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.

©2012 From The Rooftops. All Rights Reserved.

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:

©2012 From The Rooftops. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 From The Rooftops. All Rights Reserved.

Easy!? Not at all.

©2012 From The Rooftops. All Rights Reserved.

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?

©2012 From The Rooftops. All Rights Reserved.