Green Options

I’ve written a lot in these posts about print vs. electronic media and the sustainability issues faced by both (yes, both! electronic media aren’t as green as people think). Now you can investigate more deeply for yourself. On November 17, Target Marketing and Printing Impressions will offer a webinar titled “Paper or Electronic? The Impact of Choices.”

Speakers will be:

Don Carli
Senior Research Fellow
Institute for Sustainable Communications

Brian Kozlowski
Director, Sustainable Development
NewPage Corp.

This free webinar will discuss the tools, processes, and success stories that exist to help direct marketers determine not only which media best fit the job at hand but also how to improve the carbon footprint of all channels.

Topics to be discussed include:

What is the current state of the consumer on the issue of green products? Grail Research, which recently conducted a survey of 500 consumers on issues related to the purchase of green products, refers to green as mainstream and sticky, but not deep.

According to the study, “The Green Revolution” (September 2009),

• 84% of consumers say that either some or most of the products they purchase are green (mainstream)
• Only 1% say that they used to buy green products but no longer do (sticky)
• Only 8% of consumers make green the primary factor in their purchase decisions (not deep)

The number one reason people are deterred from buying green products? They are perceived as being too expensive, with 69% of respondents giving this answer. Forty percent view green products as not offering enough variety and choice.

What is the difference between the moderately interested (light green consumers) and the very committed (dark green consumers)?

All this talk about going green, do we really know what exactly it means?  Companies invest millions in trying to segment the green market. There’s the BBMG Conscious Consumer Report.  The Roper Green Gauge. The Landor ImagePower Green Brands Survey.  And on and on..(..so many segments, so little time!) Maybe more importantly: When we talk about green are we talking about the same thing?  Apparently not.

This week I spoke with Jamie Wimberly whose firm, EcoAlign, just came out with a report called “Green Gap Redux: Green Words Gone Wrong”. Wimberly is CEO of Distributed Energy Financial Group (DEFG), a company in the clean tech space that includes EcoAlign. Jamie has nearly 20 years of experience in the energy and environment space, previously having served as the Vice President of the Consumer Energy Council of America (CECA), the President of the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets (CAEM) and a Director on Boards of technology companies. He is a published author, frequent speaker and the Executive Producer of the award-winning Day In The Life Of (DILO) video.

Q: Hi Jamie.  Before we talk about the “Green Gap Redux” report, can you talk about how your focus on energy makes EcoAlign different from other green marketing agencies?
A. I was attracted to the energy sector because it impacts so many of the big issues of our day, including the environment, and is integral to modern society in all aspects.  The relationship between energy and environment is a symbiotic one, meaning that we won’t be able to clean up our environment and manage climate change without a transformation on how we produce, deliver and consume energy.  Our deep expertise in energy (the partners alone have over 50 years of collective experience in the sector) means that we can go beyond your usual agency engagement and truly discuss all aspects of strategy – operational, financial, marketing, etc.  As such, we are able to elevate the discussion of such things as messaging/ communications, product development, customer engagement, campaign design, channels and metrics, and other marketing-related activities to the C-level suite of our clients.  Finally, I would note that “sustainability” is evolving into a complete management model.  For that transition to be effective, you need to have a lot of skill sets and a strategic perspective that only comes from a deep understanding of all the moving pieces of a company. The end goal is for sustainability to become a business and economic driver to enhance profitably.

Companies marketing green products and, in particular, promoting their green energy initiatives are using words like “energy conservation” and “green energy,” but what effect has this had on consumers? Do they care? Do they even understand what these terms mean?

EcoAlign, a strategic marketing agency focused on energy and the environment, decided to find out. In September, it conducted 1,000 interviews, comparing against a similar survey conducted in September 2007. The sample was balanced to match the U.S. population by age, gender, region and ethnicity.

The results? Green Align found that consumers generally have positive associations with the terms “energy efficiency,” “energy conservation” and “clean energy,” but their understanding of what these terms mean has remained the same or decreased since 2007.

They also have low or negative understanding about technical terms such as “demand response” (resulting in the recommendation that such terminology not be used in external marketing communications) and showed a lot of confusion about green pricing terminology such as “peak pricing,” “green pricing,” and “fuel supply pricing.”

Moreover, consumers remain confused about the definitions of basic terms. They cannot articulate the difference between energy conservation, energy efficiency and smart energy. Less than one third chose the correct definition for those terms from among a selection of definitions (multiple choices).

I’ve blogged a lot about how the printing industry is far greener than people give it credit for. The presses are more efficient. Paper often has high recycled content. Marketing strategies emphasize smart use of data over volume production. There are many ways that printing is green — greener, many argue, than electronic media. But what about individual printers? To what extent are they consciously pursuing a green strategy? It can be a significant investment, after all. Are their customers making it worth their while?

Last year, the commercial printing industry information portal What They Think released a report on the status of green in the printing industry. This month, in Printing Continues to Go Green, WTT updated the report with fresh data, comparing the numbers year over year.

In the June 2009 survey, WTT researchers found the following year-over-year changes:

• Printers are far more likely to identify themselves in their marketing and promotional materials as environmentally sensitive businesses — 33%, up from 26% last year
• They are slightly more likely to justify new equipment purchases because of their more favorable environmental impact — 22%, up from 20%
• They are more likely to have special “green” certifications from independent organizations (Forest Stewardship Council, Green Seal) — 22%, up from 15%
• They are slightly more likely to say that promoting their green efforts helps their business image — 39%, up from 35%.

But it’s not all good news. Commercial printers don’t see a lot of customer gratitude for their efforts. In the June 2009 survey, they were noticeably less likely to say that it was essential to their customers and more likely to say that it was a major expense without a major business benefit. Only 2% said it was critically important to their customers.

This is a real problem. Why?

When you need to urgently need to blow your nose in Germany and don’t have a tissue on hand, you might ask a friend “Hast du ein Tempo?” (Do you have a Tempo?)

Tempo, it turns out, is a brand of tissue, not the German word for tissue.

Substituting a brand name for a general product description is relatively common across a number of languages. How many times have you heard someone say “Just Google that” or “Can I have a COKE please”? Over the years, powerful brands have impacted our culture and slipped into our language. For a brand, this is the ultimate compliment and a big awareness driver. In fact, Coke and Google (the 2 examples above) are now the #1 and #2 brands respectively on Interbrands latest list of powerful brands. Tempo continues to be a very powerful brand in Germany.

An increasing number of marketers are turning to toner- or inkjet-based printing in order to green their print marketing programs. It’s not that offset presses are inherently ungreen. On the contrary, printing as a whole is a whole lot greener than many people give it credit for. But digital printing has some compelling green benefits.

• Lower start-up waste
• Smaller, more targeted production volumes
• Presses with a higher percentage of recycled (or recyclable) parts
• Lower

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This week Newsweek’s cover story promotes an exclusive ranking of “The Greenest Big Companies in America”.

Walking the green walk, isn’t always easy, and the holidays present special challenges. Its not always easy to mess with traditions. Last Thanksgiving I hosted a 100-mile Thanksgiving (I chronicled it in two blog posts on the OrganicMania blog). My attempt to convince my mother-in-law in Tampa that buying condensed milk at my local supermarket for her traditional key lime pie wasn’t really in the spirit of the plan, did not go over so well. That said, I can see a 100-mile Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza or even a 100-mile gift rule.

Tip #1: Source locally. Use local and sustainable produce, flowers, beverages, décor and rentals for holiday parties and meals.

Beyond that, there are two primary categories of activities involved in greening holiday parties and events: Finding ways to minimize the impact of the consumption occurring at the event itself, including food, flowers, beverages, décor, gifts, ect… Finding ways to mitigate the carbon footprint resulting from the airplane travel, car travel and lodging consumed for the event.

The good news is that there are a number of greening strategies that can deal with some or all of these factors that that are sexy and require little to no extra costs.

1. Make sure you have a recycling plan in place. Make recycling easy by having a sufficient number of well-marked recycling bins near where people need them.
2. If you are exchanging gifts (…think Secret Santa), make them green. There are a host of environmentally friendly gifts items ranging from aluminum water bottles to solar powered messenger bags to fair trade chocolates to locally made crafts that could fit the bill.

Many marketers are pushing their customers toward electronic statements, e-newsletters, bills, and transactional statements as a “green” move, but in reality, it has more to do with economics. It’s cheaper for businesses to send electronic communications than print. But while pushing e-communications as greener, has anyone bothered to ask what customers how they feel about it?

InfoPrint Solutions Company did. A joint venture between IBM and Ricoh, InfoPrint conducted a a survey that found three out of four respondents would consider opting for traditional mail delivery if they were informed it had less of a negative environmental impact than email.

In addition, 50% of consumers indicated that they still prefer to receive marketing information about new products or services via traditional mail rather than email. Only 44% would rather receive marketing via email.

Do preferences convert into action? Yes! Not only do customers prefer print mail, but they are more likely to open it, even if both communications come from a bank.

How does a small company compete against the big guys in the toy industry? In particular as pointed out by Wendy Johnson, with Birchtree designs writing on the contest Facebook page: