Welcome to Green Marketing Corner. This exclusive feature of EcoMall provides tips, information and strategies from Jacquelyn Ottman, consultant and author of Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation on how to market to today's environmentally conscious consumers. To ask Jacquelyn Ottman a question, you can E-mail her at info@greenmarketing.com.
FEATURE: Empower to the People
The most successful brands on earth connect with their consumers emotionally in addition to logical facts and rational appeals. Effective green product marketers connect with concerned and aware consumers willing to pay a premium to buy green products by empowering them to clean the air, purify the water, or help save endangered forests and species.
Product purchasing and consumption are the #1 ways in which Americans act upon their environmental worries. Ask an American adult what he/she is doing to save the planet and their responses most likely will center on product-related behaviors like turning off the lights when leaving a room, recycling products and packages (and more recycling), and looking for green labels when shopping. These activities are more prevalent than donating to environmental groups or voting for green candidates, for instance.
So showing consumers how products will help them address environmental issues is a key quiver in a green marketerıs arsenal.
Educate
According to Roperıs Green Gauge, 50% of American adults say they would do more for the environment if only they knew how. So, education is critical. Does your product save water or energy? Does it help cut down on waste that must be landfilled? Does it contain fewer toxics that can harm children or wildlife? Let your customers know this!
Better yet, dramatize just how much of an impact your customer can have either by him/herself or in concert with scores of other consumers also using your product. As one good example, advertsing for Wellmanıs EcoSpun fiber made from 100% recycled soda bottles claimed that the fiber production, "Saved enough energy to power a city the size of Atlanta for a year"
How much energy or water does your product save? Aggregating environmental benefits across the broad swath of possible consumers and/or across time can help consumers feel as if they are really making a difference. (To make sure your claims are credible, avoid overstatement and have them verified by a third party. )This will help project a deep green image on your brand and company, and generate the loyalty that builds brands over time.
Personalize
What environmental issues are your own customers most concerned about? What environmental issues do your product address best? Enhance relevance and build credibility by focusing on them. Stonyfield Farm, the makers of high quality and organic yogurts capitalizes on consumers concerns for global warmingand the link between methane produced by dairy cows, to help empower consumers to take action. The company has engaged in energy efficiency programs to reduce the gases produced at power plants, and invested in reforestation efforts to help offset their own carbon emissions. Then, to promote global warming awareness to its customers, it distributed five million yogurt container lids urging consumers to "Put a Lid on Global Warming." Inside the lids was information and a website with more information.
Be Upbeat
Environmental matters are serious indeed, and if you let them, they will drag down your brandıs image, limiting your acceptance among mainstream consumers. Thatıs why thereıs a big opportunity to make your brand stand for hope. Project optimism. Make it fun to do the right thing.
One of my favorite green marketing slogans come from the makers of GreenDisk brand diskettes that are recovered from unsold boxes of software. Recognizing the superior quality of diskettes that survive the thrice-inspected trip to retail store shelves, packaging for GreenDisks brags bragged, "Made from the best diskettes everyone else ever made."
Bring It Home
Of all the strategies for empowering consumers, perhaps the most effective is this one. Focus on the local. Thereıs a raft of issues that concern consumers but they canıt do anything aboutglobal warming, ozone layer depletion, rainforest destruction, and the like. And thereıs a host of issues that are purely local in nature litter, graffiti, sprawl, you know them well.
When possible, demonstrate how your product or company can affect change locally. Or demonstrate how your productıs use can actually help address issues that sound faraway or are out of oneıs personal control. Labels and farmerıs markets that help consumers understand how produce was farmed locally is a great example. So are products that can be verifiably sourced from the rain forest.
Question: Can a profit be made by selling recycled goods to consumers?
The answer is:
Yes! There are many highly profitable consumer products on the market that use recycled content. Examples include the Scotchbrite Never Rust "wool" soap pad made from preconsumer recycled plastic and Crane's "Denim Blues" and "Old Money" lines of paper made from scraps from blue jean manufacturing and recycled U.S. currency, respectively. Both of these products command a premium price and offer benefits to the consumer beyond just the recycled content. (In the case of Scotchbrite, its the fact that the soap pad doesn't rust like conventional steel wool. In the case of the stationery, its the unique aesthetic.)
Of course, there are many examples of products that use recycled content as a way to cut costs. One great one is Marcal, a line of household paper products that has always used recycled content as its raw material (though they didn't mention it to the consumer until the 1990s when recycling became popular.)
An example of a recycled content product that is not doing well is Wellman EcoSpun fiber, made from 100% recycled soda bottles. It has found a limited market among manufacturers who target green consumers (like Nike and Patagonia), but the fact that it is premium priced versus virgin and offers no consumer perceptible benfits besides the "feel good" is a barrier to growth. (This product is a good example of how we may need government intervention in helping to create markets for green products, as most virgin polyester is coming in offshore.)
If you would like additional information, you can consult our website, www.greenmarketing.com, or read our book, Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation.
Best of luck,
Jacquie OttmanMore articles about this topic can also be found at www.GreenMarketing.com.
Let Us Hear From You... E-mail Jacquelyn Ottman the questions that you want answers for. Her E-mail is info@greenmarketing.com. She will respond to those questions with the greatest relevance to product marketers and entrepreneurs in future updates of Green Marketing Corner.
About Jacquelyn Ottman: Jacquelyn Ottman is the president and founder of J. Ottman Consulting, Inc., based in New York City. She is also the author of Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation, 2nd Edition. For the past 10 years her organization has helped businesses create competitive advantage by developing and marketing environmentally responsible products and services. Clients include 3M, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Interface, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Ottman created the Getting to Zerosm Process, the first innovation process specifically designed to generate concepts for new environmentally sustainable products and services. A much sought-after speaker, Ottman has addressed industry conferences and professional gatherings in the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. She has been quoted in Advertising Age, Business Week, Fortune, and the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Prior to founding her firm, she worked in research, account management, and new product concept development at leading New York advertising agencies, where she managed Procter & Gamble, Ralston-Purina, and other blue-chip accounts. Ottman is a member of the American Marketing Association, O2, the Product Development and Management Association, and the World Future Society.
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