Kelli Peterson recently joined Cheskin to lead business development for the Innovation studio, specifically focusing on issues of sustainability, corporate responsibility and social innovation.
With over 20 years of business development and consulting experience, Kelli most recently served as SVP, General Manager for Sterling Brands where she lead national and international strategy, research and innovation projects for clients including Microsoft, T-Mobile, Xbox, Levi’s, Nike, Nestle, Red Bull, the NBA, and Yahoo among many others. Prior to her seven years with Sterling, Kelli worked with other San Francisco agencies including Highway One, MarketSource and The Wilkinson Group where she managed accounts and lead business development for clients including Nintendo, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Sunset Magazine, The City of Sacramento, SF Rec and Parks, and others.
12 March 2010
Most of us have come of age in a time of great prosperity. Our muscles of self-restraint are nearly non-existent. Across all economic classes, we have been cultivated to believe we can have and do anything at any cost. In fact, cost has been a non-issue and we have taken great pains to push aside the notion that compromise of any sort was undertaken to achieve social status, professional success or our material possessions.
27 January 2010
Last week Royal Caribbean cruise lines made the decision to continue the journey of the Celebrity Solstice through the beach town of Labadee, Haiti with all 200 passengers on board. The fact that the beach town is just 60 miles from the destroyed capital of Port-au-Prince where global rescue teams were scrambling to bring relief and aid to those hundreds of thousands that did not lay dead under the rubble, seemed to make no difference to those either on the ship or those making the decision.
26 January 2010
Last week Bill Gates entered the digital publishing world by establishing the Gates Notes - an online evolution of his now annual January letter sharing his thoughts and learnings on the progress of the issues central to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s interesting and symbolic that the next chapter of his life story would include an “open source” platform for sharing IP on social innovation.
18 January 2010
Kraft and the Rainforest Alliance are partnering to bring a premium dark chocolate to a store near you! Cote d’Or will contain coca from farms that meet Rainforest Alliance Certified standards and will first roll out in Belgium and France this year before arriving in 9 other countries including the U.S. and Canada. The sustainable chocolate will also be added to Kraft’s Suchard brand chocolate in Switzerland and Austria.
13 January 2010
It's been a number of years since we have seen any initiative lead by a power brand in the arena of corporate social responsibility. Today, Pepsi launched one of the biggest corporate social responsibility efforts that we’ve seen since the launch of (RED) in 2006 with the Pepsi Refresh Project.
Good CSR takes strategic development and an early glimpse tells us that Pepsi has hit a home run. Why? Here's ten reasons Pepsi looks to have gotten it right.
7 January 2010
Over the holiday I saw Avatar in its full glory – 3D IMAX. This film is one of 7 blockbuster films to break the 1 billion dollar revenue mark. The plot line? Saving a spectacularly unspoiled planet from greedy resource suckers. While not exactly an original storyline, its release coincided with the tail end of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. I was briefly elated by this fact then realized that Hollywood for decades has been telling meaningful stories and this powerful movie’s coincidental release may not yield the popular discussion I might’ve hoped for.
At the movies, we watch, listen, we feel, we are momentarily touched because this is after all, entertainment at its finest (2 hours of focused attention surrounded by Technicolor and Dolby stereo!). And then we go on about our daily lives. In 1985, The Color Purple reminded us about the racism, poverty and sexism of our forefathers. Nearly 20 years later, Crash interwove story lines to paint an updated picture with characters afflicted with modern versions of the same intolerances. We watch, we absorb, but do we change our behavior?
Last year we voted in our first African American President. Did these movies directly influence this collective vote? It’s hard to argue that they did. But then it’s hard to argue that they definitely did not. What is clear that after decades of provocateurs presenting their stories, in all formats and channels, our democratic population was finally able to overcome culturally born prejudice in the name of democracy.
It’s 2010. How many more years of blockbuster narratives will be shown before we begin to see the effects of a collective and popularized effort to save a resource rich Networked Planet?
23 September 2009
This week Newsweek’s cover story promotes an exclusive ranking of “The Greenest Big Companies in America”. This is an important moment in time. In 2006, Vanity Fair was among a few high profile publications that devoted entire issues to the green movement and their distribution was reported to have been the lowest of the year. Fast forward three years and Newsweek’s list marks an important moment in time. Joining the other high profile annually released classifications such as the Top 100 Companies to Work For (Fortune), the Top 100 Global Brands (BusinessWeek) and The Largest 500 Companies (Fortune), the (presumably) annual ranking represents a palpable and permanent shift in business ethics and operations. Transparency is a leading value of those engaged in the green movement but it is still interesting to read that 70% of the companies participating voluntarily provided the data necessary to compile the list (otherwise utilizing publicly available information).
As self-reported, the release of the rankings is sure to provoke welcome debate. Measurement and metrics is the hallmark of an industry trying to develop and defend its value. It is part of credibility building and it helps to filter out those whose efforts are deemed dubious and actually detrimental to the authenticity of the opportunity. To this point, it’s interesting and promising to see four companies actively involved in the sustainability debate lead the Top 10 (HP #1, Intel#4, Nike #7 and Starbucks #10). And even more interesting to see other very public spokesmen for green business practices fall very low in the list (WalMart #59, Yahoo #69, eBay #76). Because this is an American focused list, companies such as BP, Toyota and IKEA were not on it but perhaps response will fuel vetting for a globally inclusive list.
The exciting news is that this ranking will provoke public debate over the reliability and objectivity of the data, weighting formulas, evolution vs. complacency of the standards suggested and it will establish a benchmark for future measurement and discussion.
20 August 2009
There are many cynics out there that critique and question the future of sustainable products and businesses. It’s easy to side with them, mostly because it’s difficult to understand what comprises a “sustainable” product which in turn creates a domino chain of skepticism about achievability. We don’t endorse what we don’t understand. The industry is in self-defining mode and most of us lack the degrees in chemistry, biology, natural sciences or any other course of study that might support our inclination to trust what marketers tell us is “safe” and what is not.
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