As part of his Africa, Join the Journey campaign, President Clinton’s social media team has enlisted viral videos, blogging, email newsletters and online pledge forms to spread the word about The Clinton Foundation’s work in Africa. President Clinton utilizes the blog as a platform for himself and others involved with the Clinton Foundation’s programs in Africa to relate their experiences to the Web site’s visitors. The topics of the posts vary from a group of children Clinton recently met on a soccer field in Zambia to Amy Lockwood, the Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Pediatrics Program Director, sharing a touching story about one of the many HIV positive children she has met. Through the blog, the people “on the ground” so to speak, are able to add color to the Join the Journey campaign by sharing their first hand experiences and convey a distinct message of hope and progress to readers.   More than 600 people left comments on President Clinton’s most recent post. Talk about an effective, cheap marketing plan…what a great way to spread the word about the positive changes taking place in Africa while at the same time showing the world how desperate the continent’s situation really is. Very touching and inspiring for this bloggerista.

Africa, Amy Lockwood, Join the Journey, PR Campaigns, President Clinton, The Clinton Foundation

Since I obviously did not write on the day of our move…I am well overdue for a little blogging. For those who missed LiveEarth, you missed some good concerts (and some pretty decent advertising).

Today I decided it was time to embed a video on my blog - I found this one featuring Cameron Diaz on YouTube’s home page. In all honesty, I’ve spent very little time on said site, but I have to admit that I could probably spend a good portion of my day surfing around for random videos.

Not to mention that companies all over the world (including Eastwick client Scalent) have commercials/videos on the site. I think it’s pretty safe to say that YouTube’s direct-to-user capabilities plus (or minus) star power (see Cameron Diaz above) and the more than 16 million unique visitors the site sees a month are THE secret sauce (or not so secret sauce) to effectively spreading any company’s gospel. As we frequently say at Eastwick, “Get on the Bus!”

Global Warming PR, PR Campaigns

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

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