Shiny Green Button

Environmental Leader has a must-read column today by guest John Rooks, president and founder of Dwell Creative. Rooks attacks the spectacle of green language:

All language provides opportunity for interpretation. That’s its job. And, within the spectacle of going but never becoming green, substance matters not. In the spectacle, being seen eating an organic carrot is more important than actually eating an organic carrot. Looking green is better than being green. Quoting McKibben is more important than reading him. Most green marketing today a skipping stone.

I love that last line.

Anyway, he’s on to something. Something that’s been creeping around the edges of my thinking for a while. That much of our new-found emphasis as marketers on green is a veneer, regardless of our intentions. We’re not rethinking so much as recasting what’s worked before (or is working elsewhere now) to position and promote and sell green. The irony is that one of the precepts of green is greater transparency and authenticity. But when transparency and authenticity become marketing buzzwords, it’s a sign they’ve been appropriated, made to mean something other than their original intent. Perhaps this is a too-cynical view, but as I struggle to find ways to clearly and meaningfully think about, talk about and write about issues having to do with green and sustainability and corporate responsibility, I’m often left feeling like the words I have at my disposal aren’t up to the task. And as a writer, that’s at once an alarming and depressing realization.

As Rooks says, it reflects how green is largely a construct of a marketing and advertising, pressed into service of the mission to sell. It must pass out of that domain and become embedded in our culture to find the weight and substance it needs to endure.

Timberland is moving to quarterly CSR reporting, which makes a ton of sense. As I’ve spent more and more time working through CSR reports over the past few months, I’ve been struck by just how limited they are as a communications channel. So much of CSR lends itself to ongoing dialogue with stakeholders, but the principle (and in many cases, only) way the majority of companies reach out is through their annual CSR report. Problem is, these sorts of reports typically represent all the conventions of outdated communications–they’re one-way rather than dialogue-driven, they look back instead of forward, they’re linear in their organization, they’re written as if they’re speaking to a single, monolithic audience and they often emphasize data and goals and programs at the macro level, overshadowing more meaningful and relevant stories told at a human scale.

As companies integrate their operations and infrastructure to align with and advance their sustainability goals, they should, in theory, have more sophisticated systems for tracking, measuring and reporting their progress in real time. With that capacity, companies can offer their stakeholders a more ongoing and dynamic understanding of their performance, fostering closer collaboration and greater conversation.

By responding to the growing expectations of its stakeholders for more transparency and greater currency, Timberland is demonstrating it understands the limits of current CSR communications. It has launched a website, Just Means,  that reflects the principles of social media. It has made its quarterly data available on JustMeans, which bills itself as the “trading floor for social responsibility.” (Note: I mistook Timberland’s landing page on JustMeans as the front door for its own site rather than a third-party site.)

The site features tools for looking up data on Timberland’s operations and environmental performance, a forum for questions and feedback, opportunities for its stakeholders to interact and, notably, an expanding network of people, resources and information that builds on and advances Timberland’s CSR activities and communications.

In taking this step, Timberland is inviting more intense scrutiny and feedback, which will be challenging and sometimes messy to manage. But once again it is demonstrating CSR leadership, recognizing that the old ways of doing business no longer apply. As expectations for greater corporate transparency and accountability continue to rise and adoption of social media behaviors grows, this model for ongoing, open and dynamic CSR communications will become the norm rather than the exception.

The release of Firefox 3.0 may have commanded recent headlines (and rightly so–it's a great update), but I've started experimenting with Flock, a browser designed around social media, and have been impressed in the early going. I downloaded its "eco-edition," which comes pre-populated with links, feeds and media focused on sustainability that are refreshed daily. Treehugger, Grist, Planet Green and other sites are displayed in the top menu bar. Of course, you can customize it to reflect your own interests and browsing habits. All the top social media sites–YouTube, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, etc.–are integrated into a sidebar that make it easy to upload and share green-related media and information with others. Another cool feature–it has a media bar at the top of the page where you can search and display media streams such as from Flickr without navigating away from the page you're on. I'm finding its icons and menus to be intuitive, and I like the overall look of its layout. Flock is a neat & convenient tool for integrating social media habits with an interest in green news and multimedia, and so far at least, it's delivering a rewarding experience. Thumbs up. Check it out.

About a month ago, I offered a post that compared the relative perception of HP and Apple among "bright greens"–consumers most committed to living a sustainable lifestyle–in terms of the premium they are willing to pay for a green brand. My point was that Apple enjoys the higher premium than HP, despite its less impressive environmental track record.

Well, according to a recent survey of 3,500 IT decision-makers, Apple and HP tied (with Microsoft) for the top spot for greenest IT brand, each garnering 21% of the responses. What's revealing about these results–besides the fact that overall perception is so fragmented–is how HP has not been able to pull away, despite its growing emphasis on the environmental features and benefits of its enterprise products, such as Dynamic Smart Cooling of data centers and its Halo Telepresence virtual meeting technology. You have to wonder if this is a function of poor marketing (or, to be fair, insufficient time for HP's efforts to take hold) or widespread confusion in the marketplace about what to believe and value, or both. On the technical merits, HP is probably far-and-away the green leader among these three companies. But that lead isn't translating to brand perception.

My guess is that Apple's perception is driven by its sophisticated design aesthetic. People associate crisp design with clean products, perhaps. An overly simple explanation, but as good as any.

But Microsoft? It has done some work around reducing its packaging and cutting its greenhouse gas emissions, but its corporate social and environmental responsibility platform is dominated by its investment in technology education. Its environmental messaging pales in comparison. So is Microsoft simply benefitting from the widespread awareness and strength of its brand? Since it hasn't made any egregious missteps in terms of the environment, are people ascribing characteristics to its brand that it has not necessarily earned?

If that's true, then it suggests that a key to being perceived as green–at least among mainstream, established technology companies–might be overall brand strength. After all, if you look again at the chart ranking each of the IT brands named in the survey, you could argue that its order is as much a reflection of brand strength as green leadership.

I'm a book junkie. I love to read books, love they way they look lined up on a shelf or piled high on my nightstand, love the rough feel of the paper under my fingertips, even love their musty scent. I have hundreds and hundreds of books, many of which, I'm chagrined to admit, haven't seen the light of day in years or even had the pleasure of being read. I have too many; there's nowhere to keep them all, so the unlucky ones are stored in the basement.

My wife often points this out. She contends that buying books wastes paper, particularly since I can walk to the library and check them out. And she's right, mostly. (For me, at least, the library fulfills the functional need to read, but not so much the emotional desire to connect with a great book and keep it around as reminder of that experience.) Sometimes I feel guilty for buying another book, and furtively sneak it into the house. Not because of the outlay of the money, but because I know I've broken our pledge to live a more sustainable life.

Which is why coming across Eco-Libris today was a bit of a revelation. It's a simple idea, akin to buying carbon offsets–for every book you read, you buy a tree to be planted in a developing country. Voila. Guilt-free reading.

Well, not entirely. I realize typing in my credit card number into a website doesn't wipe the slate clean. The larger goal of the Eco-Libris is to push for greater use of recycled paper to print books. So by contributing to their cause, I'm supporting something that has an effect beyond my own behavior. In theory, at least.

And that's my point. I understand and appreciate the good intentions behind Eco-Libris and other similar tools to offset our impact on the environment. But it's like I alluded in a recent post–these sorts of things smack a bit like indulgences to me, the sort of opportunity available largely to the well-heeled who want to lighten their conscience or feel like they've done their part. It keeps the broader challenge at arm's length. Yes, we need to change our habitual behavior–finding alternatives to or even phasing out the things that make our daily lives convenient and productive–but the far-larger hill to climb is shifting the strong emotional connections we've made with certain activities, such as reading. For others, it might be driving. Or flying. Or even (perhaps especially, for some folks) brands. When focusing on sustainability becomes personal and requires confronting things that are vital to how you define yourself–your passions, your sense of style, your tribe–then the true test begins.

On Monday, the NYTimes had a story wrapping up the Sustainability Brands conference I attended a couple of weeks ago. The reporter's take on the event gets to the great divide between the goals of business and sustainability. One one hand, companies are in the business of selling us more products, green or otherwise. And on the other, the crux of sustainability is to consume less. Much less.

So while it's great, she says, that companies are greening their existing products and developing alternatives that are marginally better that the conventional ones they're competing with, most are not addressing the larger problem, which is changing the expectations and behavior of consumers.

Companies have invested so much time and money and expertise into cultivating a consumer-centric culture, particularly here in the U.S., that it's not hard to see why they wouldn't touch, let alone recognize, this issue. It's the high-voltage third rail of capitalism–i.e., encouraging your customers to buy less of your product. Common sense says that if you do that, you'll be doing your competitors a big favor and will put yourselves out of business in short order.

Which very well might be true. But if all companies cling to that common sense (the one that helped create the problem we're facing), they might be putting us all out of business. Permanently. As one recent ad I saw made the point, eventually there will be no one left to sell to if we destroy the planet.

Setting aside the Doomsday scenario for now, at least one speaker at the conference took up this point. Toward the end of his talk, Jeffrery Hollander, CEO of Seventh Generation, admitted that, no matter how much greener his company's household cleaning products are, they're still failing because they're making our current lifestyles just a little bit less offensive to the environment–rather than changing our behavior altogether. His message was that we need a fundamental change in our value system, one that favors healthy relationships, communities and yes, the environment, well over the acquisition of things and personal wealth. Hollander said that the biggest challenge we face is being brutally honest about the negative impact of business-as-usual on the planet. Until that changes, he said, the sustainability movement will only make a marginal and, in the end, futile difference.

Idealistic? Sure. But at a conference whose very premise is arguably an oxymoron (as the NYTimes reporter Allison Arieff points out), it was a provocative moment of candor that, I suspect, many of us who make our livelihood helping sell more stuff recognize but cannot fully admit.

Conversation recently overheard at Universal Studios:

Studio exec: Okay, lay it out for me–what's our plan for Hulk?

Marketing exec: The usual. The website is up, and the behind the scenes vids will hit YouTube next week. Happy Meals and the co-op with McDs is ready to go. Displays for 24HR fitness, GNC, Home Depot and Men's Wearhouse will ship next week. The new coaster ride is on track to unveil at the opening. Merch will hit stories next week, about two months before we go national. PR is gearing up for the tour–ET, EW, MTV, the works. Ads will drop next—

Studio exec: C'mon–what are we doing to bring in the kids?

Marketing exec (squints eyes, squeezes temple): Well, how about this. The Hulk is green, right?

Marketing exec: Okay, imagine this–you show up at the website, right? You've got clips, you've got the blog, you've got pics of Norton and Liv. And there's a link that takes you to a carbon calculator.

Studio exec: Carbon calculator?

Marketing exec: It tells you what your carbon footprint is–you know, from driving, flying, that sort of thing.

Marketing exec: And we'll set it up so people can buy offsets.

Studio exec (rubbing chin): Hmmm, offsets….

Studio exec: Before you go–indulgences. Where can I get some of those?

Here's my random million dollar idea of the day: What if there was some sort of smart device you could carry with you that calculated your carbon footprint in real time? It would monitor your activities, your surroundings, what you used and consumed, where you went and how and so on, continually measuring your carbon emissions. Sort of like the display in the Prius that lets you know your MPG or the smart meters now offered by many electric utilities. As people have discovered, the Prius gauge motivates you to change your driving habits to get the best possible mileage. Driving becomes sort of a game, a contest with yourself. This device could have the same effect.

The personal carbon meter would have to be largely invisible to the user–i.e., no manual inputting of data–to spur the greatest adoption. Something that was just there and worked without
much hassle. Even better if it could be integrated into an existing device, like the mobile phone.

I'd up the coolness factor by designing it to convert your carbon footprint into a score or ranking–something that was immediately understandable and relevant and shared by the mainstream. And its impact would be even greater if it linked you to a social network where you competed with others to get the best score. You could create classes of competitors, based on their occupation or age, perhaps. People could go online to track specific competitions in real time. Green companies and brands could sponsor competitions and provide incentives. Like the mobile phone, the personal carbon meter would be able to offer up customized tips or product/service suggestions to help you improve your carbon performance at that moment or in your general lifestyle. It might even allow you to display your score or ranking as you went out and about in public–like a sign of
commitment or badge of honor.

A device like this, I think, would help raise awareness of the personal impact individuals can have in fighting global warming. It would introduce a common, human-scaled measurement of a carbon footprint. It would encourage widespread participation and behavior change by taking advantage of the power of social networks and the promise of competition. And it would give brands the opportunity to connect with consumers with green messages and promotions customized to an individuals decisions, behavior and surroundings.

Sure, the technology to automatically measure personal carbon emissions might be science fiction today. But two years from now? Five years from now? Someone needs to invent this thing. Steve Jobs, I'm looking at you.

Last week, I attended the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey, CA. Many folks I spoke with  remarked that attendance had doubled since the inaugural event last fall, evidence of the growing interest in sustainability as a branding opportunity and communications challenge. On the whole, I was impressed with the conference–a great majority of the sessions I attended were worthwhile and the networking opportunities were plentiful. I'm still making sense of all that I saw and heard, but I was left with an overarching, palpable sense that we've reached a tipping point. The question is no longer whether sustainability is a passing trend or a business imperative here to stay. When companies like Dow and Clorox are investing millions into developing sustainable products and focused on integrating sustainability into their brands, it's clear that the issue has legs. The question now is how fast and far sustainability will grow, particularly given the economic downturn.

More than a few speakers shared research indicating that consumers are pulling back from making the environment and green issues a top priority. Job security, health care and the cost of gas are crowding out sustainability. Mainstream folks are apparently less willing to pay a premium for green products, pledge allegiance to green brands or expend greater effort to seek out green products when dealing with economic uncertainty.

So the challenge is demonstrating that sustainable products deliver greater immediate and personal value than conventional options. Sustainability in and of itself will not compel most people's purchasing decisions. People are more concerned with their health/wellness, relationships and sense of security. Sustainability must enable and enrich those benefits. Brands that already address those needs are in the better position to integrate sustainability as a way to deliver on their promise.

Not rocket science, I know. But it's tempting to talk about sustainability as its own thing, to hold it up as a powerful force that is fundamentally changing how we live and work. That's dangerous, though. It's a sort of fetishization that undermined the momentum behind sustainability in the 80s and 90s, making it easier to dismiss as optional and incremental to rather than essential and integral to our daily lives. The job for brands is to make sustainability a meaningful and authentic component of what they stand for and deliver, rather than a fashionable add-on.

More to come…