From The Rooftops

PRIME Messaging: Rigor

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: