Site Info: How PR Companies Should Contact Us

This post is really only for people sending in messages about new products, companies, press releases, etc.

For those of you in the PR field or for people who want to send in news about their local event, I’m changing things up. The volume of press releases and the like sent to me has gotten overwhelming (this has been the case for sometime now, I’m just doing something about it now).

The only way I will read your PR (or whatever) is if you send it to the NEW contact at ThingsAreGood.com email address. Anything sent to a different @thingsaregood.com email address will be ignored.

In fact, I’ll likely not respond to most press releases as I just get too many.

Now back to your regularly scheduled good news.

A Really Good Ad Campaign

People For Good wants to remind you to do good things everyday. Throughout Canada mysterious ads have appeared promoting People For Good and it turns out it’s a few marketers who wanted to take a break from selling things and wanted to sell good ideas.

People For Good’s website is filled with small very easy to do actions that apply to almost everyone. Check it out and do some good!

“The genesis of this was about wanting to do something positive and socially responsible and taking stock of what we do for a living. And what we do for a living is changing attitudes and behaviours.”

The campaign, in which the messages started to appear on billboards in late June, is under way in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal and Halifax, and is slated to run until Aug. 21.

“The reaction we’ve had has been outstanding,” says Sherman, who won’t reveal how many millions of ad space was donated.

“I hope that aside from encouraging every Canadian to do a good deed or something nice, I hope we can also inspire other people in other industries, in other companies, to take stock of what their collective can do and try and use some of the energy… to do something socially responsible,” said Sherman.

Read the rest of the article here.
Go to the People For Good website.

“Upcycling” Gets Corporate Interest

Upcycling takes items that would otherwise be wasted and makes them into useful products. James, who works for Terracycle, wrote to let me know that they have teamed up with Kraft to make some upcycled bags. I wonder how people will react to branded recycling.

Kraft will become the first major multi-category corporation to fund the collection of used packaging associated with its products. Several Kraft brands, including Balance bars and South Beach Living bars, Capri Sun beverages, and Chips Ahoy! and Oreo cookies, are now the lead sponsors of TerraCycle Brigades. These nationwide recycling programs make a donation for every piece of packaging a location collects.

“Sustainability is about looking out for future generations. Kraft is proud to partner with TerraCycle, an innovative company who has made it their mission to reduce the impact on landfills and to educate consumers on the importance of recycling,” says Jeff Chahley, Senior Director, Sustainability, Kraft Foods. “TerraCycle’s model of rewarding ’brigade hosts’ is a novel way of collecting packaging waste that would otherwise have been sent to landfills. It’s so cool to see trash turned into merchandise that’s unlike anything else on the market.”

Artist Asks How’s My Advertising?

Posterchild is a Toronto-based artist who is sick of all the illegal billboards in the city and decided to do something about it by using art. One can hope that other cities follow in São Paulo lead by banning billboards in the city. Until then, we have artists.

Last Monday—using data gleaned from Rami Tabello’s IllegalSigns.ca—Posterchild stenciled solicitations for feedback below three illegally-run fascia signs downtown (“persistent violators,” as he put it). A play on the now-ubiquitous “How’s My Driving?” slogan typically seen on the back of big rigs, the stencils feature the number of the City’s Building Division, which is, among other tasks, responsible for sign permits. Posterchild, an equal opportunity stenciler, hit one sign each of Astral Media, Titan Outdoor, and Strategic Media. (Titan and Strategic, by the way, are the two companies currently suing the City. And Astral Media is a whole other story.)

Facebook for Justice

Wal-Mart, the king of conspicuous consumption, has tried to open a group on Facebook only to find that people are well aware of the bad things Wal-Mart does. The good part of this story is that Wal-Mart is getting told by people what they actually think, and Wal-Mart’s being encouraged to take the battering.

I like seeing people use a social networking tool to argue against a corporation with a poor track record on nearly everything.

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