April 21 st
Be Green but Not a Green Washer
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“It’s not easy being green.” – Kermit the Frog
In honor of Earth Day, I thought I’d write about something green—specifically, green washing. No this isn’t what happens when your three year old accidentally leaves a green crayon in his pocket and it goes through the wash.
According to Greenwashing Index, “Green washing is when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be “green” through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact.”
I found this on SourceWatch: The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch defines green wash as “the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment.” Ouch!!
Now, as marketers, we should absolutely be letting the world know about our efforts to create environmental sustainability. But, our efforts must be in the context of our overall environmental impact. We can’t be bragging that we recycle all of our shipping cardboard when we package our own goods in non-recyclable materials.
Today’s consumers have knowledge at their fingertips. Smart consumers will be looking at your company to see what kinds of claims you make about being environmentally friendly and what you do to back up those claims. Here are some areas they will be looking for (marketers take note and test your own green marketing!):
- Is there information available on the corporate website to back up ads or press releases? Perhaps even a sustainability section?
- Research where the money is going. Does the company support lobbyists or PACs that are in conflict with their claims to be environmentally friendly?
- Search the Internet for opposing views, or those who might have a “beef” with the company.
- Do the ads mislead with words or graphics? Is the green claim vague or hard to prove? Does the ad exaggerate the claim?
- Does the ad or claim leave out information that makes the company seem greener than it is? Do they try to divert attention from something else the company does?
- Does the company backup green claims with objective information and metrics? Do they publish a sustainability report?
- Is their messaging consistent over time? Some companies make a big deal about starting an initiative only to have the funds pulled and reprioritized to other business efforts later.
Consumers will continue to educate themselves about harms to the environment and will continually push companies to become more earth friendly. Corporations will need to prove themselves just to stay competitive, but must do so with honesty—not just for shareholders and consumers, but for the ultimate stakeholder—planet earth!
Happy Earth Day!
April 13 th
Will Social Media Replace Traditional Marketing?
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Social media is on the tip of most every B2B marketer’s tongue these days. They’re wondering which activities they should be participating in. “Should we be blogging and tweeting?” “Should we have a Facebook page?” “What about LinkedIn? Should we be there too?” These are typical of the types of questions that are heard whenever new techniques are introduced.
Laura Ramos of Forrester recently published the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix Trends Research. The study looks both at marketing activities and how the marketing spend is split amongst those activities. Of course, it’s no surprise that Forrester finds social media to be the hot new marketing tool.
Looking at B2B social media efforts in 2009, the study shows:
- 68% have set up group pages on social networking sites
- 55% use Twitter for marketing
- 49% are active with corporate blogging (up from 32% in 2008)
While these statistics are interesting, even surprising in some cases, she cautions that they represent what marketers are doing—not necessarily what is working. In fact, she says that, on average, fewer than one in five say social media has been highly effective for branding and lead generation. What isn’t defined is the term “highly effective.” But I think the point made is that social media tactics still have a ways to go before they produce the returns of more traditional marketing tactics such as e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales.
Forrester’s 2010 study did show that e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales were the only tactics to show steady upward trends in both branding and lead generation. She states pretty strongly that marketers must get these right before adding social media to the mix.
As for marketing spend, most marketers cut spending across all activities, and their 2009 budgets looked the same as 2008. Not a huge surprise given the sting of the recession. She mentions that while trade show activities are down, these types of events still take up an average of 20% of the marketing spend. This is followed by traditional tactics like print ads, executive events, direct mail, and PR, which consumed between 10% and 13% of the budget.
Boiling this all down, she advises marketers to rethink their marketing mix and take bigger risks when allocating marketing budget for online efforts. She says that even though digital and social media efforts will not overtake traditional outbound communications anytime soon, marketers can no longer ignore the shift as customers move more into the social media space.
Personally, I expect to see even more of this marketing shift as 2010 sees a lift out of the recession and business returns to a (new) normal. Also contributing to this shift will be the increased ability to measure and see positive results. Something that has been slow to come.
What does your company think about social media marketing? Have they dipped a toe in the water? Have they seen positive results? Love to hear from you!
April 6 th
BI’s Place in Sustainability Reporting
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As some of you already know, I’m quite interested in the linkage between corporate sustainability, also known as corporate social responsibility or CSR, and business intelligence. There’s a very logical place for BI teams, processes, and technologies in CSR.
CSR wraps the traditional, profit-making business efforts in ways that reduce their impact on both the environment and society. This is often referred to as the triple-bottom line-balancing financial, social, and environmental ROI.
Each company’s sustainability goals will be unique. Manufacturers may look at reducing fuel consumption through optimizing shipping routes. Hoteliers may look both at recycling guest waste and hiring from the local community. Builders may look to use more renewable building materials.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was formed to create a common framework for companies to report voluntary reporting of economic, environmental, and social activities. It doesn’t specify what to report, but rather how to report. The GRI has adopted strategies to promote standards and provide assurance to stakeholders. These include consultation panels, internal audits, and independent reviews.
Though CSR metrics are not always easy to measure, companies should make sure the metrics they gather are both suitable and available. The metrics should be objective, relevant, complete, and consistently measurable.
Today, many large, well-known companies are producing annual corporate sustainability reports. These are actually done in a very similar fashion to the “annual report.” Companies use these reports to inform shareholders and communicate with the public to:
- Demonstrate their interest in the environment, their employees, and the communities they serve
- Show their commitment to human rights and fair labor policies
- Promote transparency with employees, shareholders, government regulators, and NGOs
- Enhance or protect their brand or reputation
- To grow shareholder value
Some of the companies reporting include Nike, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, AT&T and Intel. There are even more in the GRI featured report list. Take a look at some of these reports. I think you’ll find them fascinating and you’ll see the depth in which they’ve been able to establish metrics for CSR.
As a BI practitioner, consultant, or vendor, it’s time to start planning how you can support CSR. Are you being given a seat at the table? Can you help the CSR team think differently about gathering data for hard-to-measure metrics? Perhaps a CSR scorecard is in order to provide ongoing visibility.
More companies are realizing they can no longer selfishly think only of their profits. Stakeholders are beginning to demand they reduce their impact on the environment and contribute to social justice both with employees and the community.
What will be your role?
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