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Influencer marketing combines both traditional and digital marketing tactics. Companies promote their brands and products through so-called influencers -- individuals with a substantial social media or online traffic draw. Deals between influencers and their advertisers are not always disclosed, which makes them a big problem when it comes to the impact on children, say advocacy groups. 

The Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Public Citizen filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Google, Disney’s Maker Studios, DreamWorks (owned by Awesomeness TV) and two other companies. The groups allege these firms' practice of targeting influencer marketing toward children is unfair and deceptive.

Filed on Oct. 21, the complaint alleges that several marketing companies (Collab Creators, Wild Brain, Maker Studios and AwesomenessTV) produce and distribute ads and other commercial material targeted to children that appear as content. The groups say Google both encourages and benefits from the production of child-directed influencer videos and distributes them to children on YouTube and YouTube Kids.

The advocacy groups called on the FTC to investigate and take action against companies that “create and distribute child-directed 'influencer' marketing.” They also called on the federal agency to release policy guidance making it clear that using influencer marketing to persuade children to buy a product (or urge their parents to buy it for them) is an “unfair and deceptive marketing practice prohibited by Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.” In other words, influencer marketing aimed at children violates federal law.

“Child-directed influencer marketing is misleading to children because their developing brains do not process or understand advertisements the way adults do—especially advertisements disguised as content,” Laura Moy, director of the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center, which represents the groups, said in a statement.

“Corporate predators are using young Internet influencers, admired by kids, to hawk their wares to children, even to young children,” added Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “The marketers and the advertising platforms enabling and promoting this activity should be ashamed. But since they’re not, we need the FTC to act to end their outrageous practice.”

Children have buying power of about $1.2 trillion, either through what they buy themselves or what they persuade their parents to buy. So, companies are tripping over themselves to reach children and influence them to buy their products. The complaint cites several cases of how companies target children with influencer marketing. One case involves the Collab Creators who make videos with influencers, including Baby Ariel who has 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube. In a few videos, Baby Ariel “unboxes and touts toys and games for children in a fun and entertaining manner,” the complaint describes.

Other cases include:

• Disney’s Maker Studios has a popular YouTube influencer show called EvanTubeHD, which features 8-year-old Evan and his 5-year-old sister Jillian “as they review and play with the most popular kids toys currently on shelves.” They also taste test and review snack foods. The show’s videos “blur the line between commercial and non-commercial content, targeting young children,” the groups allege. 


• DreamWorks, owned by AwesomenessTV, has a show on YouTube called Swamp Talk which features the animated character Shrek. Life Hacks for Kids is another show that features “life hacks” designed for kids, and many of the show’s videos include product placements.

Online advertising as a whole is a game-changer. Or as Common Sense Media described it in a 2014 report, online advertising “has fundamentally changed the nature of marketing to children and youth.” The company-funded YouTube shows targeted to children demonstrate just what a game-changer online advertising really is and how it is geared to influencing kids to buy toys and junk food. When it comes to junk food, those YouTube shows can contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic. And on the whole, they may run afoul of the law. Stay tuned. 

Image credit: Filckr/Eje Gustafsson

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)  is a growing worldwide health problem. The U.S U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define AMR as the “ability of microbes to resist the effects of drugs” -- a scary phenomenon given that antibiotics are our best defense against bacterial infection. In the U.S., over $2 million in estimated illnesses and 23,000 deaths are linked to antibiotic resistance annually. Drug-resistant bacteria also cause an estimated 25,000 deaths and cost over $1.5 billion a year in healthcare expenses and productivity losses in the EU, according to the World Health Organization. Global AMR deaths are expected to reach 10 million a year by 2050 and will cause economic losses of $100 million.

That makes a new discovery even more disturbing: Drug-resistant bacteria were recently found at pharmaceutical manufacturing sites in India. The investigative agency Ecostorm conducted on-the-ground research in June 2016. Dr. Mark Holmes from the University of Cambridge analyzed water samples and found high levels of drug-resistant bacteria at sites in three Indian cities (Hyderabad, New Delhi and Chennai). The results were compiled into a new report by Changing Markets, a campaigning organization.

India is a major drug production hub with thousands of pharmaceutical manufacturing units that supply about a fifth of the world’s generic drugs. Revenues topped $15 billion in 2014. Anti-infectives, which include antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals, account for a big share of the total turnover of India’s drug manufacturing sector. India also has a “huge drug resistance problem,” according to Changing Markets. Almost 60,000 newborn babies die every year in India from antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Sixteen out of the 34 sites that were tested had bacteria resistant to antibiotics. At four of the sites, resistance to three major classes of antibiotics was found, which include antibiotics used as a last resort to treat infections that do not respond to other medicines. 

Researchers looked at publicly available data on the supply chain and evidence obtained from freedom of information requests. They uncovered how antibiotics manufactured at the Indian plants are being exported, including to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), French hospitals, German healthcare companies, and major pharmaceutical companies like the U.S. company McKesson and the French company Sanofi’s generics subsidiary Zentiva

Aurobindo Pharma of Hyderabad, India, was found to be the worst polluter. Not only was it found to be a repeat polluter at its production sites in India, but the company also imports the raw materials used to make antibiotics from “dirty factories” in China, the report concluded.

Three factories tested belonging to Aurobindo Pharma were found to be “resistance hotspots.” The company has “clear links” to McKesson, and CVS is McKesson’s biggest customer. Aurobindo Pharma also has subsidiaries in European markets. Antibiotics in the U.K. under Aurobindo’s Milpharm, Actavis, Arrow, and its own-brand label have been purchased by Barts Health and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trusts. And Aurobindo wants to continue its global expansion and market share.

“The dumping of antibiotic manufacturing residues poses a grave threat to human health in light of the growing AMR crisis,” Natasha Hurley, campaign manager at Changing Markets, said in a statement. “The discovery of drug-resistant bacteria at Indian factories supplying European and U.S. markets also raises serious questions about pharmaceutical supply chains.”

Given the growing AMR problem and the findings of the report, it is imperative that policymakers, major buyers of antibiotics, and pharmaceutical companies take steps to prevent drug-resistant bacteria.

The report lists recommendations for all three to do so, including for policymakers to demand more transparency in the pharmaceutical supply chain by asking companies to disclose the origin of their drugs back to the factory that produced the raw materials. More transparency would improve production practices and would “contribute to better patient safety by ensuring total traceability of all pharmaceutical products throughout the supply chain," the report's authors wrote. 

Image credit: European Public Health Alliance (press use only) 

Despite the oft-lampooned couture shows and outsized personalities that have long dominated the fashion and personal beauty industries, the reality is that these profitable sectors are socially conservative and often resistant to change. Of course, colors, patterns and silhouettes evolve over time. But overall, these industries continue to send messages to women (and arguably, men) that they must conform to a certain ideal.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the fashion and beauty industries arguably became even more reactionary. Runway shows featured thinner and thinner models, and digital technologies presented models with a look and body that, frankly, is impossible for any “normal” person to obtain. The use of models who looked emaciated in part led to the rise of the “fat acceptance” movement as more women became exhausted by large corporations dictating how they should look and feel.

But the evidence suggests the norms of what is beautiful -- and, quite frankly, who is allowed to feel beautiful and fabulous -- are changing. And companies are beginning to take notice. One such watershed moment is CoverGirl’s recent decision to hire its first male brand ambassador.

Earlier this month the 55-year-old cosmetics brand, now a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, hired 17-year-old James Charles, a high school senior who lives in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. The popular YouTuber and Instagram celebrity has parlayed his glam social media presence into a gig that allows him to work with the likes of Katy Perry.

It's a rapid ascent for Charles. Just last month, he became a mini-sensation on Twitter by showing how he brought a ring light to his senior picture shoot to help his cheekbones stand out. And now, only a few weeks later, he is associated with a brand that has showcased a long list of Hollywood and fashion icons, including Christie Brinkley, Rihanna, Drew Barrymore and Sofia Vergara.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Charles succinctly explained how his signing on with CoverGirl symbolizes what is going on in the world of fashion and beauty, especially for men. No, his penchant and passion for hair and make up is not some “gender-bender” experimentation.

Men like Charles are not dabbling with what it is like to be a woman: They are simply dictating what it means to express themselves on their own terms. And no, despite the enduring popularity of "RuPaul’s Drag Race," Charles’ interest has nothing to do with drag performing. In his words, he’s just a “boy in make-up,” unlike a drag performer, who is a man parodying and performing as a if he were a woman.

The fact is that more men are stepping out of what has traditionally been their comfort zone and refuse to apologize for the fashion choices they make. One of the greatest examples is NBA star Russell Westbrook, whose fashion choices are undeniably hot while he rewrites what it means to dress like a “jock.” Fashion designers such as Rick Owens and Nicopanda are challenging what is menswear -- catcalls of “androgyny,” “effeminate” or “flamboyant” be damned. Much of Gucci’s latest menswear line made waves at fashion shows on both sides of the Atlantic for its patterns, cuts and fabric choices. And more celebrities, including Jaden Smith and Kanye West, have not been shy about wearing mini-skirts.

Even David Beckham has been spotted in a sarong. In the end, more of us have become part of a less rigid society. We're more individualistic and are not shy about pushing conventional boundaries. Fashion and beauty companies have no choice but to accept, and even celebrate, these trends – or else they risk becoming irrelevant.

Image credit: CoverGirl/Instagram

By Derek Eisel

Contemplating a sustainability MBA? Calculating a big company’s first carbon footprint? Implementing sustainability software for the first time? Why not do all three at the same time?

That’s what Christina Barry-Simmons and Lex Agapinan did. They used their Pinchot University graduate project to demonstrate the value of measurement and transparency in supporting Columbia Sportswear's sustainability work. I interviewed them to find out if they are in fact crazy.

Derek Eisel: What did you set out to do?

Christina Barry-Simmons: Our first pass was helping Columbia Sportswear map the [carbon] footprint for all of its owned facilities globally. But we quickly realized that would be challenging due to data collection, so we narrowed the scope to U.S. and Canada in an effort to complete the work in our school year.

Lex Agapinan: Yes, we immediately recognized we were being too ambitious.

DE: Right, so you were working and also getting your MBA from Pinchot at the time ...

CBS: We needed to do a capstone project for our MBA, and Lex was already working at Columbia. Columbia’s focus has been on the sustainability of the apparel itself and hadn’t mapped its operational footprint yet, so it felt like a great opportunity.

DE: Once you realized you were maybe being a bit ambitious in terms of your work load and time constraints, how did you adapt?

LA: The biggest, most effective thing was limiting our scope to what data we were confident we could get and what data we could trust to be accurate. We had some difficulty getting electricity and other kinds of data from some parts of the globe. Another decision was to exclude the brand Prana, which recently joined Columbia.

DE: Why did Columbia want to calculate its carbon footprint now? What was the company's urgency?

CBS: The biggest driver was transparency to investors and customers, who are beginning to demand transparency.

LA: What’s not measured tends to be [left unmanaged], and it makes us a little nervous to not know our metrics.

DE: Did you run into any surprises?

CBS: This was a great opportunity to learn how complex and time-consuming it is to gather data and calculate an operational footprint. It was good to have Scope 5 in our tool-belt for just those reasons. Without Scope 5 as a platform and team, we would have struggled enormously to do what we did.

LA: When I think about approaching this without a tool ... I’ve worked with big spreadsheets before, and they are a mess. We absolutely needed guidance about what data to collect and how to organize it. I would have been very unlikely to have been able to take time to find all the conversion factors (to convert kilowatts and other raw data to CO2 equivalent), otherwise, and to have to do that every year. Having a tool you can rely on means I can trust the calculations and not worry about messing up formulas in some complex spreadsheet.

CBS: Plus, it was great to have templates for CDP reporting and how to easily pull together the data to answer the CDP questions.

DE: Now that you’ve calculated Columbia’s first carbon footprint and completed your masters program, what advice would you give others who are crazy enough to do this?

LA: Work with a team. Don’t go it alone. Columbia, Pinchot, everyone came together. Pinchot gave advice about having a reliable timeline and context and also validation for how hard this is. If you don’t know how to do this, surround yourself with others who do. If you’re doing it without a tool, expect to quadruple the time.

CBS: Don’t underestimate the time it will take. There’s a lot of waiting for people to give you data. Some of the people you’re asking to give you data won’t understand the scope of the ask. A lot of time is spent simply waiting and responding. People aren’t motivated to get back to you. Don’t underestimate the beast. Ask for data six months before you need it. It’s important to work with a tool and to fund a dedicated resource devoted to data collection and reporting. Lastly make sure that you have buy-in for this all the way to the top. And, make sure those leaders communicate the importance of the data to the people who will be giving it to you including a sense of urgency.”

Thanks Christina and Lex, and congratulations to Columbia Sportswear for your first operational carbon footprint. Sounds like some key takeaways are:

• Get support from the top of the organization so getting data from people will be easier and more timely.


• Devote people to the effort who have the skills and time for it


• Find the appropriate tooling to support the calculation and analysis. Depending on the size of your organization and scope of your data spreadsheets might not be the best fit.

Good luck to you both! I look forward to measurable success in your work!

Image courtesy of Columbia 

Powered by management expertise and a commitment to meaningful work, Derek founded the environmental program at a Fortune 500 company. He now leads the sales efforts at Scope 5, supporting many such programs. Derek keeps bees and performs music at open-mike nights.

Companies hear it all the time: Workplace diversity pays. Businesses with policies that reflect value for diverse employees and opinions not only report more engaged and productive teams, but also a better bottom line.

And plenty of recent studies back that up. An analysis of 40 different studies comprising 1,800 professionals found that firms benefited when their workforce incorporated a healthy mix of both inherent and acquired diversity.

Inherent diversity reflects the genetic and ethnic traits you may have been born with. Acquired diversity describes your distinctive expertise and skills that facilitate success in your field. In this research, firms that took advantage of this "2-D" definition of diversity were 45 percent more likely to see increased earnings in market share. According to the research, 2-D diversity also yielded significantly greater opportunities for companies to capture a new market.

That's all fine and good, you may say, but how do you build this intentional corporate policy? And how do you ensure the spirit of these policies is reflected in day-to-day operations? What are the ingredients to corporate change?

Clearly it's not as simple as hiring a few more people with diverse backgrounds or including more women in executive positions. How do you build a business that speaks to the values of today's marketplace and today's workforce?

Driving an inclusive corporate policy

To delve into that question, we turned to Jennifer Brown, a diversity consultant based in New York. The author of a new book, "Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change" (to be released November 2016), Brown served as a consultant to some of the largest corporations in global manufacturing, insurance and banking sectors.

In many cases, she said, companies come armed with the same basic question: What does it take to become a company that reflects the values of today's diverse society?

Frequently, she said, the company asking that question has just suffered a loss. Either a corporate account or a potential business relationship delivered the bad news in one way or another: Your corporate values don't appear to match ours.

In other words, a "lack of traction in diversity and inclusion was a contributing factor to losing that relationship or not being able to pursue that relationship."

Ouch.

As painful as those words are to hear, Brown told us, they amount to actionable advice for the company that really wants to transform its image and the productivity of its workforce.

Brown said one of the first things to remember is that corporate change happens from the top down, not the other way around. "Embedding the expectation that there will be diverse representation in key corporate practices and policies" is crucial. That includes everything from recruitment to the much more complex questions of how a company builds its corporate culture, such as: "How do we grow them, promote them, invest in them [and] advance them?" Brown said demographics speak volumes about your workplace policies as well.

But it's also important to remember your workforce isn't the only representation that tells a story about your values. Your suppliers, customers and vendors do as well. Are your policies and procedures open and supportive of small business owners that offer a product or service you need? Are you reaching out to diverse communities when seeking new customers and clients?

"Workforce, workplace and marketplace [represent] the value equation for diversity inclusion," Brown said. "And there are multiple opportunities in each one of them." Businesses should know [their] data, be analyzing [their] current state as an organization and bench marking [themselves] against other companies" while at the same time, "setting goals and targets for improvement."

She said it's good to keep in mind that very few, if any, companies have actually attained all of their goals when it comes to building a diverse and inclusive company.

"Some of those arenas are harder than others to tackle," Brown told TriplePundit. "[Start] by understanding the makeup of your workforce, first and foremost: who you are bringing in, who you are promoting up. Make sure you have that human resources data to look at. I would say that’s primary." Look at your marketplace. You may not be capturing as much as you would expect.

And keep in mind that "diversity is your friend," Brown continued.

"It is your enabler for sales. It is your enabler for building and keeping more relationships that impact your bottom line, that permeable membrane between what is inside the company and the external world. You want the diversity [of your workforce] to resonate with diversity of your customers and your marketplace outside the company."

Executive leaders set the tone of the conversation

Of course an inclusive team isn't the only indicator of a diverse workplace. "The role of top leadership is so important" to building a company's image.

"What the chief executive says or doesn’t say and how effectively [leaders] communicate" plays a huge role in how employees perceive the environment they work in, the expectations and the risks of being a part of a team in which they share their own distinctiveness.

Leaders who are willing to share elements of their background in order to show they "embrace opportunities for inclusion" can have "an exponential ripple effect down that organizational hierarchy," Brown explained. "That person has tremendous ability to influence how the company shows up on an issue."

Still, she said, the number of executives who are willing to share as a means of conveying their support for diversity and inclusion policies is still growing.

"I think some CEOs and companies are getting it and understand that in order to energize and engage their employees to the maximum extent, they need to be talking about diversity and inclusion on a regular basis: what it means to each individual of the company, what it means to them personally," Brown told us.

And it counts even more when the CEO is someone who may not appear to have experienced challenges because of his or her background or gender. "I think we can say everyone expects a non-straight white male executive, (of which there are not that many) to speak more often and more authentically about what diversity means to them, because it is maybe an early part of their story. But to hear a white straight male executive speak about it in a credible, passionate authentic, knowledgeable way is extremely rare."

The Billion Dollar Roundtable

The growing acceptance of diversity and inclusion can also be measured in the number and kind of certifying organizations that support such goals. The Billion Dollar Roundtable fits in a category of its own: Its membership is open to companies that average a minimum of $1 billion per year in procurement from women-owned or minority-owned businesses. And the support for its initiatives is significant.

BDR members include companies from pretty much every business sector, with household-names ranging from Kroger and Walmart in the consumer merchandising sector to Kaiser Permanente and Johnson & Johnson in healthcare. They not only recognize companies that support small businesses, said Brown, but also provide a pathway for small businesses to find companies that have progressive values.

Conversely, there are also a growing number of certifying organizations that recognize and lend support to businesses in their areas or interests. They include the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, which lends support and certification to organizations that are at least 51 percent owned and operated by women, and the National Minority Supplier Business Council, which certifies companies that are at least 51 percent minority-owned and operated. In both of these cases, the certification supports business owners who wish to comply with the requirements for grants, but also provides support and recognition for qualifying member businesses.

For the business striving to incorporate diversity and inclusion into its business policy, organizations like WBENC and NMSBC offer a means for expanding contacts of verified businesses with good track records. And by doing so, Brown said, it helps boost up enthusiastic small businesses.

The certifying organization "grows businesses from mom-and-pop to huge businesses employing hundreds of thousands of people because of one particularly good relationship that they were able to bid on and were ultimately able to win a contract for. ...That will create real economic value for businesses that have traditionally been outside of that realm. So [it translates to] real impact on multiple levels."

Brown said the diversity and inclusion movement is in its own way a nod to those of previous generations who "never felt they could bring that diversity into the workplace." With changing attitudes toward diversity and inclusion becoming more pervasive in the marketplace today, more companies are realizing that a positive corporate policy that advocates for social inclusion is critical to their economic success.

Additional information about Jennifer Brown's book, Inclusion: "Diversity, the New Workplace and the Will to Change can be obtained via her website.

Image credit: Pexels

According to the French financial newspaper Les Echos, the government of François Hollande has scuttled plans to include a carbon tax in its fiscal year 2016 budget. The government’s sudden decision comes at a time when France’s energy portfolio faces several challenges.

The country’s aging nuclear power infrastructure, which the Financial Times estimates could cost the country at least 100 billion euros (US$108 billion), nudged Hollande to promise a reduction in nuclear plants’ contribution to the national power grid to 50 percent from the current 75 percent. In the wake of last year’s historic COP21 climate talks in Paris, Hollande’s environment minister Ségolène Royal promised that a carbon tax would help incentivize France to double its number of wind farms and triple the amount of electricity it generated from solar by 2023.

Supporters argued that a carbon tax could help transition France toward an energy infrastructure more reliant on renewables and less so on nuclear power. The emissions-free source of electricity has long been a source of French national pride, but in recent years it has become more controversial over environmental concerns.

The political reality, however, is that Hollande’s unpopularity -- which dogged him during most of his administration since he defeated Nicolas Sarkozy’s reelection bid in 2012 -- left him with little political capital to pass such legislation. Hollande’s disapproval ratings soared as high in 90 percent in one poll this summer as his reputation for indecisiveness, a stubbornly high unemployment rate and a spate of terrorist attacks demolished his standing with the French public. His promise to “commit unilaterally” to implement a carbon tax was generally ignored by voters and mocked by the press. Rumors of such a plan also led to an increase in electricity prices throughout France. Finally, warnings about a possible power shortage this winter also spooked many in the country’s parliament away from supporting the carbon tax proposal.

Furthermore, the level at which the French public would accept a carbon tax is at best lukewarm and at worst outright hostile. Sarkozy pushed for a revenue-neutral carbon tax during his presidency. But environmentalists insisted it did not go far enough, and French voters largely gave the proposal a massive thumbs-down. Although the tax was passed by the nation’s parliament in 2009, France’s highest court blocked the proposal later that year.

Had it been included in the national budget, France would have been the largest European economy to enact a carbon tax. Countries including Denmark, Finland and Switzerland have passed some form of a carbon tax. Around the world, British Columbia, Canada, imposed a revenue neutral carbon tax in 2008, and Costa Rica imposes a tax on carbon pollution.

This reversal of policy also comes at a time when yet another WikiLeaks email release revealed that Hillary Clinton considered proposing an ambitious carbon tax as central to her climate change agenda early on her presidential campaign. The proposal, to use financial penalties to discourage the consumption of fossil fuels, would have been a net financial gain for many poor and middle class American families, as the $42 per ton levy would have included taxes on gasoline and electricity but also provided billions of dollars disbursed as rebates.

Image credit: IAEA/Flickr

Editor's note: This post is a follow-up to our summer Twitter chat on healthy aging in partnership with Caesars Entertainment. In case you missed it, you can catch a recap here.

By Jan Jones Blackhurst, Caesars Entertainment

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 14 percent of the population is 65 and older. Some fear aging as a time of slowing down and not being able to enjoy life as one once did. However, many embrace it as a time to enjoy hobbies, volunteer and spend time with loved ones. The long-held stereotypes of senior citizens are fading – today’s older adults are just as likely to be running marathons or launching a second career.

At Caesars, many of our guests are seniors, and I’ve seen firsthand that people can and do enjoy this life phase. We’re also very aware of the challenges that may come with aging, from health concerns to tighter budgets.

For example, Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in America, taking the lives of more seniors than breast and prostate cancer combined. Seniors may face poverty and all the struggles that accompany it, with 10 percent living under the poverty line and 1 in 6 facing hunger.

While there is no magic bullet to solve such complex problems, there are ways we as a company can make a difference when it comes to healthy aging. Our partners at Second Wind Dreams define aging healthily as “being involved in your community, staying mentally active and having a purpose.”

That’s why Caesars Entertainment is dedicated to helping older adults live independently, maintain optimal health and proper nutrition, avoid social isolation, and enjoy mental and physical vitality through every stage of the aging process. Since healthy aging is so multi-faceted, it’s been important to find multiple nonprofit partners that specialize in aging from different perspectives.

Avoiding social isolation

For example, Second Wind Dreams works to improve quality of life and fulfill the dreams of seniors by funding special experiences, such as helping Helen, a World War II pilot, reconnect with her love of flying. Since 2009, Caesars Foundation has funded more than 3,000 dreams like Helen’s, with contributions totaling nearly $1.4 million. We also partner with the organization to provide a little extra care to seniors in assisted living homes, such as hand-written Valentines from Caesars employees in our HERO volunteer program.

Maintaining proper nutrition and living independently

Another longtime nonprofit partner of ours is a household name: Meals on Wheels America. The nonprofit’s most recent campaign -- America, Let’s Do Lunch -- invites Americans to volunteer over their lunch break to bring a meal to a senior in their community.

The Caesars Foundation has been instrumental in supporting the organization’s mission by donating 59 vans to facilitate meal delivery. Our employees often volunteer for Meals on Wheels, too, and we support Meals on Wheels America’s groundbreaking research on hunger among older adults. To date, our contributions to Meals on Wheels America and other local hunger nonprofits totals $5 million.

Enjoying mental vitality and wellness

According to the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, lifestyle choices like nutrition, sleep and socializing can impact brain health, especially among seniors. To support the Center’s excellent work in educating people on brain health and aging, Caesars Foundation has gifted $400,000, with another $200,000 to come later this year.

With this funding, the Center built HealthyBrains.org, where seniors can learn about how to improve brain health through lifestyle choices. We partnered with the Clinic to train employee ambassadors – dubbed Smart HEROs – to spread the word about Healthy Brains to their colleagues and guests, encouraging them to visit HealthyBrains.org. We hope to replicate this employee ambassador program at our properties across the country, helping the Lou Ruvo Center expand its reach and share its important message.

Our ongoing commitment

By 2040, older adults will be one-fifth of the population, so the issues that impact seniors will only grow in importance. We’re committed for the long haul – healthy aging is a key pillar of our corporate giving strategy. Caesars Entertainment and the Caesars Foundation will continue to support this population, building on the $25 million we’ve already donated to help seniors everywhere.

Jan Jones Blackhurst is executive vice president of government relations and corporate social responsibility for Caesars Entertainment.

Manmade materials positively impact our world in countless ways. They also determine, to some degree, the sustainability of a given product. Whether or not a material is toxic, is extracted from the earth (as opposed to grown), is energy intensive to produce or, perhaps most important of all, how well it performs its function all determine the type of impact it has on the world.

As a result, material science plays an increasingly significant role in product development as businesses focus on sustainability. Developments in this field have produced materials that are lighter and stronger, as well as those that require less energy to move, ushering in a raft of portable electronic items like cell phones that are both smaller and more powerful than their predecessors.

However, some of the materials in those products are rare earth metals that are considered irreplaceable. While phones only use tiny amounts of rare earths, larger products, like jet engines, require quite a bit more. For an industry poised for significant growth, that could be a problem from a sustainability perspective.

United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), the innovation hub of United Technologies Corp., set out to explore whether 3-D printing could be used to produce a 30-kilowatt induction motor that does not rely on rare earth magnets. The research was conducted under the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, alongside partners from the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT), Ricardo, Inc. and Pennsylvania State University.

The group proposed to produce copper conductors, dielectric components, and steel laminations using a single additive manufacturing system, explained Wayde Schmidt, group leader in UTRC’s Applied Physics group of the Physical Sciences department.

At the end of the day, the UTRC-led team had some successes and some challenges. Copper strands proved relatively easy to produce using laser sintering methods developed by a contracted vendor, while integrating multiple materials into one manufacturing process proved more difficult and remains a necessary challenge to overcome.

United Technologies has worked with 3-D printing technologies, also known as “additive manufacturing” since the 1980s, beginning with plastics and more recently focusing on metals for structural applications. They also use something called “topology optimization methods,” where design software predicts the exact stress patterns to be expected in a part when it is deployed. While United Technologies focuses primarily on industrial products, consumer products have also begun to utilize these breakthroughs. Under Armour is using similar technology to create a 3-D printed shoe, known as the Architech, which was inspired by the internal trabecular structure found in human bones that allow for lightweight flexible strength.

So companies have shown the usefulness of this innovation, but when Schmidt cautions that while design software can precisely define the stress level at each point in an object, and further suggest an appropriate cross-section to be used there, not enough is yet known about how the materials produced in this way will behave under real world conditions. More testing is still needed. It’s one thing for the support of an athletic shoe to momentarily fall outside of its design window, and another thing entirely for a turbine blade in a jet engine to operate outside of its design specifications.

Speaking of which, when I asked Schmidt if these materials can help improve sustainability he told me about the considerable amount of work that has gone into the materials used in Pratt & Whitney’s jet engines.

A simple rule in this arena is that higher temperature operation means better fuel economy; however, most traditionally manufactured materials cannot stand up to high temperatures for very long. United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney’s parent company, has developed a number of metal matrix and ceramic-matrix composite materials, as well as super alloys and thermal shock-resistant coatings designed specifically for those conditions. Nanotechnology is another area where much new ground is being broken. Schmidt said United Technologies is using it in a variety of ways including coatings for optical applications, thermal and environmental protection, and reinforcements in composites.

In the area of intelligent building systems, served by Carrier and other brands of UTC Climate, Controls & Security, there is ongoing research on advanced refrigerants, plastic heat exchangers, frost free coatings and strategies to reduce or prevent corrosion of metallic components.

Accomplishing all that with materials that are environmentally safe is a big challenge. UTRC won two Green Technology Innovation awards in 2014 from R&D Magazine. One award was for its EcoTuff corrosion inhibitor coating, which eliminated the need for hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. The second was for a portable aluminum deposition system (PADS), the first green electroplating system of its type, which is used both for repairs and for corrosion resistance on structural metal parts.

There can be no doubt that we will continue to see significant advances in materials that will allow for the creation of products that we can’t even begin to imagine today.

Image courtesy of United Technologies (press use only) 

The business case for sustainability is already made. Author Freya Williams' book, "The Green Giants," documents the growing trend of companies achieving at least a billion dollars per year in green product sales. These companies include Costco, which sells over $4 billion in organic food annually, and Walmart, which annually sells $1 billion in products that achieve high scores on its internal Sustainability Index.

The question every business leader should ask is: How can I reshape my company to realize this revenue growth opportunity?

The six factors that drive green sales success

In "Green Giants," Williams identifies six factors common to companies with at least a billion dollars in annual green product sales. They are:

Leadership. Commitment by a senior leader, especially the CEO, is the foundational step common among Green Giants. In these companies, sustainability is not just a staff function. Sustainability is central to the CEO’s vision. And it's integrated into the entire business strategy.

Disruptive innovation. Green Giants use sustainability to drive innovation. Sustainability drives their use of lean manufacturing tools to achieve goals like zero-waste manufacturing that reduce both costs and environmental impacts. Sustainability drives these firms' use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, solar or the Internet of Things to win customers while also addressing problems like global warming. A poster child for this trend is Tesla and its disruptive solutions in solar, batteries and AI technology that enable zero-emissions autonomous driving.

Purpose beyond profit. Purpose sells, especially among millennials. Williams calls this the Purpose Paradox: "The purpose paradox is that companies with a purpose beyond making money end up making more money!"

Patagonia is a prime example: The outdoor gear giant built intense loyalty with millennials by focusing on what’s best for the environment rather than what is best for selling more product.

Built in, not bolted on. Sustainability is not a staff function for Green Giants. It is integrated into every function within the organization. Increasingly, it is being integrated into every job.

Incentives. Sustainability performance and work associate compensation are tied together for Green Giants, especially for the CEO. This moves sustainability from a nice-to-have to a business imperative. It makes sustainability a core motivation for work associate performance.

Mainstream appeal. Green Giants are pioneering marketing innovations. These companies reshaped their marketing messaging to communicate how their products taste better, make consumers feel cool or save money. The mainstream appeal message focuses on what sustainability can do for the consumer in terms of his or her goals and aspirations.

New behavioral contract. Green Giants are pursuing a business culture based on transparency, responsibility and collaboration. The revenue growing mantra is “behaving your way to billions.” I call this social media authenticity: Today’s consumers are deciding what to buy based on what fellow their friends, work associates, and companies and NGOs post on social media. This is the new form of advertising in the 21st century. Today’s business brands are defined by authenticity earned through what Williams calls the "new behavioral contract."

Exclusive interview with "Green Giants" author Freya Williams

If your company is searching for revenue growth -- and what company isn’t -- then this exclusive interview with Freya Williams taken at Sustainable Brands 2016 is a must-watch. In this video, Williams outlines best practices that will grow sales by making a difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmd2YPS0VP4&feature=youtu.be

New businesses are essential to creating more jobs. Forty percent of the net new jobs created in the last two decades were due to hiring by new businesses, according to a 2015 report by the Brookings Institute. Small businesses created almost 2 million of the 3 million private-sector jobs generated in 2014. 

Support for small businesses is critical to helping them grow. With this in mind, JPMorgan Chase is increasing its program to help small businesses. Called the Small Business Forward program, Chase will more than double its support by committing $75 million to support women-, minority- and veteran-owned small businesses over next three years.

The purpose of Small Business Forward, developed by Chase and launched in 2014, is to support small businesses that have growth potential, offer quality employment and create economic opportunity for vulnerable populations.

One way it supports small firms is by facilitating access to capital. Part of the $75 million committed to Small Business Forward is a $1.9 million grant to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO). This grant will support the organization’s programs that connect small business owners with alternative funding sources when they are unable to qualify for traditional loans. AEO connects small businesses with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) when they don’t quality for traditional loans.

Small Business Forward seeds innovative new funds with CDFI partners supporting underrepresented businesses. This builds on Chase’s work to increase capital for minority-owned businesses in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit. In March, Chase and VEDC, a Los Angeles-based CDFI, expanded a lending program for African American-owned small businesses in Los Angeles called the National African American Small Business Loan Fund. The Fund also helps minority-owned businesses in Chicago and New York.

Chase first provided the Fund with a $3 million grant in October 2015 and in March contributed an additional $5 million in investment capital. Los Angeles, New York and Chicago are the top cities for African American-owned small businesses.

Chase and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation also launched a new $6.5 lending program in 2015 for Detroit businesses owned by minorities and businesses that primarily hire people of color. Called the Entrepreneurs of Color Fund, it is a CDFI that provides financing to businesses.

In October 2016, the banking giant extended its partnership with the nonprofit lender LiftFund by providing a $4.6 million grant for the new LiftUP Initiative. The program aims to increase economic opportunity for minority- and women-owned businesses in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans and Atlanta by offering faster and cheaper loans via a Web-based program, which reduces the loan approval time from an average of five weeks to four days.

In 2011, Chase provided $5 million to LiftFund, then called Accion Texas, to increase its lending in Texas and Louisiana. Through the grant, the nonprofit gave over 2,500 loans over a three-year period, which helped create or retain an estimated 5,000 jobs. LiftFund has provided over $200 million in small business loans with a default rate less than 5 percent, and its programs supported the creation of 389 businesses, which in turn created 1,700 jobs. And its portfolio is 75 percent minority-owned businesses.

“Supporting the success of small businesses unable to qualify for traditional capital is not only good for the economic health of the community, but it’s also good business,” Jenn Piepszak, CEO of Business Banking at Chase, said in a statement.

“Over the past several years, Chase has referred hundreds of small businesses to our trusted CDFI partners and we’re pleased that many come back to Chase for a small business loan when the time is right.”

The rise in women and minority entrepreneurship

New businesses are increasingly being created by women and minorities, according to the Brookings Institute. From 1997 to 2007, the number of minority-owned small businesses increased by over 25 percent, and the number of women-owned businesses rose by 7 percent. The number of non-minority owned businesses grew by only 6 percent during the same time period, while male-owned businesses dropped by 7 percent.

The number of total gross receipts -- defined as sales, receipts, and values of shipments -- from minority-owned firms grew faster than those of non-minority firms. The same is true for the total gross receipts of women-owned businesses versus male-owned businesses.

Accounting for almost 30 percent of all American businesses, women-owned firms had an economic impact of almost $3 trillion -- which either created or maintained 23 million jobs, or 16 percent of all U.S. jobs. However, women business owners face challenges getting fair access to capital. Only 4 percent of the total dollar value of all small business loans goes to women business owners.

The rate of Latino-owned businesses is the fastest growing demographic, but the average sales of Latino-owned businesses were flat from 1997 to 2012, while the sales of non-Latino owned businesses increased 34 percent during the same time period, research by the Stanford Graduate School of Business found. Less than 1 percent of the startups funded by venture capitalists were founded by a Latino.

Image credit: JPMorgan Chase