Since I don’t speak Portuguese, I recruited my friend Karina, who happens to hail from Brasil to help me out with this post. A week or so ago, I came across a random blog chronicling the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ journey from Japan to Brasil. However, I couldn’t figure out if this ‘journey’ was a clever marketing campaign or if the people writing this blog are just MAJOR Turtle fans.

After asking Karina to translate, both of us remained confused. So check out the site  and see what you think. Is it marketing or are these dudes just having fun?

for fun, PR Campaigns, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Denise, a fellow Eastwikker, set up a game of online tag about two weeks ago and I am happy to join (a week or so late). Here are five things you may or may not have wanted (or needed) to know about me:

1. I am running a marathon on June 3rd. The only reason I have survived my training so far is because I joined Team in Training.

2. Although I say I am from New Mexico, and not California, I was born in Los Gatos. (But left CA when I was 4 or 5…)

3. I was voted “Best Smile” by my high school senior class of 2002 (I shared the honor with Ben Warner)

4. I lived in Granada, Spain, for 6 of the best months of my life during the spring semester of 2005.

5. I still love boy bands…I fear it’s a phase I will never grow out of

I won’t tag anyone because these things drive me nuts…although I have to admit, it’s been fun.

Albuquerque High School, boy bands, eastwikkers, for fun, General, Granada, New Mexico, San Diego Rock n Roll Marathon, Spain, Team in Training, Uncategorized

When I moved from Albuquerque (NM) to San Jose last September, I found the most astonishing and troubling differences between the Southwest and the West Coast to be the amount of traffic on 101 North and the perpetual brown haze in the distance.

Ever since, I’ve been thinking a lot about global warming and pollution. I’m pretty concerned about it. Lucky for California residents, CA is one of the most progressive states when it comes to passing legislation designed to tighten auto emissions and carbon standards.

Over the past month, members of the Eastwick team have been pitching the story behind Duarte Design’s revamp of Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation - which became the basis for his Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” That got me thinking about how PR can maintain the media’s interest in all things “going green.” I also started to wonder what PR campaigns are already out there that aim to save the Earth.

While surfing the web for International PR blogs, (my proposed topic for this fledgling blog), I came across a brilliant PR campaign from the Land Down Under.

At 7:30 p.m. on the evening of March 31st, citizens of Sydney were encouraged to celebrate “Earth Hour” by turning off their lights, turning appliances off stand-by, and enjoying an hour of quiet. The results? More than 2 million Sydney residents and businesses showed their support for Earth Hour, which allowed for a 10.2 percent drop in energy usage across the city, according to Energy Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 10.2 percent was double the anticipated energy saving and represented a reduction of 24.86 tons of carbon dioxide - the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road for an hour.  Pretty impressive stuff.

Even more impressive is the fact that Earth Hour was the kick-off event for the WWF-Australia’s (Worldwide Fund for Nature) ambitious campaign to cut Sydney’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5% by March 2008. In my opinion, PR doesn’t get much better than that. I’m thinking ”Earth Hour” would be a great way to promote this summer’s Live Earth concerts…

An Inconvenient Truth, Duarte Design, Earth Hour, Global Warming PR, Live Earth, PR Campaigns, WWF Australia