Top marketing tips: Think green, sell green

Until recently green products have been seen as a niche market, but as cutting carbon takes centre stage with governments and consumers, the push to go green is going mainstream. In an attempt to pre-empt legislation dictating carbon targets, brands are launching new products and greening existing offerings at a dizzying speed.

But companies must find ways to marry their environmental push with products that are both enticing to consumers and that sell. Meanwhile, savvy shoppers are becoming increasingly skilled at spotting attempts to oversell a product’s green credentials, and are quick to punish greenwash.

It’s a tough balancing act, often in untested waters, but marketing and green experts say following some basic rules of thumb and thinking a bit outside the standard marketing box can spell success.

Knowledge and transparency

Successful products have to stand for things people care about and one of those dimensions is “green”, says Jane Kendall, project director at marketing consultants Saatchi & Saatchi.

Tom Berry, head of retail at Forum for the Future, a UK-based sustainable development charity, agrees and says understanding the true environmental credentials of your products and communicating these to consumers can be both a source of innovation and a competitive advantage.

Berry’s group, in conjunction with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), published a new report in April on communicating “eco-promises” credibly that recommends eight basic steps to market environmentally responsible after products successfully.

First, the group says companies must understand the impacts of their products – from manufacture to use and disposal – in order to deliver credible communication about their environmental credentials. Second, they suggest being transparent about those impacts in order to build trust and secure brand loyalty.

Next, they say companies must bolster green claims with independent verification and avoid making those claims in a vacuum, by making green product marketing part of a wider environmental or sustainability programme. Claiming environmental credentials for one “hero” product in a portfolio of “villains” is high risk, they warn.

Success, the groups say, also relies on enabling and encouraging consumers to act by empowering them with clear product choices and reward schemes. In addition, they say understanding different customer groups and how to tailor marketing messages to meet their needs is critical to successful green marketing.

BSR and Forum suggest that companies must stay abreast of new information delivery and packaging technologies. And last but not least, those offering green products and services must participate in shaping the rules for communicating about their products.

Creativity dividend

Inventing a completely new market is the holy grail of marketing innovation, says marketing expert John Grant, author of The Green Marketing Manifesto. And perhaps nowhere is that kind of innovation more anticipated or sought after than in the green space.

A natural evolution of new products from an existing product line tends to be the most accepted and successful approach to introducing new green brands to consumers, says Saatchi’s Kendall. She points to the success of the Prius and other hybrid cars made by Toyota as an example.

It is a lesson, Kendall says, that Saatchi stresses to its clients: you don’t necessarily have to market a product as green. Sometimes, green credentials are best developed over time as consumers come to know a product, she advises.

Green products can also turn up in places even the company marketing them least expect. Grant says he recently convinced a mobile phone company to offer four-year service contracts instead of the six-month ones that have become commonplace in the industry.

With phones only being upgraded at contract renewal, far fewer handsets end up in the landfill under the four-year contract, Grant says. And the company sees significant savings in churn and marketing costs related to drawing new customers. Thinking slightly outside the box, Grant says, can create a win-win for everyone.

Credibility gap

But launching a new product or greening an existing one can only be successful if consumers trust the product’s green credentials and the company behind them.

According to the environmental marketing site, greenwashingindex.com, in a survey at the UN climate change conference in Bali, 85% of respondents agreed that “some companies are advertising products and services with environmental claims that could be considered false, unsubstantiated or unethical”.

Saatchi’s Kendall warns that to avoid accusations of greenwash, your communications should never be ahead of your practice.

Jungle of labels

Carbon labelling, which quantifies the greenhouse gas emissions connected to producing, transporting and consuming a given product, has become increasingly popular in Europe and the UK and offers companies another way to communicate the green virtues of their products to consumers.

But Kendall warns that early feedback seems to indicate that people have a difficult time understanding the ratings. Air miles, or the distance a product travels from production to the store shelf, she says, seem to be a more easily understood measure for consumers.

One of the problems with Kendall’s solution is that product miles comprise only one part of the total greenhouse gas emissions released in the lifecycle of product.

The BSR report agrees with Kendall, however, saying some shoppers are overwhelmed with information about what different labels stand for, what issues they cover and whether they can be trusted.

Negative consumption

Brands may find that when it comes to green marketing, sometimes less truly is more, says Tom Crompton, change strategist for WWF-UK. He argues that encouraging consumption – green or otherwise – will exacerbate climate change and that only reducing consumption, even of green products, will adequately address an issue as large as the global warming catastrophe.

WWF’s April 2008 Weathercocks & Signposts report calls for a radical shift in how environmentalists approach the climate change issue and questions whether promoting green products, while well intentioned, only plays into the rampant consumerism that many say brought us to this crossroads.

Crompton believes that companies can successfully market their products, while encouraging a reduction in overall consumption, thereby essentially greening all marketing. An ad campaign (see box) for IKEA’s kitchen products, launched in 2005, gives a good example of how the approach could successfully play out, Crompton says.

But Grant argues instead for what he calls “fur coat-ism”.

“We need to convince people, through green marketing, that driving an SUV is not cool and it would be like if their mother turned up at school one morning in a fur coat,” he says.

Green marketing done right, they all agree, can help consumers make more sustainable product choices and embrace greener lifestyles – truly a step in the right direction, no matter the nuances.


Further reading:

Forum for the Future’s ‘Eco-promising’ report:
http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/files/Ecopromising_160408.pdf
WWF’s ‘Weathercocks and Signposts’ report:
http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/weathercocks_report.pdf
Advertising Standards Agency green claims guidelines: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/news/news/2007/ASA+Gets+Tough+On+Advertising+Green+Claims.htm