Marketing for a Cleaner Environment
Adriana Scarcella’s ’08 enthusiasm for marketing goes beyond making money for her employer. “I’m not really concerned with selling. I’m more concerned about bringing awareness of the product and the cause and seeing how much buzz I can build around it.”

The cause of the buzz is the LivPURE™ Fit & Fresh filtered water bottles manufactured by MEDport, a Providence, R.I. company. Hired in 2008 to promote its growing line of hydration products, Scarcella targets a teen to late 20s age group — her own.

While the hydration line is already sold in stores like Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond, it’s Scarcella’s job to blitz Gen Y frontiers, speaking at area universities about the plusses of using the environmentally-friendly bottle. She is also using JWU students for focus groups, asking for feedback on water from the sample bottles she’s handed out. “It’s a tough project but it’s so much fun because it’s me — it’s my demographic,” says Scarcella.

Knowing that her peers are online 90 percent of the time, she set up a site on Facebook. “Facebook has over 100 million users ... It’s a great way to get your product out there,” Scarcella says. “The whole deal is to get people connected and talking … So it might not be about LivPURE; it might be about saving the environment. And this is where LivPURE comes in.”

How much of a dent can LivPURE bottles make in the country’s mountains of waste? According to Scarcella, each LivPURE filter is good for 500 uses. With suggested three month filter changes, that’s as many as 2,000 fewer plastic water bottles per year going into landfills for each person using the system.

Code Red: Worst Case, Best Outcome
Code Red Business Continuity Services, located in Cranston, R.I. helps companies and organizations assess critical needs to keep running during a disaster. It is the only business of its kind in the state.

Code Red was founded by Lori (Rafferty) Adamo ’81 in 2003. After working as director of economic development for the cities of both Cranston and Woonsocket, R.I., Adamo decided to start her own business. With a background that included emergency management, “it just kind of transpired through research and discussions with folks in the industry that emergency management and planning was maybe a good thing to get into,” says Adamo. She was right. The company’s clients now include LoJack, Citizens Bank and Textron Financial.

Organizations most likely to need Code Red’s services are those required by the government to have a preparedness plan, such as the finance and insurance industries and agencies that support the mentally disabled and elderly populations. Plans vary by company and industry. According to Adamo, community organizations worry about pandemics, like the flu. The finance industry worries about terrorists. More recently, with the bad economy and the holiday season combined, Adamo has seen a rise in workplace violence. “We got a call the other day about a guy that made a flip remark about causing bloodshed at work.” Although Code Red does not work with individuals or families, it does encourage clients to talk to their employees about having their own emergency plan. “We tell clients ‘if your employees do not prepare at home, they are not going to come in [to work] during a disruption and leave their loved ones to help you stay in business.’”
email > ladamo@coderedbcs.com