No one likes to feel tricked after they've just purchased a product. The most valuable asset any company can have is customer trust.
Last month, I was among forty people who learned about the importance of authenticity in green marketing in the second in a series of four Plan-It-Green business luncheons sponsored by the North Coast Small Business Development Center and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
This luncheon's topic was green marketing and the featured speakers were Connie Roser-Renouf, a communications research and social marketing specialist with the Center for Climate Change Communication, and Jeff Sussman, the National Sales and Marketing Manager for Humboldt Creamery.
Sussman spoke about Humboldt Creamery as an example of a company that made a strategic decision to become a leader in the organic dairy foods business and described the changes it has made to market organic products. He emphasized that it is important to “make it as real as possible” for consumers and showed examples of Humboldt Creamery's cartons with a beautiful, pastoral photograph of Ferndale.
Roser-Renouf reported on recent consumer research for green marketing. She pointed out problems caused by the public's
”Greenwash” is the term often used to describe consumer perceptions that a company is misleading about its environmental practices or the environmental benefits of a product or service.
Too often, “eco-groovy” companies that spin exaggerated stories of environmental care and “environmental-friendliness” on closer inspection have nothing more than a “green sheen” produced by their marketing program. This greenwashing makes it harder for the firms that are truly making the necessary investments and working to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact.
Last year, environmental marketing company, TerraChoice, released a report called, “The Six Sins of Greenwashing.”
Their research findings were that 99 percent of 1,018 common consumer products that they randomly surveyed were guilty of greenwashing. According to the study, the six sins of greenwashing are::
1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: e.g. “Energy-efficient” electronics that contain hazardous materials. Nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight products and 57 percent of all environmental claims committed this Sin.
2. Sin of No Proof: e.g. shampoos claiming to be “certified organic,” but with no verifiable certification. Four-hundred-and-fifty-four products and 26 percent of environmental claims committed this Sin.
3. Sin of Vagueness: e.g. Products claiming to be 100 percent natural when many naturally-occurring substances are hazardous, like arsenic and formaldehyde. Seen in 196 products or 11 percent of environmental claims.
4. Sin of Irrelevance: e.g. Products claiming to be CFC-free, even though CFCs were banned 20 years ago. This sin was seen in 78 products and 4 percent of environmental claims.
5. Sin of Fibbing: e.g. Products falsely claiming to be certified by an internationally recognized environmental standard like EcoLogic, Energy Star, or Green Seal. Found in 10 products or less than 1 percent of environmental claims.
6. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils: e.g. Organic cigarettes or “environmentally friendly” pesticides. This occurred in 17 products or 1 percent of environmental claims.
Gainer and Associates was contracted by a consortium of small business diaper services in the early 1990s to develop a statewide grassroots public education campaign about the environmental benefits of reusable cloth diapers over disposable diapers.
Our slogan was “Changing Diapers to Change California.” Our work was part of a nationwide network, the National Association of Diaper Services.
Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble whupped us bad. The numbers of reusable cloth diapers purchased (home washed or with a diaper service) continued to decline and the disposal diaper sales soared.
Our tiny budget couldn't compete with the huge sums they had for their marketing campaigns. They were introducing new parents to disposable diapers with free samples when their babies were born and producing tender and touching television commercials about how diapering your baby in plastic and paper throwaway diapers was a loving choice made to benefit the environment for your baby's future.
It was such a great learning opportunity that we had fun with the contract anyway.
It became a challenge to see how many times and in how many ways we could get a positive story covered about reusable cloth diapers in California's news media. On one occasion, Sandra Jerabek, the executive director of Californians Against Waste at the time, agreed to help us with a Los Angeles media event. We prepared a table of watermelons to illustrate that the companies claiming their disposable diapers were good for the environment were just “watermelon companies.” As the TV cameras rolled, she sliced open a big watermelon to show them that these companies were “green on the outside, but very seedy on the inside.”
Consumer research has consistently shown for many years that, for most products, while consumers indicate environmental impact is important on their list of considerations, price and other priorities are more important in their product choices. This has recently changed.
Growing numbers of consumers identify themselves with social and environmental responsibility and they want their purchases to reflect their commitments. The results of the first global Edelman “goodpurpose study” released in November 2007 tell us that social/environmental purpose as a marketing imperative has global consumer appeal and can help brands build deeper relationships. The study shows that 85 percent of consumers are willing to change brands or their consumption habits to make tomorrow's world a better place. Locally, John McClurg, president of Fire & Light, said that the fact that his company's products are made with recycled glass has been insignificant in the marketplace, “until about twelve months ago.”
”The public awareness about global warming has finally started to make a difference for Fire & Light's green products,” McClurg said.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has recently given seed money to the North Coast Small Business Development Center to design and develop support and cooperation for a local certified green business program. This service will offer organizations the opportunity to seek a green business brand based on accepted standards for their type of business and a third-party evaluation. Soon to be launched, this new effort will be able to help local companies striving to reduce their environmental impacts to promote their accomplishments and contribute to the Redwood Coast region's long-time reputation of environmental entrepreneurship and green business savvy.
Margaret Gainer is the Director of the Humboldt State University Office for Economic and Community Development and specializes in helping companies reduce their environmental impact.
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