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Green Marketing
in the Age of Twitter,
Green Fatigue &
Bright Greens
McGill MBA Japan Independent Study
LANCE SHIELDS
McGill MBA Japan Independent Study
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“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
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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.
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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>
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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.
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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

25.
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

26.
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

27.
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

28.
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

29.
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

30.
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

31.
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

32.
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

33.
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

34.
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

35.
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

36.
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

37.
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

38.
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

39.
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

40.
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

41.
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

42.
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

43.
• 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

44.
• 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 Survey Question: “What are the two
main reasons you are interested in
Seventh Generation customers, I Seventh Generation products?” (level of
green = long-time interest or new
asked Middings how green their 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

45.
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

46.
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

47.
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
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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/>
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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>
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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>
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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/>
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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
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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
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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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