On the FX television show “What We Do In The Shadows,” the audience meets a familiar character: the energy vampire. His name is Colin Robinson, an unassuming, spectacled man whose incessant droning small talk slowly sap those around him of their life force. Colin is a vampire who doesn’t have…

Whether you call them Stories, Reels, or Fleets, all represent the same idea: short-form video. In the grand tradition of success and repetition that defines the internet landscape, every social platform has now come up with its own version to grab just a few more seconds of user attention. Even…

Are you ready to pitch your business solution to the climate crisis? The Battle for Cleantech Funding A recent spate of stories in green media suggest a second climate funding boom is in the offing for startups in the cleantech sector. It’s a nice change of pace after funding dried up for almost a decade…

“The public is the only critic whose opinion means anything at all.” — Mark Twain Reality Bites…Hard One of life’s ultimate paradoxes is the nearly impossible task of changing a person’s mind while at the same time public opinion is never static. When it comes to climate change, we exist somewhere in…

Greetings fellow two-dimensional creatures: With all of our interactions flattened into a rectangle, you may find yourself, like me, missing the human interaction that accompanies marketing and networking. “Adapt or die,” said Oakland A’s General Manager, Billy Beane, in one of my favorite sports movies, “Moneyball.” And, whether you like…

Does Every Size Company Need A Brand? Recently, the CEO of a growth-stage cleantech company told me branding and marketing wasn’t something his company needed to do because their niche was so small that they already had relationships with most of the companies in their industry. “Decisions get made on price and engineering,” he said. …

I celebrated my 54th birthday the other day, but I’m not ready to be pigeonholed into dad-humor. If you’re wandering aimlessly as well, maybe this list will save you some time. 1. Why do retail clerks and restaurant servers smile when they apologize for being out of an item? Either…

Does your green brand meet its mission if it doesn’t appeal to all races? Dear Michael’s Marc: I’ve always considered myself an ally for equality, regardless of a person’s color, religion, gender, etc. All human beings deserve respect, regardless of the color of their skin. But as I’ve been taking stock after the murder of yet another black man by a white police officer…

“It takes two years to learn how to speak and sixty to learn how to keep quiet.” — Ernest Hemmingway As the COVID-19 crisis has played out, I’ve been watching with increasing unease how some in the climate action community are uncomfortably close to cheerleading for the pandemic because of…