It Isn’t Easy Being Green – for Corporate Advertising

A new study by the branding firm Landor Associates breaks down the percentage of the general population that care about the environment, using three categories:

1. Not Green Interested (58%) – Don’t care about environmentally friendly practices, such as organic ingredients
2. Green Interested (25%) - Concerned about the environment, but not active in its defense
3. Green Motivated (17%) – Consider it very important for a company to be green, and base purchase decisions on whether or not a brand reflects green behavior in its packaging, ingredients and corporate actions

What the study lacks, however, is context. Are these numbers growing in comparison to say five years ago? Certainly the organic food industry has risen dramatically in recent years to the point where Wal-Mart is now getting in on the action (See May 17^th post: Big Box Organic – You Are What You Eat).

An accompanying article on BrandWeek magazine’s web site frames the study in the context of an increase in green marketing – "It is easy to say you are green, but consumers are skeptical. And because everyone wants to jump on the green bandwagon, all of a sudden it is noisy in this space, and it is hard to break through."

Among the corporate marketing efforts in recent months trying to reach the 58% who don’t care and then some, according to BrandWeek, are Dow Chemical’s "Human Element" campaign, Shell Oil’s $30 million marketing campaign in June and General Electric’s continued "Ecomagination" effort.

What the study also does not take into account is the fact that the number of active people concerning any issue, whether progressive or conservative, tends to be small relative to the overall population. When I worked campaigned door-to-door on environmental issues I would ask the question “Are you interested in clean water?” Of course people said yes. The point being that just because someone in a survey says they are Not Green Interested doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in environmental issues. The phrasing of survey questions, which are not posted, goes a long way toward understanding responses as well.

Interestingly, even though respondents had trouble identifying what it means for a corporation to be green, and 2 out of 3 consumers couldn’t name a green brand, brands that simply supported environmental organizations or causes rather than incorporating green practices did not receive recognition as being "Green."

The article went on to say that “Branding experts consider green marketing to be especially tricky because the public seems poised to accuse disingenuous companies of ‘greenwashing,’” which means companies that claim to be green but in fact are not.

Technorati Profile

Bill (Gates), Beer, Blogs (on Lay’s Escape) and School Bus Ads

Search "Microsoft EU fine" to find a story about the huge punishment against the tech giant and you might mistakenly click on a story from March 25, 2004 that “The European Union has found Microsoft guilty of abusing the 'near-monopoly' of its Windows PC operating system and fined it a record 497 million euros ($613 million).”

Of course, the current story this week reported that the European Union “levied a second massive fine — $357 million — on Microsoft and threatened greater penalties (3 million euros, or $3.82 million, per day beginning July 31) in the future unless the world’s largest software company obeys the 2004 antitrust order."

This speaks to the point in my July 3rd blog post that philanthropy is wonderful -- as in Gates' move to work full time on his foundation and Warren Buffett’s entrusting him with the historic $31 billion gift, but the world’s richest man should not leave his social responsibility at the door when he goes to work.

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On a lighter note, want to drink beer guilt-free? See “Sales of organic beers start to hop”

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Finding yourself disquieted over Ken Lay’s punishment-robbing death before his sentencing? Perhaps a scan of the blogsphere’s reaction (One quote: "I wanna see the body") will help.

In other Enron related news:

Merrill Lynch agreed to pay Enron $29.5 million to settle its portion of a lawsuit filed against 10 banks accused of failing to prevent the energy company's collapse.

Voting is still open in the Enron poll, although views may have been skewed be recent events.


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HAVE YOU HEARD? BusRadio, a Massachusetts company, is installing radios in school buses, which will naturally air advertisements along with music to a captive audience of impressionable children. The company says it will reach over 100,000 children in MA alone this fall, and has signed contracts with districts in CA, NY, PA and IL as well. Next year, it plans to reach over a million children, and to grow from there. The teen and tween kids will hear music, patter, and eight minutes of ads per hour to start. This follows on the American tradition of advertisements in classrooms in exchange for televisions and programming from the company Channel One, which now reaches 30 percent of teenagers in the U.S.

Evidently the folks that brought you BusRadio also have a company called Cover Concepts that distributes “free” book covers to schools that happen to have ads for McDonald’s, Nike, and other national brands that are used by 30 million kids in 43,000 U.S. public schools.

In response, the nonprofit Commercial Alert sent a letter to Massachusetts Governor -- and republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, urging him to stop the initiative, which is set to include “children as young as five."

My memories of taking the bus include never ending fights over which music was played on the radio with the end result always turning it off to keep the peace.

KEN LAY DEAD

Ken Lay has died of an apparent heart attack.

Gates/Buffett: Immense Generosity, Missed Opportunity

Spurred on by the groundbreaking $1 billion gift to the United Nations by Ted Turner in 1997,* Bill Gates will dedicate his efforts full-time in 2008 from Microsoft to the Gates Foundation (already the largest U.S. philanthropy with a massive $30 billion endowment), which has been buffeted by the largest philanthropic gift in history – a $31 billion gift from the world's second-richest man, Warren Buffett.

The amount of money is eye popping. The generosity immense. The power that the world’s richest man has to influence philanthropy is unparalleled.

The missing piece of the story has to do with the fact that the two richest businessmen in the world felt they could not accomplish similar societal gains through the very businesses in which their fortunes were made.

The Gates move and the gift by Buffett, 75, are classic examples of the old wealthy man’s retiree syndrome – after a long and financially successful career one feels their mortality and then seeks to “give back” and leave a legacy of helping others.

Buffett, who acted particularly selflessly by contributing the largest gift ever to a foundation in somebody else’s name, said he “agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society,” and "There is more than one way to get to heaven, but this is a great way."

A separation exists between how even this, the most successful of investors, views the criteria for making money, versus the criteria for what should be done with it. Buffett and Gates rightly deserve all of the accolades they are getting. They have set a new bar that will hopefully become a trend.

But, when will wealthy people of prominence apply such principles to making money while they are IN business, not out of it?

*I was present when the Ted Turner $1 billion gift was announced at the annual global leadership award dinner sponsored by the United Nations Association of the USA, with which I worked at the time running their nonprofit program. Turner aired the event live on his CNN network. The U.N. Foundation was set up to disburse the gift. Note, like Buffett’s the gift was in annual disbursements of stock, which means that its value will fluctuate over time.