused by plastic bags.

His company’s website, EcoMarketingSolutions.com, features over 25,000 eco-friendly promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find biodegradable, organic and recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame.

You can also reach him by email (robert (at) ecomarketingsolutions.com) or comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com or below at his Twitter link.

According to an article in ClimateBiz, such firms as Nike, Starbucks, Sun Microsystems, Levi Strauss & Co. and The Timberland Co. have created a organization, called Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy.

This group is trying to encourage and lobby for “aggressive new environmental policies based on a set of eight principles ranging from renewable energy requirements, a national greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system and the elimination of federal subsidies for fossil fuels.”

According to the article, BICEP’s principles include:
– Reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020
– A nationwide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system in which all emissions permits are auctioned off, not given away.
– Creating aggressive policies that will lead to a doubling of the energy efficiency improvement rate.
– A national renewable portfolio standard where 20 percent of electricity will be come from renewable sources by 2020; 30 percent by 2030.
– Investment in renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies and the elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels.
– No more coal-fired power plants unless they use CCS technology, with a plan to eliminate existing plants without CCS by 2030.
– Boosting more efficient transportation in the form of plug-in electric and fuel-efficient vehicles, low-carbon fuels and transit-friendly development
– Creating green collar job investment

Let’s hope the Obama administration can be pro-active in encouraging most of BICEP’s goals, which seem reasonable. It is promising to see the business community trying to enact environmentally-friendly goals, as opposed to fighting legislation or delaying its implementation.

Businesses understand that a level playing field is in everyone’s interest, and the sooner these changes are implemented, the sooner costs of alternative energy and energy-efficient products will decline.

Let’s hope it is sooner, rather than later.
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Robert Piller, President of Eco Marketing Solutions, has over 25 years of experience in running and implementing green marketing campaigns and is a leader in the recycled promotional products industry, including offering one of the largest selections of reusable and organic tote bags, recycled and biodegradable water bottles, recycled pens and pencils in the country.

His company’s website, EcoMarketingSolutions.com, features over 25,000 eco-friendly promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find biodegradable, organic and recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame.

You can also reach him by email (robert (at) ecomarketingsolutions.com) or comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com or below at his Twitter link.

“The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states will cap and then reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018,” according to its website, rggi.org.

The ten states will cap CO2 emissions from the power sector, and then require a 10 percent reduction in these emissions by 2018. The ten states are: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Pete Grannis, RGGI chair and commissioner of the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation, said in a statement on September 29th, “The first RGGI auction has successfully used market forces to set a price on carbon, and this will send a clear signal to support the investment in clean energy technologies”.

They will participate in a cap-and-trade approach which will allow these states to sell emission allowances through auctions and invest the proceeds in such consumer benefits as energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies.

According to the online green newspaper ClimateBiz, the RGGI sold nearly 12.6 million carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) allowances Friday to 59 participants at a clearing price of $3.07 each. The floor was set at $1.86 per allowance, each of which allows electricity generators to emit up to a ton of carbon dioxide. It also mentioned that RGGI futures on the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange began trading on September 29th, opening at $3.25 a ton, finishing at $3.76.

It is believed that RGGI will spur innovation in the clean energy economy and create green jobs in each state. Let’s hope each region of the country can create their own Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and spur awareness and innovation in the marketplace. _____________________________________________________________________
Robert Piller is President of Eco Marketing Solutions , which helps companies promote their brand and image at trade shows and in direct mail with environmentally-friendly imprinted promotional products that won’t end up in landfills. He is a frequent guest writer and speaker on issues of green marketing. He can be reached at robert@ecomarketingsolutions.com or visit his blog: www.greenspotblog.com.

I found another green spot website and it was really cool. FoundMyGreenSpot.com sells 100% organic cotton T-shirts and baby onesies with cute graphics and quotes on them. Then, on top of that,with each purchase you get a tree planted for you in the rain forest. With each purchase, you receive a unique ID number which allows you to go online and download a colorful and personalized certificate-suitable for framing. Great for Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts, new baby gifts–anytime and for anybody. You don’t have to be a tree hugger to support green-friendly businesses. I’m always looking out for unique green-friendly gifts. I hope you are too.
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Robert Piller is President of Eco Marketing Solutions, a company that helps businesses to promote their brand and name to their customers and prospects using environmentally-friendly promotional products that won’t end up in a landfill.You can visit his website at www.ecomarketingsolutions.com and view over 50,000 eco-friendly imprinted promotional products. Robert Piller is a frequent speaker and writer on issues of green marketing and helps companies that want to go green better promote themselves in their marketing campaigns. He can be reached at robert@ecomarketingsolutions.com or read his blogs at www.greenspotblog.com.