From The Rooftops

Story Plotting Sustainable Design

What does sustainable design mean to you? That is the question posed by this evening’s AIGA SHIFT event here in Portland. Simple enough, right!? If you think so, then you should probably be presenting in my place!

Sustainability is often discussed by virtue of the United Nations’ Brundtland Commission (1987) definition of sustainable development: “Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While many alternative meanings have been suggested, I think that the Brundtland definition is a fine place to start, especially since it dovetails nicely with sustainable design in addition to sustainable development.

But I can’t think about sustainability without also pondering John Elkington’s triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit, because I have not seen a better reflection of the complexities associated with sustainability. While the potential for profit often motivates initial product or service design, anything falling short of the above two definitions of sustainability is simply, um, falling short. But how do you know, when you set out to create something, that it will deserve the badge of “sustainability”!? Well, among other things, I think you need some damn thoughtful planning.

Sustainable design should be Considered, Intentional, Rigorous, and Engaged (with the world around us).

So, thanks to AIGA’s prompting, I offer up the following model which can be applied in the initial product/service concepting stages to see just how well your idea stacks up on the sustainability scales. Based on the Story Plotter Framework, originally conceived by the fine folks at On Your Feet and sometimes presented by Gary Hirsch (of OYF) and yours truly, I’ve simply taken the grid, turned it into a gauntlet of doom, and applied it to sustainable design thinking. And I think it could work.

You take your concept or idea, and you insert it from the left in the Sustainable Design Maker 9000, and out the other end comes a screaming, bruised and perhaps totally unrecognizable version of your original idea.

Here’s what to consider at each step:

1. Facts: What are the facts about your current design that make it more sustainable? Perhaps it will be made from a renewable resource? Distributed via bicycle? Improving the efficiency of an existing product? Etc. Continue until you’ve listed all such facts.
2. Contradictions: What are the inherent contradictions in your design? Maybe it requires wasteful packaging? Maybe parts have to be sourced from exotic locales? Continue until you think you’ve explored all of the contradictions in your current concept.
3. Possibilities: What are the possibilities for addressing your contradictions and even going further to improve the sustainability of your idea? Could you find a local source for parts? Create a package that is reuseable? Really reach here. What if…
4. Anxiety: Addressing these issues, exploring the realms of possibility will most certainly lead to anxiety. If we do THAT, then we won’t be able to grow as fast or those mill workers might lose their jobs. Sustainable design comes here to die, so deal with your anxieties and figure out which are real and which are imagined, then deal with them. Don’t let them hold you back!

That’s it in a nutshell. I think it works but it’s just a start. A new way to think or at least some new things to think about. What do you think?

-Scott

PRIME Messaging: Intentionality

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.

Check out their “Take on Environmental Stewardship”  it’s impressive for its unwavering honesty and sincerity.

“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.

Seeing Red From the Green Police

Sunday night provided us with one of the great American spectator/armchair quarterbacking events: the Super Bowl advertisements. While there are plenty of folks commenting on this year’s crop as a whole, I have been exceptionally interested in one particular ad (and the fallout and discussion that has ensued). Here at From The Rooftops we are, as you’ve noticed, deeply passionate about authentic claims, sustainability and marketing. It should come as no surprise, then, that, right after the Audi Green Police ad [if you've not seen the commercial, I encourage you to watch it, as the rest of this post won't make as much sense without it] aired I received an impassioned text from Scott, asking if I’d seen it. While much post-Super Bowl revelry took place in the streets and bars, I took to my laptop and wound up spending much of the evening surveying the reception paid to the Green Police ad.

And what a reception it has received! Some proclaimed it as validation of the green movement while other responded that it’s no laughing matter and will be the new reality in an eco-fascist future. Others made the easy observation that, perhaps as much as anything, Audi was trying to be vague yet provocative so as to stoke the fire of conversation that we have witnessed in the following few days.

Before I weigh in too heavily, I’d like, for diversity’s sake, to call out some of the types of responses I’ve seen out there so far:

This is yet another reminder that the ‘green’ movement is a harbinger of a new age of fascism

“Is this what Al Gore’s presidency would look like?” — New York Times (comment)

“Audi’s bottom-line corporate message is that the Green State is here to stay and that capitulating to it — and capitalizing on it, as Audi has — is the path to survival. It’s no laughing matter, really.” — Michelle Malkin

Oh, great, now it’s going to be even harder for us to be taken seriously

“Ugh, Middle America just took another unneeded step away from feeling that sustainability is cool, easy, and normal.” — Triple Pundit (a generally great resource in the susbiz arena)

Climate Progress

It’s okay, it’s a positive ad. Right? Right, guys?

Grist (another green resource with which I will sometimes disagree but highly recommend)

the Facebook status messages of many friends

OMG, did you really just make an indirect allusion to the Ordnungspolizei?!

“The implications of Audi’s choice of name for their campaign could be huge, especially since Audi is a German company. The first question is obvious – didn’t anyone at Audi’s PR or advertising arm/agency do any research?” — Danny Brown

“It is simply astounding that a German company would play against such a framing, making oblique references to a Nazi police unit and providing what many will see as a broadside against environmentalism as somehow fascist in nature.” — Daily Kos

It’s an ad. It got people talking about the brand. Ergo, the ad worked. Sorta.

“So what was the intent of the commercial? To get people talking about Audi, of course. And by that standard, it was a success. Did it make me want to buy one? No, but it did make me want to get a copy of Cheap Trick’s greatest hits.” — Blog of New Orleans

For our purposes here, I am less concerned with debating the merits of these various claims in order to reach a decisive position regarding the intentions of the Audi marketing team (they can speak for themselves here). Indeed, I think it’s orthogonal to the most important consideration: regardless of the intention of the ad team, how does the reception of this advertisement inform our understanding of authentic claims (in this case, concerning the characteristics of “green”).

I think it speaks volumes that, in the Wall Street Journal’s Super Bowl 2010 Best and Worst Ads, the Audi Green Police advertisement has, at least thus far, won the vote for Best Ad …and for Worst Ad. (as of 6:37pm on Thursday night: 2/11/10: 12.7% for Best and 16.8% Worst) It could be a Dickens story: “It was the best of ads, it was the worst of ads….” A tale of one advertisement being folded into multiple–and, seemingly, conflicting–narratives. I think that this, as much as anything, is the lasting legacy of the Audi commercial: we, as a message-receiving (and -filtering) body, have become hypersensitive to green claims–and for different (but often interrelated) reasons. So much is this the case that the intended audience (Green consumers) can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, and their antagonists (just do a Google search about this ad, you’ll find them) can’t decide whether to laugh or grab their torches and pitchforks. Seriously, if you’ve got the time, I encourage you to read the comments section of ANY of the links I’ve shared in this post–they are interesting, angering, funny, disconcerting, and, above all, illuminating studies in the post-Inconvenient Truth, mid-Tea Party green marketing landscape.

With regard to claims surrounding sustainability, agitation has started to encroach upon levity and message-makers (and, in the social web, we’re all message-makers) must tread very carefully, as our messages (and, apparently, footage of pollution-detecting[?] anteaters, even) are cast outward, and not projected into a blank-slate vacuum of doe-eyed but otherwise agreeable and passive viewers. Rather, modern messages are not projected at all–they are shared horizontally, from mouth to mouth and Twitter account to Twitter account. Whether intentional (or even desirable), or not, they are living, breathing invitations to participation. And participate we will: dissecting, sharing, commenting, remixing, and yes, flaming, our ways to a co-opted narrative, conforming with our evolving expression of how these claims speak to us. Especially when we start speaking back.

– Caleb

What do you think? Has Audi hurt their green messaging by putting their would-be customers on the defensive? Is all the extra attention worth it, regardless? What about their reference to the Green Police? They seem to have sincerely wanted to make sure that it was okay with the Jewish community, should they have changed the name to the “Eco Police”? (the Cheap Trick song would have been harder to tie in, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is for you to decide!)  What does this mean for our ability to “laugh at ourselves” in the sustainability sphere? Is Audi even “one of us,” with making a name for themselves as green when their centerpiece is a (repackaged) diesel car?