Author Archive
Bottled water: When it’s time to say no to branding
Several years ago I attended a conference on branding. One of the keynote presenters began his talk by holding up a bottle of water. If marketers can successfully brand water, they can brand most anything, he quipped. His comments were meant to get the creative juices flowing among his audience. Hell yes, we can brand anything! And indeed, we do.
I thought of that marketer’s attempt at inspiration yesterday when I was listening to a talk by Maude Barlow, author of “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.” Barlow, a Canadian, is known internationally for her tireless advocacy for every human’s right to water. When asked what people could do to help solve a water crisis that is worsening by the day, her first response was, stop buying bottled water. (She also encouraged her audience to check out Food & Water Watch, where you can find many of the issues and facts Barlow cites to make her arguments.)
Like I suspect most everyone else who hears Barlow speak, I left yesterday with a vastly heightened concern for the world’s clean water sources. The water crisis is no less urgent than climate change. “The issue of water is an issue of life and death,” Barlow said. “Without water, you die.” And without clean water, you die. The number one killer of children worldwide is dirty water. “In every single case, it was preventable,” Barlow said.
If the marketing superstar I heard a few years back were back on the podium today I would hope he’d hold up the bottle of water and deliver a cautionary tale. We have the know-how to take nothing more than packaged tap water and persuade others it really is different and better than — your tap water and the tap water of every other bottler. In fact, the average American consumed 29 gallons of bottled water in 2007.
With the ability of marketers to brand anything also comes great responsibility. It may give marketers a great sense of accomplishment when their creativity helps produce a multi-million dollar brand from something as basic as tap water. But they must also own up to their role in exacerbating the global water crisis (and adding to pollution from non-recycled plastic bottles).
Marketers committed to sustainability need to constantly ask: For whom and for what are we going to use our skills today? Just because we can brand anything doesn’t mean we should.
Tags: bottled water, brand, Branding, Marketing, Maude Barlow, Sustainability, The Natural Step Network, water crisis
Posted in Food and Drink, Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
Shopping ’til we drop on Earth Day
Earth Day is nearly here. Just in time for retailers and producers to stoke the consumption of all things green and revive their flagging fortunes in today’s tough sales environment. Advertising Age (reg. required) asks, “Is Earth Day the New Christmas?”:
As April 22 approaches, marketers of all stripes are bombarding consumers with green promotions and products designed to get them to buy more products — some eco-friendly, some not so much. And while that message seems to contrast with the event’s intent, the oxymoron seems to have been lost on marketers jumping on the Earth Day bandwagon in record numbers. This year it seems that just about everyone has found a way to attach themselves to what is fast becoming a marketing holiday that barely resembles the grass-roots event founded in 1970.
Leave it to American commerce to dress up consumerism on a day that is meant to remind us of the harmful effects of excessive and inequitable consumption. If business and industry wanted to make a sustainability statement, they would close up shop on Earth Day and challenge us to buy less and give more. Oh wait, isn’t that what Christmas is supposed to be about?
Tags: Advertising Age, Christmas, Consumerism, Earth Day
Posted in Business & Economics, Consumerism, Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
Is a green Wal-Mart good enough?
By now you’re probably aware of Wal-Mart’s efforts to green its business practices and its image. If you haven’t, you probably will soon. The company that a business professor I recently met called the 13th largest economy in the world has launched an advertising onslaught tied to Earth Month. According to Wal-Mart’s news release, its national advertising campaign includes print, television, radio and online ads and a 16-page insert in May issues of several consumer magazines. Brandweek says the company calls it “the most comprehensive environmental sustainability campaign” in its history.
No less of an environmentalist than Paul Hawken, speaking at his book-tour event in Portland last year, said Wal-Mart was indeed serious and sincere about sustainability. The professor I mentioned supports Hawken’s assessment. She is among a group of academics taking part in Wal-Mart’s green initiatives and is a regular visitor to Wal-Mart’s home in Bentonville, Ark. The company’s new-found green zeal is apparent on its website:
Wal-Mart’s environmental goals are simple and straightforward: to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our natural resources and the environment.
What to make of all this? This is Wal-Mart we’re talking about, the company so many, including me, have good reasons to despise. I’m on the board of a Portland nonprofit that actively supports locally owned, independent businesses and encourages people within our community to do the same. This in the face of out-of-town big-box retailers — Wal-Mart being the poster child — that have decimated so many local independent businesses and left their communities poorer for it.
Still, if Wal-Mart — given its staggering size — is successful in using only renewable energy, producing zero waste and greening its supply chain and the products it sells, it would have an enormously positive impact on the global environment. Or so it would seem.
Something, however, doesn’t add up for me. Green or no, Wal-Mart hasn’t backed off using low prices to beat its competition (including the Mom & Pops in your town). The message it’s sending is you can have it all. “Save Money. Live Better.” — it’s new slogan promises. Wal-Mart will drive its suppliers to go greener, but it will still expect the lowest possible prices from them. That protects its profit margins and enables its customers (in theory) to save money. But someone or something has to pay for Wal-Mart’s margins and our low prices — as has always been the case.
What do you think? If Wal-Mart achieves its environmental sustainability goals, will it have earned your admiration, maybe even turned you into a customer? Is going green enough? Or do you, like me, view sustainability as far more than going green? What about the matters of social and economic equity? Wal-Mart’s lower prices and business practices mean lower wages, loss of independent businesses and the community diversity they bring and the leakage of dollars out of local communities and into the coffers of Wal-Mart headquarters. Should we just chalk that up to the free market doing its thing?
Tags: Brandweek, Earth Month, economic leakage, equity, Paul Hawken, Sustainability, Wal-Mart
Posted in Business & Economics, Consumerism, Marketing, Sustainability | 1 Comment »
Marketing for a sustainable future
Those of you who’ve visited this blog before may see a slight change in emphasis in future posts. I’ll be exploring more frequently the personal and professional interest I have in marketing’s role in a sustainable future. Some would say marketing is antithetical to sustainability. As a long-time marketer, I don’t believe that. However, I also know that marketers shoulder great responsibility for supporting companies, products and business practices that are fundamentally unsustainable.
I don’t believe marketing, by definition, is the problem. One marketing executive I know believes in the Peter Drucker objective of marketing: to create and keep a customer. Sounds simple enough. And non-controversial. It says nothing about creating demand for material products we don’t need and end up throwing away in gigantic landfills. Nor supporting businesses that indulge in wasteful and polluting manufacturing practices. Nor ignoring an economic system that places shareholder interests far above those of the environment and the larger human community.
As marketers, we have choices in who, what and how we market. We can create awareness, build preference and generate demand for organizations and products that do good, or at least no harm. Or we can put our talents in creativity and persuasion to work for the bad guys. I believe it’s time for marketers to awaken to our capacity to change the world for the better and to make conscious choices about how we are going to employ our skills and ourselves.
There are organizations and businesses trying to do the right thing for shareholders, customers, employees, communities and the environment. These are the employers and clients we need to be supporting. If that isn’t a practical option for you as a marketer (since you need a job and income), then do what you can to change the marketing — if not the behavior — of your employer or client. Stand for sustainability, even if you stand alone.
For better or worse, marketers are perhaps the most visible storytellers of our time. The stories we craft and publicize are meant to move people to act, and very often they do. The question we must face is whether the actions we instigate support or jeopardize a sustainable future. If you don’t know the answer, then consider the physician’s maxim: First, do no harm.
Tags: do no harm, Marketing, storytellers, Sustainability, sustainable future
Posted in Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
Forget the snow, listen to the oilman from Houston
As I write this, falling snow is blocking the otherwise expansive view I enjoy from my home. This is spring, in Portland, isn’t it? In all my years in Oregon, I don’t remember even a trace of snow in spring on the valley floor. It’s almost enough to make me side with the right-wing talk show and blogging bloviators who would have us believe climate change means we’re entering the next ice age.
Fortunately, a piece today in the LA Times is helping to loosen the dark side’s grip on my senses:
The American West is heating up faster than any other region of the United States, and more than the Earth as a whole, according to a new analysis of 50 scientific studies. For the last five years, from 2003 through 2007, the global climate averaged 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than its 20th century average. During the same period, 11 Western states averaged 1.7 degrees warmer, the analysis reported. The 54-page study, was released Thursday by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization — a coalition of local governments, businesses and nonprofits. It was based largely on calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report reveals “the growing consensus among scientists who study the West that climate change is no longer an abstraction,” said Bradley H. Udall of the University of Colorado, whose work was cited in the study. “The signs are everywhere.”
I really didn’t need more scientific studies to convince me that climate change is real and potentially catastrophic. But analysis like this isn’t aimed at folks like me. It’s aimed at lawmakers, especially Congressional members, to act now on legislation to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions nationwide. The LA Times cites a source that says “as many as 10 Republican senators from Western states are leaning against” a bill in the Senate aimed at slashing CO2 emissions.
Perhaps those senators ought to be listening to John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Company. Public television’s Charlie Rose asked Hofmeister this week, “So why should we have a scientific debate about global warming?” Hofmeister replied, “I don’t think we should. I have said many times, ‘the debate is over.’ Shell has said, ‘The debate is over for us.’ We’re not climatologists, but we’re convinced action is needed. No more debate. Action!”
Words like these coming from an oilman in Houston, Texas — it’s even more shocking than spring snow in Portland.
Tags: Charlie Rose, Climate Change, John Hofmeiter, LA Times, Oregon, Shell Oil, snow
Posted in Climate Change | No Comments »
Recession or no, climate change can’t be put on hold
Here’s a silver lining in the existing or pending US recession: Chances are consumption and production will slow, meaning less fossil fuel expended and fewer greenhouse gases emitted. Feel better? I didn’t think so. None of us wants to see the inevitable wrenching loss of jobs, income and personal security that comes during a major economic slowdown.
The attention of government and business leaders, as well as the public, is increasingly fixed on the economy. And while that’s understandable, every other public concern will likely take a back seat to the economy. Including climate change. America, the largest source of CO2 emissions in the world, will be telling the world that we can only afford to focus on climate change as long as our economy is growing (and spewing growing amounts of CO2).
The effects of a recession are painfully real. I started my career in the early 1980s when Oregon was in the midst of a miserable recession — depression, really. I was fortunate to find a job. Some of my friends, meanwhile, lost their homes. Earlier this decade, I felt the tech implosion in a very personal way. The marketing business I co-founded lost half of our revenue in just a couple months in 2001. Within a year we had laid off nearly half our staff. It doesn’t get much worse than that as an employer.
For those of us who believe global warming is real and human-caused, this recession — if that’s what we’re in — poses a vexing question: Can we or how do we keep the very real concerns of recession from overwhelming the equally real threats of climate change?
We may be entering a very nasty period of job and income loss for millions of Americans — and perhaps for many others around the globe dependent upon our economy. A recession is one of those clear and present dangers experienced at the personal level. It’s difficult to think about much else when you’re faced with the prospect of losing your livelihood or your home.
And yet, climate change is no less urgent of a matter than the health of the US economy. The UN Human Development Report 2007/2008 calls climate change “the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced.” Its authors warn:
(Climate change) is still a preventable crisis — but only just. The world has less than a decade to change course. No issue merits more urgent attention — or more immediate action.
Try telling that to someone who’s lost his or her job or home. Or to the political candidate who can’t get the words “It’s the economy, stupid” out of his or her head. To them, global warming is a faraway worry. Unfortunately, it’s not. When we get through this recession — and we will, as history shows — the issue of climate change will still be with us. Every year our political leaders back burner the issue draws us that much closer to irreversible harm. As the UN report makes clear, “The world’s poor will suffer the earliest and most damaging impacts.” They have no political voice in America. And neither do future generations.
If the world is going to avoid the worst of global warming, America and Americans must be completely engaged and leading the way. We’re about to find out whether we’re up to the challenge.
Tags: Climate Change, consumption, fossil fuel, global warming, greenhouse gases, recession, UN Human Development Report
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Politics | No Comments »