Green Marketing

in the Age of Twitter,

Green Fatigue &
Bright Greens

McGill MBA Japan Independent Study

LANCE SHIELDS
McGill MBA Japan Independent Study

1
“Every social and global issue is a
business opportunity just waiting
for the right kind of inventive
entrepreneurship, the right kind of
investment, the right kind of
collective action.”
- Peter Drucker

2
 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................4
GREEN MARKETING IN THE AGE OF TWITTER, GREEN FATIGUE & BRIGHT GREENS ......4

HISTORY & BACKGROUND OF GREEN ..................................................................7

HISTORY OF THE GREEN MOVEMENT ..........................................................................7

GREEN MARKETING 101 ........................................................................................12

DEFINING GREEN MARKETING ..................................................................................12
THE GREEN CONSUMER BANDWAGON ......................................................................13
VARYING SHADES OF CONSUMER CONSCIOUSNESS..................................................15
A THIRD SHADE – BRIGHT GREENS ..........................................................................17
KEY CHALLENGES FOR GREEN MARKETING ..............................................................19
A CHALLENGE FOR THE LATE 2000S – GREEN FATIGUE ............................................22

CASE ANALYSES ....................................................................................................25

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................25
CASE: THE BP OIL SPILL - ILL UOCIAL MEDIA AND CROWDSOURCING ......................26
CASE: SEVENTH GENERATION AND TRIBAL BRAND MARKETING ...............................32
GREEN NGO MARKETING ........................................................................................47
CASE: THE URBAN FOREST PROJECT – DESIGN MEETS GREEN ................................47
CASE: URBAN FOREST MAP - PNLINE CENSUS FOR TREES ......................................50

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS .....................................................................................55

APPENDIX.................................................................................................................57

ADDITIONAL LINKS .................................................................................................65

PHOTO CREDIT:.......................................................................................................66

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Introduction

Green Marketing in the Age of Twitter, Green Fatigue & Bright Greens

In 1999 in the middle of the dotcom era, I moved to San Francisco after taking

a job as an art director at Agency.com one of the top Internet agencies at the

time. The excitement of being part of something as big, fast and sexy as the

web boom was a vibrant wave that we rode even as it dashed us in a heap on

the beach as the dotcom bubble broke. The web market rebounded and I

continued my career as a creative director launching corporate websites and

digital ad campaigns. Over time, the web has changed from one-way

communication to multidirectional, user-driven communications (Web 2.0)

making the Internet social and exciting once again.

At the end of a MBA, I began to ask myself what would be the next

wave that would usher in new business and marketing opportunities around

the world? From talking to professors and through my own investigations, I

decided green marketing businesses were that next wave and had the added

bonus of being responsible and good for the planet. If I were to start my own

business, work for a company or work as a communications consultant; I

decided green marketing would surely be the most promising trend in a future.

At the same time I asked myself how I could leverage my past web

experience and involvement with social media marketing which is currently in

full swing. At that point, the theme for this investigation became clear and the

synergies of the social web and green marketing became the topic of this

paper.

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 The paper is titled “Green Marketing in the Age of Twitter, Green

Fatigue & Bright Greens” because green marketing does not exist in a

vacuum but is part of a collection of relevant cultural trends that if understood,

I believe, can make green marketing more effective and high impact. For “the

age of Twitter” the paper will discuss how social media can be used to build

iconic tribal brands around green companies and nonprofits. For “the age of

green fatigue”, the paper will look at the challenge of the oversaturation of

environmental issues and green marketing messages that have lead to

greenwashing. And for “the age of bright greens”, the point is that there’s a

place for a new shade of green that takes advantage of the Internet, design

and innovation to architect a brighter future.

The paper will begin by giving a history of the green movement, mainly

in the U.S., to better understand what green marketing has grown out of, as

this form of marketing has a cultural legacy bound to conservationism and

corporate mishandling of our food, products and the environment. The next

section of the paper will be a Green Marketing 101: defining green marketing,

showing how it has evolved, discussing the three shades of green, and

looking at the challenges faced by green marketers today including

greenwashing and green fatigue. In the last major section, the paper will

attempt to show both best case and worse case examples of businesses and

nonprofits pursuing green marketing in some form and the hope is to derive

lessons in which to better manage similar programs in the future. Some of

these cases were based on conversations with people working in the field of

green marketing and the hope is to bring some realism to the work. From the

get-go environmentally minded people are suspicious of marketers and

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advertisers for taking part in orchestrating consumerist waste and

environmental destruction. So, in the end, it is this paper’s ultimate goal to

show how we as green marketers can win back their trust and have authentic

relationships with our customers by collaborating with them to find healthier

and more sustainable lifestyles.

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History & Background of Green

History of the Green Movement

Very different than other kinds of marketing, green marketing traces its roots

back to activism and cultural upheaval over long periods of history. Important

to understanding green marketing is having a general knowledge of the

environmentalism which has helped shape the public’s consciousness and the

very way we see corporations, consumer products and the governments

which are in place to protect us.

Early Environmentalism

The origins of the environmental movement can be traced back to different

parts of the world throughout history. One example is Arabic medical

treatises during the Arab Agriculture Revolution (later known as the Medieval

Green Revolution) starting in the 8th century and was concerned with such

seemingly modern notions as air contamination, water contamination, soil

contamination and solid waste mishandling. Four centuries later in 1272, King

Edward I banned the burning of sea-coal after smoke became a major air

problem in England.

In Europe, the Industrial Revolution created environmental pollution as

great factories sprang up and the use of large volumes of coal and other fossil

fuels lead to unprecedented air pollution as well as large volumes of chemical

discharges that were damaging to humans. The British Alkali Acts in 1863 to

control air pollution was the first large-scale law to be passed. The

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environmentalist movement, at least in Europe, grew out of this reaction to

this industrialization, growth of cities and poor air and water quality.1

Early Americans and Transcendentalists

The green movement in the U.S. can be traced back as far as 1739, though it

wasn’t called environmentalism and still considered conservation up until the

1950s. Benjamin Franklin petitioned Pennsylvania, citing the rights of the

people to stop waste dumping and abolish tanneries from Philadelphia. But

one of the most influential U.S. green innovations was in fact based on

intellectual thoughts dating back to the 1830s. Environmentalism is actually an

important part of American philosophy first developed by the

Transcendentalists, most notably Henry David Thoreau. In his book Maine

Woods he called for the conservation of nature and federal preservation of

virgin forests. He did this by first capturing the minds of the public on the true

nature of wild places. Walden was an even more well-known book that

captured Thoreau’s return to nature and which argues that people should

become intimately close with nature.2

U.S. Pragmatism

Thoreau’s contribution to conservation was largely philosophical and while his

words were hugely influential later on for educated nature conservationists in

the 20th century, one of the most active periods of conservation in the U.S.

began in the late 19th century and often called the Era of Pragmatism. John

1
“Environmentalism”. Wikipedia. 15 Mar. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalism#History>.

2
ibid.

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Muir was important in this period after he moved to Yosemite in 1869, shortly

after the U.S. government set aside wild lands for parks. Through this

Scottish-born American naturalist’s writings and activism, which argued for the

inherent right of nature to exist (foreign to some people even today), the U.S.

public and politicians were influenced to begin a change of awareness about

preserving nature for the public good. He helped found the Sierra club in

the1890s and became its first president to help start a number of important

parks and educate the public. In contrast to Muir’s back-to-nature approach,

President Theodore Roosevelt after visiting Yosemite in 1903, was

instrumental in publicizing the conservation movement at a wider scale. The

National Park Service was established in 1916 under Woodrow Wilson. 3

Green Goes Personal

The U.S. green movement was in large part slowed down and forced out of

the public mind by the World Wars and the Great Depression. While the

Sierra Club continued to grow and establish new parks, the green movement

mainly focused on land conservation which was of little concern to the

average citizen. It would take large-scale disasters and catastrophe at a more

personal level to wake up the U.S. public to such things as food quality and

consumer product safety.4

The first of these was the 1948 disaster in Donora, Pennsylvania called

the “Death Fog” in which a U.S. Steel zinc and steel plant emitted a fluoride

cloud into the town killing 20 and leaving 100s of citizens sick and dying. After

3 Anonymous (“Sara”). “A Brief History of the Modern Green Movement in America”. WebEcoist. Mar.
20 2010 <http://webecoist.com/2008/08/17/a-brief-history-of-the-modern-green-movement/>
4
ibid.

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a U.S. Steel cover up, numerous angry lawsuits occurred as well as the first

calls for national legislation to protect the public from industrial air pollution.

Significantly, this national outcry marked the beginning of the U.S. public

holding industry and corporations accountable for their actions.5

Sending a Green Message

Many people associate the green movement with the Rachel Carson’s

groundbreaking book Rights of Spring that was serialized in the New Yorker

and then published in full in 1962. Conservationist Carson wrote that

detrimental effects of DDT pesticide on the environment, particularly on birds.

Carson’s writing while criticized initially by the chemical companies was

eventually embraced by society and even U.S. President John F. Kennedy

directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate Carson's claims.

Carson was not a scientist nor an authority in chemistry or biology but the

power of her voice was heard above industry to eventually end the use of

DDT in the U.S and raise the consciousness of the U.S. public.

The 1970s were marked by numerous steps to clean up the

environment: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the

founding of Earth Day, the Water Pollution Control Act, and the Endangered

Species Act. At the same time disasters at Love Canal in 1978 and Three Mile

Island in 1979 terrified the public with toxic waste, pollution, and

contamination. The 1980s were plagued with oil spills most notably the Exxon

5
Bryson, Chris. “The Donora Fluoride Fog: A Secret History of America's Worst Air Pollution Disaster”.
Fluoride: Protected Pollutant or Panacea?. 12 Apr. 2010 <http://www.fluoridation.com/donora.htm>

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Valdez in 1989 while there was backlash from industry against environmental

laws.

The Nineties - An Owl and Treehuggers

The 1990s were marked by radical activism as new environmental groups

such as Earth First sprang up in reaction to corporate negligence. At the same

time conservative radio made fun of environmental issues such as the spotted

owl, the merits of clear cutting and the “treehuggers”, passionate young

activists that chained themselves to trees to stop bulldozers. These events

helped gain the green movement wide visibility but also had a marginalizing

effect and politicized key green issues in emotional ways. The movement was

often depicted as anti-corporate, anti-property and cult-like. At the same time,

climate change was jeered at as over reaction by hippy fanatics. From the

point of marketing discussed later in this paper, this perception of

marginalization is a challenge for green marketers even today.6

Al Gore and Beyond

Al Gore’s award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” brought the

green movement into the public eye like no other media event since Rights of

Spring. The film made it clear even to the most conservative that our food was

chemically treated and genetically modified, our water was contaminated with

toxic chemicals, our resources were running out and our wasteful habits were

filling landfills. Scientific proof is clear enough to the vast majority of

developed countries that climate change is actually occurring and the need to

6
Bryson.

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get on board with the Kyoto Protocol not only made sense but was an

embarrassment to Americans whose president continued to stay out of it.

Green Marketing 101

Now that a history of the green movement (mainly in the U.S.) has been given

to set the background for societal change in the past 150 years, it is logical

that we next look at green marketing and how it has developed in modern

times. Keep in mind from the past section on the green movement that green

marketing springs from a cultural movement for public good and this can be

an advantage and disadvantage to marketers depending on which side of

politics they are on. I will also show in this section that green comes in

differing shades from dark green to light; and that depending on one’s level of

engagement can be closer to the original movement (dark greens) to more an

expression of one’s personal brand and buying behavior (light greens).

Defining Green Marketing

The meaning of “green marketing” is vague in the same way as the words

“green” and “marketing” each are construed in different ways. So first it would

be beneficial to have a definition for green marketing. Using a voice of

authority, according to the American Marketing Association (AMA) green

marketing is defined as “The marketing of products that are presumed to be

environmentally safe.” This is their retail definition but they have two other –

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social marketing and environments definitions. The social marketing definition

is “The development and marketing of products designed to minimize

negative effects on the physical environment or to improve its quality.” That

leaves the environments definition, which is “The efforts by organizations to

produce, promote, package, and reclaim products in a manner that is

sensitive or responsive to ecological concerns.” 7

Why are three definitions needed for something as seemingly simple

as selling sustainable products? This depends on who is doing the “selling”

and who is doing the “buying”. If we are looking at the retailer The Body Shop

selling environmentally safe beauty products then the retail definition is a

good fit. But if we are thinking about the marketing needed in a corporation’s

CSR program, by an NGO raising funds or the U.S. government wishing to

influence public behavior, it is a necessity to get stakeholders to buy-in to their

activities and each needs a wider definition. Immediately, we face the framing

problem that green marketing is needed for more than just commercial

purposes. And even in commercial purposes, one of the main focuses of this

paper, we’ll see the frame can change from personal to societal, depending

on the marketing strategy needed by the organization.

The Green Consumer Bandwagon

The term “green marketing” first came into existence in the late 1980s and

gained prominence in the early 1990s. The American Marketing Association

7
“Green Marketing”. Dictionary. Marketing Power (American Marketing Association). 15 Apr. 2010
<http://www.marketingpower.com/_layouts/dictionary.aspx?dLetter=G>

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held the first workshop on “Ecological Marketing” in 1975 and it lead to a book

of the same name, a first of its kind. A series of man-made and natural

disasters around the world in the late 1980s lead to the beginning of green

concerns, going beyond the typical deep-green crowd. Floods in Bangladesh,

earthquakes in Armenia, the Berlin Wall coming down; it was a time of turmoil

and change. The UK Green Party achieved an unexpected 15% in votes in

1989 and in 1988 The Green Consumer Guide was published, attracting 1

million readers.8

But how did this effect business? By the end of the decade, many

people were calling it the ‘green consumer bandwagon’ and what followed

was a series of brands jumping aboard and making grand green claims. New

brands, first springing up in Europe and the UK, such as Ecover and The

Body Shop came into fame during this time and became standard-bearers.

The Henley Center called it the “Caring and Sharing” decade. As with any

bandwagon, nobody wanted to miss the green marketing trend in the late 80s

and early 90s and many mainstream brands launched their own green ranges

including Boots launching a Body Shop clone called Naturals and Sainsbury’s

and Safeway supplementing their conventional lines.

However, as Joel Makower, a writer on green marketing and author of

The Green Consumer states, the first green marketing revolution lacked

substance and in his own words, “Many of those early products were outright

failures: biodegradable trash bags that degraded a little too early; clunky

fluorescent bulbs that emitted horrible hues; recycled paper products with the

8
Grant, John. The Green Marketing Manifesto. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2007.
24-25.

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softness of sandpaper; greener products that couldn’t do their job. Much of it

was expensive and hard to find, to boot.” Public interest soon waned, as

functional benefits of products didn’t balance with the ethical issues they

claimed. This was an important lesson in early green innovation as the hype

faded and consumers became more sophisticated. Household cleaning brand

Ecover, after moving from health food stores to popularity in mainstream

retailers like Safeway, by the early 2000s began to realize the need to

completely rework R&D for efficacy, in other words actually clean dirt, could

no longer rely on only green claims.9

Where did it all go wrong? It’s not that hard to produce a house cleaner

or garbage bag that is both environmentally safe and functionally effective.

While some of it may have to do with problems in early innovation, the main

issue was corporations rushing to take advantage of green agendas to make

a quick profit without paying attention to a key aspect needed for effective

green marketing – authenticity both for green and marketing purposes.

Varying Shades of Consumer Consciousness

Rolf Wüstenhagen, a professor at University of St. Gallen in Switzerland,

wondered what was preventing consumers from buying cleaner, greener

technology for their homes. While partially it had to do with the significant

investment in buying and installing new heaters, Wüstenhagen discovered

through his research that there are varying shades of green in consumers.

Through the study that consisted of 61 consumers in 9 focus groups, and

9 Grant. p. 26.

15
testing them on social and psychological factors before getting to the point of

economic calculation, it was found that marketers of green technology faced

two types of consumers – “dark greens” and “light greens”.10

The dark greens were shown to value environmental aspects more

than other attributes, are willing to pay a premium for it, care about energy

independence and value sourcing products from a local vendor. They also

care about applying green solutions like orienting their home towards the

south.

On the other hand, light greens were much more concerned with

convenience. For them, there’s a trade off between environmental aspects

and affordability of product. They are less likely to pay for green attributes,

care about comfort and ease of maintenance. They are also risk averse and

are less willing to adopt new green technologies.

While different levels of green behaviors in consumers may be obvious,

the important lessen here is that it is impossible to send a single marketing

message to reach both kinds of greens. Even for consumers that tend to buy

green, their motivations differ, some do it for environmental reasons (dark)

while others do for more for personal status (light).

10
Kanter, James. “The Color of Consumer Consciousness: Light Green and Dark Green”. New York
Times. Science. 12 Apr. 2010 <http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/the-color-of-conservation-
light-green-and-dark-green/>

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A Third Shade – Bright Greens

Another shade of green was introduced by writer Alex Stephen in his blog and

book Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century (2003). Stephen

dubbed this new shade the “bright greens.” Stephen described bright greens

as “the belief that for the future to be green, it must also be bright. Bright

green environmentalism is a call to use innovation, design, urban revitalization

and entrepreneurial zeal to transform the systems that support our lives.”11

Stephen contrasted them with light greens who he said care more

about lifestyle and consumer change as the key to sustainability advocate

change at a personal level through the way they shop or small changes in the

home (for example recycling). He feels that light greens are one of the main

ways sustainability has become mainstream and cool. Stephen says, on a

downside, many believe light greens are to blame for the “green fatigue” that

is occurring (green fatigue will be discussed later in this paper.)

In a different way, dark greens often stress pulling back from

consumerism, local solutions and shorter supply chains and advocate change

on a community level. In their best, dark greens have great know-how in

bioregionalism, reinhabitation and taking control of one’s life and surroundings

in a collective way. On a downside, dark greens can be known for being

doomsayers and warning (and sometimes advocating) collapse.12

11
Steffen, Alex. “Bright Green, Light Green, Dark Green, Gray: The New Environmental Spectrum.”
Worldchanging. 18 Apr. 2010 <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009499.html>
12
Steffen.

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 Compared to light and dark greens, bright green environmentalism is

more an intellectual current among North American environmentalists with a

number of businesses, blogs, NGOs and even governments now explicitly

calling themselves "bright green". The City of Vancouver strategic planning

document, for example, was titled “Vancouver 2020: A Bright Green Future”.

Northern Europe and Scandavia especially have a strong following of bright

green proponents and the recent Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

(COP15) in December 2009 used bright green as their guiding message (see

http://www.brightgreen.dk).13

In the case of the green marketers challenge, similarly to the first

discussion of light and dark, with this new perspective on light, dark and now

bright greens, the job of the marketer to align her products and market

communications with the right consumer target is not a simple one, especially

when one considers that the three kinds of green are more conceptual than

real and that people would naturally pick and choose across the three

depending whether they were consuming, organizing a community or

designing a new innovation. But at some point decisions must be made and

the marketer must decide who their customer is and she is bound to fail

unless they really know whom their value proposition is the best fit for.

13
“Bright Green Environmentalism”, Wikipedia. 20 Apr. 2010
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_green_environmentalism>

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Key Challenges for Green Marketing

According to market researcher Mintel, about 12% of the U.S. population can

be identified as True Greens (similar to dark greens), consumers who seek

out and regularly buy so-called green products. Another 68% can be classified

as Light Greens, consumers who buy green sometimes.14 In the face of this

difference, companies must make difficult choices on how to market their

products.

How Green is Green Enough?

One of the main challenges green brands and products face is the lack of

standards or public agreement about what green really is. As Joel Makower

states, on a fundamental level, there is no definition of how “green is green

enough” when it comes to what claims a company can make about itself or its

products. This lack of consensus in consumers, companies and governing

bodies, according to Makower, has slowed the growth of green marketing as

cautious companies are unwilling to make claims that they may get called out

on by NGOs and eco watch activists. At the same time consumers are

mistrustful of company claims of green as they have become increasingly

sophisticated and knowledgeable through information from the web.

The Eco Bag Problem

In 2007, “Queen of Bagland” Anya Hindmarch designed the “I’m Not a Plastic

Bag” eco bag for the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s to help establish the

credentials of the company. While it became a fashion hit among the hip and

14
“Green Marketing”, Wikipedia. 20 Apr. 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_marketing#Statistics>

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decorated in London, selling 20,000 before selling out, it got caught out in the

media for developing a campaign that was already passé as organic cotton

and Fair-trade had become the norm. The headline on one blog read, “I’m not

an ethical shopping bag.” 15The mainstream news took up the story and much

of the impact of the green communications was

diminished. Chris Arnold, creative partner at ethical

marketing company Feel said, "So what if people

buy it because it's a fashion statement, if the person

who uses the bag is shallow and driven by fashion,

it still helps the planet because they haven't used a

plastic one.”16 But sophisticated consumers,

unfortunately for Sainsbury’s, don’t think this way. The first challenge was

what Sainsbury’s thought was an innovative green statement had already

moved on and the company was seen by vocal true greens as being a

clueless brand. This was further aggravated when Sainsbury's was accused

of hypocrisy after it admitted the bag was made in China and was neither

organic nor fair trade.17 At the same time, green for fashion’s sake, while one

way to make green a normal and acceptable behavior, arguably lessens the

ethical halo that eco bags and other green products might have.

15
“'I'm not an ethical bag': Sainsbury's 'green' bag not organic or fair trade”. London Evening Standard.
24 Apr. 2010 <http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23394103-im-not-an-ethical-bag-sainsburys-
green-bag-not-organic-or-fair-trade.do>
16
Winterman, Denise. “It's in the bag, darling “. BBC News. 25 Apr. 2010
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6587169.stm>
17
Mendick, Robert. “Exposed: 'I'm not an ethical bag'”. This Is Money. 25 Apr. 2010
<http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=419792&in_page_id=2>

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Virtue Cannot Be Claimed

As mentioned earlier in the section about the green movement, green

marketing is completely different than other forms of brand marketing. The

key difference is that conventional branding and advertising are focused on

generating awareness and perceived superiority, in other words a sales job.

When a typical ad agency helps a company create a vague brand statement

of virtuous claims and their actions don’t live up to the claims in every aspect

of the business, as there are so many, it invites suspicion and scrutiny.

Especially with today’s social media, potential scandals are picked up on

Twitter so fast that they’ll have the well-intentioned marketing director’s head

spinning before the TV networks get a whiff of it. When companies try to use

certain images or keywords that research has supposedly proven to influence

consumer behavior, they tend to backfire. By suggesting it without actually

saying green, these cultural codes point to the activity of “greenwashing”, the

practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as

environmentally friendly. Companies describing their products as natural

when in fact they are only using small amounts of natural ingredients and

filled with a long list of inorganic chemicals is a typical reason consumers

don’t trust claims of virtue and why they can only hurt the brands that pursue

them without actually living up to them 100%. In many cases, they would be

better off selling the products without the green tag and focusing on the core

functional benefits.18

18
Grant. p. 76-79.

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 On a corporate level, when a company states it’s corporate vision

about green in a vague and emotive way, it can also go sour. The public

judges companies by what they do and whether they ‘walk the talk’. By saying

‘trust us’, after years of ugly industrial truths, a typical American consumer

cannot help being suspicious that it’s just empty corporate smooth talking. In

many ways, the advertising industry itself is to blame believing consumers too

naïve to see beyond their strategies to pull on their heartstrings. As one green

marketing expert says, “green is a principle, not a proposition”. Traditional

brand advertising has rarely been able to do more than sell value

propositions, certainly not believable ethical principles.

A Challenge for the late 2000s – Green Fatigue

“It seems like all you hear about these days is "going green," and I'm starting

to wonder if there's going to be a backlash. I care about the environment, and

even I'm getting a little sick of hearing about it...”19

These are the words of Rebecca, a friend of Jennifer Grayson green journalist

at the Huffington Post’s Green (and editor of green politics blog

http://www.theredwhiteandgreen.com launched after working on the Obama

campaign) included in her March 24th column titled “Eco Etiquette: Do You

Have Green Fatigue?” She talks about a trend in the past couple of years that

started picking up in 2008 in which environmentalists began to worry about a

“green fatigue” or oversaturation of green messages in the media and

19
Grayson, Jennifer. “Eco Etiquette: Do You Have Green Fatigue?”. Huffington Post. 25 Apr. 2010
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-grayson/eco-etiquette-do-you-have_b_510930.html>

22
contradictory information about how to live a proper sustainable life. She says

that while Al Gore might have won the Noble Prize, more recently in a 2008

Gallup Poll “35% of Americans don’t believe in global warming” (see

Appendix, Exhibit 1), nearly twice the number compared to 1997. Even while

media coverage of environmental issues increases, our awareness

decreases. She thinks green fatigue is partially to blame and recommends a

few approaches to green marketers to avoid this trap.

“Stop harping on global warming”

Grayson makes the point that people have become weary listening to

impending global warming catastrophe, as it’s hard to believe in something

that may not happen in their lifetime. Instead she recommends talking about

things that “touch people on a personal level and are easy to rally behind.”

She uses the examples of focusing on the elimination of coal ash pollution,

reducing the use of toxic pesticides, petroleum-based fertilizers in our food

supply and conserving natural spaces for local communities. All of these

positively impact climate change.20

“Focus on saving money”

She makes the logical point that when companies like Ford turn off their

computers at night, they BOTH save $1.2 million and 20,000 tons of C02

emissions. She also mentions that in an economic downturn especially, green

messages need to appeal to people’s will to actually save money.

“Less focus on green products”

20
Grayson.

23
The writer’s point is that with the proliferation of eco-friendly products, a lot of

them don’t add value and some are even guilty of greenwashing which

undermines consumer faith in looking for green products (she used

fijigreen.com as one example.) She sees much of the green products as a

diversion from really innovative inventions that could bring breakthroughs that

really change consumers’ behavior. Green Marketing Manifesto author John

Grant shares this opinion, “green issues are pointing to the need for step

change, not marginal and cosmetic improvements.”21

Overuse of the ‘g’ word

Interestingly, Grayson believes one other reason for this fatigue is overuse of

the word “green” itself. With the only synonyms being environmental, eco-

friendly, and sustainable; people may be becoming desensitized to the

imperative of the situations and ideas represented by the words. The

message in essence has gotten watered down and assimilated into so many

marketing and media messages that it no longer stands out in the noise any

longer.22

21
Grayson.
22
Grayson.

24
Case Analyses

Introduction

To best understand how organizations make use of green marketing, it is

useful to examine how a variety of companies, non-profits and even

governments have both effectively and ineffectively gone green. It is my hope

that by looking at product marketing and communications through a variety of

examples of green marketing that future marketers can benefit by the

analyses and hopefully stand on the shoulders of past attempts to create

more authentic and successful marketing programs. These cases will include

the following:

• A recent controversial news item, the BP oil spill to analyze the ways

the company and the U.S. government dealt with the crisis through PR,

social media, crowdsourcing and possible greenwashing.

• How environmentally safe product company Seventh Generation uses

social media and community to build a tribe, increase customer loyalty,

listen to their opinions as a form of market research and use digital

media for viral marketing.

• Two notable cases of green NGO projects – one called the Urban

Forest Project which used design to draw attention to a green message

in cities and the second called the Urban Forest Map which is a Web

2.0 enabled crowd-sourced tree census started in San Francisco.

Interestingly, both are successful collaborations between nonprofits

and city governments.

25
Case: The BP Oil Spill - PR, Social Media and Crowdsourcing

On April 20, 2010 a BP oil rig went up in flames, killing 11 workers and

beginning a disastrous oil spill that dumped 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day

into the Gulf of Mexico. BP tried a variety of solutions to stop the spill from the

21-inch wide pipe including a preventer blowout switch, 200-ton box lowered

over the leak, a third attempt was to run a mile long tube into the pipe in hope

of sucking up the oil, among others. BP, the EPA, the U.S. Department of

Interior, the Department of Defense, and OSHA set up Deepwater Horizon

Response (DHR) to manage response operations. The DHR describes itself

and its website on its About Us page as:

A Unified Command links the organizations responding to an incident and

provides a forum for those organizations to make consensus decisions. This

site is maintained by the Unified Command’s Joint Information Center (JIC),

which provides the public with reliable, timely information about the

response.23

Beneath this text are a long list of logos with BP at the top and followed by 15

other logos 8 of which are Department of the U.S. government (Departments

of Homeland Security, State, Defense, the Interior as well as the National

Parks Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife and the Coast Guard.) What isn’t clear and

draws doubt to this whole exercise in communications is who is really behind

it and what are the true intentions of it. How can BP and the National Parks

Service be part of a “unified command”? Besides the DHR website, the DHR

23
“About Us”. Deepwater Horizon Response. 15 May 2010
<http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/541571>

26
is also using a variety of social media including a Facebook page, a Twitter

page, a YouTube page and a Flickr page.

The question I have is how much is this damage control greenwashing

for BP and the U.S. government and how much is this an earnest attempt to

keep people informed and gather solutions to stop the spill? To answer this,

both the usage of the media, the quality of the communications and the

character of the social media responses should be looked at.

The Website

Deepwater Horizon Response website24 (see Appendix, Exhibit 2) includes

the latest news of clean up activity, FAQs, Hotline contact info, report

incidents and claim submissions, volunteer opportunities and suggestion

submissions of how to stop or clean up the spill. The top page shows Flickr

photos of a random selection of disaster control activities and YouTube

videos. Much of this is clearly meant to be useful for people living in the Gulf

area and citizens interested in environmentalism to give as much information

as possible and give people a chance to contribute their own ideas. It appears

to be fairly governmental in nature so a user can’t help coming away with the

feeling that this is not so much a brand play for BP but an effort by the

government. At the same time, it feels like a weak attempt as the level of

information is shallow and there’s no sense of the true position of the

organizations backing the site.

24
www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com

27
 On the bright side, the Suggestions page is a rather innovative way to

use crowdsourcing to increase the number of options BP and the government

agencies can use. The site says about suggestions:

“BP has established a process to receive and review submitted

suggestions, on how to stop the flow of oil or contain the spill emanating from
the Mississippi Canyon 252 well. Proposals are reviewed for their technical
feasibility and proof of application. More than 4,800 ideas have been
proposed to date. Given this quantity of technical proposals suggested by
industry professionals and the public, it may take some time to technically
review each one.”25

The key takeaways here are most likely that A) the government and BP

are aware of the fact that crowdsourcing is an effective way to gather ideas

from environmentally engaged social media users and B) they understand

that by allowing people to submit they are gaining some favor from them as

social media users appreciate being able to give their opinions. At the same

time though, looking at the number of suggestions and the number of Twitter

followers 4300, this number is not large enough to really come up with truly

value added ideas. So in that way it could appear to be more a gesture than

an actual innovative way to solve the spill problem. Also, the PDF suggestion

form itself seems awkward and hard to fill out and the site says that reviewing

each idea takes a great deal of time, bringing the whole process into question.

Social Media Usage

25
“Suggestions”. Deepwater Horizon Response. 15 May 2010
<http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/546759/>

28
The DHR Facebook Page26 (see Appendix, Exhibit 3) has by far the most

active user generated content and where you can see the green

sentimentality of the angry citizenry coming out. If anything, the page is a

venting stage for enraged users to express their feelings on the disaster, a

large volume at BP such as the comment “Obama needs to immediately seize

all of BP’s assets, it should no longer be called BP, but rather a state

controlled cleanup organization and any other oil income should be utilized for

ongoing cleanup work.” Whether this is an effective green PR tool is

questionable and as neither BP nor the government is in dialog with the

protestors only makes them seem more guilt ridden. The DHR’s use of

Twitter27 and YouTube28 is much the same, a space to disseminate the latest

news release while maintaining a distance from the crowd, which shows a

disconnect from the people you’re supposed to be gathering ideas from in

order to solve the problem.

Incentivizing Through Social Media

Better methods would be to post questions to stimulate more constructive

input, to post responses to commonly expressed negative opinions to bring

the conversation into a more civil dialog and possibly even incentivize the

crowd to generate a larger volume of high quality suggestions by rewarding

the selected solutions with a suitable amount of money. This last idea of using

monetary reward to motivate social interaction is normally not an effective

means to nurture engagement in social media but in this case the level of

seriousness and potential ecological and economic loss that the spill

26
http://www.facebook.com/DeepwaterHorizonResponse
27
http://twitter.com/oil_spill_2010
28
http://www.youtube.com/user/DeepwaterHorizonJIC

29
threatens to cause, requires a different sort of entrepreneurial user to

stimulate better quality crowdsourcing. Along this line, rather than just using

Facebook and Twitter, the DHR could be better off setting up a system similar

to InnoCentive29 to more effectively connect with inventors and technologists

needed to find the right ideas. The incentive/prize would help to spur the

competitive behavior of the participants producing potentially better results.

Failing Grade for BP Unless It Succeeds Through Action

In 2000, British Petroleum launched its green campaign, “Beyond Petroleum”

and for almost a decade it invested heavily in it to position itself as a socially

conscious oil company that recognizes the link between fossil fuels and global

warming. While criticized by skeptics and environmental groups who chided it

as “Beyond Preposterous” and “Beyond Belief”, it was also shown to be

amazingly effective. Sales from 2004 to 2005 rose from $192 billion to $240

billion then to $266 billion in 2006. A Landor Associates survey of consumers

found that 21% of them thought BP was the greenest of oil companies,

followed by Shell at 15% and Chevron at 13%. The company also claimed

that the green campaign 2000-2007 increased brand awareness from 4 to

67%. Most critics agreed that the company was just using green language to

change people’s perceptions (ie. greenwashing), however they could not deny

the effectiveness, such as this comment “BP is running a greenwashing

campaign,” said John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and

Democracy, “and from a sales and marketing perspective, it is brilliant.

29
http://www.innocentive.com/

30
They’ve positioned themselves where everyone wants to be today, especially

oil companies.”30

In 2008 the success of the ongoing campaign had compelled Adweek

to ask if advertising, as much as action, can change public perception. What

we see in this most recent oil spill disaster is there is no good in trying to talk

their way out of this one. The goodwill of all those years of green branding is

used up. There is simply the action left to stop the leak, clean up the spill and

pay Gulf Coast residents for damage incurred in order to save the company’s

name and future business off U.S. shores (or any other country’s) that will

look on BP with suspicion. Whatever it can do to minimize the damage to the

Gulf of Mexico ecology, will in turn help to reduce its increasingly tarnished

green brand image and goodwill. No CSR program or ad campaign could deal

with this, at least not for many, many years. If BP hopes to take action on their

own or use crowdsourcing to do it, the company must take more extreme

steps to diligently do the right thing so people can see this and start to forgive

them. No one stays mad forever.

30
“‘Beyond Petroleum’ Pays Off For BP”. Environmental Leader. 19 May 2010
<http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/01/15/beyond-petroleum-pays-off-for-bp/>

31
Case: Seventh Generation and Tribal Brand Marketing

On Tribal Marketing

At the core of marketing and communications is

building a relationship with a customer, but the key to

that is being authentic and relevant.31 With green

product brands there is a unique opportunity to build

what John Grant (Green Marketing Manifesto)

describes as “green tribal brands” or a form of

marketing that allows customers to collaborate with companies to actually

create brands. Grant uses the word tribe to connote membership in a group of

like-minded people. One well-known non-green example of is the tribal nature

of the Harley Ownerʼs Group (H.O.G.) that takes on the coloration of a cycle

gang but is made up of middle class, midlife bikers.32

People today identify with brands but since postmodernism, norms and

social diktats have been fragmented so that people can truly pick and choose

what they will wear, buy, act and be. The job for life is gone, the Internet has

changed information access and people have lost trust in traditional

institutions. Brands have a much harder time today than in the 1950s and the

tribe is one way of dealing with this. From the perspective of a green

business, building a tribe is key to attracting and engaging both light greens

and dark greens alike. In the past, green was associated with a particular

31
Li, Charlene. Open Leadership, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2010.
32
Grant. p. 152.

32
style group such as vegan, hippy, conservationist or NGO. Part of the problem

was that dark greens were seen as too exclusive to the point that it sabotaged

their cause. Green marketing now means building iconic green brands that

create exclusive aspiration and desire around green lifestyles and choices.

But the format of this membership has changed with culture and

technology. Grant writes this tribal culture is “folksy, going back to the time

when stories and other cultural memes were all like urban myths; the good

ones spread. The tribes are perhaps re-emerging online, but they are now

fluid networks of inclusion, rather than static, exclusive sets.” In Web 2.0,

what this means is building an iconic brand around a community or a social

network.33

This is exactly what has happened with leading green household

products company Seventh Generation, building a tribe of light greens and a

fair share of dark greens through a variety of social media channels and

engaging in conversation around environmentally safe lifestyle choices. As

will be shown, the company has made good use of this tribal approach in

social media to build customer loyalty, create relationships with customers,

inform about green benefits, collaborate by asking and listening to customer

opinion and achieve a new kind of transparency to build trust with it's

customers and employees.

33
Grant. p. 153.

33
Company Background

Seventh Generation, Inc. is an American company that sells cleaning, paper,

and personal care products. The company was founded in 1988 and is based

in Burlington, Vermont. The company focuses its marketing and product

development on sustainability and the conservation of natural resources.

Seventh Generation uses recycled and post-consumer materials in its

packaging and biodegradable, and phosphate- and chlorine-free ingredients

in its products. The company takes its name from the Great Law of the

Iroquois that states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of

our decisions on the next seven generations."34

CEO and “Chief Inspired Protagonist” Jeffrey Hollander founded the

company after being an entrepreneur in the adult education industry and

audio publishing industry which he sold to Times Warner, initially taking partial

stake in energy conservation product mail order business and then launching

Seventh Generation in 1988 in Burlington, Vermont. After his son suffered a

serious asthma attack that was cured partially by the use of non-toxic

cleaners, creating a healthier home environment hit home for Hollander. An

avid entrepreneur and environmentalist who believes in total transparency of

organizations, his leadership has been key to the formation of a green

marketing company that makes the best use of social technology and

education to effectively market the company brand and products.

34
“Seventh Generation Inc.”. Wikipedia. 20 May, 2010
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Generation_Inc.>

34
 In kind, Seventh Generation describes its business practice as

“focused on offering people ways to express their idealism, passion, and

commitment to causes larger than themselves at every point along its supply

chain—from suppliers and partners to shareholders, customers and its own

staff.” 35 With an education focus to the organization, it sets out to help

customers make informed choices and provides information through a variety

sources including packaging, its website, newsletters (“7th Gen News”), a

variety of social media websites, booklets and presentations by CEO

Hollander himself.

On the product side, Seventh Generation offers a wide variety of

environmentally safe products including non-chlorine bleached, 100%

recycled paper towels, bathroom and facial tissues, and napkins; non-toxic,

phosphate-free cleaning, dish and laundry products; plastic trash bags made

from recycled plastic; chlorine-free baby diapers, training pants, and baby

wipes; and chlorine-free feminine care products, including organic cotton

tampons.

Communications in the Social Media Age

For the purpose of this paper, I contacted Seventh Generation after noticing

the companyʼs active use of social media and recent Webby Award

nomination of their digital marketing campaign “Million Baby Crawl”36 in the

Best Green category. In a very social media like way, I tweeted under the

#greenmarketing tag and was soon contacted by Seventh Generationʼs web

35
“About Us”. Seventh Generation. 24 May, 2010 <http://www.seventhgeneration.com/about>
36
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/million-baby-crawl/

35
editor and web marketing specialist Chris Middings37 who offered to let me

interview him about the company and their use of social media for their green

marketing. The following is based on two telephone conversations we had.

Seventh Generation first began experimenting with social media a few

years ago and started out using a familiar mix of YouTube, MySpace and

Facebook. In the past year they have added Twitter, FriendFeed and Google

Buzz as they have expanded social media use. This was lead by the web

team that is part of marketing but a variety of other departments interact in the

social channel including communications/PR, customer insights and customer

service. The company originally decided to engage in the social web when the

leadership realized there was a conversation occurring with or without them in

blogs, forums and social networks; and they came to the conclusion that it

was in their best interest to join in or have their position be ignored.

When asked what social media has accomplished for the company

Middings answered, "Timely conversations and no 'wasted' advertising. The

old shotgun approach using TV, etc. just leads to mental pollution. Social

allows us to talk with those who have raised their hand to talk with us.” In this

way, social media for green companies could even be seen as changing the

game of the ad business. By speaking directly to customers, they have

greater impact and can fine-tune messages in real-time, redefining the brand

message as they go along. Of course, this sort of communications might not

be that easy for large corporations with strict brand and PR guidelines (for

example P&G), but for a small to medium size green company like Seventh

37
http://twitter.com/cmiddings

36
Generation, enabling employees to reach out to customers can give the

company competitive advantage over larger competitors.

Facebook

Middings said that their Facebook page38 was by far the most active of all the

social media channels. (See Appendix, Exhibit 4) Combining both employee

and customer posts and questions with remarkably long lists of comments

(often over 100 comments per post) the Seventh Generation Facebook page

is a best case for social media being done in great frequency and depth. One

reason that explains this success of Facebook pages over Twitter is that is

that it fits the tribal nature of Seventh Generation’s employee and customer

communications. What the Facebook becomes for green marketers and their

customers/advocates is space where customers can self-identify with the

green brand, bounce ideas off one another and make friends of shared

passions. It's centralized enough that people can have conversations together

as well as easily pop out into their other groups or social networks.

Twitter

Twitter39 on the other hand appears to be more an effective

transmission channel to give updates about what's going on in Facebook, the

site community, simple product advice and green news. In this way, Twitter

seems more like a traditional marketing tool for the company to broadcast

one-way messages. Like a funnel, subscribers get channeled into more

38

http://www.facebook.com/lance.shields?v=wall&story_fbid=139280989420245#!/SeventhGeneration?ref
=ts
39
http://twitter.com/SeventhGen

37
educational or communicative platforms. This is a popular way many brands

use Twitter as well as a form of buzz marketing that goes viral when

subscribers retweet Seventh Generation tweets or post their own related

posts to #7thGen hash tags. In this way Twitter transcends one-way

communication by empowering its customers to spread the word and attract

new customers who are interested in creating an environmentally safe home.

The Nation Community Site

Besides the off-site social channels, Seventh Generation maintains its own

community as part of their main site that they call in true tribal language “The

Nation”. It consists of a series of forums that provide a centralized, controlled

social space for the company to facilitate conversations and conduct focus

group like interactions to better understand customersʼ reactions to products.

On this Middings said, “The Nation asks folks to register to post to our forums,

download coupons, etc. We also send them a twice-monthly newsletter. It is a

great way to educate them about the other issues in their lives that can be

made healthier. Our primary goal is education.”

Listening Through Social Media

At the same time, Seventh Generation’s customer service staff take a non-PR

tact closer to what traditional call centers did for them before they went online.

Customers pose questions, health problems, recommendations and praise

directly to these customer service reps who in turn answer directly back in an

open way that all subscribers can read and gain insights from like a call center

gone public.

38
Measuring Success

The next important question is how does Seventh Generation measure its

social media effectiveness? Social media monitoring and analytics have

developed considerably in the past few years however Middings answered,

"Measurement is harder to define. We're not using an analytics package for it

but overall it has been a very effective way to talk directly to consumers.” Like

many companies first starting out with social media, Seventh Generation

looks at a disconnected mix of data from weblogs, survey results, numbers of

comments and followers, overall sentiment, etc. to get a general idea of how

communications are going. At this point, more than effectiveness, they appear

to be focused on the content of the dialogs they are having with customers (ie.

What do people think of products?)

In the future, says Middings, the next step for the company would be to

start using a social media analytics package like Radius 6 to measure

quantitatively if each of their campaigns, product launches and channel usage

are creating real value. The question immediate surfaces: “If you don’t

measure your social media, how do you know if you are being effective in

communicating and listening in the social web?” Unlike Web 1.0 (ie. static

corporate or ecommerce websites) in which we used to only track our website

clickstream data (via Webtrends or similar tool), tracking the social web and

decentralized web is a lot more challenging due to the fact that users are

posting to “living pages” through comments, off-site content in feed readers

and aggregator sites (can be measured via Feedburner) and Citations of other

people talking about you (measured via Technorati), for a starter, not to

39
mention social networks Twitter and Facebook. The following diagram and

next two sections are discussion of fundamental social metrics the company

could use to start monitoring their success (if they are not already doing so).

As Twitter and Facebook are clearly the most actively used services by

Seventh Generation, there is a discussion of metrics for each.

4041
(Sources for Chart )

Twitter Metrics

• In the case of Twitter, the company is posting with several accounts so

it could be useful to learn which accounts are getting the most success

around growth rate of followers (percent change of growth/loss to total

40
Kaushik, Avinish, Web Analytics 2.0, Wiley Publishing: 2010. P. 266-271.
41
De La Houssaye, Lee. “The New Facebook Page Insights: Getting to Know Engagement Metrics”.
Market Net. 25 May, 2010 <http://blog.marketnet.com/index.php/2009/07/15/the-new-facebook-page-
insights-getting-to-know-engagement-metrics/>

40
 in given period), number and frequency of tweets, shared link click

through rate (CTR), amplification (# of retweets) and the most popular

tweets.

• The number of retweets is key to gauge whether something of value is

being tweeted to followers.

• Average CTR for shared links is key to understanding the impact of

links that point back to Seventh Generation’s websites.

• Both retweets and CTR can tell them about followers’ preferences and

help focus Twitter efforts. Comparisons across accounts could also

allow experimentation with different communication styles.42 This can

be done using a variety of 3rd party applications. Web-based Hootsuite

is a free solution that handles many of these metrics.

• Another advantage of Hootsuite is it allows teams to coordinate posts

and replies by creating “Assignments” to delegate specific tweets or

replies to specific accounts and individuals while avoiding redundant

reposting of the same messages. This could be key to Seventh

Generation for focusing their team efforts while keeping track of metrics

and overall sentiment of user comments.43

• Conversion rate for replies can be used to benchmark how many

replies are sent and received with the account compared to a Twitter

average or some other goal. High conversion rates tell whether a

42
Kaushik, Avinish, Web Analytics 2.0, 266-271, Wiley Publishing: 2010
43
Olson, Dave. “Coordinate for Efficiency and Accuracy with HootSuite Assignments”. Hootsuite. 28
May, 2010 <http://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-facebook-crm-assignments-sharing/>

41
 conversation is actually being had, not a one-way transmission.

TwitterFriends is a good analysis site for this (http://twitter-friends.com/)

• Another Twitter analysis tool that has very useful analytics is Klout.com

where the key measurement is “Influence” which is based on 25

variables, with 3 categories: True Reach (engaged followers),

Amplication Score (chance that you’ll be retweeted), and Network

Score (your engaged followers are influential). The main account

@SeventhGen received a 48 Klout Score44 which is comparatively very

high (only slightly lower than Starbucks which has a much higher True

Reach or number of followers) (See in Appendix, Exhibit 5)

Facebook Fan Page Metrics

As Middings mentioned that their Facebook fan page was the most active of

all their social media channels, it’s important to discuss about how they could

go about measuring effectiveness.

44
“SeventhGen” results. Klout.com. <http://klout.com/SeventhGen>

42
• All Facebook fan pages have a free analytics tool called Facebook

insights (pictured above) built into the page that is accessible by the

administrator (the person who set up the page). It measures user

exposure, actions, and behavior relating to your Social Ads and Facebook

Page.45

• Facebook uses an algorithm that calculates your number of posts, total

interactions received on posts, and your page’s total number of fans as

well as “other factors” over a rolling seven-day period – and generates a

single number called “Post Quality”.

• The charts also tell you the growth of your fan base over time broken

down by country. As a KPI, the company should set a growth rate to try to

stick to.

• There are charts for most user interactions such as the total number of

times a page was viewed per day; total photo views, audio plays, and

video plays for the content you have uploaded to your page. This should

be analyzed to focus on the kind of content users prefer.

• Overall, Insights is pretty limited but Webtrends has just come out with

Facebook support including Twitter activity driving to Facebook Fan

pages, Facebook Fan page activity overlaid with corporate blog posts,

Conversion performance if they happen in Facebook, Custom

applications, Facebook page tabs, and Facebook ad click performance.46

45
Olson.
46
“Facebook Analytics and Measurement”. Webtrends.com. 1 June, 2010
<http://www.webtrends.com/products/analytics/facebook.aspx>

43
• Facebook page tabs in the case of Seventh Generation are important to

see how much users are interacting with the latest campaign Million Baby

Crawl, their coupon promotion page and their RSS feeds page.

• Overall, looking at the large volume of comments to both company and

user posts, the positive sentiment and the successful way promotions

appear to being used on the fan page, Seventh Generation does not

seem to have any major problems and should now focus on fine-tuning

their communications through experimentation and paying attention to

Page Insights and possibly the new Webtrends to offer customers the

most engaging content.

Seventh Generation Customers

To get a better understanding of the
Seventh Generation customers, I
asked Middings how green their
Survey Question: “What are the two
main reasons you are interested in
Seventh Generation products?” (level of
green = long-time interest or new
interest in the environment)

customers really were. To answer this

he provided results to a survey users

fill out when they join the community

website (see the survey in the

Appendix, Exhibit 6) for the question

Source: Seventh Generation online poll
“What are the two main reasons you

are interested in Seventh Generation products?” The first most answered at

36% was “Personal/Family Health” which puts them in the light greens camp,

seeing green as a personal choice of purchasing products for their family.

They would most likely be turned off by preachy green messages but are

44
eager to insure their family’s health. The second most answered at 24% is

“long-time interest in the environment” points to a more dark green leaning. At

the same time 12% say they have a new interest in the environment and

another 15% say they have a new baby.

Considering their products, Middings has come to realize their green

household products are unfamiliar and even strange to many people and they

are up against people’s mother-in-law’s who attempt to preach old (toxic)

brands they are familiar with. In addition, young mothers are a main target for

their communications and education programs, as these first time customers

become interested in non-toxic, safe products for their new babies such as the

biodegradable diapers and green cleaning products. Then as these mothers

become more informed and loyal to specific product brands, they have the

potential to migrate to other products and categories.

Summary: Seventh Generation’s Transparency

When asked what the company’s overall social media strategy was, Middings

answered, “We see it as a way to interact with customers. We sell B2B, so

this is a great way for our Consumer Insights Team to directly interact, in real

time, to answer consumer questions. Social is like an 800 number that

everyone can see.” When asked whether the leadership and president of the

company gained from the findings of the Consumer Insights Team, Middings

said that they make regular presentations to the management to share

consumers’ issues with products and areas where they could improve. From

this the company makes proactive changes to products as well as marketing

style. These insights also help Middings’ communications team know what

45
sort of information is needed by consumers to be as transparent as is being

demanded of them. He said, "Social works best when a company is

transparent and social is forcing transparency overall so it's a great fit for us.

We have nothing to hide and welcome dialog allowing us to improve products,

gauge interest in new products, etc."

Transparency is a clearly stated mission of the company president

Hollander. He published a management book titled “Responsibility Revolution”

where he talks about “for purpose (and profit)” business leaders who first must

stand for something before considering how to make a profit. He points to the

start of the recession as the investment banks lacking accountability and

transparency. He also underlined the greenwashing taking place in CSR

programs that merely try to cover up wrongdoing. To be truly responsible, he

makes the point that companies must be completely transparent in what goes

into their products, what processes were used in manufacturing them and how

waste is managed. It is inferred that companies in the future will not be

competitive or sustainable unless they become more and more transparent to

provide customers with the information to choose them over competitors.

Hollander and Bill Breen in a corporate responsibility manifesto in

ChangeThis.com say, “By publicly baring its less than admirable impacts on

society and the environment, the transparent company takes the first step

toward collaboratively fixing its problems.”

In this way, Seventh Generation attempts to provide customers with as

much sight into the company and its products as possible. The style of its

communications and social media reaffirm this commitment and bring

46
customers closer to the brand and compelling them to join the tribe of other

customers to spread the word to their friends and families.

Green NGO Marketing

Innovation and Creativity for a Green Purpose

As with green fatigue that is a challenge for companies like Seventh

Generation due to oversaturation of sustainability messages, green NGOs

have a similar problem of facing indifference and it is a necessity to look for

new innovative and creative approaches to reach the public and donors with

their causes. News about such green issues as global warming, diminishing

rainforests and extinct species gets jumbled together with such corporate

disasters as the BP oil spill and the overall mood is grim and even defeatist.

There is clearly a place for new influences both web 2.0 and real world events

to get the sustainability word out, raise funds for such things as urban

forestation projects and give young people a sense of hope that a difference

can be made. In this section, two noteworthy examples will be given for how

new channels, new kinds of expression (the first case) and new technology

(the second) is being utilized to engage a public of all shades of green. While

NGOs, these examples could also prove useful for corporate green marketing.

Case: The Urban Forest Project – Design Meets Green

Often, green initiatives still have a tree-hugging, hippy or activist exclusivity

that turns off many including even light greens that make up the majority of

47
potential advocates. Along comes Worldstudio47, New York City based

marketing and design firm that specializes in campaigns for social and

environmental change, that has partnered with cities and other organizations

in the U.S. to launch progressive, even hip programs for green change.

The most well known Worldstudio project, while working with the

American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), is The Urban Forest Project, which

in Fall 2006 launched as a first-of-its-kind outdoor exhibition, taking root in

New York City. One hundred eighty-five celebrated designers, artists and

students employed the idea and form of the tree to make a powerful visual

statement on banners that were displayed throughout Times Square (See

Appendix, Exhibit 7.) Since then it has spread throughout other cities in the

U.S. including Albuquerque, Baltimore, Denver, San Francisco, Toledo and

Washington, DC.

This unique environmental,

public arts and educational initiative

calls on artists, designers and students

in each location to employ the idea or

form of the tree to make a powerful

visual statement on these banners that

are displayed throughout the community. The tree symbol is used as a

metaphor for sustainability and the banners at the end of each exhibition are

recycled into tote bags and auctioned off to raise money. Says Worldstudio

head Mark Randall, "Instead of chucking the banners in the garbage when we

47
Worldstudio Blog. <http://blog.worldstudioinc.com/>

48
take them down at the end of October, we'll give them to Jack Spade to make

into tote bags, we'll auction these to raise money for scholarships for kids

wanting to study art and design. I love the idea that through this project we're

also sustaining the next generation of design talent, not just producing a load

of pretty banners." 48

Analysis of Urban Forest Project

The important thing to take note in this case, is a seemingly simple idea like

enabling 185 designs and artists to design banners around an even simpler

tree icon can have a great potential for grabbing the public’s attention through

grassroots activities that spread to other cities. The cities themselves, eager

to both improve their image as sustainable (a form of municipal CSR) as well

as looking for innovative ways to educate their residents around green,

naturally are interested in programs like Urban Forest. For this very purpose,

Worldstudio has “templatized” the Urban Forest Project and offered it up to

Denver and Albuquerque and Denver. However, since they lost money,

Worldstudio has decided to manage the Washington DC and San Francisco

projects with the help of local partners.

As a green business idea, the Urban Forest Project is scalable and

opens up new opportunities for the small design studio. The Project is

exemplary in that Worldstudio sustains itself while continuing to create social,

change-oriented solutions for clients. At the same time, it clearly acts as

amazing PR for the small firm and gives them the credibility to attract

48
Walters, Helen. “A Forest Grows in Manhattan”. Businessweek.com. 5 June 2010
<http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2006/id20060901_978009.htm?chan=top+news_to
p+news+index_innovation+%2Bamp%3B+design>

49
corporate client CSR projects with a community bent. Having well-paid green

communications professionals in abundance means NGOs and corporations

alike have the voice to achieve their goals, cutting through the noise, avoiding

greenwashing and battling green fatigue.

Case: Urban Forest Map - Online Census for Trees

Urban forestry NGOs have worked

for decades in most cities in the

U.S. to plant more trees in their

communities and thereby improve

the quality of life. The majority of them function as volunteer-driven

organizations and don’t receive much funding from municipal governments.

One such NGO, the Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF) in San Francisco,

California is a community-empowering NGO that started in 1981 and plants

nearly 1000 trees each year. With 12 staff members and many neighborhood

volunteers, the organization plants trees throughout the city every other

Saturday. Not surprisingly, considerable logistics are involved in planting; FUF

obtains permits, removes sidewalk concrete, supplies tools and materials and

selects, purchases and delivers the trees. FUF also faces the challenge of

increasing public awareness of the importance of trees in an urban

environment.49

The Urban Forest Map

49
“About FUF”. Friends of the Urban Forest. 5 June 2010 <http://www.fuf.net/about/index.html>

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Within this setting, an innovative new social, Web 2.0 approach to engaging

urban residents was first introduced in the San Francisco area on April 15,

2010. The Urban Forest Map (http://www.urbanforestmap.org) is “a

collaboration of government, nonprofits, businesses and you to map every

tree in San Francisco.”

Urban Forest Map project manager Amber Bieg said, “We’re going to

publish the most up-to-date data from our data sources. Then, from that point

on, we’re going to allow the community to add and edit and update that

information. It’ll become a tree

census from the community and

function like a Wiki.”

The idea originated when

Bieg was planting a tree for the LA

nonprofit tree advocacy group Tree

People and realized there was no

easy way to document the

planting, share it with the rest of

the community, measure the impact or -- most importantly -- engage others

with the importance of urban forestry. She put together initial plans for a web-

based tree mapping tool, and with funding from Autodesk she assembled a

team and launched a prototype. The California Department of Forestry and

Fire Protection (CalFire) provided a grant to complete the website. Friends of

the Urban Forest was the project sponsor throughout and helped to publicize

it and tie it to actual tree planting activities from launch.

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 In addition to allowing people to post information about the trees in

their neighborhoods, the map-wiki will help “calculate the environmental

benefits the trees are providing -- how many gallons of storm water they are

helping to filter, how many pounds of air pollutants they are capturing, how

many kilowatt-hours of energy they are conserving, and how many tons of

carbon dioxide they are removing from the atmosphere.”50 By measuring the

“Eco Impact” in turns of a dollar amount, the rationale for planting more trees

is made even more convincing to both residents and the government.

The data can then be used by urban foresters and city planners to

better manage trees in specific areas, track and combat tree pests and

diseases, and plan future tree plantings. Climatologists can also use it to

better understand the effects of urban forests on climates, and students can

use it to learn about the role trees play in the urban ecosystem. In the case of

50
“About”. Urban Forest Map. 10 June, 2010 <http://www.urbanforestmap.org/about/#about>

52
San Francisco, different parts of the city have different microclimates (for

example hilltop areas versus the sandy areas near the beaches) and the

record of varying tree health in these area tells FUF and city planners what

kind of trees have the best chance of thriving in each location.

Urban ecologist and project manager Kelaine Vargas underlined the

importance of crowdsourcing by saying, “There’s a growing understanding of

the value of ‘citizen science.’ Science isn’t just the realm of professionals and

people with doctorates anymore. We all have something to offer: a glimpse

into the world just outside our windows, documentation of our environment.

This information is really valuable for planning and improving and just

understanding the world around us.”51 Vargas sees this website’s green

technology as a wave of the future and sees San Francisco at the forefront of

using computers and networks to green and beautify the city.

With the help of open-source software and leveraging the growing

power of geographic information systems (commonly known as GIS tools), the

Urban Forest Map will likely have uses beyond those currently

envisioned. San Francisco is the first city to use the Urban Forest Map, but

others are expected to follow. “Million Tree” campaigns are taking off around

the nation, and this tool enables the on-the-ground community information

sharing vital to the success of such campaigns.

Success Factors for the Project

51
Vargas, Kelaine. “Quotes”. Urban Forest Map Blog. 10 June, 2010
<http://blog.urbanforestmap.org/quotes/>

53
 The Urban Forest Map launched with considerable buzz appearing in

the San Francisco press, Wired.com, Huffington Post, Treehugger blog and

word-of-mouth around the city. Going forward, the key success factors for the

Urban Forest Map would be the following:

• Steady growth of users finding, posting and editing trees on the map. This

could be accomplished through the buzz generated via social media such

as Facebook52 and Twitter53 to spread the word to new users and update

people on new features and key milestones.

• The success of the Urban Forest Map expanding to other cities in the U.S.

and possibly outside the U.S.

• The tendency of crowdsourced content to generally improve over time,

despite the potential for error inherent in CGM such as Wikipedia,

• Other developers leveraging and building on the open-source platform to

offer richer information about the forestation of the city.

• Continued funding.

Analysis & Summary of Urban Forest Map

For green nonprofits, simply issuing newsletters, holding community meetings

and maintaining a blog is not enough to broaden the reach of green initiatives

and attract lighter green to the movement. The Urban Forest Map succeeds

by using technological innovations and the trend of consumer-generated

media to enable residents to discover and share the experience of a city in the

52
http://www.facebook.com/UrbanForestMap
53
http://twitter.com/UrbanForestMap

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process of becoming green through tree planting (thereby earning a place as

a case study in this paper). This case also shows an unusual collaborative

process as the map developers worked with a variety of organizations for

funding and support – a corporation (Autodesk), government (California

Department of Forestry) and an established green nonprofit (FUF) to achieve

this online crowd-sourced tree census. Lastly, what makes the Urban Forest

Map significant is that it becomes a tool for improving the environment by

quantifying the benefits of trees in reducing air pollution, offsetting

greenhouse gas emissions and reducing energy consumption.

Concluding Thoughts

The Sum is Greater Than its Parts

For all practical purposes, this paper cannot hope to cover all aspects of

either green marketing or social media marketing. What we have looked at is

two niche marketing trends that when colliding reach a larger audience than

green marketing could do on its own. At the same time, green marketing gives

social media a purpose and a value that it does not have if left to people

tweeting what they had for lunch today. Together, we have green marketing in

the age of Twitter where green fatigue can be defeated and the bright green

vision is one step closer to achieving.

It is obvious that as BP with its oils spill was our villain and Seventh

Generation was our champion. But I believe of the two, BP probably learned

55
more from its miserable affair about what people think of them and where they

have to change to be relevant in the future. Whether they actually do make

this leap and win back consumer trust, BP acts as a lesson for all industry on

how a brand can become a hollow image overnight. And that is how it should

be as the age of brands is drawing to a close. In the post-brand age, brought

in large part by the democratizing effect of the Internet, word-of-mouth and

community rule while brands are demystified and commodified. Once more, it

is more about “who” the person is you are buying your products from and

what people similar to you say about it.

In these crazy times, unwieldy to many businesses and NGOs,

dynamic new ideas for how to engage with the market are needed. Seventh

Generation engages in open dialog embracing the goods and bads of the

social web to get to know their customers as people and listen carefully to

give them what they need for their healthy households. Design firm

Worldstudio in New York came up with a concept to tie together creators and

cities around a green theme that benefits future design students. Nonprofit

urban foresters in San Francisco came up with a map-wiki that enables citizen

scientists to record the trees in their community and gain new insights on how

greening their city can effect both the environment and their pocketbooks (the

key to sustainability).

In the end, we will not reach everyone and not every household will be

green. But the future of green marketing is looking a lot brighter than it did in

the 80s and 90s. You see it everyday in the blogs and forums, people thinking

for themselves and coming up with hundreds of new ideas for how to eat,

travel and live greener; bringing all of us, including MBAs and businesses,

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one step closer to what some call bright green while others simply call

progress.

Appendix

Exhibit 1:

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Exhibit 2: Deepwater Horizon Response Website
www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com

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Exhibit 3: Deepwater Horizon Response Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/DeepwaterHorizonResponse?ref=ts

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Exhibit 4: Seventh Generation Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/SeventhGeneration?ref=ts

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Exhibit 5: Twitter metrics - measure of influence at Klout.com
http://klout.com/SeventhGen

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Exhibit 6: Survey to Join the Nation that collects a wide variety of
demographic and psychographic data

62
63
Exhibit 7: Urban Forest Project – Sample Banners

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Additional Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalism

http://www.urbanforestmap.org/ (Urban Forest Map)

http://ufp-global.com/

http://www.worldstudioinc.com/home/ (Worldstudio’s corporate site, the for-

profit company that controls it)

http://blog.worldstudioinc.com/ (Worldstudio’s blog, reinforcing their brand as

socially and environmentally responsible)

http://www.ufp-nyc.com/ (Urban Forest Project - NYC)

http://www.fuf.net/ (Friend of the Urban Forest)

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Photo Credit:

The cover photo “Paper Lanterns” is attributed to

“Cali2Okie (April)” and was found on Flickr and is

under Creative Commons License (Attribution-

NonCommercial-NoDerivs):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cali2okie/2399377732/

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