Coca-Cola is famed for its Open Happiness campaign, committing random acts of kindness with surprise giveaways and pop-up brand experiences in local markets.

Now the reigning Best Global Brand is inspiring people to commit their own random acts of happiness in a pro-social campaign that invites you to "Go crazy and do good for others."

The "Let's Go Crazy" theme was introduced last year during the brand's UEFA Euro 2012 European campaign. This campaign's theme song: Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit." Watch more of the stealth acts of happiness in the new campaign below.Continue reading...

McDonald's spent a good portion of last year in the U.K. promoting exercise for kids with tie-ins to the 2012 London Olympics. It also introduced a fruit-juice-based drink called Fruitizz as part of its Happy Meal revamp.

Now, McDonald's U.K. is pivoting to feed kids' minds as well. It has launched a new campaign called Happy Readers to put millions of kids' books into the hands of families and to help make reading fun.Continue reading...

Greenpeace has added Uniqlo to its list of global fashion brands and retailers signing its Detox pledge, making "a public commitment to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its entire global supply chain and products by 2020."

The commitment covers all Fast Retailing-owned brands — Uniqlo, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Princesse TamTam, GU and Theory — which together operate more than 2,000 stores. "Uniqlo recognises clean water as a critical global issue, and is proud to join Greenpeace in its campaign to eliminate hazardous chemical use," stated Yukihiro Nitta, Fast Retailing's executive in charge of social responsibility. The company also vowed to disclose discharge data from at least 80% of its global suppliers (including all their facilities) by the end of this year.  

As the environmental group blogged, the Uniqlo deal "comes just a month after Zara, Mango, Esprit and Levi's announced similar individual commitments, responding to waves of pressure from activists and consumers around the world. Competitors in the fashion world including GAP, G-Star Raw and Calvin Klein are looking increasingly out of touch now that 12 of the world's top high street fashion brands have committed to Detox." Other Detox signatories include Adidas, C&A, H&M, Nike, Puma and M&S.

Executives at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in Bentonville, Arkansas, were already having a bad week, with its holiday-heightened labor dispute on the current cover of Bloomberg Businessweek and brisk business making Bushmaster rifles the #1 assault rifle in America criticized in the wake of the Newtown, CT, school massacre. Still, at least the Mexico bribery scandal that besmirched its corporate reputation earlier this year, when a New York Times investigation was published, was dying down. Until Tuesday night.

That's when the New York Times' follow-up to its April expose was published online, with the headline, "How Wal-Mart Used Payoffs in Mexico." After examining thousands of documents and talking to local officials and Walmart's own executives, the latest chapter in the NYT expose concludes, "An examination by The New York Times found Wal-Mart de Mexico to be an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited."

The story is featured on the New York Times homepage today, smack in the middle of the gun debate raging among its readers, editors, writers and the population at large — a debate in which Walmart's brand is also involved as America's largest seller of guns, and the Sandy Hook rifle, in particular.Continue reading...

All PR is good PR, right? Getting your brand name in front of as many eyeballs as possible can’t hurt, especially if the eyeballs are attached to bodies that are participating in a fun, engaging activity and so moved to purchase? Well, no.

The eyeballs of Britain have been staring down hard at Starbucks after it surfaced that that the coffee giant has paid only £8.5m ($13.8 million) in tax in the UK since entering the country 14 years ago despite having £3bn ($4.8 billion) in sales in that same time. In the last three years, the company paid exactly nothing in corporate tax in the UK. Some financial wizards at the company (or that the company consulted) figured out a way to make this a legal possibility. It involves the UK division of the company buying its coffee from the Swiss division in order to circumvent the tax charges.

Starbucks has agreed to voluntarily cough up £20m ($32.4 million) over the next two years to help make amends, but the dust-up hasn't settled yet. It's sponsoring an ice skating rink at London’s Natural History Museum, where Jessica Alba took her daughter for a spin. A big screen is pulling in Twitter messages with the hashtag of #spreadthecheer — and some wags took the opportunity to #spreadthesneer.Continue reading...

Following in the wake of Zara's capitulation, Levi’s is now the 11th brand to bow to pressure from Greenpeace's global Detox campaign. The denim giant has committed to eliminate releases of all hazardous chemicals throughout its supply chains and products. Still being pressured: Calvin Klein, Gap, and Victoria’s Secret as part of the green campaigner's goal “to expose brands until the use - and abuse - of hazardous substances is totally eliminated.” 

The world’s largest denim brand, has agreed to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its entire supply chain and products by 2020. The commitment comes eight days after Greenpeace launched its “Toxic Threads: Under Wraps” report targeting global fashion brands releasing toxins in Mexico's rivers, resulting in a digital groundswell with more than 210,000 people calling on Levi’s to Detox, tens of thousands taking action on Facebook and Twitter, and over 700 people protesting outside Levi’s shop fronts in over 80 cities worldwide.

As part of its Zero Discharge Commitment, Levi’s (as outlined in a blog post) will start requiring 15 of its largest suppliers in China, Mexico and elsewhere in the Global South to disclose pollution data as early as June 2013, followed by compliance from 25 additional major suppliers by the end of 2013.Continue reading...

The two billion people who watched the 12-12-12 concert for Hurricane Sandy relief at New York’s Madison Square on Wednesday night may have tuned in (or streamed) for the chance to see music legends — Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, the Who, Roger Waters, Chris Martin, Michael Stipe, Dave Grohl, Alicia Keys, Eddie Vedder — but the heart of the show was the stories of people whose lives were impacted by Sandy, and who were asking the world to care and help.

As the Los Angeles Times commented, “Critiquing the broadcast of the 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert on Wednesday night is like assessing the food at a bake sale: Maybe the muffins are oversalted or the cookies are stale, but that's not the point. The point is charity and drawing attention to the cause.”

So  kudos to Madison Square Garden (and New York Knicks) owner Cablevision, not to mention Clear Channel, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, Chase, State Farm and other sponsors and volunteers for putting on a story-driven night of music and social compassion (the #121212concert hashtag is still lively on Twitter) to raise proceeds for the Robin Hood Relief Fund.

And in a similar (if less glitzy) vein, the American Red Cross has some stories it would like to share with you, too.Continue reading...

In April, GODIVA Chocolatier launched its Lady Godiva Program, honoring inspirational women on a local and national level who embody the original Lady Godiva’s selflessness, generosity and leadership as seen above.

Every two years, GODIVA selects a National Lady GODIVA Honoree and this year its first recipient is Lauren Bush Lauren, Co-Founder of FEED Projects, whose non-profit has provided over 60 million school meals to children living in 62 countries throughout the world through the United Nationals WFP since the launch. 

GODIVA committed to sell one-of-a-kind FEED 10 bags, with each providing 10 school meals to children in cocoa-producing regions, and most recently, launched exclusive limited edition products like the FEED 8 Origins Collection of chocolates, where for each box sold, 8 meals will be donated to children in Ecuador and Uganda.

“The Lady GODIVA Program takes this notion of giving one step further.  With the creation of the Lady GODIVA Program, we will honor outstanding women that make a difference both on a national and local level as well as the causes that matter most to women,” says Jim Goldman, President & CEO, GODIVA Chocolatier.Continue reading...