Archive for the ‘Climate Change’ Category
Greenwashing is just the tip of the marketing iceberg
Greenwashing is a regrettable practice across the business world today. And I applaud initiatives such as the Greenwashing Index to prevent the practice from spreading.
I’m concerned, however, that greenwashing may be distracting marketing executives and educators from an even more distressing matter: The vast number of companies, large and small, that even today don’t give lip service to green or sustainable products or practices. They don’t pretend to be sustainable, don’t promise to become sustainable, don’t understand what it means to be sustainable and, frankly, don’t appear to care.
The marketing and advertising of these companies remain what they’ve always been: attempts to promote and sell products and services, without a hint of green gloss. They stress the usual customer benefits: greater value, quality, innovation, convenience, luxury, responsiveness, ROI and the like. But they make no claims to be more earth-friendly, socially responsible or otherwise green or sustainable. These businesses continue to do what they’ve always done, with no obvious regard or accountability for the environmental or social impact of their actions now or across future generations, except perhaps as required by law, rule or regulation.
I don’t know what percentage of businesses are making concerted efforts to become far more sustainable. I’d wager it’s a small minority. One reason the media features companies that embrace sustainability is they are the exceptions. If every company was going green, there would be no story. And one reason businesses tout the “greenness” of their products or practices (sometimes resorting to greenwashing) is they see a competitive or “first mover” advantage. Again, if all companies produced sustainable goods or services, that advantage disappears.
The point is too few businesses are serious about sustainability today. And that should have brand managers, PR counselors, ad execs, social media mavens and all other marketers up in arms.
I don’t want to minimize the seriousness of greenwashing — no company should be allowed an advantage through false or deceptive marketing. But who should worry us more:
- The few unethical companies (and their marketers) trying to pull the green wool over our eyes? Or…
- The many businesses making truthful, “non-green” claims that contribute to excessive or inequitable consumption and their inevitable byproducts: natural resource depletion, ecological damage, climate change, poverty?
Marketers committed to sustainability have a perfect opportunity in this worsening recession to drive home a critical point among their not-so-green peers: It’s time to examine the very role of marketers in fueling unsustainable economies and ways of living. Or stated more positively, how marketers can get on the right side of sustainability.
Ridding the world of greenwashing would be welcomed progress. Harnessing the creative and persuasive talents of every marketer on behalf of a sustainable world would be nothing short of awesome.
Tags: advertising, brand managers, greenwashing, greenwashing index, marketers, PR, Sustainability, sustainable
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Communications, Consumerism, Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
The crisis of identity in business
An owner of a popular gourmet restaurant in Portland, Ore., recently told the local daily, “This year is about survival. Not making money, just surviving.” I suspect that sentiment is shared by vast numbers of owners and executives of businesses large and small right now. GM and Chrysler, anyone?
What began as a financial system meltdown is now a full-blown economic crisis that is worsening by the day. For those businesses able to survive this period, there may be a new crisis looming. I’ll call it the identity crisis.
We feel this individually when we’re suffering confusion about who we are, why we exist, what our role or purpose in life is. Psychologist Erik Erikson, who is said to have coined the term, observed that adolescents were especially prone to an identity crisis. Others speak of it as a condition anyone may confront in a period of great change.
Businesses are not immune to this experience, especially when revenues drop precipitously or leadership loses its focus or exuberance. They may not call it an identity crisis, but the existential questions are the same we ask as individuals: What is our role? Who do we serve? What do they need? What do we offer that matters? How are we different? Why should anyone care?
If companies aren’t dealing with doubts like these today, they probably will be soon. Why? Well, look no farther than the headlines that assault us by the hour. Massive bank bailouts and economic stimulus packages, layoffs by the tens of thousands, huge budget shortfalls in state and local governments, warnings of escalating climate change — and widespread perception that things will only get worse.
No one knows what lies ahead. But one thing seems certain. There will be no going back to the way things were. The days of easy credit, unrestrained consumer spending, unregulated markets, cheap non-renewable energy — the basis for our economic “success” and environmental mess — are behind us. The sooner businesspeople accept that, the sooner we can begin the soul-searching work of determining our reasons for being in today’s new world.
According to one reporter, “Researchers have found that those (individuals) who have made a strong commitment to an identity tend to be happier and healthier than those who have not.”
I believe the same applies to businesses. Firms whose success rests on the old order of things — and that means most of us — strike me as most vulnerable to a crisis of identity. Happier prospects await those who create and commit to a mission and organizational identity consistent with the financial and environmental realities that will be with us for years to come.
In my work helping organizations bridge their mission into their brand identity, I see the benefits of clarity, focus and meaning this effort brings.
If you’re among those struggling with the purpose of your firm’s existence, here are two questions worth considering:
How can we become part of the solution to this economic and environmental crisis? The world and its inhabitants need all the help they can get. For too long, industry has let government, social service, environmental or faith-based organizations solve social and ecological problems. There is an opportunity, not just a responsibility, for businesses to answer the call. Identify how your firm can make a difference, choose a path and watch your whole organization come alive!
What are our customers’ essential needs and how can we satisfy them? One reason we’re in this mess is business has fixated on stoking customer desires more than on satisfying fundamental needs. The result has been consumption and waste of a planet’s worth of stuff, with too little human happiness and too much economic disparity and ecological damage to show for it. As the economy tanks, businesses and individuals are getting back to basics.
If you’re wondering what constitutes basic human needs, Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef identifies nine: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Seems like a great starting point for giving your business renewed purpose and relevance in the months and years to come.
Tags: brand, brand identity, business identity, customer needs, identity crisis, Max-Neef, mission
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Communications, Consumerism, Current Affairs, Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
No sympathy here as auto woes hurt Big Advertising
I just learned Detroit’s Big Three automakers account for six percent of the revenues of the world’s four largest advertising holding companies. Meaning, if the automakers go down, it will be a painful blow to the firms most responsible for promoting their products. Hmm, let me see if I can work up some sympathy here. Sorry, no can do.
These are the very same agencies that consumed countless barrels of creative fuel bringing us the dream of owning Hummers, Escalades, Expeditions, Yukons, Navigators, Suburbans, Tahoes and other gas-guzzling, climate-killing hogs. I wonder who came up with that delightfully clever idea two years ago by GM to hand out 42 million toy Hummers in McDonald’s Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals. Once the kids get their meals, the parents will reach for the toy, and voila, next thing you know they’re with their kids in the Hummer showroom.
The major holding companies — Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, WPP — all count a Detroit automaker at or near the top of their list of largest clients. They’ve happily allied with an American industry that Fortune magazine wrote last year has been “getting a free pass on fuel economy for more than two decades. Instead of devoting its considerable technical resources to improving gas mileage, it has been cranking up the horsepower of its engines and selling modified trucks as SUVs.”
And now the Big Three automakers are cranking up the pressure on Congress to bail them out, while the Big Four ad conglomerates hold their collective breath. Detroit automakers are the poster children for environmentally and, now, economically and socially destructive behavior. While the atmosphere warmed, vehicles got bigger. While fuel prices rose, sales of big autos tanked. And while sales disappeared, so did the hopes of local communities whose economies are devastated by auto plant closures.
I’ve seen little evidence any of this has dented the conscience of the world’s leading ad executives. No doubt they’ve been too busy counting profits from their share of the billions Detroit has spent on advertising, including $4.6 billion in measured spending in 2007 alone.
The day of reckoning is now here for big advertising, just as it has been for their auto clients and their clients’ employees and communities. Good folks in advertising, PR and marketing are losing their jobs. My wish is they now find work supporting companies and industries that actually care about our planet’s future.
Tags: advertising, automakers, holding companies, SUV
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Communications, Current Affairs, Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
Will business pick up the signals?
What a different world we awoke to on November 5. For most of us voters, the future looks a little more hopeful, less divisive. For the rest, well, let’s just say not everyone was feeling the love we Obama supporters were feeling.
I’m not certain what this staggering political act by the American electorate means for those of us in business. But I do think voters sent some strong signals our way.
I keep returning to what Rob Walker, author of the recently published book Buying In, calls the “fundamental tension” of modern life: “We all want to feel like individuals. We all want to feel like we are part of something bigger than ourselves.”
Obama personifies this tension. Many see in his achievement the hope and possibility that any individual anywhere can achieve his or her dreams, no matter the odds. Others are drawn to his larger calling to fulfill America’s promise of a perfect union.
Thomas Friedman quotes Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel in his New York Times column about Obama’s victory: “Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”
Sandel and Friedman weren’t addressing business directly, but I can’t think of a greater insight for business to take from this election.
With few exceptions, businesses have catered exclusively to our desire to feel like individuals. Our products and our marketing have appealed overwhelmingly to the fulfillment of personal needs and wants through consumption. And because it was good for business, we managed to elevate the role of Americans as consumers above all others, including citizens.
If Sandel is right, Americans want more. Not more stuff; more opportunity to make the world a better place and more leaders who inspire the greatness in all of us. Businesses must recognize the pendulum is swinging away from the all-consuming, me-first excesses of the past quarter century. Those that respect and engage customers and other stakeholders as whole human beings — ready to “serve a cause greater than themselves” — will lead the way in our brave new world.
One great cause is sustainability. Like civil rights, the sustainability movement is a struggle for the ages. From where we stand today, the challenge of preventing catastrophic climate change, healing our natural systems and creating more equitable economies appears as a mountain summit beyond reach. Will the climb be worth the effort? What do you think the civil rights warriors who can now stop dreaming of an African-American president would say?
Tags: Buying In, equitable economies, New York Times, Obama, Rob Walker, Sustainability, Thomas Friedman
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Consumerism, Current Affairs, Marketing, Politics, Sustainability | 1 Comment »
What we still control in these uncertain times
Last night I offered the opening thoughts for a discussion group around sustainability. I took my inspiration from Al Gore, whom I heard speak last week at a political fundraiser in Portland. Gore asked the rhetorical question: This feels like the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, doesn’t it? The audience collectively nodded and murmured yes, yes, it does. It does feel like we’re in the midst of a very dramatic shift right now and are entering unchartered territory. Gore said what we were all thinking.
This helps explains why I’ve been feeling so much uncertainty lately, something I’m sure I share with many millions of others across our country and globe. Endings and beginnings are inevitably messy and halting. And this historic period we’re living through now is bound to be all of that and more. I told my fellow discussion group members that on a walk this weekend, I asked a therapist (my wife) what she would say to a client who’s struggling with uncertainty. She replied, without hesitating, “I would ask them what it is in their life they think they can control.”
Great question. I decided to answer it for myself. The exercise was eye-opening. Even as the economy threatens to collapse and news on climate change grows more ominous by the day, I found within a few minutes of pondering this therapist’s question there was much that remains within my control. Here’s what I jotted down:
my responses
my beliefs
my vision for the future
my stories
my awareness
my actions and behaviors
my intentions
my goals
my hopes
my creativity
my determination
my purchases
I could have kept adding to the list, but the point was made. Yes, we live in a time of great uncertainty and there’s so much outside of our control. More importantly, there’s still so much within our control. This is as true for businesses as it is for individuals. Now is an important moment for those who own, lead or manage businesses to ask what they still control and can accomplish even as customer spending slows and markets and economies contract. It’s easy to move into reaction mode, letting uncontrollable external forces dictate your every action and keep you working in fear of what lies ahead: loss of business income, potential layoffs, maybe even business closure.
Operating from a commitment to sustainability, I believe, provides the anchor in this perfect storm. It keeps our minds, decisions and actions rooted in care for what really matters: the health and welfare of the planet, our employees, customers, communities and other stakeholders. Sustainability is not a line item to be cut when times are tough. It’s a belief in how to conduct business. It’s also a response, vision, awareness, intention, goal, hope and set of actions. All of these things are within our control as businesses. And that’s something we can all hold onto as our world heaves and sighs into a new era.
Tags: Al Gore, commitment to sustainability, economy, end of an era, Sustainability, uncertainty
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Marketers’ choice: ‘Lead, follow, or get out of the way’
Consumer spending is falling fast. While that’s bad for the economy, it’s good for the environment. Excessive consumption produces waste and pollution streams that are destroying our planet. The question now is how are we going to respond to the economic crisis at hand. If our elected officials and business leaders seize the moment, the consumption downturn will ignite a movement that saves our economy and our environment for generations to come.
And maybe, just maybe we marketers will heed the call to help lead the way.
In the near term, an environmental benefit will be of little solace to those whose jobs depend on consumer spending, which is to say most of us since consumer spending comprises nearly two-thirds of our economy. It’s all-but certain the current financial crisis will slip into an economic recession, perhaps as rough as any we’ve experienced in decades.
As painful as the near future may become, the glass half-full view reveals the opportunity ahead. Financier George Soros explains:
You see, for the last 25 years the world economy, the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he’s been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It’s finished…You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.
Over consumption, made possible by easy access to debt, explains much of the financial mess we’re in today. And a consumer economy, stoked by cheap, abundant fossil fuels, is a principle cause of global warming. In the end, reliance on consumer spending is both bad for the economy and bad for the environment. Other than that, it’s great.
What makes the coming elections so critical is the next president and Congress will decide whether we as a nation will fundamentally change the underpinnings of our economy. If we simply find new ways to prop up our consumption-based economy, we will hasten the day of reckoning that climate change requires. If we embrace the environmental and social challenges of climate change as the economic opportunity of our times, we can all look toward the future with hope.
For marketers, the opportunity is to finally begin leading the world in the right direction. If “the motor of the world economy” has been consumption, the fuel has been marketing. Marketers create awareness and demand for goods, services and ideas. The problem is we’ve used our talents overwhelmingly in support of unsustainable economies, employers and clients.
But that can change. Imagine if we were to unleash our creativity and persuasive abilities in service to freeing our economy from dependence on fossil fuels and mindless consumption. I’m convinced the impact would be both enormous and swift for our climate, environment and economy.
I don’t know whether the collective parts of the marketing industry — branding, advertising, PR, direct marketing etc. — are up to the task. The industry is so deeply enmeshed in the profitable, but dead-end ways of consumerism. So be it. The train is leaving with or without us. In the words of Thomas Paine, our choice is simple: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
Tags: Branding, Climate Change, consumer spending, economic crisis, excessive consumption, George Soros, global warming, marketers, over consumption
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Communications, Consumerism, Current Affairs, Marketing, Politics, Sustainability | No Comments »