Shiny Green Button

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This week, something I thought would never happen did. My email was hacked! Everyone in my contacts list received a stilted, poorly written message raving about the new iPad and pointing them to a website where they could get one on the cheap. The email appeared to come directly from me and even included my name at the end.

Almost everyone who received this message knew right away that it wasn’t really me. For most people, the spammy nature of the message itself was a dead giveaway. Others, mostly people I haven’t written or spoken to in months or even years, wrote back to say it didn’t “sound” like me, but they weren’t positive. Incredibly, a few people—all of them contacts I very rarely email—actually believed I sent it.

There’s a lesson here, well, a couple of them. For me: come up with a better password. For communicators: voice matters.

Even though you may have different individuals crafting communications for your business, they should be able to speak with one clear, consistent voice. If the voice is off, readers you’ve worked hard to build a relationship with will know. At best, they’ll be distracted by the dissonance. At worst, you’ll lose credibility.

Writers and editors have been salivating over this one for a while now, and the big day is almost here. On July 6, The Yahoo! Style Guide—billed as the style guide for the Internet age—will be available. For now, you can read bits and pieces online, including articles about writing for the web, optimizing for SEO and basic web coding. My favorite part so far is a helpful word list, with terms you probably won’t find in your standard Webster’s or American Heritage dictionary: mouse over, schwag and geolocation, for example.

Plenty of editors will turn their noses up and say they’re happy with their Chicago, and their AP, and their Strunk and White, and their Bryan Garner, thank you very much. But, there’s no denying that it’s high time for a resource like this. The time we spend trying to figure out if dropdown  should be one word or two or hyphenated (Y! says none of it. Use pull-down menu instead) could certainly be better spent.

In poking around the word list, I already see a couple spots in which Yahoo! is diverging from my precious dictionary (AmHer says username; Y! says user name) and even Mr. Garner himself (he says no hyphens  in up to date when it’s used as an adverb; Y! says put ‘em in). We’ll all have to decide whether to go all in or use the guide selectively, but none of us who write or edit for the web will be able to ignore it altogether.

Nor should we. Our beloved style guides will always be relevant and useful because the rules of good writing and grammar are solid. But, they don’t tell us how to woo search engines or how to avoid bias when writing for an international audience. My guess is this new style guide (all 528 pages of it!) will take its rightful place next to all of our others, and it will still be up to us to decide when and how to apply which style guidelines. It’s always nice to have one more tool in the little writing shed.

I’m not sure what to think about this.

On one hand, the combination of girl power and green sensibilities sounds like a force to be reckoned with. (Like!) 

But on the other hand, the language used to market the book sounds flimsy and faddish (FAIL). What do you think?

Those of you who read Shiny Green Button regularly know that one of our favorite subjects is the corporate social responsibility or sustainability report. If you ask us, these documents can—and should—do more than compile data.

They should engage consumers and employees. They should inspire action among business partners and competitors. They should bolster brands and show value to investors.

But, just like any other kind of writing, CSR reports can only accomplish these goals if people read them. And that means the information in them should be clear, compelling, relevant and interesting.

If you’ve been following Pamela’s series on our company green team, you know that in 2009, we began looking at how we could make our own business more sustainable.

We’re a small business, but we found big ways to make a difference, and we learned some valuable lessons as we went along. When it came time to share our results, we saw a chance to rethink the standard corporate responsibility report and stretch our creative muscles.

The result is an interactive, data-rich, narrative-driven story that not only reveals what we did, but addresses the challenges we faced in getting there.

We may be a bunch of creative types who spend most of the day at our desks, but we know we can make our world better. Here’s proof.

Let us know what you think!

I had the pleasure of sitting next to Scot Case from TerraChoice at dinner a few nights ago. Scot is one of the authors of “The Six Sins of Greenwashing” (now seven). He told the story of the happy accident that led to the report. Apparently, TerraChoice had a few summer interns collect all the “green” products they could find at the local grocery store, and then they analyzed the facts behind the claims and published their results. TerraChoice had no idea it was releasing something that would become THE guide for all marketing and communications folks working in the green space.

It’s been three years since the study came out, and it has made an impact in two totally opposite ways. In many cases, the report has kept companies honest. It has raised awareness of the issue and given marketers a standard set of rules to follow. But it has also kept some companies from saying anything at all—even if their product or service has a credible green story—because they are fearful of being labeled a greenwasher. Even Scot admitted that the “Sins of Greenwashing” report may have gone too far, paralyzing companies and keeping consumers from learning about really good products.

What do you think? Has the fear of greenwashing gone too far? Has it kept your company from talking to your customers about your green product?

Photo credit: adactio on Flickr

Panera Bread Co., a franchise bakery based in my home state of Missouri, just opened a store in Clayton, Mo., that looks and feels like any other Panera restaurant, but with a twist: customers decide how much they pay.

A sign at the entrance instructs, “Take what you need, leave your fair share,” and cashiers give customers a receipt indicating normal prices, and then point them to a donation box, where the honor system takes it from there.

The store is run by the company’s nonprofit foundation and former CEO, Ron Shaich, who told reporters, “I’m trying to find out what human nature is all about.” If the pay-what-you-want model can keep the business afloat, Panera says it will open similar stores in other communities.

Clayton is a pretty well-to-do area, so the experiment isn’t quite as financially risky as it might be in a poorer community. But still, it’s an interesting business move. Even more interesting to me is that, although I’ve seen multiple stories in the press, and the company is promoting the store on its Facebook page, Panera’s own website doesn’t say a thing about it.

But with all the favorable press and positive social media mentions, does it even need to? Is this newsworthy action its own communications strategy?

Photo credit: Daniel*1977 on Flickr

Over at GreenBiz.com, Tim Mohin, director of corporate responsibility at AMD, offers insights from this month’s Ceres conference in Boston and poses an interesting question:

“If so many companies are producing data on environmental, social and governance issues, who is reading all these reports? And, what are the data being used for?”

Mohin describes a scene at the Ceres awards ceremony, when a representative of Seventh Generation accepted the award for best sustainability report in the small and medium business category and asked the audience how many people had actually read the winning report.

The response? Chirping crickets and a few hands.

But, when he asked how many people had read their own company’s report, almost all hands were in the air.

Mohin goes on to say that CSR reporting can offer more than a window into a company’s programs; it can be useful as a mirror, to engage employees and inform improvements in a company’s CSR strategy moving forward. An excellent point, but I can’t get past that first question: why should anyone read a company’s CSR report?

Mohin identifies a gap that we communicators need to fill. The data companies collect for CSR reporting is a goldmine for stories with relevance beyond employees and investors and industry analysts.

For example, we can take the data out of the report and into the real world,  putting one company’s accomplishments in the larger context of its industry and global efforts. We can connect the dots between corporate sustainability efforts and the products consumers see on the shelf. We can add texture to data about employee volunteerism by highlighting who benefits from it and how others can pitch in.

When we use corporate responsibility as a frame for a company’s larger brand story, we can encourage external audiences—consumers, suppliers, peers and even competitors— to not only read about its sustainability efforts, but support them and also consider their own.

Here’s an example from our own portfolio. We helped HP develop its comprehensive global citizenship report, but we also used the data to create a business-magazine style companion piece for a consumer audience. Would you read this?

Photo credit: melloveschallah on Flickr

I was somewhat dazed and confused by the images sprinkled throughout ING’s corporate responsibility report, just released this week. They show individuals with outstretched hands, palms covered in orange paint, each with a word. Responsible. Children. Respect.

How odd. What the heck did it mean? What did it have to do with ING, other than employing their trademark orange? The one cultural reference point I had was an ominous, sinister one of Lady Macbeth trying to wash blood from her hands, which surely was not what ING was hoping to convey.

Explanation came on page 29 of the 62-page report.

Hundreds of ING employees took part in our WHAMM or ’What Matters Most‘ Campaign by sending images of their orange handprints. These prints tell us what our employees care about most in life and business. They help ING to set principles for future community and sustainability projects.

Well, now that’s a cool story. ING could have done itself a favor by pairing its images with a caption that explained the program. Not only would it have eliminated confusion, but it would have called attention to a story that nicely illustrates their corporate responsibility efforts.

When I was taking art classes, my teacher taught me that backing away from the canvas every now and then was important. Looking at my painting from across the room always revealed something I was missing by standing close.

It’s a lesson that applies to anyone in marketing and communications too. Even when we’re rushing to meet a deadline, it’s crucial to stop and take one last step back, evaluating both the images and the words to make sure they are working together to tell one, consistent story. Otherwise, we can end up distracting and confusing our readers, or worse, sending them messages that are very different from the ones we intended to send.

Photo credit: Water Lemon on Flickr

An EcoGeek reader who subscribes to both National Geographic and Wired found two very different messages recently from Kohler, the company known for its sleek, aesthetically pleasing plumbing fixtures.

In National Geographic, an evocative image of clear water splashes across the page, along with a conservation message about Kohler’s water-saving products and the URL for the company’s microsite www.savewateramerica.com.

In Wired, Kohler offers a highly stylized image of a duo in a Dancing with the Stars-style big-finish pose. They’re standing in a room-sized shower looking fierce, as nine multi-nozzle showerheads blast them with what Kohler’s product info calls “a deluge even Mother Nature would envy.”

Some EcoGeek commenters call this hypocrisy and greenwashing. Others are defending Kohler’s right to target niche audiences, which is a common and even “best” practice in marketing.

The problem here isn’t that the company is sending different messages. The fact is, it’s sending mixed messages. And, those mixed messages are reaching the same audience, not different target markets. NatGeo nature lovers like to geek out on Wired tech gear; water conservationists still like an amazing shower, but they’d prefer the low-flow variety.

As sustainability and environmental responsibility flood the mainstream, this is a fundamental communications problem that marketers will need to solve. Companies that want to do their part for the environment on one hand (Kohler offers water-saving products and also donates them to Habitat for Humanity), but who still profit from not-so-sustainable offerings on the other will want to promote both ends of the spectrum, from green to luxe.

If clients don’t integrate sustainability into everything they do, how can communicators weave it into an authentic, credible brand story? Have you had a similar experience?

Photo credit: Celebdu on Flickr

There’s only one problem with social responsibility reports. They’re so … report-y. 

They’re great at communicating facts and results. The greenhouse gasses reduced. The materials recycled. The dollars raised for charitable causes.

But there’s something that gets lost: how you got there. Making your life or your business more sustainable, like any major transformation, is a daily endeavor for change. It’s as full of false starts and setbacks as it is gold star moments.

At AHA!, we’re closing in on the end of our first year with an official green team. We’ve helped Fortune 500 companies with their corporate social responsibility communications, and now it’s our turn. We’re gathering up the data and revisiting our accomplishments as we prepare our very first sustainability report. It’s an exciting moment.

And as a green teamer, I’m feeling like it’s important to recount some of the details of our trek, for a couple of reasons.

First, the lessons we learned this year can be valuable for others who are embarking on their own path to sustainability. I learned a lot from looking at detailed case studies from other companies—I wanted to know HOW they did things, not just what they did. Plus, I was encouraged every time I read a blog or heard a speaker who acknowledged the challenges involved with integrating the principles of sustainability into their business. Those honest reports helped me understand that roadblocks aren’t permanent, and failures are just an opportunity to get better and try again.

And second, I think sharing some of the small, concrete steps along the way can help engage more people to join in. For example, saying you reduced CO2 emissions is one thing, but showing the creative ways individuals have found to track emissions, measure them and then cut them can show others the real, practical ways they can contribute.

So check back in the upcoming weeks for more details about our first year with a green team at AHA! I’ll be sharing some of our goofs, lessons learned as well as some of our successes.

Next up: The green team attempts to save the world in a month. And then we get real …