Tag: ecomagination

Green in Green

Posted on by Drew Neisser

One of the nice things about being on vacation is that you actually have time to read a couple of newspapers cover to cover. That was particularly rewarding today as I devoured both the New York Times and the Wall St. Journal. If you get a chance, check out the Journal’s special section called Eco:nomics, that contains a series of interviews they gathered at conference by the same name. The interview’s with Jeffrey Immelt (CEO of GE) and H. Lee Scott, Jr. (CEO of Wal-Mart) were particularly instructive. While both of these companies were quick to get on the green bandwagon, neither are prepared to call it missionary work. Instead they see it simply as good business. Here are two telling quotes:

JEFFREY IMMELT: I don’t think that CEO hobbies have any role in running companies. I’m an investor, I’m a capitalist and I’m a businessman. So I believe that I could generate earnings for my investors through technology. There’s no percentage for any CEO in the world to run his or her business thinking that there are not going to be carbon caps someday. Because the day it becomes law, you’re five years late. And you either get out ahead of these things or you get stomped by them.

H. LEE SCOTT JR.: It’s consistent with what we say our purpose is, and that is saving people money so they can live better. We looked at what Sam Walton started and how he developed the company. It was by eliminating waste, bringing in efficiencies. And by thinking about sustainability from our standpoint, it really is about how do you take cost out, which is waste, whether it’s through recycling, through less energy use in the store, through the construction techniques we’re using, through the supply chain. All of those things are simply the creation of waste. We found it’s consistent with the entire model we’ve had since Sam opened the first store.

Neither of these CEO’s are seeking sainthood by going green. Instead, as Emmelt put it, they see “green in green.” This sort of honesty is refreshing and avoids the pretense so often found in green-related marketing. While there is room for altruism in this world, I’m suspicious of any public company with profit-driven shareholder obligations that claims it is going green for any reason other than it is simply good business. Businesses that do badly by doing good won’t stay in business. Businesses that do well by doing good, in this case by leading the green revolution, are to be commended with higher stock prices not Nobel Prizes.

 

Ethical Green Marketing?

Posted on by Drew Neisser

One of the SIG groups I belong to posed an interesting question, “How do you ethically include green in your marketing?” Having wrestled with this question quite a bit on this blog, I offered the following response:

No company can afford not to consider how they could be more green. Employees want to work for companies that are green. Consumers want to buy from companies that are green. There is money to made from selling green products (i.e. GE windmills) and dollars to be saved by making your operations greener (i.e. Wal-Mart). That said, beware the “green” backlash. Before spending any marketing dollars selling your greenness, make sure your story is solid and your efforts transparent. GE’s ecomagination pledge is a brilliant example of how to do it right. If you choose to tout your greenness, expect watchdog organizations to police all of your activities and uncover less than green activities. This was the case with BP (as I wrote about back in August) who wanted to dump some toxins in the Great Lakes and ended up finding a greener option after watchdogs complained.

Bottom line–before you talk about being green make sure you are really doing everything to be green. Track your progress every step of the way and let your employees and the public know what you are doing. Benchmark your consumables (electricity, oil, paper, etc.) and overall carbon footprint if you can and then set goals for reducing, reusing and recycling. It’s not easy being green and don’t make it sound like it is. Wal-Mart is practically a pioneer in green marketing, yet their CEO Lee Scott, Jr. admitted publicly last week that they “weren’t really green.” This is quite an amazing statement from a company that dramatically reduced its energy consumption (just by changing the lighting in every store) and is driving its entire supply chain to reduce packaging and overall shipping costs. The point is that those that are trying to be green realize how truly difficult it is to cover every base. Under-promising and over-delivering green is a good starting place for any ethically-minded company.

Addendum 3/18 3:45pm

As companies increasingly try to out-green each another, Greenwashingindex.com aims to keep marketers honest. Here’s a brief intro from their website:

Welcome to the Greenwashing Index — home of the world’s first online interactive forum that allows consumers to evaluate real advertisements making environmental claims. “Going green” has become mainstream for businesses large and small — and that’s a good thing. What’s not so great is when businesses make environmental marketing claims that can be misleading. The intent of this Web site is to:

  1. Help consumers become more savvy about evaluating environmental marketing claims of advertisers;
  2. Hold businesses accountable to their environmental marketing claims; and
  3. Stimulate the market and demand for sustainable business practices that truly reduce the impact on the environment.

GE WHIZ, MARKETING FOR GOOD WORKS

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In marked contrast to his more famous predecessor Jack Welch, about three years ago, Jeff Immelt set about to transform GE from a huge conglomerate into a huge conglomerate that did well by doing good. Here are the four “primary pledges” of his ecomagination plan that at the time seemed like pipe dreams:

  • In R&D, the company has pledged to more than double the $700 million it spent researching cleaner technologies in 2005, to $1.5 billion by 2010.
  • GE also seeks to generate at least $20 billion of revenue in 2010 from products and services that “provide significant and measurable environmental performance advantages to customers.”
  • The third “ecomagination” commitment calls on GE to improve its operations’ energy efficiency 30% from 2004 levels by 2012.
  • Finally, GE is planning to keep the public fully informed of these efforts through various means, including its website and advertising.

Three years later, GE is on track to deliver on all of its pledges, generating a reported $15 billion in revenue from “green” products in 2007 and decreasing internal energy consumption ahead of goal. This is a text book case of thinking big and executing bigger. The ecomagination program has way too many legs to cover here so let me just call your attention to two experiential components.

The first is an online game called GeoTerra that GE launched about two years ago that continues to draw a robust audience. Here’s what Future-Making Serious Gamer had to say about it:

Geoterra is an interactive GE-branded experience that presents game-like attractions that allow players to enhance the well being of an island’s inhabitants and environment through the diversity of GE’s ecomagination products and their ability to create a greener planet.

The challenge of the game revolves around the player’s ability to interact with three eco-challenges and not only score as high as possible, but recognize the best use for each of the GE products and effectively utilize them on the fictitious island. Optimal performance results in a higher Geoscore.

The second is the “imagination center” that is being built right now in Beijing for the Olympic Games. According to the New York Times report today, this two-story building in the middle of the Olympic Green is “half fun house, half museum.”

The exhibits are aimed at adults, with enough just-for-fun features so that a visiting executive need not feel guilty about dragging along the whole family. In the center’s wind energy room, children — or any adult whose inner child is clamoring for attention — can wave their arms to make digital projections of objects sway in the wind they create. In the water purification room, they will walk on a video projection of water, with each step creating ripples.

Meanwhile, GE is building windmills around the world faster than you can say Don Quixote. Here’s to dreaming big.