Category: Green Marketing

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Marketing, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

It’s been a great discussion the past few days about whether and when it makes sense to work with companies that don’t share your values. I promised to add my own views after we’d gotten some comments, and thus, this post—which I wrote before receiving any of the comments, but chose to hold back on posting:

Here’s my take, as a long-time peace/environmental activist who also writes about how to leverage social change through business. You have these options:
1. Be a purist and refuse any tainted money or tainted partnerships, defining taint to mean that the company is in some way involved in things you disagree with.

2. “Separation of powers,” where you will work with a company that has dirty hands, but only work on the clean-hands aspects of that company.

3. Use the partnership to actively push the company toward more progressive stances, and eventually to abandon the actions that caused you to look askance in the first place.

I’ve evolved on this issue over time. In the 70s, I’m pretty sure I’d have been a #1. And been out in the streets with the protestors. But that was before I saw how the business world can not only change itself, but become a fulcrum for change in the wider society. These days, I’m at least a #2 and when possible, a #3. I’m even in dialogue with an outfit that does seminars for utility companies—and I told them I would not assist with anything that promoted nuclear (and if they hire me to present, I will definitely be using my bully pulpit to push the #3-style agenda to the utilities attending the conference).

But I do think there might be companies (or governments) whose philosophy is so opposed to mine that I would still be a number 1, still refuse to get my hands dirty.

I also recognize that sustainability is a path, and we are all somewhere on the path. I am not sure you could find a person who is living 100% sustainably. Even my very self-sufficient 90-year-old friend who lives in a mountaintop cabin she and her late husband built themselves, with no electricity or running water, grows most of her own food, and keeps her income below the taxable level—creates carbon emissions with her woodstove.

I think a great example is Walmart. I don’t choose to shop there, because I oppose its policies on labor issues, community development impact, predatory pricing, and a host of other areas. At the same time, I have publicly lauded Walmart, many times, for its groundbreaking, deep, systemic attention to sustainability. And I point out that Walmart is not a company of tree-huggers, but of executives looking to maximize profit. I’m willing to publicly praise Walmart’s ability make and save boatloads of money through enormous initiatives to use less energy and to introduce organic foods/green products to customers who would *never* set foot in a Whole Foods–even while choosing to put my own shopping dollars elsewhere.

I discuss this kind of conundrum a bit in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Just back from a few days in Istanbul, Turkey, where I spoke at a conference and then got to play for a few days.

As with all my trips, I keep my marketing eyes open. Here’s some of what I noticed:

  • Turks are  maniacs for food freshness (and the food is WONDERFUL!) to the point where packing dates as well as expiration dates are common on packages (which I have seen occasionally in the US) and the packing dates are extremely recent (not very common in my own country). I walked into a very small supermarket in kind of a backwater neighborhood on the Asian side and bought a bag of nuts that had been packed just one week earlier. And they tasted amazingly fresh. That tells me that supermarket turnover has to be very fast, and that the customers are looking at those packing dates and rejecting anything too old, if even this small and uncrowded market had food so fresh. If I were marketing any product in Turkey, food or otherwise, I’d think about how to include a freshness campaign.
  • Like many tourist destinations, Istanbul has an army of men (I didn’t see any women doing this) whose job it is to get the tourist into a particular shop (especially carpet shop) or restaurant. In Turkey, they were really personable, and often started by meeting tourists on their way into an attraction, giving some useful pointers, and then saying they’ll meet you at the end and escort you to the shop (and all of them kept those promises). At least the “like” part of the know-like-trust formula is very much a part of doing business. However, most of them lack any discernible USP (Unique Selling Proposition—a reason to do business there rather than with someone else). One that did told us that his partner would give us a discourse on the history of rug-making, which was accurate (I’ll be posting an article soon based on that fascinating conversation).
  • Most of the Turks I saw had dark hair and a medium skin tone, darker than Northern Europeans but lighter than Arabs or Greeks (kind of like my own skin tone, in fact). I did meet several fair-skinned blondes and redheads. Yet if you look at the ads, you’d think half of Turkey is blonde. I could interpret this as blondes having higher status (as they seem to do in the US as well—remember “Is it true Blonde’s have more fun?”), or as rejection of the principle that marketing should use images that resemble your market, or as something else I wasn’t there long enough to understand. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s coincidence.
  • For green marketers especially: if you want to move society to go green, make the green alternative much more attractive. Public transit in Istanbul is cheap, fast, easy to navigate—and extremely heavily used. Car ownership, by contrast, is expensive and full of hassles from icky traffic to high fuel prices to very limited parking in many areas. The result? Only 1 in 10 Istanbul residents have a car. I’m betting that once the rail connection between the Asia and Europe sides is complete (my understanding is that a tunnel is being constructed), public transit will become even more popular.
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By Posted on Posted in Green Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

Guest post by Cynthia Kocialski

It seems as though green is here, there and everywhere these days. Everyday customers encounter companies that are green. Preschools are now advertising themselves as green schools. Dry cleaners are marketing themselves are being green. Landscape and maid services are green too.
When every company, small or large, jumps on a trend, what happens? People ignore it. It becomes a common business practice. It is simply expected in the minds of the customers, and is no longer a competitive or marketing advantage.
But wait … perhaps there is still a way to use your company’s green and clean efforts to your advantage – an indirect way. Marketing is about creating demand and every business person knows that it’s important to be different. Every business wants to be top of mind for their customer. It doesn’t matter how they remember your business just that they do remember it.
Why not use your green efforts to promote your company? News and information organizations are all faced with the same problem each and every day. Their audience needs to read, hear, or view something tomorrow, but what? And along comes your company comes with a story about its green efforts – a hot topic these days.
Green is touted everywhere. Companies label themselves as “Green”. But what does it really mean? What is a green preschool? What does a green dry cleaner mean? Even an Internet security software company claimed they would be a ‘green’ company in their start-up business plan.
Public relations is most effective when it introduces audiences to your company and your product without trying to sell them. People want information. They like to be educated, rather than “sold.”
Take the opportunity to educate and inform your customers about the specifics of your green-ness. Engage in a little shameless self-promotion.
1) Contact the media about doing an article or an interview.
2) Offer to speak at a meeting, conference or tradeshow.
3) Write a guest post for a business or green or environmental blog.
4) Offer a limited time promotion on Earth Day or environment celebrations.
Many small businesses can benefit from the clean and green technology revolutions going on right now, even if your company does not directly use or offer products that are environmental-friendly.

About the Author
Cynthia Kocialski founded three tech companies and has been involved with dozens of other startups. She has written a book about her experiences in start-ups companies, “Startup from the Ground Up, Practical Insights for Transforming an Idea into a Business”. She also writes the popular Start-up Entrepreneurs’ Blog (www.cynthiakocialski.com) and has written many articles on emerging technologies. Cynthia can be reached at cynthia@cynthiakocialski.com

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By Posted on Posted in Green Marketing, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

Guest post by Daniel Cawrey

What are some of the green trends making their way through the web?

It seems like almost everyone today is trying to leverage social media in order to captivate audiences that may be interested in their product, service or information. This can also be used to for green organizations to help them with their marketing efforts as well, and it surely has a much softer impact than some traditional marketing methods. Sure, the web and social media as a whole requires energy to run itself, but at least it’s not as wasteful as some of the other alternatives to get people’s attention such as direct marketing.

But how does the social media sphere reflect on the green movement as a whole? Let’s take a look at some social media sites as well as an initiative by one organization that take the environment into account as their complete focus.

UNEP

The United Nations Environment Programme has the @UNEPandYou Twitter account that has over 22,000 followers. It is an insightful stream of Tweets that discusses climate change, tree planting campaigns and sustainable tourism information.

A great resource to get timely eco-friendly information.

In 2009, UNEP celebrated World Environment day by planting a tree for every follower that it gained during the campaign. They ended up planting 10,000 trees. As you can see, the organization has embraced a number of social media sites, and is a great example of a strategy for others to follow and be successful with.

Quora

One of the best ways to follow some of the most interesting developments and green initiatives is to follow “Green” or “Green Technology” on Quora. IF you haven’t used Quora, reserve yourself some time because it can be a bit addicting.

Quora is like a mash-up between Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo Answers. Many people use it to learn about interesting things that they are curious about. Although some information can be redundant, you can really learn some great answers that come from experts such as “What is an environmentally friendly way to remove outdoors ice without using salt?” or “How much oil is used to produce a calorie of food in the developed world?”

Greenwala

Everyone knows about Facebook, but the problem with being the most popular social networking site is that it is really too broad to cover people’s interests. That’s where Greenwala comes in. It’s a place for people to learn about and share their particular causes. Information is available about all sorts of green topics, all in one place.

You can connect with Greenwala via your Facebook account.

Users can set up communities, share articles and sign petitions. In Quora-like form, the site has even started a question and answer section as well. Some popular groups include “What Can I Turn This Into” recycling group, and the “Green Technology, Architecture & Innovation” group.

Daniel Cawrey is a freelance writer. In addition to running his own blog about Google Chrome and Chrome OS, he also writes on consumer topics such as credit cards.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Events, Green Business, Green Marketing, Publishing, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

I have only half an hour left of being 53. It seems a good time to reflect on the whirlwind year I’ve had. Professionally, a lot has gone right for me this year.

First, of course, this has been my initial year as a Guerrilla Marketing author, and the publishing world is definitely nicer to authors who have hitched their wagon to a star. The folks at Wiley have been far more collaborative and helpful than many authors experience with their big NYC publishers, and certainly more so than Simon & Schuster was with me all those years ago. I’ve been promoting the book constantly all year long, and the publisher and even Amazon have also worked on that goal. And as a result of all that effort, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has been on the Environmental category bestseller list for at least 11 of the last 12 months—we’re not sure about March—and was #1 in the category for part of April and May. Even cooler—within three weeks of publication, a Google search for the exact phrase “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” brought up 1,070,000 hits—far more than I’ve ever seen for anything else I’ve been involved with. Some of those pages have come down since, but as of today, it’s still quite respectable at 551,000. And a search for my name peaked last month at 119,000, nearly double the previous high point of 62 or 64,000.

Because of the new book, I’ve also done quite a bit of speaking this year, including my first international appearance (at an international PR conference in Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Social Forum and World Economic Forum. This was a different event, but in the same venue, and it felt pretty trippy to be speaking from the same building that the likes of Bill Clinton and Warren Buffett speak from. And when you write a book called Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, you have automatic “chops” in both the green community and the marketing world—which is great, since the book really looks at the intersection of profitability and sustainability. I’ve spoken and exhibited at quite a few green events this year (ranging from the mellow, outdoor SolarFest in Vermont to the huge Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival in the Washington, DC Convention Center) and made numerous great contacts.

And I discovered, particularly when doing media interviews, that I really do know quite a bit about going green, on a much deeper level than just “made from recycled materials” stuff. I was very pleased with the quality of some of the more than 100 interviews I did this year, finding that a number of the journalists went a lot deeper than others I’ve experienced in the past—and I was able to take them deeper still. I’m not saying this to brag, but because I didn’t actually realize how much I do know about many substantive issues around sustainability until I started answering so many great questions about it.

Part 2 will discuss the most exciting part of my year: a way to get the message in front of a much wider audience. Stay tuned.

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By Posted on Posted in Green Business, Green Marketing, Shel's Personal Life

Just a quick brag: Monday, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, my hometown paper in Northampton, Massachusetts, became the first newspaper to contract for and publish an installment of my new column, Green And Profitable (Note: this paper may not let you see it if you’re not a subscriber–but it’s one of the sample columns on this site).

1 down, 999 to go to make my goal of 1000 paying markets for the column within two years.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

Good article on Triple Pundit about how to discuss environmental issues with people who either don’t care or are actively hostile to the Green perspective. Five talking points you can use to reach people via their own self-interest.

The list includes the sweeping headings of population, education, “natural capital,” and the economy.One particularly thought-provoking point in the natural capital category: the easiest and cheapest half of any natural resource is always extracted first, meaning the environmental and economic impact of continuing to extract starts climbing very steeply once the low-hanging fruit is gone. This is why gasoline was only 30 cents a gallon when I was a kid, and floats between $2 and $4 in my area currently (much more expensive in Europe, by the way).

But on the whole, this article doesn’t give a lot of ammunition to environmental advocates in the trenches. The next step is to take these categories and make them specific and actionable, and really appeal to the self-interest of those listening.

Examples?

  • Whether or not you care about climate change, you should care about the huge inflationary spiral caused by soaring fuel prices. If we can reduce our fossil fuel consumption by 50 percent, that means your dollar will continue to go a lot farther than it would otherwise. Otherwise, it will continue to get worse because the oil that’s easy and cheap to get is already used up.
  • Do you know I saved 40 percent of my paper costs in my business, just by switching to a two-sided printer and using the double-side feature? Do you think that could work in your business?
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