elephant journal is proud to be the official new media partner with LOHAS Forum. Click here for our ongoing LOHAS coverage, and be sure to follow our live coverage on Twitter. [Our editor Waylon Lewis is honored to serve on two panels during this event.]By the year 2050, 25 percent of the U.S. population will be of Latino heritage. Green businesses, are you listening?
Actor
Julia Ahumada Grob, who was raised by a Chilean father and Jewish mother in New York City, and produces the original Web series
East Willy B (a cross between Cheers and Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing), calls herself a "hyphenated person."
Grob helped create the digital show in part to represent the New Generation Latino, or people like her.
Green marketers trying to sell their products to the New Generation Latino, take note. These potential customers are:
- Urban
- Culturally proud/sensitive
- Tech/Media savvy
- Global
- Socially Conscious
The key to marketing to this audience, Grob says, is to be authentic. A lesson
Coors Light learned the hard way.
The brewer was forced to pull its its
Puerto Rican Pride ad campaign after two days, following a heated digital protest within the urban Puerto Rican community.
Further proof that, thanks to Twitter, Facebook and the like, social responsibility is here to stay. Your customers won't stand for anything else.
Heather Munro Marshall is a freelance writer, yoga teacher and creator of Namaspray® yoga mat cleaner. She is blogging from the LOHAS Forum 2011.
The below article is brought to you as part of elephant journal’s ongoing coverage of LOHAS Forum. For our complete coverage, be sure to follow elephant on Twitter and Facebook.
By the year 2050, less than 53 percent of the U.S. population will be non-Hispanic white. The other 47 percent? People of Color. And they will have trillions of dollars to spend.
"We're becoming a majority People of Color Nation," says Erica Williams, Citizen Engagement Lab.
Speaking at the LOHAS Forum 2011 in Boulder, CO, Williams also predicted that "Millennials," or people born between 1981-2000, will eclipse the number of Baby Boomers by 2020. Additionally, the majority of U.S. youth will be non-white by 2019.
"In short," she says, "we are getting younger, and browner."
Williams is part of the next generation of Social Entrepreneurs, who are blending culture and technology to target these domestic emerging markets.
Rha Goddess, CEO of Move The Crowd, sums up the business strategy simply as: Stay True. Get Paid. Do Good.
It's all about making connections, collaborating, and most importantly, creating a community of shared values. That means to find customers, you will have to do more than speak their language, you will have to have an ongoing conversation.
"Listening's great. Responding is better," says Rolando Brown, Poet and Collaborator of mvmt.com. "If you're not responding, you become irrelevant very fast."
Heather Munro Marshall is a freelance writer, yoga teacher and creator of Namaspray® yoga mat cleaner.
elephant journal is proud to be the official new media partner with LOHAS Forum. Click here for our ongoing LOHAS coverage, and be sure to follow our live coverage on Twitter. [Our editor Waylon Lewis is honored to serve on two panels during this event.]Women, it turns out, are in charge of 73% of household spending.
A fact not lost on Olympic Silver Medalist, snow boarder
Gretchen Bleiler, who has turned her passion for the environment and connections with top-notch sponsors into the latest sustainable product idea.
Speaking at the
LOHAS Forum 2011, she said women want products that have it all: high-quality, sustainability and good looks.
Enter ALEX, short for Always, Live, Extraordinary, the name she and her husband have given to a new kind of water bottle. The hardest part of re-using the typical bottle, she says, is that they are impossible to clean.
ALEX is different: it twists in half, making it much easier to reach the icky gunk that gets stuck to the bottom. And it's dishwasher-safe. Best of all, Bleiler's company will donate 2 percent of profits to clean water access causes.
I am woman, hear me roar!
Heather Munro Marshall is a freelance writer, yoga teacher and creator of Namaspray® yoga mat cleaner.
elephant journal is proud to be the official new media partner with LOHAS Forum. Click here for our ongoing LOHAS coverage, and be sure to follow our live coverage on Twitter. [Our editor Waylon Lewis is honored to serve on two panels during this event.]I hate grocery shopping. Have you
seen the multitude of choices on shelves lately?
First, you have to check the labels. Organic. Non-GMO. Free-range. Natural. Local. Gluten-free. Next, make sure your purchase sends the right message to the company. And oh yeah, save every penny you can by shopping the sales or using coupons.
Thankfully, a new consumer Web site will simplify this eco-product quagmire. Launching this fall,
ecobonus.com will reward people who buy earth-friendly products. Data from
The Good Guide and
SPINS to rank eco-products rank based on non-biased, scientific data.
The Web site will also offer product samples, reward points, even coupons. And membership is FREE. Nothing to sneeze at in this economy.
Best of all, Ecobons hopes to change the consumer playing field. Similar to retailers' long-running Green Stamp reward program of days gone by, Ecobonus will form a coalition of manufacturers, retailers and non-profits to create a new playing field for brands and consumers to interact with each other.
Can't wait to take it for a test drive this fall.
Heather Munro Marshall is a freelance writer, yoga teacher and creator of Namaspray® yoga mat cleaner. She is posting this blog from the LOHAS Forum 2011.
elephant journal is proud to be the official new media partner with LOHAS Forum. Click here for our ongoing LOHAS coverage, and be sure to follow our live coverage on Twitter. [Our editor Waylon Lewis is honored to serve on two panels during this event.]Entrepreneurs, boot-strappers by nature, have no advertising budget. Pitching a product to the press, therefore, is one attractive idea. Think: "Oprah's Favorite Things."
Magazines, newspapers, blogs, they're all worth contacting. But pitching ain't easy. Katy Saeger, Managing Partner,
Saeger Media Group, outlined the do's and don'ts at the
LOHAS Forum 2011.
So You Think You Can Pitch? Follow these Tips!
1) Know who you really are. Your authentic self is doing interesting things, share them.
2) What time is it? Breaking News is best for blogs and newspapers. In June/July, pitch glossy magazines for December.
3) Should you use Facebook or Twitter to contact reporters? Twitter is better for direct contact; Facebook is for getting your message out there.
4) While you pitch: Be a human. Get to point. Keep it brief. Open the door for conversation. Have a few angles ready. Don't be TOO creative, though. You're not Maya Angelou.
5) Wait a few days to follow up by email. Be CAREFUL with phone calls.
P.S. Never Use These Terrible Phrases1) "You should write about me..."
2) "Have I got a story for you..."
3) "Did you get my email?"
In short, pay attention to the publication's audience. Tailor your talk to their readers.
Heather Munro Marshall is a freelance writer, yoga teacher and creator of Namaspray® yoga mat cleaner She did NOT make the finals at the Naturally Boulder pitch slam last year.
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