Green Marketing

Green games we can play

Starbucks lets us play Planet Green Game. This is a neat way to present complex concepts to audiences. Between the game section and the supporting pages, a reader gets to absorb a lot of challenging ideas with relative ease.

And Chevron presents Energyville, "an energy game developed by The Economist Group." The landing page offers a basic idea of the game and an impressive counter of the barrels of oil and gas consumed globally during your visit. You can play the game without registering. Or just watch a guided version of the game. Or review the comments under "join the discussion." Your homework, reader: Please review the game and identify if and how it promotes the use of oil disguised as an environmentally intelligent energy strategy. Once you've got that figured out, take a look at the comments in the quasi-blog discussion. Which do you think are real, which not, and why do you believe that?

One wonders, though: What is it about the green theme that prompts companies to take this playful approach? To attract the doubters? Add attraction to an often painful topic? Why do we need a game to make ourselves aware of our impact on the  environment? Is it because we don't know, don't want to understand, have too much to worry about? Because not enough of us take enough steps to make a difference?

And the question many of us seem to be asking in so many ways: How much time do we have left before it doesn't matter what we do or not do?

Last one green, turn off the lights

Market Research World, publishing on June 5, 2007, highlights a report by Continental Research titled Businesses Blasé About Green Issues. The report states that "almost one in two corporate businesses believe that global warming is not a serious issue, according to a new poll of 500 business decision makers."

The poll only included U.K. businesses. The short article mentions that 90 percent of the organizations polled turn off the lights when they're not being used. That's very nice, but it's also shocking that only "45% of all U.K. businesses either have or are currently developing a formal policy towards environmental or social responsibility issues."

What do you think? In the discussion of environmental issues, is there too much emphasis on what individuals can or should do, and not enough about the role of companies and governments?

Microsoft Dynamics and environmental sustainability

We work for many different groups at Microsoft, including Microsoft Dynamics. I don't doubt that Microsoft Dynamics has a high potential for environmental benefits. A few months ago, our writer Andrew Watson talked to a case study customer, Patriot Memory (formerly PDP Systems), a chip maker. The VP of operations told Andrew that the company saved a small forest and cut their use of paper by 90 percent, thanks to Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

You can review posts and participate in a Microsoft-facilitated discussion about Microsoft Dynamics and environmental sustainability. The discussion is somewhat less than lively, with a relatively small number of contributions and a few shameless plugs for certain companies' products. As one contributor says, "Why is there no discussion in this newsgroup?" However, consider that most of the pertinent posts seem to come from IT practitioners who would command much credibility in this area.

Breaking through green noise

The New York Times on June 25, 2007, published a great article by Clifford Krauss, At Home Depot, How Green Is That Chainsaw?  When the NYT is good, it can still deliver watershed moments.

Krauss discusses the credibility problems a lot of poorly articulated green marketing efforts face. A quote:

"In somebody's mind, the products they were selling us were environmentally friendly," said Ron Jarvis, a Home Depot Senior Vice President who oversees the Eco Options program. But not in his mind. "Most of what you see today in the green movement is voodoo marketing," he added. "If they say their product makes the sky bluer and the grass greener, that's just not good enough." By the standards of Mr. Jarvis—who fertilizes his own home garden with a liquefied worm waste product packaged in recycled soda bottles and fills his swimming pool with salt water to avoid putting chlorine into the environment—only 2,500 of the products made the cut. Even at that number, some environmentalists say that Home Depot is being too inclusive. In the process, they say, it is engaging in its own kind of overstated marketing, posing as green even as it continues to sell powerful pesticides and polluting lawnmowers. Green, after all, has become the new "new and improved," a label so widely used that many environmental groups, while lauding the heightened interest of consumers, now dismiss many of the efforts as greenwash. "Everybody is in a mad scramble to say how green they are," said Jim O’Donnell, Manager of the Sierra Club Stock Fund, which handles $50 million in a portfolio of companies it considers environmentally friendly. He added that he was hopeful the product greening would become more meaningful over time.

Green marketing: a credible steamroller?

Recently, it seems everybody's jumping on the green marketing wagon. And for all the good reasons: global warming and the environmental impact of our activities are on everybody's mind and covered in the news every day. Some of us living today are still waking up to the issues. For the next generation, environmental concerns will be always urgent and critical, without any choice about directing attention that way or not. So it makes sense that companies and their marketers present environmental narratives and think about what they can do to manage and reduce the environmental consequences of their business activities. Some of those marketing efforts are highly credible and worthwhile thinking about, some others are dubious, and some others are funny. The "green story" certainly has led to jaded mindsets, as well as enthusiasm and the conviction that marketing can play a big part in helping our world.

In this blog, we take a look at how companies and marketing organizations create and communicate their environmental messages. We'll present valuable resources for green marketers, when we find them. And we'll try to figure out how environmental marketing resonates, succeeds, thrives, or falls flat—and why.

Enjoy, share your comments, and feel free to reach me, Chris Lemoine, directly at chris@washburncom.com.