32 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2022
    1. It is always about the new The frontpage of any content-driven media is often geared towards the latest happenings. But what if there are old gems hidden beyond? A new user wouldn’t be able to discover them.

      Older content may broadly be considered more valuable than newer content. The fact that it has been "tried and true" gives it enormously more value than newer and untested content.

      Newer content is primarily valuable solely because it is new. How much of it will live on to become old content without falling off of the long tail of the value distribution?

      Link this to the idea of imitation > innovation in Annie Murphy Paul's book The Extended Mind.

      Link this to the fact that NASA uses 30+ year old software and systems in their outer-space program because all the glitches and bugs have been found and it's far more reliable.


      Finding the older gems has generally been the sort of driving idea behind @peterhagen and his https://lindylearn.io/ site -- particularly his Hacker News tool.

  2. Mar 2019
    1. The Lavazza Calendar , now in its 27th edition, is created under the creative direction of the Armando Testa agency and was presented in Turin at Nuvola Lavazza on 21 November.
    1. “We still have many untapped opportunities to keep developing our markets, bring purpose into all of our brands, and that will translate into more opportunities for growth right across our considerable geographic footprint.”​Jope stressed the need to deliver “quality”​ growth that is consistent, competitive, profitable and responsible.“To have consistent growth, we need to use the breadth of our portfolio to avoid or minimize the impact of onetime shocks. Competitive growth is simple, growing ahead of our markets. Profitable growth is going to require that we get the right balance of price and volume mix in any period as well as keep delivering strong savings and efficiency programs.​“And finally, our growth will, of course, be responsible, which means putting purposes into our brands and making continued progress on the ambitious environmental and social roles that we set out in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.​“It is not purpose ahead of profits. It's purpose that drives better profits.”​

      Again, an article that presents the conflicting nature of a purpose brand. This clearly states the new CEO of Unilver is going to put profit first. This is my last annotation. Overall, I would say that I still find the 50 foods campaign reliable. If you look at it simply as an informative document I think it is accurate, and a good publication However I think it is worth it to understand the authors as well. Unilever is not a perfect company, nor is WWF. Far from it. I hope that we can support this 50 foods campaign and other good choices while still holding Knorr Unilever and WWF accountable for their contradictions, hypocrisy, corruption, and bad choices.

    1. “Unilever believes that complete transparency is needed for radical transformation,” Engel said in a statement posted on Unilever’s website. Advertisement“This is a big step toward greater transparency, but we know there is more work to be done to achieve a truly sustainable palm oil industry and we will continue our efforts to make this a reality.”

      This is an interesting move. On the one hand, I wish Unilever woulds stop messing with products like whitening skin cream and pal oil. But if they are going to use palm oil I'd rather they be transparent about it. It makes me hope, perhaps naively that they will always be transparent about what they do. It's encouraging and discouraging at the same time.

    1. Fair & Lovely is not the only Unilever product to shore up problematic ideas about skin colour. In 2013 the company drew criticism for a body lotion promotion campaign in Thailand, which appeared to portray lighter skinned female students as smarter than dark-skinned ones.  Its other brands such as Pond’s also contain whitening lotions.  Unilever’s wares are also not the only ones on the market to run counter to the spirit of the SDGs; every single product that implies that any skin colour is inferior is guilty of this. (One might argue that tanning products also sell a way for people to temporarily change their skin colour, but pale skin carries much less socio-cultural baggage than dark skin does). 

      It's really horrifying that Unilever sells skin whitening products. It makes me trust them much less. It's such an ignorant thing for a supposedly smart and sustainable company to do.

    2. While there have been some valid feminist critiques about Dove’s emphasis on beauty and empowerment through consumerism, Dove and Unilever’s other Sustainable Living Brands have, by and large, lived up to the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals.  But products such as Fair & Lovely contravene the goals on several counts. Goal 5, for instance, aims to empower all women and girls.  While Fair & Lovely ostensibly wants to “give women the confidence to overcome their own hesitations and fears to achieve their true potential”, it has spent decades portraying dark-skinned women as people who are overlooked romantically and professionally, until they buy their way to fairer skin.  If a company truly wants to empower women, surely a better way to do this is to break down stereotypes that perpetuate sexism and colourism—that is, discrimination on the basis of skin colour—rather than to sell people a product to pander to those insecurities?

      At the beginning of the semester, we talked about how gender equality and female empowerment are part of sustainability. This is a very good point. If Unilever doesn't remember or care about things like this, it undermines their other goals.

    1. Unilever cannot be faulted for its dedication and good intentions. And as long as sustainability equals efficiency, all is well. Both Unilever and the world benefit, exactly the way Paul Polman likes it. Reducing the use of pesticides is good for both the environment and the company’s shareholders. The more fruit a palm oil tree can bear, the less land will have to be cleared. But win-win scenarios are not often as clear-cut. Personal care product sales are up and while this means sustainability brownie points for Unilever, it also causes environmental problems in the emerging economies. And the Roundtable which was supposed to promote sustainability, has become a lightning conductor for an unsustainable production model. Unilever’s proud boast is that it has managed to ‘decouple’ or separate higher revenue from environmental impact. It is a first move towards the beacon of sustainable growth. A closer look at the company’s Sustainable Living Plan shows Unilever is on schedule in most areas (although deadlines are moved about), except when it comes to the environmental impact of consumer use. That is where the bullets on the sustainability dashboard turn an angry red. Greenhouse gas emissions ‘per consumer unit' went up eight per cent from 2010. That poses a problem, since two thirds of Unilever’s total CO2 emissions stem from consumer use. So the business is growing – but not in a very green way. People want to consume responsibly but not less. Authorities are willing to go green as long as the public purse does not suffer. And companies are no longer bogey men but part of the solution. Paul Polman is a welcome guest because his message is a comfortable one. As head of a transnational company he is making the world a better place. But unlike his idols Ghandi and Mother Theresa, the Unilever boss, while looking after People and Planet, must never lose sight of Profit, as the recent Kraft-Heinz takeover attempt attests.

      I think this is one of the most objective reviews of former CEO of Unilever, and is accurate about the current state of Unilever. I think we should always take what a company says about sustainability with a grain of salt because it is still trying to profit. But, we need people who care in business. Businesses contribute to pollution more than anyone else. Unilever is still kind of in a gray area, but I think their efforts still make them reputable overall, at least in the eyes of the public.

    1. The firm, behind more than 400 brands from Ben & Jerry's ice-cream to Dove soap, has pledged to remove sexist stereotypes from its own ads and called on rivals to follow suit.Some 40% of women did not identify with their portrayal in adverts, it said.The firm spends £6bn a year on adverts.The figure makes it the second-biggest advertiser globally and chief marketing officer Keith Weed told the BBC this gave it a responsibility to push the change "on a broader society level". /**/ (function() { if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.adverts && bbcdotcom.adverts.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.adverts.slotAsync('mpu', [1,2,3]); } })(); /**/ He said the campaign, dubbed Unstereotype, was the culmination of two years of research.

      Although this article is not related to sustainable food, it does discuss things on the UN goals like gender equality. The fact that Unilever cares about removing stereotypes from its ads shows that not only are they conscious of the current climate of gender discussions, they are also conscious of representing gender equality publicly. This enhances their reputation and credibility ethics-wise.

    1. In January 2017, corporate behemoth Unilever unveiled a new commitment to ensuring that all of its plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. The commitment was built on a recognition that the global plastics market was broken; nine months later, Blue Planet 2 aired, alerting the public to the environmental hazards of plastics.

      This article describes Unilever's plans to change the way it uses plastic. It shows that Unilever cares about sustainability because they are transparent about the economic benefits of being more sustainable as well as the benefits to the planet.

    1. The city of New York’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, Unilever and Green City Force came together to find a solution.Instead of trying to get fresh food in, they decided to grow it right where it was needed. By creating six urban farms, access to fresh produce in underserved neighbourhoods has increased, as has the knowledge of local residents about how food is grown, and healthy eating. This is community impact in action!Unilever have taken a step further, creating Growing Roots - an organic, plant-based food snack that donates half of its profits to urban farming programmes, whilst allowing others to join and dig in to help grow a better future for communities across the US.

      This is one part of Unilevers comprehensive website about sustainability. The site shows that Unilever frequently collaborates with sustainable organizations and that they care about many sustainable issues.

    1. For its part, Knorr has been working closely with farmers in its supply chain to meet sustainable agricultural standards and to implement new techniques for mitigating water waste in its crop production, such as drip irrigation. Farmers who have been participating in Knorr’s program for three years have saved an average of 10.6 kilotons of water.

      This demonstrates work Knorr has done to impact water usage in the food industry, with great results. It gives the company a great reputation and makes the content more reliable.

    1. The creative directors for Armando Testa are Andrea Lantelme and Federico Bonenti, the copy bears the signature of Stefano Arrigoni. Production of The Box Films. Edelman Italia, Burson-Marsteller Italia and  Studio Suitner have collaborated in communication and press office activities.
    1. n writing this report, Knorr, WWF and Adam Drewnowski are grateful for input and review from experts at Bioversity International, Crops For the Future, EAT Foundation, Edelman, Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), Food Reform for Sustainability and Health (FReSH), GAIN, Global Crop Diversity Trust, Gro Intelligence, Oxfam GB, SDG2 Advocacy Hub, Wageningen University and Yolélé Foods. This report ultimately reflects the views of Knorr, WWF and Adam Drewnowski.

      I believe that this makes Knorr Unilever seem reliable as a source as well as making the content seem reliable, and the author objective and understanding. This is because the 3 authors of the document collaborated with so many different sources to write the paper. It would seem that have a well-rounded grasp of the topic.

    1. And the images of the American photojournalist celebrate the good news coming from the Earth and the Earth, identified all over the world together with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
    1. Fans queued for over 2-hours to see the studio and 20k+ people watched the music recordings live on Facebook - impressive given it was 2am! Fans snapped up the limited edition E.ON x Gorillaz EP's we created, and over 82k+ people streamed the tracks created on SoundCloud.
    1. Gorillaz founder and bassist Murdoc Niccals, said “These days I’m not just a feminist, I’m an environmentalist too. That’s why Gorillaz has partnered up with E.ON – the leading eggheads in solar storage – to create a spanking new studio that not only lets us create more mind-blowing music, it also saves the planet. E.ON do batteries as well, meaning we can keep banging out killer tunes even after dark.”
    2. Billy Faithfull, ECD at WCRS, said: “Ambitious clients, brave strategists, fame hungry creatives, fanatical music consultants, an inspired director, bulletproof producers, a thousand solar powered toys, a giant ball of gas in the sky and four beat-crazed figments of pure electronic pop imagination. True collaboration comes when everyone is firing on all cylinders. I count myself lucky to have been in the right time and the right place to blinded by it all and along for the ridiculous bone-shaking ride.”
    1. Reaching over 59m people with over 82.6m views, our film catapulted E.ON into popular culture. This resulted in a huge lift in brand (141%) and creative (97%) interest in the UK, with even higher spikes in other markets. The campaign has also picked up a raft of awards, including three DMAs and top prizes at the D&ADs, Webby’s and The Drum Awards.
    1. E.ON global head of marketing Anthony Ainsworth said: "Gorillaz have always inspired audiences and artists with their bold and pioneering approach to sound and visuals and that's exactly what this project was set up to showcase."
    1. The work is made up of six oil-painted plexiglass sheets up to 120cm high Photograph: Ami Vitale/2019 Lavazza calendar
    2. The work was created using non-toxic, 100% biodegradable materials and portrays two children sheltering under a blanket
    3. ‘These mountains instil a sense of respect at first glance. Yet, when we reflect that the glacier has shrunk considerably in just a few years, it is easy to see how much it needs to be protected. We are at a crucial juncture for action’ – Hula Photograph: Ami Vitale/2019 Lavazza calendar
    1. Anthony Ainsworth, Global Head of Marketing at E.ON, commented: “Our collaboration with Gorillaz brings the possibilities of solar power and battery storage to life - using the sun’s energy as the driving force behind an incredibly creative and ambitious project. Gorillaz have always inspired audiences and artists with their bold and pioneering approach to sound and visuals and that’s exactly what this project was set up to showcase. 
    2. Gorillaz founder and bassist Murdoc Niccals, said “These days I’m not just a feminist, I’m an environmentalist too. That’s why Gorillaz has partnered up with E.ON – the leading eggheads in solar storage – to create a spanking new studio that not only lets us create more mind-blowing music, it also saves the planet. E.ON do batteries as well, meaning we can keep banging out killer tunes even after dark.”
    1. “There is an increasing number of people not just interested in innovative energy solutions like battery and solar panels but ready to engage with an energy company in a different way,” Emma Inston, E.ON's global head of brand and customer communications, told The Drum. “We’re absolutely going to be at the heart of that movement and in the same way as we’ve transformed our company over the last couple of years, we’re working to transform our brand to truly represent the help we can give our customers today and in the future.”
    1. he photos were taken in six countries: Thailand, Morocco, Kenya, Switzerland, Colombia and Belgium, by Italian photographer Ami Vitale.
    1.   The “Good to Earth” Calendar, a creative project by Armando Testa, will make its debut on November 21st in Turin, in the Nuvola Lavazza. The event will reveal the photographs by Ami Vitale and the original works of nature art installations produced by six artists, each using a different technique, which become an integral part of the landscape, in harmony with the ecosystem and vegetation.
    2. Turin, October 29th, 2018 - Nature becomes art in the 2019 Lavazza Calendar
    1. “It is an original mix of the story told in pictures by Vitale and the works of internationally famous urban artists who have embarked on what can only be described as a process of co-creation with the environment,” said Francesca Lavazza, curator of the Lavazza Calendar, and a member of the board of directors of the company.
    2. These are the six art installations, set in the environment - forests, deserts, glaciers and cities - featured in the 2019 Lavazza Calendar, Good to Earth.