PRIME Authentic Messaging
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
The good news is if you can communicate this around as a standard that people can use, then feasibly you can diminish some of the effects of greenwashing by changing the rhetoric surrounding the issue. The bad news is this will only work until such time as your acronym gets appropriated by the same people who fomented green ignorance such that greenwashing became both possible and common. If value can be found at the margins of institutional thought, then it can be adapted or adopted. Adoption is more monetarily, culturally and psychically expensive; so, adapting it to fit the pre-existing will of the institution happens more often. The question I would ask is: How can this appropriation be staved off as long as possible in order to maximize the effect your way of thinking can have.
I see a scale issue that could be exploited, in that measurability still needs benchmarks, and the companies you’ve mentioned can be used to develop these tools in such a way as to generate guidelines from which implementation and change management techniques can be derived to encourage adoption rather than adaptation. It will be significantly harder to obfuscate or exploit your acronym for inauthentic purposes once you’ve set down clear, scalable benchmarks for relatively simple third-party evaluations. You can make it easy to publically embarrass those who should fail the tests, but have taken great pains to pretend they don’t.
Hangers-on can be annoying, posers can dilute the value of what you’re doing, but liars…scratch a liar, find a thief. Liars steal whatever value you tried to create. A disincentive might be a good idea to discourage adaptation rather than adoption.
Either way, Caleb, should you want an extra set of hands going forward on this, I’m here for you.
[...] 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” [...]
[...] 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” [...]