Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (1)

Highlight Environmental Sustainability—but Avoid “Greenwashing”
May 8, 2008

First of all, I would to take this opportunity to declare a permanent moratorium on the phrase “It’s not easy being green.” It seems that almost every article or blog post in the past 18 months has featured this as a head or subhead. I say “stop!” It makes me want to discard (without recycling) my Muppets albums!

That said, unless you’ve been trapped in an underwater pyramid for the past 18 months, you know that so-called “green” initiatives—that is, environmentally responsible and sustainable business practices—are becoming ever more crucial for consumers and, ergo, businesses.

For example, eMarketer cites recent research from DoubleClick that found that:

60% of US adults who make online purchases say that it is very or extremely important to them that a company is environmentally conscious.

Almost half of those who make online purchases said they specifically search for environmentally-friendly products at least some of the time.

More importantly, 45% of respondents who make online purchases said they would pay at least 5% more for a product that is promoted with environmentally-friendly attributes. An additional 22% were willing to pay at least 10% more.

38% of respondents said the most attractive type of environmentally-conscious marketing focused on specific user benefits such as saving money on bills or products lasting longer.

Specific environmental benefits were a distant second, cited by 21% of those surveyed as the most attractive type of environmentally-friendly marketing.

As a result, companies are clambering to beef up their “green cred.” I recently completed a special report “primer” on green printing issues for graphic communications news portal WhatTheyThink, which includes the results of a recent survey conducted by WhatTheyThink’s Ecnomics and Research Center. It found that, among commercial printers—usually the last people in the world to jump on a bandwagon (oh, but I kid commercial printers...)—the issue is front and center, even if few have taken many steps beyond using and/or recommending recycled paper.

Now, it probably goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that not everyone believes that environmental sustainability and/or climate change are especially crucial issues, some feeling that the whole thing is simply “political correctness run amok.” Be that as it may, the fact remains that it is a concern—as the DoubleClick data cited earlier, and other polls and surveys, have found—for more and more people, especially younger people, which makes sense, since they are the ones who are most likely to be personally impacted by any dire consequences of climate change.

Still, the point of this post is not to debate the merits of the evidence that supports global warming, but simply to point out that it the reactions to it are a force to be reckoned with in marketing today. Now, whether or not it is simply the fad du jour and everyone will lose interest in a year or two remains to be seen. (Remember when ISO 9001 certification was the cat’s pajamas? Now how many companies make any reference to it?) But for now, it’s the way things are, and consumers are expecting some level of “greenness” on the part of the companies they choose to do business with.

A Google search or two turns up no shortage of companies that tout their environmentally responsible practices, but, as it turns out, companies often oversell the extent of their greenness. (Yes, we’re shocked, shocked, to discover that companies sometimes misrepresent themselves.) This is often referred to as “greenwashing,” and anecdotal evidence suggests that consumers increasingly insist that businesses but their money (long green?) where their mouths are. But how can they prove it?

One way—which I discuss in the WhatTheyThink report—is known as a “chain of custody” certification program, in which an oversight organization (such as the Forest Stewardship Council [FSC]) offers official guarantees about the path taken by a given product’s raw materials from its origin (like a forest in the case of paper products) to the consumer, including all intermediate stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing, and distribution. Chain of custody certification corroborates the promise that is being made to consumers. So, for example, printers and other companies who work with paper products can be FSC-certified or use FSC-certified materials.

Another more broadly applicable solution has been proposed by the SAS Institute. As an article in this week’s Information Week says:

SAS for Sustainability Management applies business intelligence capabilities to environmental performance. It includes a performance management app with metrics established by the Global Reporting Initiative, a 10-year-old group that has a framework used by 1,500 businesses to measure the economic, environmental, and social impact of their operations. It also includes SAS’s activity-based management app, which tracks factors such as how much carbon emissions facilities produce and develops models that show how changes would affect costs and profit. In addition, SAS predictive analytics and risk management apps forecast trends related to sustainability, such as the possibility that government fines for environmental violations could go up in the future, raising costs.

Although:

SAS declined to say what the software will cost, but environmental BI could be a tough sell right now since it's not analyzing fast-payback factors such as the profitability of customers or new revenue opportunities, both high priorities in a slowing economy.

But then:

SAS says its software will provide transparency to separate the truly green from the talkers.

As I have said, as green issues take precedence (assuming these issues do continue to loom large in the public consciousness), some sort of methodology will be necessary to help companies prove they’re as green as they say they are.

Coming up tomorrow: some steps (ranging from simple to downright convoluted)  that companies can take to make their marketing greener. And on Monday, look for my attempt at answering the question: “Print or electronic: which medium is greener?” The answer just may surprise you!

Posted by Richard Romano on May 8, 2008 | Comments (1)