Just Say Mo
Breast cancer has the pink ribbon, heart disease has the red ribbon and prostate cancer has…the mustache? In effort to raise awareness—and money—for the fight against prostate cancer, men around the world will grow mustaches throughout the month of November Movember.
The Movember (sometimes referred to as No Shave November) rules are as follows: start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a mustache (Mo’s, in Australia) for the entire month. According to the Movember website, the mustache is the ribbon for men’s health. Participants can raise awareness and funds for cancers that affect men by sacrificing their faces.
Started by a group of friends in 2003 in Melbourne, Australia, the movement has evolved and expanded to become a world-wide effort that raises millions of dollars for organizations such as Livestrong and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
New York Yankee Nick Swisher is growing one, even the Flip Camera is sporting a ‘stache. No word on Tom Selleck, although suffice it to say he serves as inspiration to “Mo Bros” everywhere.
While Movember generates a lot of buzz and is certainly a fun way to raise awareness for men’s health, it’s tough to predict if the mustache will ever achieve the recognition level of the pink ribbon. For now, all I can do is hope to spot a Yosemite Sam-esque mustache sometime this month.
Paint AW Pink
Part of Addison Whitney culture includes active support of philanthropic endeavors. Breast cancer is an illness that has affected all of us in some way, and we are part of a much larger initiative dedicated to finding a cure.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we here at AW made donations to BCC Rally and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As a gift, in return for our donations, we each received a 7-inch hot pink ribbon to be displayed on our desks, cubes or doors. Excitingly, we collected enough money to receive 35 bows. They went up on Friday, October 1, the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
To coincide with day one, we encouraged everyone to wear pink to the office and help to Paint AW Pink. Friday was definitely a pink day as the bows glowed brightly throughout the office, and many of us showed off our pink shirts and dresses.
The bows stayed up through October, but we will always be part of the fight for a cure.
24 Hours of Booty
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This weekend, more than 1,200 cyclists converged on Charlotte for 24 Hours of Booty. For 24 hours, cyclists rode a nearly three mile loop around the Myers Park neighborhood in a sign of unity against all types of cancer. This annual event raises money for cancer research and survivorship. This year, participants raised more than $1 million!
Addison Whitney’s own Verbal Branding Coordinator Jenna Wise took part in the ride as part of Team Gita. Volunteerism is a large part of the Addison Whitney culture so seven members of our team, along with a few spouses, signed up to help out.
Some people may think of volunteering as something you’re giving an organization, but I’m always amazed at how much I get back from volunteering a few hours of my time. This event was incredibly inspiring. The race began as cancer survivors rode off after an emotional send-off. And then an army of cyclists, some riding in memory of those they’d lost to cancer, and others simply devoted to helping others took off – all 1,200 of them.
This event isn’t about how many laps you’ll ride, it’s about why you ride. The best part of my night was then a father and daughter came over to chat. The young girl proudly told me she was riding for her mom who was a survivor. That’s why you ride.
Addison Whitney Helping Hands Event: Million Meal Mission
Addison Whitney recently attended a mobile food packing event hosted by Harrison United Methodist Church in Ballantyne for starving children in Haiti, the Philippines and more than 60 countries around the world. In partnership with Samaritans International and the "Feed My Starving Children" organization, the "Million Meal Mission" food packing event supports children in impoverished living conditions through nutritional support. This was a community-wide event for local businesses, civic organizations and churches with a goal of having 1,700 volunteers pack 350,000 (of the 1 million) meals in 3 days.
FMSC has developed a food mixture that is easy and safe to transport. Preparation only requires boiling water and it is culturally acceptable all over the world. With the input of scientists from major food companies, FMSC developed MannaPack™, a formula consisting of rice, soy, vitamins, minerals, dehydrated vegetables and chicken flavoring.
In an assembly-line fashion, volunteers measure the ingredients and package the meals in small pouches. The formula was designed to save the lives of severely malnourished and starving children but the ingredients also improve the health, growth and physical well-being of children who are no longer in immediate danger of starvation. A single bag of food provides meals for six children.
Result:
5,000 plus volunteers and businesses around Charlotte and Union County packed 1,019,304 meals during the mobile packing events at Mineral Springs UMC, Harrison UMC and Oasis Shrine. These meals will provide enough food for 2,793 poverty stricken children for one full year!
Please visit the Feed My Starving Children website for information on how you can help!
Green Brands Put to the Test
We've talked a lot about how brands are trying to add "Green" to their corporate color palette, sometimes with real, valuable initiatives and sometimes with just words. (Green: Who Can Claim It? and Greenwashing) So in honor of this Earth Day, the 40th Anniversary actually, we'd like put some of those brands to the test to "verdify" how green they really are.
Last month, SunChips introduced the world's first fully-compostable chip bag. The new bags, made of plant-based materials, should fully decompose in 14 weeks (under typical hot composting conditions). A few weeks later, Snyder's of Hanover announced it too would be using sustainable packaging (on its organic line of pretzels).
I don't have a compost pile, much less the perfectly mixed 1-2-2-2-1 “hot" compost that SunChips recommends, but I do find the random scrap of trash in my yard after trash day. Would the bags eventually decompose in my yard or on the side of the road? We plan to find out.
For our Earth Day experiment, we have staked one of these composting bags to the ground to simulate errant trash. We will photograph our progress and share the results on the blog.
Jumping on the Brandwagon
As a Charlotte resident and pseudo Carolina Panther’s fan, it’s basically required by Mecklenburg County law as an excuse to drink to watch their games on Sunday afternoons (well that is if you can’t get into a good marathon of America’s Next Top Model). Recently though, I’ve noticed that many players’ wardrobes have added a certain splash of color to their usual blue and black palette: pink. These “Pink Panthers”, as they have been trademarked, have been sporting everything from pink wrist bands to pink towels to even pink gloves. What makes the average 250 lb beefy staple of an athlete accessorize with the world’s most feminine color? They, like many other athletes across the U.S., have been showing their support for Breast Cancer Awareness. Read more
New Ways to Give Back and Get Involved!
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Google and Yahoo compete for our questions and curiosities. Now they both lend their powerful search engines to help us give back and get involved in our communities.
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AW Lends a Helping Hand
Each year, thousands of volunteers join forces at “Hands On Charlotte Day” to make a huge impact on the local community. On October 18, volunteers participated in dozens of projects, from beautifying area schools and parks to sorting clothing and food donations and much more.
Addison Whitney employees and their families joined in on the fun as part of a new corporate initiative called “AW Helping Hands.” We started our day with a kick-off celebration at the EpiCentre (Charlotte's newest Uptown hot spot). Starbuck’s coffee helped take off the chill at the open air pavilion, so we could listen to words of inspiration and get revved up for our day of hard work. Speakers included County Commissioner Jennifer Roberts and US Olympic Women's Basketball coach Anne Donovan. From there, we all dispersed to our individual project sites.
Our team’s project was at Irwin Avenue Elementary. We were asked to help beautify the school grounds by re-mulching playgrounds, pulling weeds, planting flowers and shrubs, and building planter benches. Our team did a fantastic job and had a lot of fun! We worked hard to see that everything was done well and looked great. Click here to see photos!
About Hands On Charlotte:
Founded in 1991, Hands On Charlotte, a nonprofit volunteer service organization, provides individuals, families, businesses and community groups with volunteering opportunities that are flexible, rewarding and fun. Over the years, they have become Charlotte's number one source for volunteering, engaging thousands of volunteers annually. Hands On Charlotte is an affiliate of HandsOn Network.
Pink Branding for Breast Cancer Awareness
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If you’ve been to Target or your local grocery store recently, you’ve probably noticed a lot of pink packages and displays. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and many brands are doing their part to support breast cancer research and raise awareness of the disease. Consumer product brands such as HP, KitchenAid, and One A Day® Women’s are just a few brands that are not only donating a percentage of their proceeds to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation but are also modifying their packaging over the next month or so to “advertise for the cure,” displaying a predominant use of pink in their package designs. In recent years, pink has become the official color of the cause and around this time of year, the increasing number of participating brands always impresses me. So next time you are doing your grocery shopping, take note of the products that support breast cancer awareness and research and do your part…buy them. Are there other brands that you know of who have gotten creative to support this cause?
Shop for products that support breast cancer research.
Toast to Your Town
The recent launch of Absolut Los Angeles is yet another example of a brand “getting back to basics”, reviving an old product, or in this case continuing an older ad campaign —a topic some of my fellow bloggers and I have been discussing as of late.
Absolut Los Angeles is actually an extension of one of the brand’s vintage marketing plans. Launched in the late 1980’s, “The Absolute Cities” campaign coined a limited edition flavor of vodka for a selection of cities in the US and Europe. The campaign included a unique vodka flavor personalized to accent the culture of each city, with flashy print ads to boot.
The campaign re-launched in 2007. But with a twist (not of lime).
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