vivid shining brands

From the "This has to be a hoax" department: McDonald's is going green — swapping its traditional red backdrop for a deep hunter green — to promote a more eco-friendly image in Europe. About 100 German McDonald's restaurants will make the change by the end of 2009, the company said in a statement Monday. Some franchises in Great Britain and France have already started using the new color scheme behind their Golden Arches. "This is not only a German initiative but a Europewide initiative," Martin Nowicki, McDonald's Germany spokesman, told The Associated Press. Dropping more than a half-century's worth of branding in favor of a consumer trend towards "greener" products? Has McDonald's gone mad? ...or is it branding genius? Since so many of their competitors (Wendy's, BK, In-n-Out) have the classic red/yellow color combo, could they be leveraging part of their massive brand equity to disrupt the fast-food market landscape? ...

Interesting new paper out from the P rint Council  showing that traditional print is greener than eMarketing. In the Fall 09 Blueline , the PINC (Printing Industries of Northern California) newsletter, Frank Romano (an industry "guru" according to the newsletter), noted: "We are trying to replace paper with electronic forms of communication," Romano says. "Eliminating paper is not green. I'm sorry, the world is not going to be any better off...Electricity comes from a plant somewhere and in order to get electircity, you have to burn something, usually coal. That's what goes into the atmosphere...There is a a cost for all of the electronics. We grow trees and we can plant more trees." Are marketers, consumers, and advertisers all making a big mistake?