How many offensive ad campaigns could companies create this year? Plenty.

Many businesses are realizing that consumers are looking for brands that care, brands that engage in dialogue, and brands that understand current trends. These companies are adapting to these new sensibilities and their businesses are thriving. Other companies have launched sexist ad campaigns, derided green actions, squelched customer’s comments and complaints, and mounted a merciless attack on local businesses, and consumers have spoken out.

Green is popular. Therefore, shaming green initiatives shows you are not only clueless, but part of the problem.

Despite the rising popularity (and wide media coverage) of bike sharing programs in cities and the number of cities looking to institute more bike lanes and encourage bicycle commuting, GM decided to run an ad campaign designed to make bicyclists feel ashamed of biking. The campaign, run in college magazines and aimed at current students and recent grads, shows a guy riding his bike and covering his face as a girl rides by in her (presumably GM) car. The tag line reads: Stop pedaling…start driving, and shows a picture of a smaller car, and a … truck.

There was an immediate outcry. Bicycling organizations, students and even professors condemned the ad and everything it stood for. GM backpedaled so fast that it immediately yanked the ads and began apologizing via Facebook and through every other type of social media it could find. The company responded to many of the negative comments and apologized.

Why do companies never tire of spitting on women and girls to sell stuff?

Dr. Pepper was tired of selling diet soda only to women. Who really wants to appeal to the demographic that makes over 80 percent of household buying decisions anyway? So they decided the way to appeal to men was to make a point of excluding women. On their Facebook page they even encouraged male-only users (it is off-limits to women) to play games where they shoot high heels, unicorns and rainbows.

Surprising no one but Dr. Pepper, the campaign didn’t appeal to most men (which is somewhat reassuring) and since it went out of its way to alienate women, no one was left to buy it.

Some companies still think it’s a good idea to sell items by sexualizing girls or promoting sexist stereotypes (or both at the same time). Abercrombie and Fitch has been a repeat offender, and this past year, family-oriented retailers Kmart and JCPenney joined the club. JCPenney quickly took this t-shirt out of inventory after being flooded with complaints, and a Kmart located in Australia took these thongs off the shelves for the same reason. The thongs are made by Kmart’s inhouse brand, Girl Xpress and the perception was that they were marketing them toward young girls. Kmart denied it, but wouldn’t state the customer age range Girl Xpress was targeting.

To be honest, it’s hard to tell what the point of this campaign was supposed to be, but whatever it was, everyone quickly lost sight of it. One blogger complained on Chapstick’s Facebook page about the use of this tacky, unattractive picture of a woman’s derriere in tight jeans. The company promptly deleted her comment (an irony many have pointed out considering the company’s invitation to be heard on their page). Ditto the negative comments that came after it. However, comments like, “after looking at this pic i know right where i wanna hide my chapstick,” were not deleted by the company.

Soon it was a battle to see who was faster, the commenters or the censors. Everyone forgot about the ad that sparked the war in the first place and directed their fury at the company who tried to control the conversation. That is something you just don’t do in social media and Chapstick came out of what could have been a minor embarrassment looking like an exceedingly foolish, 800-pound gorilla.

When you are Goliath, recruiting bystanders to pound David into dust makes you look like an even bigger bully.

It’s not enough that Amazon undercuts the prices of most local bookstores, but now they are encouraging consumers to go into local businesses, scan items and compare the price with the same item on Amazon. Since in many instances, Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax, the savings can be significant, causing many shoppers to not buy the item at the local business and buy the item online.

When promoting this new price check app, Amazon offered customers $5 for each item they bought using it (up to a total of $15). Forbes calls it the future of business, but in the face of Small Business Saturday and all the evidence that communities need to patronize and support local businesses to help local economies, Amazon’s campaign is as brazen as it is mercenary and cold-hearted.

Sometimes when you do everything right, it still goes wrong because your consumers can’t be bothered to read the label.

Coca-Cola thought it would be such a terrific holiday-cause marketing campaign to support polar bears, a species in dire need of help as well as animals that have been prominently featured in nostalgic Coke holiday ads in years past. They designed an eye-catching white can and prepared to watch awareness and profits grow. What happened? No one bothered to read the label, so Diet Coke (which is sold in a silver can) drinkers bought the white regular Coke by accident and then screamed about it.

Of course it is serious when diabetics or others with dietary restrictions consume something they shouldn’t due to a purchasing mistake, but many companies have very slight label differences that distinguish their products, but no one goes after them with the viciousness that Coke faced for simply offering the same drink in a special issue white can instead of a red one.

Many see this as a failed campaign by Coke, but did they really do anything wrong? Faced with an ugly public backlash, they have halted the manufacture of the white cans and are introducing a red polar bear can for the rest of the campaign. Now people can go back to not paying attention to what they buy again.

SEE ALSO:

2011 In Review: The 10 Stories That Defined Shelter in 2011

2011 in Review: How Small Spaces Trumped McMansions

images: bitzcelt, BikePortland, YouTube, Huffington Post, lovelyish.com, The Real Time Report, iTunes, the rocketeer (via Flickr cc)

Vancouver will no longer be known as the affordable shooting location for TV shows from Airwolf to The X-Files. Judging by blogs, Twitter and social media trends, people are now watching the city for its environmental leadership.

Friday marks the start of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games hosted in Vancouver, marketed as the “greenest” ever Olympics by Ann Duffy, corporate sustainability officer for the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC).

Of course, she faced a huge challenge in trying to minimize the footprint and waste generated by facilities and operations to accommodate: 7,000 athletes, 10,000 media professionals, and some one million people who will buy about 1.85 million event tickets (according to estimates by MacLeans’ sports section).

But for many environmentalists, what her organizing committee has done isn’t nearly enough to warrant a green-gold medal. And the sponsors of the “greenest ever” games, basking in her green halo’s glow, are suffering scrutiny, too.

Coca Cola aspires to win a green rep through recycling efforts in Vancouver. Panasonic has pledged to offset its carbon footprint. And Teck – a mining company based in Vancouver – donated the bronze, silver and gold for the official medals, which it thankfully “mined” out of electronics waste materials, and not sensitive habitat.

Do some, none or all of the above deserve the love of ecogeeks? Put yourself in an informed position to judge, with the links and resources below.

Basic reading:

Short descriptions of green initiatives at the Winter Olympics by Earth911.com writer Amanda Wills

“Canadians have also made it clear that celebrating winter sports shouldn’t come at the expense of a healthy planet. Thousands of people signed a petition in support of making the games climate conscious. All these voices made a difference. The 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver have raised the bar for climate action, including energy efficient venues, the use of clean energy sources, and by promoting the use of public transit. Of course, there is, still, lots of room for improvement”¦” – A report entitled 2010 Winter Olympics: What’s the score on climate change? from the David Suzuki Foundation

-¦Unchecked global warming jeopardizes the future of all winter sports. Frenzied reports have been coming in for weeks about the snow situation in Vancouver, which by all accounts is not good. Snow is being saved under tarps, according to some of those reports. More snow is being trucked in from surrounding areas. And even these efforts are expected to fall short, so the snow will likely have to be “enhanced” by sand and hay underneath…So far this year, at least six events have been canceled [due to poor snow conditions].” – A Change.Org post by environmental activist Mike Gaworecki

A Vancouver-based blogger, Leah Karpus, considers everything from made-in-China souvenir mittens to local snow conditions as part of her personal assessment on the Winter Olympics green marketing campaign

Further Resources:

The Reports & Resources area of the official Vancouver 2010 Olympics website, including Environmental Assessments and Sustainability Reports

A slideshow on Mother Nature Network profiling 12 Olympic athletes who “want to save the planet.”

A story about the forthcoming London Summer Olympics from Sustain Magazine that asks: Is “Sustainable Olympics” is an oxymoron?

A WWF-World Wildlife Fund report about the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, which they say are failing to meet proper environmental standards

An activist blog post that criticizes the Olympics for claiming to be green, but taking money from industrial developers as sponsors, and using too much non-renewable energy

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring environmental news, trends and tech highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: Roland

All eyes are on Copenhagen this month as the drama events of the UN Climate Change Conference play out. But those eyes aren’t just the ones of climate change activists and greenies. Multinationals are just as involved – even global beverage giant, Coca Cola, is descending on the Danish capital.

Working with other media, marketing, tech and creative partners, including DuPont and Gap Inc., Coca Cola was instrumental in launching the Hopenhagen campaign. The result? An interactive online campaign as well as lots of exposure on the ground in Copenhagen. Known for its creative advertising and branding, Coca Cola released a special Hopenhagen set of posters, seen all over town for the duration of the conference.

On Coca Cola’s Hopenhagen website, the company encourages visitors to take action against climate change and learn more about recycling and water as well as Coca Cola’s plant bottle, a soda bottle made form 30% plant-based materials (that means it’s still 70% plastic!). But supporting a good cause shouldn’t come without questions.

Although the company now supports several sustainability initiatives, most notably a partnership with the WWF that promotes water conservation, Coca Cola certainly has its flaws.

Earlier this year, Coca Cola found itself on a list of companies with factories causing major water pollution in the Chinese capital of Beijing. This summer, the Environmental Working Group called upon Coca Cola to protect consumers from the hazards of BPA, after a Coca Cola representative joined a group of lobbyists in a meeting to talk about the “fear tactics” used in the market in regards to BPA. Some have questioned the company’s tactics in India, and then there are the alleged murders, kidnappings and torture at bottling plants in Colombia, for which The United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund have filed a lawsuit against Coca Cola.

Beyond environmental and humanitarian complaints, Coca Cola also uses high fructose corn syrup to sweeten its US beverages, another minus point on the sustainability list.

So what should we think about Coca Cola and Hopenhagen? Yes, the campaign is a conglomerate of big business, but in a world where business is often a driver of change, multinationals are needed to step up to the plate, and this is a good example. However, it’s equally important to ask whether the support companies are giving is genuine or simply an attempt at the kind of marketing that will benefit them (aka greenwash).

At the end of the day, Coca Cola is a business and businesses want to make money. But, if Coca Cola achieves its goals of doubling serving sales to 3 billion per day in 2020, how and where the beverage is produced, how much water it takes and what it’s bottled in will be even more crucial in terms of the company’s footprint, no matter how much positive marketing goes into making the company look green.

Image credits: Coca Cola

Carbon Footprinting, or conducting a life cycle analysis on a given product to measure its greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime, is all the rage. But how useful a tool is it?

Case in point: Coca Cola recently made big news when it measured the carbon footprint of a can of Coke. A standard 330ml can of Coke will set you back 170g of carbon dioxide (CO2e). But what does that really mean? To a consumer, not much. Are you going to stop drinking Coke based on those numbers? Drink more Coke? Or start drinking Coke, even though you never did? Probably none of the above.

To Coke, the numbers mean slightly more because it gives the company a snapshot of which aspects of production are most carbon intensive (manufacture, transport, packaging, and so on) so Coke can lessen their environmental impact.

But what about qualitative factors? When Coke compared the footprint of a can of Coke to the footprint of a mango and passion fruit smoothie from Innocent, a UK Smoothie Company, the smoothie had a higher carbon footprint (209g for a 250ml bottle).

Of course, one might wonder how can you compare apples to oranges – or in this case, high fructose corn syrup and water to fruit. How can a can of Coke actually be better for the environment (or a person) than a smoothie?

And, if you compared a smoothie filled with fruit grown closer to Britain – like apples, pears or berries – rather than tropical fruit flown in from the Southern Hemisphere for comparison, you’d probably come up with a lower number.

A better tool, which can be used alongside Lifecycle analysis, is agroecology.

Agroecology integrates qualitative concerns and considers ecology, sociology, economics and policy with equal weight. An agroecology analysis might evaluate how the fruit is grown and what sort of living standards the people who grew it enjoy. It might also consider the impact on the environment of the Coca Cola plant that produced the Coke in question (beyond the carbon footprint issue).

Carbon Footprinting is a good tool for corporations, but consumers, when deciding which products to buy, should take such numbers with a grain of salt. Incidentally, if you want the lowest carbon snack of all, go for a piece of fresh, local fruit.

Fun fact: Coke recently scooped up a minority stake in Innocent. The company will use the funds to expand its markets in Europe.

Image: maessive

I’m drawn to circle pendants. For my birthday, my mother bought me a silver design with diamonds from David Yurman. Such a nice mom. (By the way, if you’re reading I’d love matching earrings.) I have mod blue plastic ones for my Laugh In party dresses, and an earthy necklace with large gray stones and a platinum circle pendant in the center.

But glass recyclers have created something truly unique in these designs forged from beer, water, wine and Coca-Cola vessels. They’re so delicate and the glass charms are lovely.

For $70, Georgia artist Kathleen Plate lets you tell the world what you drink and how much you care about curbing consumption. The circle is achieved by cutting and firing the recycled glass and the chain is sterling silver. The color is derived from the drink: brown from beer, teal from wine, clear from cola and green from water. Quench your circle jewelry thirst at Uncommon Goods.