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Never Say Green?
July 25, 2008
One of the fundamental laws of Newtonian physics is that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” You could probably rephrase that to read, “For every trend or movement, there is an equal and opposite trend or movement.” With this paraphrasing in mind, it was with no small amount of amusement that I read this
Brandweek article about the so-called
“Never Greens”:
Forget the Environment Say the “Never Greens”
William Coverley has nine cars, including four Porsches, a pickup and a Ferrari. Last week, he bought a 10th—a 2008 GMC Yukon XL—because he needs something to tow his boat. The three-quarter-ton SUV gets a dismal 14 miles per gallon in traffic.
Nice work if you can get it. But go on...
Coverley is part of a small but persistent new consumer demographic: The “Never Greens”— people who either don't care or are not interested in America’s new passion for sustainable, green products...The Never Greens don’t buy green products, don’t remember green advertising when they see it and are irritated by it even if they do, according to Mintel.
I love this quote:
As consumers flee gigantic trucks for environmentally friendly small cars and hybrids, Coverley is an increasingly rare beast: He wants one of the biggest gas-guzzlers that $40,000 can buy. “Do I care that I’m wasting gas? No, I really don’t,” the Hudson, Ohio, resident said.
Perhaps I will invite him to the grand opening of my panda-hunting preserve or to join me when I go club manatees for sport. But I digress...
Climate change and other environmental topics have become curiously political, for reasons I don’t understand. Even if the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong (and I find that unlikely, but am willing to grant the premise for the sake of argument), I fail to see how focusing on environmental preservation and sustainability is a
bad thing. I have always felt—and now we’re starting now to see—that “green” technologies can fuel economic growth and expansion. Do people prefer large, illusory, unsustainable economic bubbles (as per this great, and sadly accurate,
Onion article)? Or do people just really like pollution? If it’s a “but what about all the displaced workers in fossil fuel industries” issues, well, I don’t see that anyone has shed tears for all the printers who have gone out of business thanks to the explosion of the Internet. I don’t get it.
The Lesson: If you look hard enough (or even if you just look about casually), there is a market for anything and everything. While environmental sustainability is a hot topic, at least for the present, there will always be those who resist the latest trends, although one should be cautious about the difference between being a contrarian and just being ornery. It’s up to the individual marketer to decide if the contrarian market is one worth pursuing.
Posted by Richard Romano on July 25, 2008 | Comments (2)
