Two articles from Advertising Age this week provide some insight. Both pieces examine the relationship between Wal-Mart’s advertising firms and its sustainability initiatives. The first article, “‘Come as You Are’ to Help Environment”, reveals that Wal-Mart’s green initiatives did indeed start as a marketing campaign and nothing more. The person speaking on the issue? Not a sustainability expert, but a representative from Wal-Mart’s advertising firm, the Martin Agency.

Mark Hughes, director of the ad firm, insists that despite its initial duplicity, Wal-Mart has become a true believer in sustainability. The company has launched a huge marketing campaign around the idea, and many of Lee Scott’s public statements reinforce Wal-Mart’s green image. But Hughes also notes that the company - and its marketing machine - focus more on what consumers can buy to help the environment, and less on what Wal-Mart is actually doing on the issue.

Ad Age’s second piece, “Who’s in Charge of Green?”, highlights the fact that Wal-Mart’s marketing staff vastly outnumbers the company’s sustainability team, and most of the go-to sustainability reps are actually part of the marketing department. Adam Werbach, the company’s sustainability golden boy, is employed by Saatchi & Saatchi, a marketing firm, not Wal-Mart’s sustainability department.

What does it mean for Wal-Mart’s environmental initiatives to be written about in an advertising industry magazine, rather than an environmental publication? Perhaps what Ad Age itself admits: that consumers are increasingly skeptical of corporate green campaigns, and are more and more often calling companies out for greenwashing. This could be disastrous for Wal-Mart’s green campaign, and the company implement more comprehensive changes if its intends to capitalize on a “green” image.

Who’s in Charge of Green? [Advertising Age]
‘Come as You Are’ to Help Environment [Advertising Age]

Even when you get a panel of so-called experts, there tends to be disagreements. In fact, when asked about all the controversy among what to do about the energy crisis and sustainability and alt energy Adam Werbach blurted, “First thing that we need to do is to kill all the experts,” which got a laugh but also made a good point. Lovins showed some lovin’ for her case that innovation comes with healing. In her case, she argued that investing in sustainability rather than armies would work in places like Afghanistan where she’s off to teach, not how to shoot an M-16 but of course, sustainability. Like political pundits, the talk shifted to taxes (like a carbon tax) versus subsidies. We, like most of the crowd pondered the thought of adding a “carbon tax” to various products and services. But we all know how much this country loves its taxes. But then what about subsidies? It’s no shock that dirty energy like coal and oil look relatively cheap because of the subsidies. Green foodie Michael Pollen of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame, dedicated numerous book pages talking about corn and soy subsidies, and here the group and audience did the same. That subsidized corn ends up as high fructose corn syrup in so many cheap processed foods. We don’t see any spinach subsidies. Balance the energy scale. We think that it’s time for more Green energy subsidies (not just solar). People don’t want their dirty energy taxed so we need to make clean energy cheap.

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