Boomerang

For over eight hours, a few hundred communications professionals minimized the use of their Blackberries and cell phones to focus on one topic: the environment. PR Week’s Target Green event, held at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel on May 10, was a great success. The majority of top PR firms, along with many Bay Area and national companies, were in attendance. Just a few years ago this event would have been a much harder sell — but now, people were flying in from England and China to attend. More importantly, the event was a solid indicator that the environmental movement is no longer on the fringes of society. Given the breadth of topics covered – from fuel cells to fisheries; from green products to green brands – it was clear that Green has gone (or at least is in the process of going) mainstream.

Although the event was very positive, there was still room for improvement. For decades, the environmental movement has been driven by grassroots organizations that challenged the mainstream. High-profile organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, as well as smaller groups like the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, have played a critical part in getting us to where we are today. Unfortunately, their voices were conspicuously absent at Target Green. The panels would have been a lot more interesting had they included, or been moderated by, some of these players. In fact, a panel that focused on the communications challenges of these organizations would have been extremely interesting and informative.

I used to wonder why grassroots environmentalists found it so easy to criticize large companies that did anything environmentally positive; but I think I get it now. It would be so easy for corporate America to completely co-opt the Green movement – ultimately making it nothing more than a marketing gimmick – that the grassroots voice, one not motivated by profit, is needed to keep things in check.

I’m certainly not saying it’s bad that corporate America is interested in being Green; quite the opposite, it’s great! Today an increasing number of companies are striving to create more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly products; and that benefits us all. But the opportunity to loosely use the term “Green” in the same way some loosely use the term “Organic” is dangerous. One way we can keep this from happening is to make sure the people who dedicated their lives to this cause don’t become marginalized simply because the movement has grown in popularity. This is one area that will always benefit from people outside the mainstream pushing us to do more.

If there is a second Target Green, I’d love to see this perspective included.

Before I sound too negative, I should say I walked away from Target Green feeling very positive. I hope PR Week holds more of these events. Things have changed significantly over the last few years. So many businesses now look at the environmental movement and see an opportunity. That’s great! Best of all, we’re part of an industry that has the ability to play a major role in making a difference in the future of our planet. That’s powerful stuff. I can only hope we never forget there’s more than profit at stake.

While I’m a relative late-bloomer to the growing trend of city car sharing, I’ve learned that there’s no need to worry about the expense and annoyance of finding parking in the city, paying high insurance premiums, or dealing with rising gas prices at the pump. I’ve experienced the “power of the fob” for myself, there’s no turning back. I’m hooked.  By sharing vehicles between a small and local “social network” of car-sharing members, people can really make a difference in reducing traffic congestion, parking problems, and our dependence on oil - while promoting cleaner air and more open space.

Back in 2001, City CarShare, a Bay Area nonprofit, introduced the city’s first car-sharing program — and others like Flexcar and Zipcar have entered the market since then. It’s pretty much the greenest way you can drive. A U.C. Berkeley study conducted in 2003 showed that each person who joins City CarShare saves nearly 100 gallons of gasoline each year, on average. When you add it all up, the current members of City CarShare in the Bay Area have saved more than 1 million gallons of gas. More recently, City CarShare has begun offering discounted programs to large local organizations like San Francisco City College to further increase its member base.

In my short time with City CarShare, it’s been easy and affordable to get around town to run errands, pick up friends and family at the airport, or conduct business in cities and towns nearby San Francisco. It does take a bit of advance planning to make sure you book the cars you need during certain times of day via the Web - but there are numerous “pods” (parking locations) to choose from, and all you need to do is wave your member “fob” on your keychain at your designated time - and the doors unlock, and off you go. Gas, insurance, pod parking and maintenance are all covered for you.

At $4/hour and 44 cents a mile, it’s really one of the cheapest ways to get around the Bay Area. And better yet, you can feel good knowing that membership in an organization like City CarShare is taking anywhere from 7 to 20 cars off the road for each vehicle they add to their growing fleet — and that’s having a very direct and real impact on the quality of life and environment in the cities that we live in.

For longtime tech valleywags, last week’s Business 2.0 “Next Net” mixer was a dose of deja vu. Held down the road from our offices, it was a nostalgic throwback to the flashy rooftop fetes – a la the Industry Standard – in S.F. during the first Web boom. Sipping on vino and cocktails, a few colleagues and I hobnobbed with CEOs, VCs, bloggers and editors, PR pals and other technorati, like next-door neighbors Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. We made merry to honor editors’ picks for Web 2.0 companies that stand out as best bets to strike it rich in 2007.

The Bay Area definitely represented for companies least likely to end up in TechCrunch’s DeadPool. After surviving one dot-com crash and the multiple rounds of agency layoffs in its wake back in the late ’90s, it’s natural to be a bit skeptical of the current enthusiasm. However, there were new business models and trends that caught our attention. Most of them focused on ways to mash up advertising and entertainment into innovative offerings, and new ways to deliver video content through a variety of channels and devices.

One of our clients, Joost, was among the companies honored at the event – as was Spot Runner, a one-stop online shop for low-cost 30-second TV ads that our parent company WPP invested in last year as part of its new digital initiative. A company that I’d personally put money down on is SimulScribe. Last month, I read David Pogue’s unusually enthusiastic N.Y. Times “State of the Art” column on the company’s pioneering service that lets you “read your voicemail.” Through advanced voice recognition software, you can now quickly scan info via online text, search for it and never have to listen to annoyingly slow or long VM’s ever again. How cool!

Like SimulScribe, another Web 2.0 client of ours, Fabrik (profiled in Business 2.0 last November) gets the majority of its software revenues directly through subscriptions, in addition to license fees via large international brands’ CE devices. With last week’s global stock market slide and Greenspan’s speculation about a potential recession ahead, it’s hard not to wonder which of the Next Net 25 will make it for the long haul – especially the ones betting it all on eyeballs and ad revenues.

But in the meantime, it’s surely a fun and exuberant ride!

If you’ve been around more than a random seven years in marketing and have worked with big companies, you’ve heard ‘em all say, “Oh we can’t do that! It’s like turning the Queen Mary! It’ll take forever. No, it’s impossible.”

Yet, in our very own spectacular San Francisco Bay, they turned the Queen Mary - the Queen Mary 2.0 that is. Beautifully did she turn, with a navigational margin for error of less than 70 feet and just 28 feet worth of clearance under the Golden Gate Bridge. (And if you don’t know our Bay, it’s grounded many vanity toys of far less consequence.)

So I grabbed my camera and headed to the bay to see it for myself (photo above). Cuz frankly, I am super sick of hearing that cliché.

But Captain Tom Miller, for whom docking the ship was “the challenge of a lifetime,” modestly said that while she was big and heavy, “she’s a good ship and maneuvers well with all the latest technology.”

Isn’t that like the best companies in the world? They might have started out like the original Queen Mary, near impossible to turn, but they reinvent themselves using new technology, often a modest, new captain, and hopefully end up as light on their feet as our new grande dame the QM2.

So the next time I stare down a bunch of nay sayers whether they’re in start up chaos or orderly corporate sterility, I will channel the spirit of Cap’n Tom. Because yo’… I know that dame can turn.