Check out our 85% funny commercial to get GMOs labeled on Funny or Die. I want to thank Director/Producer Stephanie Soechtig of Atlas Films for letting me And Ronny Northrop work with her on this series. We had one more that we wanted to do that would have been AWESOME, but we ran out of time and money. I'd say "next time" but I hope the people of Califonia win Prop37 and the right to know what's in their food and there is no "next time." GMOs are not an easy thing to make entertaining so I'm sort of proud that we're 85% funny. I'd say that's probably a bit generous. 

Of the top ten donors to No on 37:

• Four are subsidiaries of foreign companies (BASF, Bayer, Syngenta, Nestle).
• Nine are out-of-state companies. Only one – Nestle USA – is based in California, but it is a subsidiary of Nestle S.A., which is based in Switzerland.
• Three are subsidiaries of foreign pesticide companies (BASF, Bayer, Syngenta) that are not allowed to grow genetically engineered crops in their own countries for health and environmental reasons. 
• Six are pesticide companies not based in California, which together have given $20 million to oppose Californians right to know about genetically engineered food.

“Foreign and non-California companies are trying to buy this election, and keep California mothers and fathers from finding out what’s really in their children’s food,” said Stacy Malkan, media director for Yes on Proposition 37 California Right to Know campaign.
 
“It’s especially stunning that the opposition is being bankrolled to such a large extent by foreign pesticide companies that are using California families as guinea pigs for their genetically engineered crops that are shunned back at home,” Malkan said.
 
Switzerland has banned the growing of genetically engineered crops since 2005.  Germany severely restricts genetically engineered crops in Germany, and none are being planted there in 2012. The Swiss company Syngenta, along with German-based BASF and Bayer, have spent $2 million each to oppose Prop 37.
 
“These foreign companies are subverting our elections with a massive propaganda cocktail of lies and deception,” Malkan said.
 
On Friday, Oct. 19, food and consumer products companies contributed an additional $5.2 million to the No on 37 campaign.  Of the 35 contributors, only two are based in California, Nestle (a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestle S.A.) and Clorox.
 
“The vote on Proposition 37 will come down to a question of whom should we trust. Should we trust the world’s largest pesticide and junk food companies to make the choices about what’s in our food, or do we want to make those decisions ourselves?”
 
Thus far, the opponents of Proposition 37 have raised a total of $40.7 million. The Yes on 37 California Right to Know campaign has raised $5.3 million, largely from natural and organic food companies, and from more than 10,000 individual donors.
 
The Yes on 37 campaign is also backed by more than 2,000 health, faith, labor and consumer groups including the American Public Health Association, California Nurses Association, California Council of Churches, United Farm Workers, California Labor Federation, Consumers Union, Public Citizen, the United Food and Commercial Workers and many more. See full list of endorsers here: http://www.carighttoknow.org/endorsements

 For more information about the Yes on 37 California Right to Know campaign, see www.CaRightToKnow.org.

We've posted the companies that are fighting to defeat Prop37 here before. It's amusing to contrast their sweet, happy and wholesome consumer images with the political work they do. The Cap'n, Tony the Tiger and the Trix Rabbit have all been pulled into the mud. Their images tainted and brand value eroding as they become symbols of opposition to consumer rights. Remember to vote YES on 37. http://www.carighttoknow.org/

This is a 4 part series. We'll post them all but if you're in a rush here are the links. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. 

This is a 4 part series. We'll post them all but if you're in a rush here are the links. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. 

It's the hump day of Alan Watts week and he has a reminder to make your life's music this week. 

Let's keep going with Alan Watts week. Tuesday is a good day to wake up. 

It is a glorious Monday and what better way to start than with thoughts from the beautiful brain of Alan Watts?He is one of our absolute favorite thinkers. His question is so important when you're getting started on life's journey but it's never fully answered. It might be worth asking every few years for the rest of us too. Happy Monday.

Celebrities certainly have a certain power in our culture to get people to sit up and take notice. So when I was introduced to Stephanie Soechtig from Atlas films and she told me about the plan she had to create some short film content to help out on Prop37 I offered to help out. We called it is a guest CD role and I pulled in my buddy Ronny Northrop to help with the writing too. We're excited by the results and excited to have over a hundred thousand views in a short time but this little video and others like it are battling 30 million in advertising to defeat Prop37.

Celebrity power verses the power of money.

Money that poured in from Biochemical companies like Monsanto and Big Phood companies like Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. While we see incredible examples of social media's power to galvanize people in other parts of the world it may be that in our own country elections can still be bought. When it's a fair fight between ideals the democratic nature of social media helps bring the best ideals forward. In California the massive and deceptive ad spend has trimmed a 2 to 1 lead for labeling to a very tight race. 

All we have is each other so share this and any other video about Prop37 as far and wide as you can. 

Money may buy this election but as Dr. King said, "How long? Not long. Because no lie can stand forever."

In the end, the right to know what you're eating is a social issue. Today too many people know too much and the numbers of people who know too much are climbing every day. So whatever happens in California, all Monsanto and friends can really buy is some time. How long?

Not long.

Usually, as an advertising person considers advertising anything, they think about how they personally feel about that product. Or, in this case, when you advertise against something, you still consider how you feel and what kind of relationship you have had with that product. 

When CSPI Mike Jacobsen approached me to create work with the goal of changing the cultural conversation around soda I was just finishing off a 32oz. Big Gulp. Not actually, but I've never been militant about soda either. Like a lot of people, I really like one from time to time.

Mike and CSPI have been long-time food activists and he is responsible not just for coining the term "junk food" but for much of the ingredient labeling we take for granted on the back of the products we buy today. This guy is the real deal and he has been trying to wake us up to the costs of sugar in our diets for a long, long time. 

I'm actually one of those people that has removed High Fructose Corn Sweetener (HFCS) from my diet but I don't worry too much about traditional cane sugar. Mike is a scientist first and foremost and his position is all sugar is the same. I'll take a wait and see approach, but by avoiding HFCS, which is in almost all packaged food today, my sugar (fructose) consumption is way, way, way down. It's been a good thing. 

Years ago before we concieved of the TRUTH campaign to reduce teen tobacco consumption I had the same questions about tobacco that I have about soda today. At the time many of my friends smoked and so I felt compelled to create something that told the truth about tobacco and the tobacco industry but avoided attacking the smoker. Part of our brand values were that TRUTH didn't care if you smoked. We just wanted you to know the truth. Period. That pretty much mirrors my attitude with soda. I never was a smoker but I've had and enjoyed plenty of pop. I even worked on advertising for diet soda. Today I avoid the HFCS stuff but I love an occasional Clementine Izze or the Cokes that get imported from Mexico made with cane sugar. The key word is "occassional." Soda was never meant to be an everyday beverage.  

So why work for CSPI? Because as a society our increase in sugar consumption has been monumental and it is making us sick and soda is the number one contributor in raw calories. This is a problem we need to figure out because although you might decide to opt out of drinking soda you can't opt out of what is happening to your friends and neighbors and country. You can't opt out of a healthcare system that is collapsing under the costs we ALL pay in taxes to treat runaway obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and more. 

The costs that an industry passes on to you when they do business are called "externalized" costs. What that means is that in the course of them doing business things happen around that business but they don't have to pay those costs. Lung cancer was and maybe to some degree still is an externalized cost of the tobacco companies doing business as usual. When used as directed a large number of their customers wound up in hospitals undergoing treatments and care that they often could not afford. That cost of business was passed onto the taxpayer and state government. Eventually, the states realized how much this was costing and they began to educate citizens, tax the tobacco companies, regulate their advertising, and, finally, sue them to recoup the billions the states had spent to essentially subsidize the tobacco companies way of doing business. 

With soda, we are probably in the very early stages of a similar realization. When used as suggested by the packaging and the marketing, people drink dangerous amounts of liquid sugar/soda and become so sick that they go into the healthcare system where we all pay with our tax dollars to work to repair their damaged bodies. Each one of us is paying for Big Soda to do business the way that they are doing it. Either paying with our health, our kids health, or our wallets getting lighter to pay the taxes to prop up an overburdened healthcare system. Our wallets might be the only thing getting lighter unfortunately. It's bad. And it's not just doctors, food activists and epidemiologists that are concerned. Our military has begun to sound the alarm because we are too obese to fight. In fact, they can no longer get an average 18 year old American into shape during basic training. There's not enough time to do it. Our addiction to sugar is a matter of national security. 

Now Big Soda suggests that they never advertise to children as part of being responsible advertisers. So why do they have cartoon bears? It reminds me a lot of when the tobacco companies suggested that they would never advertise to children yet Joe Camel was about as well known with children as Mickey Mouse at the time. There's a big sculpture of a polar bear holding a soda at a ski resort near where I live. And I almost never see grownups crawling all over that thing. Guess they missed the mark. 

We are at the beginning of a massive cultural shift and our food is at the center of it all. I believe there is a healthier future ahead if we just keep the dialog going. 

Hard to know what The Real Bears can contribute to a more open and realistic cultural conversation about Soda, sugar or even HFCS. Yet that remains our sincerest hope for the project - to make a sweet world even sweeter. 

A great many people spent a lot of their talent and time to produce a 3 minute labor of love. These folks make a sweet world, even sweeter. Mike Jacobson (vision), Jason Mraz (music and love), Lucas Zanotto (animation), Amanda Fox (production grit), Jeff Cronin (guidance), Todd Putmin (mentor), Mark Eckhart (glue), Adam Butler (creative), Marty Butler (creative/production), Stefanie Hermsdorf (design/rocket fuel), Ronny Northrop (lead creative/writing), Ryan Kutchner (creative/writer), and Cyrus Clemensen (digital guru) Let me know if I missed anybody and I'll add the name ASAP.