Last week Billabong held its fifth annual Design For Humanity event at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, CA. Billabong once again successfully brought together three very separate elements of fashion, music and art and rose over $120,000 for The VH1 Save The Music Foundation.

The sold out fashion-music-art block party was a blow out with indie band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros playing an incredible set and Hanni El Khatib performing it on the financial district stage.

The runway fashion show lead by Billabong design director Mandy Robinson, paid homage to this year’s charity, the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, with looks inspired by some of Billabong’s favorite artists, Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and Hendrix. The styling was reminiscent of this Rock & Roll era with itsy bitsy snake bikinis, crochet dresses, cropped snake skin jackets, exaggerated bell bottoms, fringed hi-waisted shorts, and floor length sheer maxi dresses.

As always there was a huge art element to Design for Humanity. Morgan Maassen, who worked with Billabong to shoot their team riders all over the world, created a “Soundwaves” photo exhibit with the photos and video playing on plasma screens from the various shoots.

The VH1 Save The Music Foundation created a one-of a kind guitar installation onsite, with signed instruments that went for auction. 4 Taylor guitars were donated with musicians; Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Natasha Bedingfield, My Morning Jacket, and David Cook all signing them. 100% of this year’s ticket sales and proceeds from will be donated to The VH1 Save the Music Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring instrumental music education in America’s public schools, and raising awareness about the importance of music as part of each child’s complete education.

The passion for environmentalism is shown in the planning process. Interior designer Christophe Pillet, landscape architect Christophe Ponceau and hotelier Shahé Kalaidjian integrated the hotel into the lush surrounding nature and preserved nearly all existing trees on the site. “The luxury at Hotel Sezz Saint-Tropez is not about the usual bling bling you might expect at the Côte d’Azur. It’s about the unique natural settings of this resort. From the start our goal was to respect and preserve the surrounding nature, and to create a hotel that fits perfectly with it,” says Kalaidjian.

In order to optimize air circulation, the bungalows and cocoons were built with extra thick walls and the windows with integrated filters that absorb ultraviolet rays. Numerous CO2 absorbing eucalyptus trees in the parking lot ensure the air is fresh and clean. The entire resort is equipped with energy saving lamps and the rooms with flat screen LED TVs. Moreover, all employees were trained in environmental matters. The products at Spa Sezz by Payot are made with primarily natural ingredients like plants and minerals.

In cooperation with the Lycée Technique Don Bosco in Nice, Hotel Sezz Saint-Tropez is currently developing a program for soap recycling. All used soaps from the hotel will be collected and regularly sent to the school where students learn how to recycle them.

The Hotel

Located a few minutes outside Saint-Tropez, the hotel is not only a hideaway for nature lovers but also a place for peace seekers. With laurels, pines, palms and eucalyptus trees Ponceau has created the epitome of a Mediterranean garden. Like in a small Provencal village, the 37 ground-floor rooms, suites and villas are grouped around the heart of the hotel: the azure pool. Here, guests can relax and unwind on the lounge chairs and sunbeds that Christophe Pillet created. The nearest beach and the center of Saint-Tropez can easily be reached with the bikes that the hotel offers.

Hotel Sezz Saint-Tropez also features a gourmet restaurant Colette headed by Pierre Gagnaire, the recently completed Spa Sezz by Payot as well as a Dom Pérignon Champagne Bar.

HOTEL SEZZ ST. TROPEZ
Route Des Salins
83990
Saint Tropez, France

The film examines the profound claim that many of our most-debilitating degenerative diseases – such as heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and several forms of cancer – are almost always preventable, and in many cases reversible, through diet alone. The major storyline traces the journeys of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, a nutritional biochemist from Cornell University, and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, a former top surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. The idea of food as medicine is put to the test. Throughout the film, cameras follow “reality patients” who have chronic conditions from heart disease to diabetes. Doctors teach these patients how to adopt a whole foods plant-based diet as the primary approach to treat their ailments – while the challenges and triumphs of their journeys are revealed.

www.forksoverknives.com

Coca-Cola Israel tapped agency Promarket to help erect a unique pop-up shop featuring products up-cycled from Coca-Cola bottles and cans, as part of the brand’s “Give it Back” campaign. The shop featured clothing, jewelry and other goods made from recycled Coke containers. Customers were also invited to bring in their used bottles and cans to trade in for the products sold in the store. The shop’s main objective is to educate the public about the benefits of recycling through upcycled design. Merchandise available for purchase includes shirts, hats, accessories, handbags and furniture – all made from recycled Coca-Cola bottles and cans. The store also features information stations and an exhibit of the artists who contributed to the limited-edition collection of design, furniture and fashion pieces.The store opened during the Passover holiday, which also happens to mark regeneration in Israeli society.

View more images after the jump

Ever wished you could keep cold water ice cold and your morning tea hot till the end of day… all while saving the planet? Now that’s possible with the launch of S’well bottles. The S’well bottle is a superior stainless steel bottle that utilizes a new advancement in insulation, which keeps drinks cold or hot much longer than its counterparts, and the best part is that S’well has teamed up with WaterAid, a non-profit organization that for the past 30 years has been working to deliver water solutions to world’s poorest communities. Every bottle sold provides a year supply of water for someone in need, and every five bottles sold provides a lifetime supply. Water is essential for life, but one billion people, one sixth of the world’s population, do not have safe access to it. To address this crisis, for every S’well bottle sold, 10% percent of the proceeds are donated to this charity. This year, WaterAid will reach 1.2 million people with safe water and 1.7 million people with sanitation.

The debate has begun!… can electric motoring deliver a true Rolls-Royce experience? Rolls Royce Motor Cars created 102EX as a working test-bed to get feedback from Owners, opinion leaders, enthusiasts and journalists on alternative drive-train technologies in ultra-luxury cars. In this film, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, introduces the car and the debate, encouraging contributions from all who are interested. Join the debate at www.electricluxury.com

Directed by photographer/environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand and narrated by Glenn Close, HOME takes you on a visually stunning, voyage around the world. It is a unique film that approaches the current debate about climate change from a whole new angle, giving the viewer the opportunity to see for themselves how our earth is changing. Going well beyond the scientific reports, charts and graphs, this film is an inspiration that speaks to our hearts and touches our souls.

“In the past 200,000 years, humans have upset the balance of planet Earth, a balance established by nearly four billion years of evolution. We must act now. It’s too late to be a pessimist. The price is too high. Humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend and change its patterns of consumption.”

Spanning 54 countries and 120 locations, all seen from the air, the film captures the Earth’s most amazing landscapes, showcasing its incomparable beauty and acknowledging its vulnerability. HOME is an emotional reminder of what is at stake: the Earth, in all its beauty, and the people who live on it. With this film, Arthus-Bertrand hopes to provide a stepping-stone to further the call to action to take care of our HOME.

HOME is the first film that has been made using only aerial footage. HOME the movie is carbon offset. This means that all of the CO2 emissions engendered by making the film are calculated and offset by sums of money that are used to provide clean energy to those who don’t have any. For the last ten years, all the work of Yann Arthus-Bertrand has been carbon offset.

Hosted by Anderson Cooper the tribute will honor the Top 10 Heroes and reveal the 2010 Hero of the Year on Thanksgiving evening at 8pm (EST) / 5pm (PST). This year’s Top 10 Heroes include community crusaders from across the globe, with accomplishments ranging from providing hot meals for the homeless in India to clearing land mines in Cambodia. The tribute, from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, will also include a special guest appearance by all 33 Chilean miners and five of their rescuers.

See the heroes tell their stories in their own words.

When Vice magazine first started, all they cared about was sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. But they started traveling around the world, they got more into politics, culture, fashion, art, the environment. Basically, everything. And this is that — The Vice Guide To Everything. It’s their new MTV show about the absurdity of the modern condition: the most interesting people, news, sub-cultures and rituals on the planet. It’s the stuff you don’t get from the mainstream media but that you absolutely need to know — and won’t stop talking about.

The Vice Guide To Everything premieres Monday, December 6 11P/10C on MTV

This post is written by Melissa Graham, Account Director for Edelman in Toronto, Millennial and part of the Edelman 8095 global liaison network.

As Arathi mentioned in her post yesterday, 8-in-10 Millennials in our global survey told us that they have taken some form of action on behalf of the brands they trust and respect. Enabled and fueled by technology, our actions can instantly reach our network of friends and followers and shift perceptions in a powerful way. Whether it’s a positive experience or a customer service issue, we take to our social circles, online and offline, and start sharing, asking around for advice. We’ve been raised to share and consult in this way and most of our technology makes the process so painless and efficient, sometimes automating the process altogether, that it doesn’t make sense not to. Especially in Canada, a country of early adopters, with nearly half of the entire population on Facebook and the third most Twitter users in the world, this is second nature, to say the least. We call it “reverberation”- the impact Millennials can have on brands through communication with their extended peer groups in real time and below, you will find several key insights from our global study that illustrate the degree to our generation is increasingly creating and being effected by it.

We found that:

• 76 percent of Millennials think that that friends and family highly depend on their opinions.
• Millennials are more willing to take positive rather than negative action online on behalf of trusted brands. 8095 global data suggest that nearly half (47%) write about good experiences on their social-networking sites, while only 39 percent write about bad experiences. However, as a Canadian Millennial myself, I have to add that Canadian Millennials are the only Millennials in our survey who said they are more willing to take negative action rather than positive action on behalf of a brand online. 8095 global data suggests that 31 percent of Canadian Millennials write about negative brand experiences and 26 percent write about positive brand experiences.
• When Millennials lose trust and respect for a brand, 54 percent have told their family and friends not to purchase its products, 41 percent have boycotted the company and nearly one-third have either posted something on their social network about the brand (32%) or have joined a community of people who dislike the brand (29%).
• We’re not just talking about our smart phones or major purchases. Our 8095 Live community suggests that while 32 percent of the products they tend to share with friends are electronics, a full 68 percent of U.S. Millennials are talking about everyday brands, such as personal-care products such as toothpaste and deodorant, food, cookware and housewares.

So, for any marketer reading this, as The Cluetrain Manifesto commanded more than ten years ago, “We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.” Actually, in our case, we want you to take 1.7 billion of us and the reverberation our actions create as seriously as you take one reporter, one ad or one celebrity spokesperson.

Edelman 8095 is the global Millennial consultancy at Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm.

Via PSFK