Marketing Earth Day

The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, and within months, the US Environmental Protection Agency had been created to protect our precious environment.

Earth Day 2018 will be on Sunday, April 22. This year, the focus will be on plastics--specifically, removing plastics from our waterways and preventing plastics from harming the natural environment.

Of course, Earth Day has its own Twitter account (with 48k followers), its own FB account (with nearly 400k likes), a YouTube channel, Instagram account, and a blog housed on its website.

Businesses, educational groups, and other organizations are going green every day and using Earth Day to put the focus on education and action for ecological health. A few examples: Dow has teamed up with Erb Institute (U of Michigan) for a new sustainability education project. Apple announced, in time for Earth Day, that all its facilities run on 100% green energy. Indiana State University has a bike-share program as part of its Earth Day events, which also include bringing vendors on campus to provide info to students and faculty. Major League Soccer is working toward greener goals on Earth Day. The United Nations has declared the day International Mother Earth Day.

Watch for more environmental activities that encourage consumer and business involvement, along with nonprofits providing education and guidance, leading up to Earth Day and beyond.

Major League Soccer's New Brand Logo

It's a new branding era for Major League Soccer. As the 20th season of the league approaches, it wants to signal the next stage in its North American growth. So the boot and ball are gone, replaced by this striking new brand logo that lends itself to team-by-team adaptation. Here's what the MLS's CMO told Sports Illustrated about this latest version of the brand logo:

The more modern brands of the world don’t need to telegraph a specific category or line of business they’re in. In many cases, they stand for something much bigger. A great example of that is Apple.

Not everyone is enamored of the new logo. A Boston Globe writer says: "... while I don’t have a great sense for design, I’m not sure I even like the new logo. But I do find the switch itself interesting. It conveys that MLS, which is calling the rebranding effort ‘MLS NEXT,’ thinks it’s entering a new era."

I definitely agree--MLS is using this modern brand element to reflect its emergence as an established sports league. No longer a startup that has to explain itself over and over, the MLS of today has big-league players, major media coverage, good audience numbers, and marketing confidence.

In fact, MLS has become so good at marketing the game experience that college football is using it as a model.