Here’s a little exercise that I’d highly encourage you to try some time (especially if you’re a marketer). I’ve seen it work in settings large and small, and it strongly demonstrates the power of story each and every time. It goes like this:
Grab someone you know (or a total stranger for that matter). In the next minute, share with them a story that is told in your family about another member of your family. Next, ask that person to summarize what that member of your family cares about. I’ll bet you they nail it. Based on one 15-60 second story, they’ll be able to summarize one or more of your family member’s personal values.
Lisa Watson, co-founder of Cupcake Jones, shares a funny story about testicular cancer!?
Wouldn’t you love it if you could tell such an effective story about your company!? YOU CAN! We, as marketers, spend hours every day crafting language, when we could be capturing and sharing the stories that exemplify our company’s values and benefits. Like never before, it’s time to become storytellers rather than wordsmiths.
For a little fun, and an example of this exercise in action, watch this clip from the session I did with Gary Hirsch at GoGreen ’09. Watch the whole thing or jump to the 26 minute mark for this specific exercise.
Contemporary marketing is about relationships in motion. This observation might seem axiomatic, but it’s worth unpacking: if our goal is to foster relationships between an organization and the people (note: people, not consumers) with whom it interacts, we need to be sure we’re facilitating the dynamic in a fulfilling and authentic manner. It’s like any relationship: you learn about one another by virtue of what you share and what you do. If you like what you learn, you seek a closer connection. As you’re getting to know someone, where is your emotional sense of them derived? The stories they share, the way their eyes light up when they passionately discuss a topic, and so on. If you ask someone “what do you stand for?” They might say: ”flip-flops on Fridays, free coffee refills and the abolition of the Designated Hitter rule.” But there’s another question—an unasked one—that is also being answered: “what moves you?” This question is at least as important but, again, answered more subtly: the way a person gesticulates wildly when talking about their favorite things, the company they keep, the way their stories all seem to circle back to the same particular issues—this is sometimes received subconsciously, but it is certainly stored away, deep in a person’s mind and heart. Again, it’s not just what you stand for, but what you move for. Does this person (or brand) leap into action for things that I care about? As fundamentally social beings we notice these things and store them away as the building blocks of subsequent relationships and social constructs.
Who wants to hang out with boring people?
Let’s take the observation that relationships are cultivated through sharing—the rational and emotional process of exchanging values and actions—and return to my original statement: marketing is about relationships. It would seem, then, that a big part of marketing concerns sharing the same things: values and actions. What are your organizations biggest passions? What inspires your employees to get out and volunteer? What does your brand support, even when the cameras aren’t rolling? People want to know these things, and in a world of increasingly democratic and horizontal communications, they’re going to find out. It is my thesis, then, that good, authentic marketing is about sharing with people not just the things that your brand stands for but also the things that it moves for. “Standing” implies values that are immutable …but also stationary. In our live-tweeting, 24/7 news cycling world, you might need to have a dynamic means of expressing yourself, too: this is action marketing. To be perfectly clear, this certainly doesn’t mean that the things that move you ought to be transitory or orthogonal to your identity. Indeed, the things that you move for need to be the things that are so brand-aligned that your entire organization leaps into action. It is precisely this action-through-alignment that sets you apart from the pack and closer to the people you’re trying to reach.
Obviously, it’s important to make sure that you articulate what your brand stands for (hopefully it’s more than flip-flops and coffee refills). What I’m suggesting here is that smart brands in the 21st century will need to be in tune with the confluence of two additional elements: time and passion. You want people to become passionate about your brand—it’s contagious. To share what moves you is to demonstrate that your organization is capable of being moved: it has personality. Life. We look for these ‘action’ characteristics because we have always looked for them in social relationships. These are the qualities we keep close and, in turn, share.
Businesses need this contagiousness. As brands become increasingly shared socially—horizontally—among people and across networks they need to have an authentic reason for doing so. Happiness spreads easily (witness the VW “Fun” project). So does indignation (just ask Nestle). We share and connect with all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, but they go nowhere if there are no actions with which people can resonate. Because of this, I encourage your brand strategizing (and expression) to reflect some thinking about what your brand moves for, because we know your customer is.
This is part six 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 gush about rigor and how strong, verifiable sustainability information is one of the surest antidotes to greenwashing. In part four I discuss intentionality in terms of expressing an organization’s true sustainability aims: how to do it well and why it’s sometimes more important to be honest than good. In part five I consider the role of mutuality as a valuable step in moving authentic sustainability messaging externally, into the public realm. Please join me now as I look at exchange as a means of understanding how and why an increasingly empowered (and digitally connected) base of customers and supporters plays to the strengths of authentic brands. As always, comments are appreciated and encouraged.
Exchange
Sustainability claims: Are accompanied with an invitation to talk more about the company’s “walking of their sustainable talk” [Exchange]
Companies with authentic sustainability messaging have a huge advantage over greenwashers: as a customer presses deeper for more information they are presented with an increasingly compelling story. Because they have something to hide, inauthentic marketers will press for the opposite effect: deflect queries and obstruct deeper conversations as much as possible; many people are quite savvy to this behavior and don’t seem to appreciate it very much. To be sure, this is an unenviable position; perhaps this was possible back before consumers possessed the means of horizontal interaction, but those days are gone. Much of the public is quite skeptical about sustainability claims (and for good reason); the better equipped you are to demonstrate your chops, the better (and more differentiated) you are. This is exchange: the last (and perhaps most rewarding) step in the PRIME marketing process. You’ve set the foundation (participation), backed it up with integrity and depth (rigor, intentionality), talked about it accurately (intentionality), supported it with partners (mutuality) and have now successfully piqued the curiosity of the market. Relax and enjoy the ride: you’re doing good work and people want to talk with you about it.
How to go about this? It will, of course, depend upon your brand, goals, customer, etc., but there are some general principles and tools that are useful for most any organization. At its core, exchange is about being willing and able to talk with your customers, but even before that it’s about listening to them. Understanding what your customers want to know is not only invaluable for matters of business intelligence and strategy; it means that, if done properly, your responses will be received as being on-message, appropriate and meaningful.
This exchange between you and your customers (and your customers among themselves) is a great opportunity to share a fuller story of why you do what you do. Indeed, Simon Sinek, suggests you start with “why” because it is in the “why” that we can inspire people. Ever on-message, Start With Why is the title of his book and the theme of his TEDx talk.
Sinek offers a valuable means of connecting these dots with people because you’re making the connection together and in terms that are mutually significant. In his TEDx talk he suggests inverting the process of engaging people. Instead of spending all your time speaking about features and benefits (“what”) or value proposition (“how”), he observes that there is deep value when we talk about why we do what we do (“why”). It’s an invitation to share a deep, emotional connection that really gets to the heart of your reason for being in business. This invitation is ideally suited to the PRIME principle of exchange because it plays to your strengths: rigor, openness, passion and authenticity.
It has been said that “advertising is the price of being boring,” you have successfully demonstrated that you’re not boring because people are actively seeking you out. They want to talk with you about …well, YOU. Similar to Sinek’s proposition of starting with “why,” Scott likes to put this in terms of three key factors: who you are, what you stand for and why you matter. Your goal now is to listen to these individuals and be prepared to share these things (among others) with them regarding their favorite issues: an exchange of meaning, sincerity and value.
Lately I’ve had several organizations seeking out help with their “social media strategy.” As I spend more and more time explaining these things I’ve started to initiate the process by asking a series of questions: who is your customer? who is your brand? where do they meet? why?
Ultimately this hinges upon one observation: we seek out and sustain connections in the social web in order to create value. This is an oft-stated thesis, but an important one nonetheless. My goal today is to briefly introduce how and why this is and how it relates to brands.
a glimpse at life in the Clif Bar breakroom
In the brand strategy world we often encourage a client to “let the brand drive the decision process.” This brand-based thinking is also very useful in the social media world. If your brand makes rubber gaskets for industrial widgets it’s probably more important that you have a solid blog (and Twitter account) that enables you to discuss industry trends/topics related to your customers and their up- and downstream needs than for you to have a Foursquare mayorship incentive or a Facebook page with giveaways. If your washer brand is based upon integrity, quality, service and price and your customers are industrial widget makers, then you’ll probably want to use your social web presence to enhance their experience of you and your brand: respond promptly to customer input, share behind the scenes content that enhances your brand and its story. Use it as a means of differentiation: put up that funny photo of the time the account manager’s dog got into the breakroom leftovers. Have your senior product designer put up a technical blog post that shares R&D information about how and why the new line of washers is superior to the competition. Post a write-up of the company’s Relay For Life team. Don’t try to get Justin Bieber to tweet about your product. The supply chain manager mightn’t care if you have a Facebook “like” button on your homepage, but you might build a closer connection with them if they come across the Relay For Life post and see that there are people behind the email addresses with which they interact. Whatever you do, make sure it’s valuable: simultaneously in service to the brand and the customer’s needs.
Seeing as it’s the social web, there is even more potential for socially-oriented brands. If you have a brand that cultivates supporters, this is a great way to solidify that relationship and turn them into evangelists. Again, this is done by utilizing your social media efforts to be valuable. Give them a behind-the-scenes peek at the brand they love. Save them time and money. Share content they care about. Give them something exclusive that rewards them for reaching out to your brand. Be fun. The tricky part is understanding how customer needs and expectations interface with the brand. There is no ready solution to this challenge—no “app for that”—only active listening and earnest interaction. That being said, the process is moved along greatly if you make sure to “let the brand drive the decision.” As someone who loves consumer insights and digital ethnography, I speak from experience when I say that there is MUCH that can be learned about your business by working with the people who evangelize it. They are, after all, the very reason you do what you do. They love what you stand for—the way you make them feel—talk with them about it. Find out what more can be done.
There are several factors that you must keep in mind when constructing a social media strategy. A few important ones:
Objectives – what is your desired outcome? (and don’t just say “more money!”) More brand impressions? A 10% increase in sales of product X over the next 60 days? More followers on Twitter? More blog comments? Improved clickthrough from the point of first contact to the product page? More positive ratings on Yelp? The first mistake that brands make is to step into the social web without a coherent strategy and set of desired outcomes. Make a strategic plan and work from there. Revisit it frequently. Make mistakes, own up to them, learn, improve.
Available resources—Be honest with yourself: do you have 5 hours a week to do all the requisite legwork to keep a sustained and engaging presence online? 10 hours? 1 hour? Your social media strategy is better served by 2 hours of precise, effective and well-aligned efforts than 5 disoriented hours of standing in front of a “firehose” of digital information. Many organizations are tempted to hand it all off to a “Social Media Intern,” but I’ve always encouraged a reexamination of this. Would you leave an intern in charge of your press releases, customer service calls, sales generation, media relations, copywriting and branding? Of course not. The social web calls for strategic thinking and execution. Invite all the appropriate parties to the table for strategic planning and work from there. If you have an intern and you think you need to spend 20 hours/week executing this plan, you need to involve them in the whole process. Find someone who has what it takes to be a director-of-social-media-in-training and groom them for the big time. If you treat the social efforts as being that thing that the intern does between getting the mail and replacing the coffee filter, you’re going to get what you paid for.
Creativity—One of the things that I love about the social web is how much room there is for innovation. It’s wide open, folks; you can do more than just self-promote and give away swag—take this as an opportunity to refine and demonstrate your brand promise and identity. A couple examples of interesting (though not necessarily recommended) initiatives:
Skittles changed the front page of their website to simply display any and all tweets that had “Skittles” in the title. …with interesting results.
Air New Zealand asked trivia questions about New Zealand and got over 4,000,000 organic brand impressions.
Jimmy Choo’s exclusive and high-end Foursquare treasure hunt encouraged fans to seek out destinations that were a part of the fashion scene.
OMG, I'm FAMOUS!
These campaigns all come back to that recurring theme of value as a factor of branding. Skittles, who for so long encouraged us to do the impossible act of tasting rainbows, opened their front door and enabled us to do the impossible: instantly find ourselves on the front page of Skittles.com. Jimmy Choo offered a way for high-end customers who care about fashion to use their smartphones to more readily hone their visibility on that very scene, all by virtue of being encouraged to interact with a brand that thrives in the space.
You can see how this value-building process is delicate: it would make little sense for an elite, niche brand like Jimmy Choo to open up their front page to a Twitter search, and Skittles would be tremendously off-brand if they were to send you on a treasure hunt among fancy shops selling $200 T-shirts. A brand must first understand their customer and how their customer wants to interact, then brainstorm–come up with a fun, surprising and meaningful way to make that happen. Try it. Don’t worry about figuring out if you’re doing it right; you’ll know because they’ll tell you.
This is part five 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 gush about rigor and how strong, verifiable sustainability information is one of the surest antidotes to greenwashing. In part four I discuss intentionality in terms of expressing an organization’s true sustainability aims: how to do it well and why it’s sometimes more important to be honest than good. Please join me now as I consider the role of mutuality as a valuable step in moving authentic sustainability messaging externally, into the public realm. As always, comments are appreciated and encouraged.
Mutuality
Sustainability claims: Use, whenever possible or necessary, third-party partners for support and advancement of their goals [Mutuality]
As we’ve discussed so far, sustainable systems are not easily implemented, let alone discussed publicly. Many organizations find themselves in a Catch-22 where they vacillate between their interest in exploring elements of sustainability and their fear of reprisal for any missteps (or misstatements) along the way. The PRIME framework is specifically designed to work through these issues. Mutuality is concerned with the advancement of an organization’s goals and partners who can help it do precisely that. There are two parts to this: the goals and the partners.
We’ll get to goals in a moment but first I want to say that, regarding third-party partners, it’s important to recognize that it is not only unnecessary but sometimes counterproductive for an organization to clamber for any and all certification and legitimacy-building labels they can muster. It’s not about racing to get the most third-party partners; it’s about collaborating with the best, most mission-aligned organizations that are out there. If you’re an architecture firm whose designs don’t reflect any concern about environmental issues, it would be kind of silly for you to go to brag about using partially recycled paper or having an Energy Star refrigerator in the office. You’re an architecture firm; most of your environmental impact is going to be associated with the production and utilization of your buildings, not the device your office uses to keep lunch cold. Conversely, here at From The Rooftops, the designs we produce are conceptual rather than physical—some of the largest parts of our footprint will be associated with commuting, paper and energy consumption. For us, using an efficient refrigerator would be a much more sizable chunk of our footprint.
You can see how this relates to goals, then. The goal of an architecture firm is to design great buildings, not refrigerate leftovers in a slightly more efficient manner. To be sure, it’s great to do that, too, but an organization needs to be honest with itself regarding its identity and purpose (not to mention the way it expresses such things): if you design buildings and you want to lay some claim to sustainability, you’re probably going to want to be conversant in all things LEED and other green design organizations and standards. Why does your organization exist? And don’t tell me your answer is just, “to make widgets.” Hopefully the goals of your organization are more significant—to help solve a certain problem; to bring about greater happiness; to design enduring aesthetic structures that not only shelter but inspire—something that matters, right? Right. Okay, how does this match up with your sustainability aspirations? If those deeper reasons for your organization’s existence lack a legitimate sustainability element, you’re going to be hard-pressed to talk about it authentically. Pepsi’s brand goals might be promoting “enjoyment,” but if their brand is held back by various issues (water, bottles, corn syrup), they will have a hard time talking about “enjoyment [+ sustainability].” An architecture firm that has credentials for and designs passive homes or LEED projects? Yeah, we can share more enthusiastically in their story of: “designing enduring aesthetic structures that not only shelter but inspire [+ sustainability].” Once our imaginary architecture firm has their in-house ducks in a row (via participation, rigor and intentionality), they have the foundation and legitimacy from which they can begin to move externally and seek additional verification and symbiotic relationships (like certified passive homes, LEED, etc.) through which they might be able to enhance the magnitude of their efforts.
The PRIME principle of participation requires demonstrating the systemic, deep internalization of sustainability. Rigor helps you talk about it in a manner that is validated and meaningful to an increasingly skeptical audience. Intentionality concerns the discussion of such things in line with a frank, brand-aligned and consistent narrative. Mutuality can be seen as a step toward moving this process externally—finding real-world partners that are aligned with the deep system of internal, well-supported and brand-aligned claims and activities. Such brand- (and therefore goal-)aligned partnerships are often mutually beneficial: by adopting and promoting a third-party standard, the firm gains tangible support for their green claims and the third-party organization gains increasing legitimacy in the marketplace (by virtue of a “network externality” or “network effect”), thus enhancing the value of the standard and encouraging others to adopt it as well. In this way, the adoption of such standards can be not only beneficial for the adopting organization and the third-party auditor but for all others—past, present and future—working with the auditor, too. I guess you could say that, sometimes, 1 + 1 can equal 3 …unless you’re Mr. Garciano, my old math teacher, in which case you’d shake your head and say, “Caleb, how did you ever make it past elementary school!?”
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.
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:
This is part two 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. Please join me now as I consider the role of participation in smart, authentic marketing efforts. As always, comments are appreciated and encouraged.
PARTICIPATION
For an organization to anchor its sustainability efforts (and correspondent messaging) on solid ground it must express the right information to the right people at the right time, in a participatory manner. A brand that isn’t fully engaged in the sustainability world will have a hard time ascertaining all of these “right” factors if they haven’t committed the proper resources to their efforts.
Inbev, the Belgium-based conglomeration that in 2008 purchased Anheuser-Busch, has recently made headlines for announcing that it would make a “30 percent reduction per unit of production in the Company’s water usage worldwide since 2007” which is both important (considering they’re the largest brewer in the world, meaning that this reduction amounts to the equivalent of 25,000 Olympic-size swimming pools) and commendable; but it is still a rather shallow step when compared to the efforts of the eighth largest brewer: New Belgium Brewing.
While Inbev has committed to making some process improvements that are smart, better for the planet, easy to implement and directly tied to their bottom line, New Belgium has done those things and proceeded to take an even more holistic approach, demonstrating tremendous participatory depth and breadth. Not only does New Belgium use their water efficiently, their website explains that they collect two valuable byproducts from their wastewater efforts: methane and a nutrient-rich sludge. They use the methane in on-site energy production and they have partnered with another company to install a small treatment plant next door to their facility that takes their process wastewater to produce a sludge that creates a high protein fish food for aqua-farms.
[I know what you’re thinking, “But Caleb, won’t the fish get drunk?” Yes, dear readers, yes they will. Those lucky darn fish will get fed and drunk off some of the finest booze this side of Ambrosia-ville. See, New Belgium even cares about giving the fish quality grub and grog! Social justice points!]
Do they launch a huge advertising campaign about their new getting-fish-sustainably-drunk program? No. Do they hire models in fish outfits? No. But they certainly make the info readily available to people who are inclined to learn more. Authentic participation in the efforts to push the sustainability envelope— full-circle thinking—it’s hard to fake and really inspiring to see.
So I’ve been chatting with a lot of organizations and individuals lately about ways to articulate a lively and meaningful sustainable brand presence on an increasingly cluttered web. I see many brands using Twitter but cringe when I see them merely using it as a channel for announcing their latest press release. That cringe becomes a grimace when the corporate blathering is concerned with unreal sustainability claims.
I started thinking about the instances when sustainability claims ring hollow and the times when they really resonate with people. I was thinking about some of the brands who do a good job of using the social web for talking about sustainability issues and found a few commonalities. From these I came up with a short list of qualities that seem to be vital for such authenticity and resonance:
Sustainability claims:
Are conveyed in a manner that demonstrates that the company has really internalized the matter (they haven’t merely added a sustainability intern to the PR department) [Participation]
Are based upon measurable, tangible and verifiable targets or numbers [Rigor]
Are in line with an evident and earnest interest in progressing toward a more sustainable system [Intentionality]
Use, whenever possible or necessary, third-party partners for support and advancement of their goals [Mutuality]
Are accompanied with an invitation to talk more about the company’s “walking of their sustainable talk” [Exchange]
Once I had these qualities drawn up, it was only a short hop and a conceptual skip until I’d created something that the business world really needs more of: catchy acronyms!
Participation, Rigor, Intentionality, Mutuality, Exchange: PRIME
Some of my favorite non-greenwashy companies (I used to work in the outdoors industry, so some of the first ones to come to mind are: Timberland, Keen, GoLite, Nau) exemplify all of these things. What I find myself wondering now is if it’s useful to others to think about things in terms of the PRIME construct.
These are some rough preliminary thoughts, but I’m curious to get your input—Is this a useful mechanism for describing such important characteristics? Do these qualities fit the bill? Are some missing? Does the business world need another buzzword acronym (a buzzronym?) in the first place? -Caleb
I have honestly never experienced a napkin dispenser that is harder to use than these little numbers at Sparky’s Pizza. The URL for www.antagonizeyourcustomernap.com must have been taken, so they went with EasyNap instead.
