Marketing for Good turns 1 next week. One year of chronicling how select marketers are trying to do well by doing good. One year of monitoring cause marketing, corporate social responsibility efforts and all things green. 220 or so posts later, I’m happy to report that it has been worth the effort. I’ve made a lot of new friends, honed my POV and learned to write really really fast. I’ve even been approached by PR types who wanted me to write about their clients which was both flattering and unsettling.
As a birthday present to MFG, I’m delighted to join Blogger Action Day and focus today’s column on green. First, I wanted to highlight a few of my recent MFG posts on green activities:
* Ericcson’s Green Tower of Power
* The Battle over Clotheslines
* BMW’s Hydrogen Car
* Starbuck’s Green Game
* CPG’s downsize packaging to be more green
* The risks of over-stating your greenness
Then I wanted to share the highlights of a conversation I had last week with the CMO of a large food manufacturer. He and his company will remain confidential for the moment as I still need to convince him to take his company’s Green story public (so let’s just call them Company G for now). The story is a good one made all the more remarkable by the fact that they haven’t promoted any of this to their customers.
A few years ago Company G decided to go as green as they could without breaking the bank. They looked at every element of their manufacturing and distribution process. They started to use rugged pallets (fiberglass?) which could be reused over and over again versus the cheaper wooden ones that usually break-down after a couple of shipments. They examined their packages and eliminated as much waste as possible including plastic lids for yogurt. 85% of their packaging comes from recycled materials. They talked Wal-Mart into taking an 8-pack instead of 6-pack which increased packing efficiencies and decreased shipping costs. They did more and I will be sure to write about them more once they are ready to share it all. Turns out Company G is also addressing a number of health related issues including shifting to hormone-free milk for all its dairy products, not just those they make for Whole Foods.
I asked the CMO if he had considering telling the world about their Green efforts. He said “you know, we’ve just been doing it and are probably too close to it to recognize the promotional opportunities.” Interesting. Could it be that the companies that are sincerely going Green are the ones that are too busy to talk about it? Conversely, could it be that the ones that are actively promoting their greenness aren’t sincerely committed? I have often cautioned about greenwashing on this blog noting that over-promising and under-delivering would we discovered and appropriately ridiculed. But over-delivering and under-promising feels like a lost opportunity. Not just for the company but the world we share.
Every Green claim is a gauntlet thrown. Every Green claim leads to a potential competitive advantage that other companies will have to consider matching. Green claims beget Green awareness beget genuine change. A recent study by the organizers of the Good and Green Conference noted that more than 66 of Americans believe that “doing well by doing good is a savvy business strategy” as reported on Associated Content. Here’s a bit more on this conference:
The Good and Green Conference [November 29-30 in Chicago] is the
green marketing conference designed to teach mainstream marketing
professionals how to tap into the benefits of green marketing
without greenwashing.
The conference further supports the notion behind today’s Blogger Action Day:
According to these Web 2.0 experts, bloggers and social media sites
have helped drive the niche environmental movement of the early
Earth Days into mainstream audience discussions across the world.
They also believe that green is the new color of a company’s bottom
line.
It’s nice to know it all adds up. Many voices make a chorus, many choruses make a movement. The Green movement is as undeniable as it is complex. All I know is that we marketers need to join the movement now. With all our collective might, we can do well for our brands and of course, do some good for the world we share.