Whenever filmmakers want to establish New York neighborhoods of old, they pan across the tenements lingering on the heavily laden clotheslines. These images are burned into our brains to the point that just seeing a clothesline today is enough to signal hard times or a neighborhood gone to seed. Some communities have gone so far as to ban the use of clotheslines to prevent an unsightly display of undies setting up an almost comic skirmish between fans and foes.
The Wall St. Journal reported on this battle yesterday in their article called: The Right to Dry: A Green Movement Is Roiling America…Clothesline Has Neighbors Bent Out of Shape in Bend; An Illegal Solar Device? This story caught my attention, not just because of the “dry” humor, but also because the heroine of this conflict:
To Susan Taylor, it was a perfect time to hang her laundry out to
dry. The 55-year-old mother and part-time nurse strung a clothesline
to a tree in her backyard, pinned up some freshly washed flannel
sheets — and, with that, became a *renegade*.
Susan’s foes in this epic struggle include both the developer and snooty neighbors:
To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban
blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains.
“This bombards the senses,” interior designer Joan Grundeman says of
her neighbor’s clothesline. “It can’t possibly increase property
values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood.”
For marketers, this seemingly insignificant episode is in fact a harbinger of opportunity. With dryers consuming 6% of US household electricity, using clotheslines is not an insignificant way for people to try to be greener. It’s also cheaper since the sun, at least for now, is free. So consider all these potential business development opportunities:
* Dryer manufacturers will want to build machines that use
significantly less energy going well beyond Energy Star standards;
* Clothing makers could create a whole new brand of garments that
are particularly suited to line drying;
* Home/garden suppliers may want to produce clothesline shields that
blend into the environment but hide the clothes;
* Sign companies could create “I Dry Green” posters for homeowners
who want to brandish their right to use the sun;
* And one inspired clothespin producer would be smart to seize the
day, branding their product as “the green linchpin.”
The point of all this silliness is that with every challenge comes opportunity. Marketers can not afford to ignore the growing desire of consumers to do their part, however small, to help stop global warming. Instead, marketers would be smart to *inspire *the movement with products and services that help consumers make a difference.