Shiny Green Button

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?

That’s how Gil Friend kicked off the first full day of the Sustainable Brands conference yesterday.

It was a powerful and surprising statement. It showed how far sustainability has come from the days when environmentalists were labeled “tree huggers.” Today, it’s become another part of the business landscape. Companies aren’t demonstrating social and environmental responsibility because it’s nice. They’re doing it because it gives them a competitive advantage.

Friend’s statement also emphasized the urgency and complexity of our challenge. You just can’t afford to be nice when climate change threatens to turn our home into a blistering, sooty rock. You can’t afford to be nice when you are reinventing the industrial engine of the economy.

Still, change is hard. Bruce McGregor from IDEO told us yesterday that only 10 percent of people are successful in making a change when faced with a life-or-death situation. There are an awful lot of smokers out there who can’t kick the habit after a diagnosis of cancer, and plenty of people fail to exercise and eat better even after developing type I diabetes. Just telling someone to change because it’s good for them doesn’t mean they will do it.

Now, here we all are—facing a life-or-death situation—and still drinking water out of plastic bottles, flushing bleach down the drain, driving our cars.

As marketers and communicators, the lesson is to stop talking to consumers about how they can feel good about their more eco-friendly purchase or their microloan. Only a handful of consumers buy because they want to do good for the planet, and recent research by Fruitful Strategy shows that 24 percent of people are “rejecters” of green products, purposefully avoiding products with green messages on the label. Most people are not buying or behaving green out of altruism, but because it also makes them feel more secure, comfortable or attractive—or it saves them money.

So it’s time for sustainability to stop being so nice. We have to be sustainable and beautiful. Sustainable and healthy. Sustainable and simple. Sustainable and affordable. Our future depends on it.

AHA! is heading to the Sustainable Brands conference next week, for four days packed full of CSR goodness. We’ll be reporting back throughout the week, right here on Shiny Green Button, or you can follow our tweets at http://twitter.com/AHAwriters.

In those first few days of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, many in the communications industry criticized BP for its lack of a cohesive crisis communications plan. First they said it wasn’t their fault. Then, they accepted responsibility. And how much oil is gushing out? The numbers have been fuzzy.

But lately, critics have eased up, thanks in part to what many are calling BP’s effective use of online tools and social media. The company is getting the word out about cleanup efforts via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and a dedicated website, www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com. It’s also front and center on the main BP website.

Of course, no matter how effective the company is with these venues, the pitfalls of social media still apply. Social media, by its nature, puts a brand in the people’s hands, and that includes disgruntled consumers and activists.

When I did a Google search for “BP Facebook,” the first item was a link to a “Boycott BP” Facebook page. A fake Twitter account mocking the company, @BPGlobalPR, launched May 19 and already has twice as many followers as BP’s official account. Despite some obviously snarky tweets, some readers have confused the fake account for BP’s official voice.

The actual crisis BP is communicating about is obviously much larger and graver than the recent palm-oil problem Nestle faced, or yesterday’s Intel Facebook snafu, both of which have been held up as examples of what not to do with social media. Rather than getting defensive or trying to stop the vitriol, BP seems to be moving forward with its own message while letting the critics move forward with theirs.

This seems like the right approach for now, but unfortunately, the environmental crisis and the communications crisis that goes with it are both far from over.

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: Nick Hobgood on Flickr

Those three words are music to a marketer’s ears. If a client came to me with a project and said they wanted something “swift, radical and creative,” I’d clear my calendar to meet with them that day. I’d drop whatever was on my desk and turn my focus. I’d expect the assignment to be hard, meaningful, high-stakes and worth the effort.

What’s more, every person I know in my circle of creative services agency types would do the same.

Beyond that, most of the smart, creative people I know in whatever field—from engineering to law, from medicine to education—would relish that kind of assignment. It’s the stuff our work stories of triumph and celebration come from.

Well, friends, our assignment may have just been issued. Read this piece from CNN about the U.N.’s third Global Biodiversity Outlook report. Not only does it call for dramatic action, it lays out the cost in oh-so-human terms: $121 trillion of lost economic opportunity if we don’t do something now.

So, how about it? What “swift, radical and creative” idea can we come up with? I’d love nothing more than to cancel this afternoon’s dentist appointment.