Today is the 20th International World Water Day, established by the United Nations in 1993 to focus attention on sustainable management of fresh water resources. Among the messages being promoted this day is the fact that close to one in eight people worldwide will not be able to find or drink one glass of safe water, and twice as many will not have access to the use of toilet (a very real crisis that gets its own global day of awareness every November).

The global water crisis is so pressing that it made the agenda at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos as a new report ranked water among the top five global factors equal in impact to systemic financial failure and fiscal imbalance reports Forbes, and globally, 2.7 billion people are affected by water shortages, compounded by climate change, and a population nearing 8 billion.

The good news, from major brands and businesses to non-profits, is that increasing attention is being paid.Continue reading...

Ben & Jerry's appears to be the first brand to publicly side with the Occupy Wall Street protests. The Unilever-owned, socially pro-active ice cream-maker's homepage shows a message of solidarity that states, in part:

"We know that words are relatively easy but we wanted to act quickly to demonstrate our support. As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy."

Read the full statement below. Know of any other brands showing their support? Post a comment below.Continue reading...

Ashton Kutcher personifies personal branding in the era of social media, with the entrepreneurial actor's fingers in every nook and cranny of pop culture, from TV actor and producer to Twitter maven, to cause-related marketing with his DNA Foundation with wife Demi Moore, to inspiring others to dream big.

Looking from analog to digital, the recent news of his replacing Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, a deal worth about $20 million, may only last a season as the show is only confirmed for one more year at this point, but in that year, we can only imagine what Ashton will do in addition to entertaining us on CBS.

In a landmark deal for a Hollywood celebrity, he just launched a Twitter app with UberMedia to share his various passions (via his curated channels) and make social surfing easier for others to find their passions on the social site, where Kutcher tweets daily to more than 6.8 million followers.Continue reading...

Justin Bieber's new women's perfume (about which the 17-year-old pop star tweeted "A real man knows what a lady wants") will hit stores next month.

"Someday," as it's called, departs from last year's unisex "My World" fragrance exclusive for Walmart by selling via a more upmarket retail network that includes Macy's, Sephora, Lord & Taylor, Dillard's, Nordstrom, "and other fine department stores." Priced at an affordable $25-$35, the proceeds, a least partly, will benefit charity. The TV commercial (which will debut during Tuesday's Glee finale) was shot "on a Boeing 737 that creates a zero gravity environment."

The design, however, isn't so much "giving back" as "taking from."Continue reading...

Chocolatier Green & Black is taking it to the people − both customers and suppliers. The organic and Fair Trade Certified chocolate producer has announced a program in which 10 residents of the U.S. and U.K. will be named Global Ambassadors and taken on a 14-day adventure challenge next spring in the Dominican Republic rainforest, where they will work with the local cocoa farming community and help build a gravity-fed water system.

Those interested have until Jan. 3 to apply; the company will select ambassadors based on what they have done for their own communities. The winners will also receive $1,000 for a local-community building cause of their choice, and they will be tasked with blogging about their experiences on the trip.

This isn't the first time Green & Black has made an effort to get its consumers involved in the company.Continue reading...

Lady Gaga may be going silent (at least on social media), but she's not dialing down her product endorsements.

The latest: lending her image (and Poker Face) to KDDI's au smartphone, a Japanese Android-enabled model featuring Skype instant messaging and other capabilities. With consumers not exactly loyal to mobile phone brands these days, KDDI is clearly hoping to make au a wow among smartphone users.

As for Gaga's social media vow of silence, she's joining other celebs ceasing Facebooking and tweeting for a good cause.Continue reading...

Two weeks ago we brought you the ad from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that equated eating fast food with death. The "I was loving' it" campaign was clearly more of a cry for attention for the group than it ever was an actual attempt to change behavior.

Now, a new commercial from Down Under shows that America is positively reasonable when it comes to advertising the harmful effects of fast food.Continue reading...

The star of the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative? Not the various celebs and CEOs at the event, but this video.

Designed by Nike's marketing team under the watch of Maria Eitel, president of the Nike Foundation, the first Girl Effect video in 2008 has been watched by an estimated 10 million people.

Just a few of the movement's supporters at CGI's annual meeting: World Bank managing director Ngozi Okjonjo-Iweala, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, CARE CEO Helene Gayle and Intel Foundation president Shelly Esque. 

Kristof, reporting on the event said, "My hunch is that the most effective way to market antipoverty work in coming years will be by rebranding it, in part, as a security issue."Continue reading...