We've written once or twice this year about the Bite Back campaign we did for Compassion International's malaria initiative.

We talked with the Compassion group again on Friday and were amazed to hear of the profound affect that this campaign is having.  Since March, this campaign has raised over $130,000 towards providing mosquito nets to Africans in danger of contracting malaria.

What is even more impressive is that the campaign is carrying itself, with Compassion putting little effort behind it.  I guess when you say the right things in the right way to the right people with a message that is ready to spread, it's hard not to achieve great results.

We just feel privileged to be a part of it all.

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While probably amongst the least severe of their problems, GM and Ford are officially considering the sale of their respective Swedish subsidiaries, Saab and Volvo. (Read more: Financial Times).

It's no secret that these two brands have been hurting for quite some time now, but how did the once respected carmakers end up on the chopping block? Didn't Volvo build their whole reputation on utilitarian design and tank-like safety? What about Saab's quirky but functional styling and turbocharging innovations? As with many a failing brand, the problem is they no longer stand out.

To demonstrate this point, let's consider a single car — Saab's bread-and-butter, the 9-3. With the latest generation, Saab got rid of the funky hatchback for a conventional three-box shape in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. At least on paper, it has all the parts for a successful recipe: beautifully designed, powerful, efficient, safe. However, while it's good in all these regards, it isn't the best at any of them. It's out-performed by BMW and out-prestiged by Benz; it isn't as reliable or efficient as Acura; it doesn't offer as much value as Infiniti. Safety has become a pretty level playing field for most modern automobiles. And no longer possessing the famous Saab charm, this put the 9-3 in the worst place for a brand: middle-of-the-road. Brand purgatory.

Recently, I caught a couple of ads from Saab's new campaign. It takes a defining characteristic of the brand (turbocharging) and marries it with the new bragging right in auto advertising ("My MPGs can beat up yours").

The ad does fall short in the effect that there's little substance behind it. The actual efficiency of their cars are again, just average. But whether knowingly or not, Saab is onto something here. This "clean, green, Swedish machine" direction could be the shot-in-the-arm that Saab and Volvo so desperately need for three reasons:

1. MPG has emerged as one of the most important criteria for buying a car.
2. The beautifully considered Scandinavian design philosophy is an area of differentiation in which both automakers excel. This super-clean aesthetic is also the perfect vehicle (pun!) to peddle green marketing from.
3. There is no premium car brand that currently positions itself as the "green-luxury" leader.

Imagine a well-built, impeccably designed, premium car that gets 40 MPG. How's that for a bailout?

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We recently completed working on a book for Hanson called Take The Walk. It was a book about their journey through Africa and subsequent actions to make a real impact in the world. "Take The Walk is about giving you simple tangible ways to take action against the HIV / AIDS pandemic and poverty in Africa. A small donation, the purchase of a pair of shoes, the download of a song."

Hanson came to us with thousands of pictures and words, we helped them brand their journey. The brand that was set through designing this book has now been extended into an EP design, website, and other merchandise.

A truly talented group of people came together to help make this book a reality and hopefully make a real impact in the world. Billy Cerveny helped write the book with Hanson and the words truly capture what the journey was all about. Bryan Johnson shot most of the photography in the book and his images truly take you to Africa and show you a world that I never knew existed. To find out more about the book and Hanson's journey and to purchase a copy, check out www.takethewalk.net

Check out some more spreads from the book below…

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I am a fan of all things that fly under the radar. Music usually sounds better if no one else has ever heard of the band. Beers taste better if no one drinks what I'm drinking. And food always tastes better when you have to make a 30 minute drive to a dark hole in the wall called Big Ed's. (Even though its extremely popular with those in the know, much of Knoxville has no idea that it even exists.)

While I was in Knoxville for Thanksgiving with the folks, we made the trek out to Oak Ridge solely for this pizza. Big Ed's is one of the few brands I can think of that has not made the slightest change in years, and yet the line is out the door every night.

The menu is 4 inches wide by 3 tall and consists of the price of pizza depending on how many toppings, the 8 toppings they offer, coke choices and 4 beer choices(all michelob) . You get a plastic fork and a paper plate half the size of the slices. The tshirts are the same as I used to get 20 years ago when I would sit at the bar with Big Ed himself. And they still use scissors to cut the pizzas.

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If you've ever driven through the rolling hills of Tennessee, then you've probably noticed the ‘See Rock City' billboards on barn roofs scattered across the heartland. If you're a Tennessee native like myself, then you've probably come to appreciate the welcoming nostalgic presence of each redundantly passing barn. For those that aren't familiar, Rock City, a natural rock formation on top of Look Out Mountain, has been promoting itself for decades with a simple phrase on the roofs of barns aligning major roads, that simply says "See Rock City".

Well, This past week traveling home for Thanksgiving, I passed a few barns as usual, and I was curious to find out the story behind this brilliant campaign.

I found a book accounting the tail of Clark Byers, a sign painter who in 1936 put his paint bucket and latter in his truck with one mission and put a small obscure Tennessee tourist attraction on the map, with little to no money. Byers would travel around to local farmers and offer a free paint job for their barn, along with some Rock City souvenirs, in exchange for a "See Rock City" roof top ad. The book, "Rock City Barns: A Passing Era", details more than 500 sites in 15 states spanning over 35,000 miles, even though there are over 900 Rock City barns in 19 states.

What I so passionately love about this story is the sheer brilliance in realizing how much underutilized (and practically free) space was available on the everyday, "Run of the Mill" (pun intended), All-American barn. This is a purple-cow if I've ever heard of one. It's so unique in fact that the entire identity and product line of Rock City has been founded around this idea. The barns campaign changed America and the folk art culture of the south as we know it.

Sometimes no money forces us to rely on the power of our mind and not the power of a dollar.

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Prison Fellowship partners with local churches across the country to minister to prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families. They approached Matchstic for a help with a new campaign – Forgive, Don't Forget – that they launched at Catalyst 08.

Below is Drew from PF talking about their campaign and how we can all get involved.

PFM from matchstic on Vimeo.

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