Flipping through Business Week the other night, I was struck by the number of Marketing for Good initiatives out there. I will review two such efforts in this post, including ads from Home Depot and Honda. It seems “doing well by doing good” is contagious.
For example, a few months after Wal-Mart announced its massive Sustainability initiative, Home Depot has a print campaign featuring the headline, “What Do You Call a Year in Which You Sell 63 Million Earth-Friendly Products? A Good Start.” The ad goes on to detail Home Depot’s commitment to offering “customers a wide range of eco-savvy options.” The photo of the cute pigtailed little girl holding a compact fluorescent light bulb is actually quite eye-catching. For all I know, Home Depot started this campaign months ago and, frankly, I don’t really care if it simply an effort to “keep up with the Waltons”. The point is, Home Depot sells a lot of stuff that ends up in a lot of homes and if they, too, push environmentally friendly light bulbs, more will be sold and energy will be saved.
Speaking of saving energy, Honda continues to tout “Environmentology,” noting in their print ads that they are “the most fuel-efficient auto company in America.” I’m delighted to see them make such a claim and hope it sparks a war among the automakers to prove who can be the greenest. These are the kinds of war I can whole-heartedly support.