DDB Brand Integrity Group leverages the core values of companies as a foundation for building their brands - a way to create competitive advantage. Our strength is in unearthing opportunities for our clients to communicate their corporate citizenship efforts with the spectrum of audiences they need to reach - standing by their brands with a sense of responsibility, championing their causes with the creative resonance to propel positive change.
There's been a lot of to-do lately about a consumer backlash against green marketing and messages. A recent article in AdWeek highlights several surveys as evidence that consumers are either somewhat ambivalent about the environment or don't believe corporations' environmental claims. I think there's truth in both points but there are still significant opportunities for companies to communicate green.
A new survey exploring consumer perceptions of green claims made by advertisers, reports both good news and not so bad news (it could be a lot worse.) The good news is that consumer recall of advertising with green messaging is very high, with more than a third (37.1%) of consumers saying they frequently recall green messaging and an additional third recalling it occasionally (33.1%). The not so bad news is that two-thirds (65.3%) of respondents say they sometimes believe green claims made in advertisements. (22.7% say they seldom or never believe green claims and 12.1% say they always believe green advertising claims. I’d love to find out more about these 12% -have I got a deal for them). Not surprisingly, wary consumers tend to investigate these claims, and they do it online. The survey found that four out of five (79.6%) of respondents use Internet web sites to conduct personal research on green initiatives and products.
This makes me wonder how, or even whether, companies are using online outreach and social media to communicate green. Only very recently have a few super green companies forayed into the social media space. Patagonia launched the Footprint Chronicles which tracks the sustainability of ten of their products and invites people to comment and share their thoughts. Seventh Generation created their version of Facebook, the Seventh Generation Nation, complete with member profiles, discussion topics, and product promotions. And Nau, the ultra hip and sustainable activewear company, launched their company on a blog, The Thought Kitchen .
Other than these progressive companies, are there corporate entities out there communicating green via social media?
I was in the car the other day listening to KUOW (Seattle's NPR affiliate) and the story was about whether "greencollar" jobs are a real, potential economic boon, or just a bunch of hype. They interviewed a guy named Todd Myers from the Washington Policy Center, a "free market think tank." Mr. Myers said that all of the talk about new opportunities is "almost a hundred percent political."
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is rapidly building his reputation as an environmental crusader. And what’s exciting for us is that he’s doing it while still in office. Just this past week he put forth a proposal to charge shoppers in Seattle 20 cents beginning next year for every new paper or plastic bag they use to carry away goods from grocery, drug or convenience stores. The point is to encourage people to bring reusable bags with them when they shop.
Foam food containers would also be banned under the proposal. I’m particularly happy about this last point. I’ve complained numerous times to the lunch place around the corner from my office about their styrofoam containers. The response has always been a blank or slightly hostile stare. I feel somewhat vindicated.
New research from the Natural Marketing Institute concludes that 40-50 percent of Americans recycle “all of the time.” Wow, that's great news! Too bad it's not true.
In this month’s Metropolitan Home magazine, the word “upcycling” is the word du jour.
Apparently, upcycling is “converting waste into something far more valuable, like making a chandelier out of plastic bottles.”
This is the headline that appeared today, February 27, on CRO's (Corporate Responsibility Officer) website and in CRO magazine. CRO is a leading membership organization and media company for corporate practioners, service providers and influentials in the field of corporate social responsibility. DDB BIG is listed as #7 in the ranking. We're delighted by the recognition but...WTF?
Today, on CRO's (Corporate Responsibility Officer) website and in CRO its magazine, DDB BIG was named #7 of the Top 10 Firms in Corporate Responsibility. CRO is a leading membership organization and media company for corporate practioners, service providers and influentials in the field of corporate social responsibility. We're delighted by the recognition but...WTF?
I've heard a lot in the last week about Nike's first performance basketball shoe, Trash Talk, made from manufacturing waste. Steve Nash, the All-Star guard for the Phoenix Suns, is doing his part to talk it up and wore it last week when Phoenix played the Dallas Mavericks. Maybe there's something to this shoe. The Suns beat the Mavs 109 to 97 and Steve Nash had 24 points and 13 assists. Not bad. Is this the beginning of a new paradigm? Environmental Performance = Athletic Performance. This could be a huge boost to the environmental movement.
The shoe's environmental credentials are solid. The upper is pieced together from synthetic leather waste and the mid-sole uses scrap-ground foam from factory production. The outsole uses environmentally-preferred rubber that reduces toxics and incorporates material made from recycled footwear.
I'm anxiously awaiting the trashy high performance running shoe.
It seems like I’ve had a lot of discussions recently, many of them heated, about how good, bad, or ugly Wal-Mart really is. For many, Wal-Mart is still the evil empire no matter what it has done, or has committed to do, with respect to cleaning up its environmental performance and forcing others to do the same. It seems that nothing will improve their opinion of Wal-Mart given their belief that Wal-Mart fundamentally altered the retail CPG landscape, small towns across the US, and how products are manufactured overseas and brought to market, to the detriment of society and the environment. There is of course some truth to that.
My wife Molly is amazing. Wait...happy new year. Much better.
My wife Molly is amazing. Weeks before Christmas we talked about how much waste wrapping paper produces for essentially less than 5 seconds of appreciation. It's short life purpose is basically to dazzle the giftee, or much like a flower attracting bees, bugs, and butterflies, to draw the giftee to open the present. What we typically found was we'd end up with bags and bags filled with wrapping paper to recycle or we'd spend much of the "opening-time" taking small pieces of scotch tape off of torn apart wrapping paper so that it could make it to the recycling bin.
This was the year of something different.
It’s no surprise that corporate social responsibility, green marketing, corporate citizenship, whatever you want to call it, has made the top trends in 2007. We saw many companies make bold, new commitments: Coca-Cola pledged to recycle 100% of its recyclable plastic bottles, Toyota said it would generate zero waste from its corporate headquarters covering 15 buildings and more than 5000 employees, and Wal-Mart surpassed its goal to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs by the end of this year.
And we saw more companies launch campaigns to highlight their social and environmental commitments: GE debuted more wonderful work through its Ecomagination campaign , Method showed us that cleaning products could be both hip and safe for people and the planet, and Aveda illustrates that wind power can be sexy in a preview of its 2008 campaign highlighting the environmental track record of its products.
We also saw some attempts fall flat, or worse, result in bad publicity and criticism of the company. Oil companies seem to have attracted more than their share of negative attention. Chevron recently launched an aggressive CSR advertising campaign touting its climate change credentials that’s been criticized as too little too late, and Shell Oil ran an ad 
showing a refinery emitting flowers from its chimneys with claims that it uses its waste CO2 to grow flowers (they ended up pulling this ad).
Within the last 30 days, Barneys, the high end fashion retailer, has come under scrutiny for its “green” holiday catalog which, among other things, promises donations to non-profits who were unaware their brand names were being marketed in the catalog, calling into question the accountability of such efforts.
There is no doubt that 2007 was instrumental in pushing CSR further into the consumer mainstream and onto the radars of companies in the US and around the globe. And prospects for 2008 look rosy. Americans apparently haven’t lost interest in the environment as a December GfK Roper poll indicates that the US public “resolves to make 2008 green.” Let’s hope businesses continue to focus on CSR strategies and make good on many of the commitments that were made this past year.
Copyright © 2007
DDB Worldwide
Communications Group Inc.
