The sustainability challenge: move away from language and toward experience.

By Emily Drew

Angry Birds and Cinepuzzle. Those are the favorite games of Judah Schiller, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, whose San Francisco office got rid of the board room years ago and replaced it with a game room, complete with Xbox Kinect. “We have our best meetings in the game room,” Schiller and his colleagues told me at Sustainable Brands ’11 this week.

Schiller’s own love for gaming led Saatchi S to a study released this week called, “Engagement Unleashed: Gamification for Business, Brands, and Loyalty.”

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People are inherently good, and Panera’s new social model proves it.

By Emily Drew

One in six Americans live in “food insecure” homes. This means one in six Americans is seriously hungry, likely under-nourished or malnourished and doesn’t know when he/she will have their next meal.

When Panera Bread Founder and CEO Ronald Shaich learned this, he thought about how Panera Bread opens two restaurants every week, employs 60,000 people, and he knew Panera’s resources could have impact on America’s hunger problem. He personally set out to help, pitched his board (with a lot of respect and credibility under his belt), created a foundation and the result is a new kind of chain restaurant: pay-what-you-can Paneras. 

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Why sustainability will not be achieved until “green” goes mainstream.

By Emily Drew

Eighty-two percent of consumers say “green” is feminine. Green is the new pink, and that’s not good for environmentally friendly products and businesses.  

A study launched by OgilvyEarth states “green” products aren’t being marketed effectively to the mainstream consumer and green marketers are actually forgetting two major consumer groups: men and the working class. The report, “Mainstream Green,” notes that  66% of consumers are “in the middle” on being green, and argues environmental sustainability will be impossible until green becomes “normal,” even invisible in society.

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