This is part four of an ongoing series of developing thoughts on the intersection of authentic messaging and sustainability. In part one I introduce the concept of greenwash-fighting marketing that follows 5 “PRIME” principles: Participation, Rigor, Intentionality, Mutuality and Exchange. In part two I elaborate on the concept of participation. In part three I explain why some part of one’s sustainability messaging platform needs real, tangible figures. Please join me now as I consider the role of “intentionality” in smart, authentic marketing efforts. As always, comments are appreciated and encouraged.
INTENTIONALITY
Sustainable Claims: are those which are in line with an evident and earnest interest in progressing toward a more sustainable system [Intentionality]
The state of our busy, globalized world is such that we have a great many pressing needs and not necessarily a lot of time in which to make headway. There’s a lot to do and no one person (or business) can do it all; but it’s all good work and it all needs doing, so any step toward sustainability is a step worth taking. At the same time, there are better and worse—more accurately stated: there are more and less authentic—means of expressing these steps and it is this with which we are presently concerned.
I once heard a recovering alcoholic—a fellow with a hard upbringing and a real ‘down-and-out’ story—talk about how he navigates his life in accordance with ‘the right way.’ He said that the right path starts out hard and gets easier, while the wrong path starts out easy and gets harder. It was a simple observation but an eloquent and approachable one. I’d be hard-pressed, in all my years of fancy philosophical studies and high-brow literature and poetry reading, to find many sentences that say so much so simply. The same basic principle applies to businesses and the way they express their sustainable selves. A company might be able to get away with fudging figures here and there, but those things will ultimately come to catch up with them. Conversely, setting an ambitious but authentic sustainability course can be a huge challenge, especially at the outset, but, in time, those stories and motivations build momentum and provide an exciting tail-wind that can really push a company’s efforts forward. This is intentionality: striking a trajectory with a vision that is internally authentic and externally approachable.
In terms of messaging, intentionality concerns the way an organization talks about its “sustainable self.” As we discussed in the Rigor post, it is ill-advised for an organization to cloak itself in a deep green façade, emphasizing big, vague goals (“We’ll be ‘sustainable’ by 2050. Promise.” All the while utilizing graphics of trees and leaves …and my arch-nemesis: papyrus font). Instead, try being accessible and realistic: talk about what you’re doing; talk about what you’re not doing. Explain why. Employ a voice and a persona that accurately reflects your organization. Sustainability has to start somewhere and, by and large, the public is pretty understanding when you explain that you’ve got a long way to go, but you’re working on it.
[the next thing is to invite them in, as you work on it—this is Exchange (the E in PRIME), which will be discussed in a later blog post]
Thus, intentionality, in PRIME messaging, encourages a business to do what it says and say what it does—authentically. It means that, if your business is still trying to figure out what “GHG footprint” means, say so. Your public is smart and web-savvy and these sorts of things will come out in due time.
While there are plenty of good organizations who demonstrate the telling of deep green stories (it’s fun and, keeping in mind our observation that the ‘wrong’ path gets increasingly difficult, it’s relatively easy, too), I’m interested in doing something a bit different: how about a company that is authentically telling their not-so-green story? Hold on to your rotten tomatoes, because I think it’s worth noting when it’s done well, and that’s precisely what Canadian outdoors brand Arc’Teryx has done.
courtesy of Alpine-Guides
For those unfamiliar with Arc’Teryx, they are the gold standard of outdoors apparel. Their gear is often a couple years ahead of anything else in the market and priced accordingly. It’s absolute overkill for day-to-day citywear (though I’ll still see their jackets enshrouding early morning dog walkers), but they’ve pulled out all the stops for technical applications and the outdoors community is perpetually enamored with their latest and greatest. Their brand promise of uncompromising performance is, therefore, not always aligned (or even concerned) with issues of sustainability. If you’re making a piece of gear that needs to keep a mountaineer alive at 20,000 feet, how important is it for the zipper pulls to be partially recycled? What if that makes them 5% weaker? What if that makes them wear out 50% faster? Now, you and I mightn’t be too concerned with marginally weaker zipper pulls, but we aren’t climbing K2, either. How, then, does Arc’Teryx, an undeniably non-sustainable brand, present itself in the hyper-green-friendly outdoors industry? Very sincerely and very carefully.
“If you are looking for exceptional outdoor gear that will last for many seasons, Arc’teryx products are the premier solution to meet your needs. If you wish to support products that are made with organic and/or renewable materials we may not be the right choice for you. That being said, we continually evaluate fabrics and materials made from renewable sources and when any meet our criterion for quality and performance we will integrate them into our product line.”
Wow. In three sentences they have reinforced their own brand promise, sincerely responded to green queries and committed to reconciling the two whenever it can be uncompromisingly achieved. [though they still seem to be falling short on some counts: their $29 casual T-shirt doesn’t use organic cotton and I doubt they can make an argument that non-organic is higher performing]
All in all, the way in which Arc’Teryx shares its position on such matters is deserving of high marks for transparency and rigor, going so far as listing information about the green cleaning products that their custodial staff use and the independent auditor they’ve hired to help them understand where they are and how they can improve. Do they deserve green plaudits? No. But as far as ungreen messaging goes, they are certainly entitled to some credit where credit is due: their “Environmental Statement” demonstrates their commitment to initiatives whenever they can be achieved without sacrificing their ultimate commitment: to the person who needs the most technically demanding gear for the most technically demanding purposes in the world.
Intentionality and the other principles behind the PRIME messaging concept are fundamentally a rebuke of greenwashing as a marketing and business practice. The people at the Greenwashing Index define greenwashing as: “when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be ‘green’ through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact.” A company’s “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) page can often be Ground Zero for greenwashing and other disingenuous claims. Now, with this in mind, go back and look at the Arc’Teryx CSR site (their “Environmental Statement” serves as their CSR page)–do you see anything that comes across as greenwash? What is their green claim right up front? That they want “to continually become more aware of and sensitive to the environmental impact of our business practices.” Now, how does that intention match up with their activities? They acknowledge, point-blank that they don’t–and, until they’re equally high-performing, won’t–use recycled materials, so there’s not even any green to greenwash there. They have gone to decent lengths to hire auditors to investigate their environmental impact. They’ve contracted printers and custodians with good, rigorous environmental credentials–just green, no greenwash there. They’ve expressed a commitment to environmentally-preferable transit behavior, and backed it up with an impressive array of first place accolades for Bike to Work Week. Again, a small but solid green achievement with no sustainability hyperbole or ‘puffery‘. To be sure, Arc’Teryx has got a LONG way to go before we can applaud them and their sustainability innovation, but, as a case study for intentionality, they’re exemplary in their transparency and honesty. With such principles in place, I eagerly await the day that they’re able to meld their penchant for innovation and game-changing design with a generous helping of sustainable materials and business practices.
Foursquare, the popular social location (SoLo) app (or, as they describe themselves “[…] your favorite, er, mobile + social + friend finder + social city guide + nightlife game thing.”) has just turned one year old. While their growth has been astronomical, there have been some fundamental growing pains that we’ve all seen on the horizon for some time. [note: if you’re not familiar with Foursquare, I’d encourage you to read up here]
While there is much to be said about the way PleaseRobMe pithily encapsulated the privacy and safety issues surrounding the broadcasting of one’s location, I’d like to think out loud about a different issue that has been an elephant in the room that we’ve all been checking into: cheating (or, as Foursquare charitably puts it, “armchair mayors”).
I think it’s safe to say that one of the main reasons that Foursquare has taken off in the social location space is the way that they have made a very clever and fun social game out of the act of the checkin. (to be sure, Gowalla is still very much a player and I’ll be interested to see how the two services [and any other entrants] come to adapt to—and shape—the market and the realm of possibilities in this category) When I first introduce people to the rules and dynamics of Foursquare I often hear the inevitable question: So what’s to stop you from checking in somewhere you haven’t actually been? To which the usual response is: “…but why would you do that? If the basic idea is to let your friends know where you are and where you’ve been, what would be the point of sharing a location that you’re not actually occupying?” The next observation, of course, is to acknowledge that, as Foursquare gains popularity and adoption by businesses, the incentive to fudge one’s location history will become increasingly tempting.
Two of the more common incentives that businesses have come to extend revolve around either discounts every time you show the cashier that you checked in, or a freebie of some sort for the person who is the mayor. While ‘armchair checkins’ won’t mean much to the former category, it can certainly be an issue with the latter. Indeed, the more a mayorship is worth, the greater the likelihood that people will start to feel the temptation to overstate their attendance. In other words, we’ve known that this is a longstanding concern and, as the number of participants increase, the more competitive and contested the whole thing will become.
The problem with Foursquare’s current solution (explained here) is that it’s quite dependent upon two interrelated things that are far from dependable: the accuracy of your phone’s GPS system (or the Foursquare team’s “tricks” for non-GPS phones) and the likelihood that the person who first created the location was standing near the same place as you when you checked in.
I find myself wondering how well this will work for something like a baseball stadium—the same venue might occupy several city blocks—Foursquare will need to come up with a clever solution to this issue. Venue creation is necessarily a product of crowdsourcing, so it’s hard to have a definitive notion of the true extent of a venue’s dimensions. Perhaps they can attribute greater ‘locational leniency’ to venues racking up major checkins?
What about the average coffee shop? I’ve long thought that, as checkins become increasingly contested, venues might start utilizing a checkin code—a short sequence of numbers or letters that, like a changing wi-fi password, is given to you by the cashier when you buy your coffee. It makes cheating a lot harder and, since the Foursquare user is already sure to be stopping by the cashier for their order and the wi-fi password, they’re not put too far out of their way in the process.
Consider the alternative:—just the other day I was chatting with a guy who, while standing at the front door of a coffee shop, had his checkin flagged as being a cheat. He was frustrated not only at the prospect of being deprived of the checkin points (and the potential to close-in on the existing mayor), but was also peeved at the accusation of being dishonest. The experience left such a bad taste in his mouth that he’s since stopped using the app. (note: they do have a cheater code error form for such instances, but I don’t expect many people to go out of their way to fill out a survey every time Foursquare accuses them of cheating).
What I find myself wondering is how this will impact Foursquare’s rate of adoption (and attrition). Because it now requires users to be more precise with their game participation (no more checkins ex post facto) I can see two things happening: frustrated at the increased barrier to participation, some users, disheartened at the loss of points and increased attentiveness required by the new developments, find themselves reducing their investment and ultimately quitting; the committed users who ‘played by the rules’ all along begin to gain more mayorships and rank on the leaderboard as the “armchair mayors” drop like flies.
It will ultimately be a positive development for Foursquare if these two developments come to pass, but only if the company feels it has the momentum to stay ahead of Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp and any other entrants on the horizon. Or, to put it another way, if the SoLo market has, thus far, only seen early adopters (read: more tech-savvy, more willing to deal with UX issues), we can expect that the incoming early majority users might be less amenable to such issues and Foursquare had better get it figured out well—and quickly. It is a precarious endeavor to advocate integrity without sacrificing liberty and enjoyment (indeed, if Foursquare gets it right, they’re likely to have a few politicians [not to mention developers] knocking on their door, asking how it was done), but if they’ve demonstrated anything, the folks at Foursquare have shown that they’re a team of smart, creative and innovative folks—in other words, precisely the sort of people one would expect to do it right.
What are your thoughts? Am I overstating the significance of these moves? What about the varying sizes of venues–how can Foursquare distinguish between large and small venues (if it even needs to)? How about a checkin code–will that be too much to expect of a Foursquare user? I’d love to hear from you, so hit the comments!
This is part three of an ongoing series of developing thoughts on the intersection of authentic messaging and sustainability. In part one I introduce the concept of greenwash-fighting marketing that follows 5 “PRIME” principles: Participation, Rigor, Intentionality, Mutuality and Exchange. In part two I elaborate on the concept of participation. Please join me now as I consider the role of rigor in smart, authentic marketing efforts. As always, comments are appreciated and encouraged.
RIGOR
The state of green messaging is such that the eco-bandwagon is getting mighty close to overloaded. So many groups are jumping aboard with hidden baggage that, in some ways, it’s slowing the pace–or even shifting the overall direction–of the larger green marketplace. It’s not a matter of two different companies touting sustainability features (“which is more important: that Brand A, though made in China, has bought carbon offsets, or that Brand B, while unrepentantly polluting, is still stubbornly produced somewhere in the US?”) and the consumer having to determine which one speaks to them more deeply. Instead, many brands in a given product segment lob one or two buzzwords (and the occasional graphical identity liberally sporting the color green and flowers) into the fray, resulting in much confusion and distrust on the part of the consumer.
It’s important not to get too reactionary here–many of these brands are indeed quite sincere in their sustainability-oriented developments–it’s more of an unfortunate side-effect of incomplete thinking/messaging in the sustainability space. While an organization might be trying to express the inroads they’ve made, their efforts can erode the signification of the words they invoke; intentionally or not, they wind up muddying the waters in which the deeper green organizations are standing. I submit that much of this can be headed off by the invocation of tangible, 3rd-party verifiable claims. I call this rigor because it requires thoroughness rather than the making of off-the-cuff, feel-good claims and it would do a lot to restore the experience of sustainability in the consumer’s eyes (and heart). I think that Timberland has made a truly valuable contribution in this space by taking a brave, innovative and rigorous step forward with their ‘nutrition label‘ system. Check it out:
It would seem that most consumers (excepting deep green buyers), for sheer overload of messaging (and absence of marked, tangible differentiation and verification), skeptically take all claims on par and move on to the next stage of decision making. This, of course, serves to erode the bedrock upon which the sustainability world is trying to grow and, in time, we find ourselves in a precarious state of eco-inflation. How can one company convey that they are actually “eco-friendly” when everyone is saying they’re “eco-friendly?” With their nutrition label system, Timberland has made a great step towards that ‘marked, tangible differentiation‘ I mentioned above because they meet consumers with real, accessible numbers, right at the point of contact.
Imagine looking at several shoes in a store: the salesperson shows you the “green” shoes they carry; you pick up the timberland shoe and notice that they share several bite-sized pieces of valuable information, you pick up the competitors and …nothing. Hopefully the competitors will start to disclose their own information soon because the one problem with the Timberland labeling system is that it doesn’t give the user a sense of how the figures stack up in the context of the larger industry. That the shoe’s components are 74.4% PVC-free means that 25.6% aren’t PVC-free, which isn’t a good thing …unless the rest of the industry does even worse, but we have no way to know that. Important steps, but, as usual, there’s even more to do. I’m confident that Timberland is up to the task.
Timberland has done a good job of embodying what my grade school English teacher always used to say: don’t say it, show it. As Timberland demonstrates, this is where rigor comes in. Show the places where your company has actually done something. Back it up. This is what Portland’s own Daniel Eckhart describes as “the stink of authenticity.”
At the Green Salon (called SHIFT) put on by the Portland chapter of the AIGA (the professional association for design) Daniel, the owner of local web design consulting studio Numerosign, treated the crowd to a great presentation on precisely why rigor matters and how it can be utilized in order to “outgreen the fakers.” In the interest of showing, rather than saying, I feel it’s important to go right to the source and show you Daniel’s example of just what we’re talking about:
