“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!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

The Copenhagen Climate Summit has come and gone. World leaders have returned to their respective countries with their pressing priorities. You would think the low rumble of the Summit has gone dormant again, but look behind you. Consumers are not only thinking green, but beginning to take “green” actions. President Obama has pledged to help utilities install 40 million smart energy meters so that consumers can take real-time actions to reduce unnecessary energy usage. Consumers, like you and me, will soon have “energy intelligence” (a term coined by Information Management’s Robert Farris). So how do businesses get energy intelligence?

Businesses are being asked not only to cut costs, but to do so especially in the area of energy usage, demonstrating they are doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint and take advantage of PR benefits of being “green.” Stakeholders, including customers, investors, and regulators, are now expecting it.

Energy costs in business average around 10% of the operating expense budget. It’s a number that the Dept. of Energy says could be reduced as much as 27% with the right techniques—decision support and operational efficiencies. It’s the classic performance management scenario: getting visibility so you can take action.

Sure, you can review your energy bills, but those are as much as 30 days old and don’t usually give you the level of detail needed to make appropriate changes. Even better, you could monitor the facility management systems used to track the usage and health of your heating/cooling, lighting, and water systems. Still not enough to make the right decisions. Were there one or 100 employees in the building that day? That information may be in another system like HR or security.

This is where Robert Farris’s post on Energy Intelligence suggests a business intelligence approach. He states it so eloquently in his post:

An energy intelligence system can integrate data from islands of energy usage information (building management systems, building sensors, utilities, etc.) and combine it with other operational data from your enterprise applications (supply chain, manufacturing, HR, finance, customer relationship management, asset management, etc.) to provide visibility to trends in usage, costs and efficiencies – across all locations, sub-locations, and building systems.

By bringing this information together in one place and providing BI capabilities – trending graphs, dashboards, near real-time monitors, exception alerts, location-comparison reports and detailed analysis capabilities – an Energy Intelligence system can help company leaders understand where efficiencies are and help them make informed decisions about what actions will provide the most return.

With more and more companies creating a career path and C-level positions for sustainability leadership, business intelligence vendors and corporate BI teams need to step up and educate organizations about the use of performance management for energy intelligence.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I’m very pleased to see another business intelligence software company has added an offering for corporate sustainability reporting. On December 15, 2009, SAP/Business Objects announced their comprehensive sustainability solution, joining both Actuate and SAS.

Corporate sustainability is increasingly becoming an integral function of the business and reporting plays a key role.

“Sustainability is increasingly mission-critical across the corporate world,” Stephen Stokes, vice president of Sustainability and Green Technologies at AMR Research, said in a statement. “Managing and reporting an organization’s sustainable performance via transparent and high quality data collation, analysis, optimization and modeling is a new basis for defining and communicating operational excellence.”

Businesses are looking to their business intelligence providers for reporting solutions they can integrate into their current BI environment – solutions that will help get them up and running quickly.

That thought led me to wonder how easy it is to find reporting solutions for sustainability. I first did a Google search for “corporate sustainability reporting solution.” The good news is SAP made it to the first page. SAS made it to the second page, and I was five pages deep and never found Actuate.

Interesting, what I did find was Oracle talks about sustainability but doesn’t have a dedicated solution.

Next, I went to the SAP, SAS, and Actuate websites. I wanted to know how difficult it would be to find their sustainability solutions. With SAP just releasing their news two weeks ago, you would have thought it would still be front and center. Intuitively, I thought I would find it in their Business Objects section, but no luck. Finally did a search and found it in their SAP solutions section. However, I tried going straight to the solution section (without using search results) and could find not it.

So I tried SAS. They were a little better. Nothing on the home page under “solutions” but hit the “more products & solutions” link and you’ll find their offering.

Lastly, took a look at Actuate. Nothing mentioned on the home page about sustainability solutions. Nothing in the navigational menus. Making it more difficult, they organize by product and don’t have a menu for solutions. Finally resorted to doing a search. Actuate’s sustainability solution came up easily.

All of this shows that business intelligence solution providers are making good progress in addressing the demand for sustainability reporting, but they are still falling down in helping prospects and customers find their solutions.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I still remember my first Earth Day, which was also THE first Earth Day in 1970. I was in 4^th grade (go ahead, do the math… I’ll wait). Preventing littering was about as much as I understood about being environmentally responsible and its relation to Earth Day.

Since then, there has been a fair amount of progress, though not near enough, in the almost 40 years since Earth Day started. The term “green” used to primarily represent recycle and reuse, but has expanded in scope to include Corporate Sustainability, also known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR uses a triple bottom line that measures success based on financial, environmental, and social metrics.

Many companies are embarking on sustainability programs and mostly for the right reasons, treating people and the environment with care and respect, and not just for PR. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t communicate your company’s CSR efforts.

Whether your company is involved in a formal CSR program or just embarking on various green initiatives, make sure your efforts are being communicated to your stakeholders who include customers, employees, partners, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and local communities.

CSR Communication Benefits

In addition to increased revenues and decreased costs, CSR programs offer a number of benefits. Many of these benefits are enhanced by communication including:

·         Improved reputation – easier to hire good employees, build customer loyalty, and create shareholder value

·         Improved community relations – local involvement builds community support and makes doing business with local authorities easier

·         Improved compliance – public officials are inclined to work together with companies making efforts to meet regulations

With CSR, there are many ways to provide information and exposure regarding your company’s efforts, and all should be considered. The CSR stakeholder community is pretty diverse, so it’s to your benefit to get information out using a variety of media. Media should include all of the usual suspects such as press releases, newspaper articles, television news casts, radio public interest stories. Online mediums should also be used such as company and industry blogs, company Facebook pages, Twitter announcements, and posted podcasts.

In addition to news-type information, success stories and thought leadership from company executives can be used to create an interesting and powerful image to stakeholders.

Beware of Greenwashing

Lastly, be careful how you present your content. Information must be honest and accurate to avoid what is now being called “greenwashing” which is the act of making your company sound greener than it really is.  Don’t highlight your environmental or social improvements in one area to cover up for negative activities in another area. Companies that try and create a perception of sustainability to gain customer and stakeholder favor without backing up their claims will actually do more damage to their reputation than good.

Build up CSR Knowledge in Marketing

One way to help ensure you communicate accurately is to make sure you are knowledgeable about CSR. With recent changes in the government and an increased focus on sustainability, more and more companies will be embarking or expanding on CSR programs. Now is a great time to educate yourself on corporate sustainability, aka corporate social responsibility, so you will be ready to frame your company’s efforts in their best light. Aquinas College does a good job of explaining sustainability in layman’s terms.

Business Link says it best: “A successfully implemented corporate sustainability strategy positively impacts a company’s reputation and brand image by demonstrating that the company is taking responsibility for its actions and embracing change for the greater good.  In fact, an essential part of a company’s success is the engagement and development of strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders based on trust, respect, and cooperation.”

Another Earth Day has come and gone this year. I am grateful that it is no longer just about recycling or being green, but that it takes a larger stance, one that compels companies to take a good hard look at their impact on the earth and make the changes needed to ensure our children will enjoy the natural assets we have today.

What do you think about the role of companies as it relates to CSR?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI