I don't know if you watched the LiveEarth Marathon this weekend. I saw a little bit of it on NBC, a little bit on Bravo, and some of it on the Brazilian TV. While US TV mostly showed the international attractions singing in English (like Lenny Kravitz running in the middle of the audience in Copacabana beach in Rio), I really enjoying watching some of my local favorites in the Brazilian broadcast.
I was pleased to see that my friends at Globalization Partners International were involved in sponsoring and providing services to such a global event (7 concerts in 7 continents on 07.07.07) for what is one of the biggest concerns for humanity these days. Martin Spethman, the owner of GPI, tells me that this event was just the beginning of what is going on with Live Earth.
GPI provided translation and website localization services in 19 languages ranging from Arabic to Zulu. Translations included a set of "Solutions" to educate over 2 billion people on how they can fight global warming and pledge their support the movement.
In that same conversation, I learned that GPI won 12 website awards in one year 2006 for its own site. Even though I like his site, I am not that I am that impressed with the 12 awards. What it tells the cynic in me is that he had the time to register to at least as many competitions.
But what matters from my perspective is that these accomplishments demonstrate the place smaller firms can have if they are successful and innovative in marketing their services, how smaller firms carve out a niches (environmental products and services translations in this case), and how they can compete very successfully without huge marketing budgets. After all, GPI is listed among LiveEarth partners among companies like Pepsi, eBay, and Philips.