Jacquie Ottman's
Green marketing Blog
Shop ‘Til You Drop—but on Earth Day?
Posted on April 24, 2012 by Jacquelyn Ottman
This year seemed to produce a bumper crop of Earth Day promotions — and a lot of accompanying media backlash. Stories written by Marc Gunther, Matt Wheeland, and a NYTimes piece by Elisabeth Rosenthal are three I saw and I’m sure you saw more yourself.
The media are making Earth Day marketers look like the moneychangers in the temple. Why is this happening? What can we do about it?
It’s happening because of dyed-in-the-wool skepticism over business’s real motives when it comes to the environment. Accordingly, it’s happening …Read more...
Book Review: Greener Products: The Making and Marketing of Sustainable Brands
Posted on February 03, 2012 by Jacquelyn Ottman
In his recently released Greener Products: The Making and Marketing of Sustainable Brands (2012, CRC Press, 222 pp.), Al Iannuzzi offers a detailed and persuasive case for incorporating sustainability into your business model. Examining both the making and the marketing of green products, his writing is firmly situated in the language of business — making it a useful resource for both business leaders and students alike.
Iannuzzi’s message is rooted in two core truths that we believe in strongly. First, there is no such thing as a truly green product: every product …Read more...
The Rise of the Biobased Economy — and Why Brand Owners Need to Develop a Strategy in 2012
Posted on January 11, 2012 by Jacquie Ottman & Mark Eisen
Our economy is slowly but surely heeding the signal that carbon is the new watchword. During the past few years, a steady stream of so-called “biobased” products have been making their way to retail shelves — compostable dinnerware made from corn, plant-based laundry detergents, and bamboo flooring among them. Coke and Pepsi are now competing to be first to market with a soft drink bottle derived entirely from sugarcane or other plant materials.
The emerging biobased economy even has its own label — USDA Certified Biobased, pictured here. It’s …Read more...
Book Review: The Method Method
Posted on December 12, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
In their new book The Method Method: 7 Obsessions that Helped Our Scrappy Start-up Turn an Industry Upside Down, Method cofounders Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry with co-author Lucas Conley take the occasion of their unconventional company’s tenth anniversary to step back, and offer readers the opportunity to peek inside their business, learning from their mistakes and acquiring the secrets to their success.
The Method Method offers a refreshingly honest look at how to create and maintain a successful business in a changing market where consumers …Read more...
EPA’s Design for the Environment Label — A Route to Safer Chemicals
Posted on November 21, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Some chemicals are safer than others, and the U.S. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics’s voluntary Design for the Environment label can help consumers identify all purpose cleaners, laundry detergents and oth
er products that have met performance measures and are known to contain the safest possible ingredients. Since its inception in 1997, the label has been earned by over 2700 products. (Full disclosure: DfE is a former client of mine.)
A product of EPA’s now twenty-year-old Design for the Environment (DfE) Program, the DfE label is based upon product review criteria developed with …Read more...
Why Education is Key to Green Marketing Success
Posted on October 26, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Given the complexities of greening, properly educating consumers can make the difference in the success of a campaign. One green marketer who learned the hard way about the need to educate is Whirlpool. In the early 1990s they won a $30 million “Golden Carrot” award that was put up by the U.S. Department of Energy and a consortium of electrical utilities for being the first to market with a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-free refrigerator. But they misjudged consumer’s willingness to pay a 10% premium for a product with an environmental benefit that many did not …Read more...
How to Choose the Right Eco-label for Your Brand
Posted on October 19, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Eco-labels are an excellent way to enhance credibility for green marketing claims, but they are not without risk. While 28% of consumers look to green certification seals or labels to confirm that a product adheres to claims, these labels can also confuse. Happily there’s enough method within the madness for marketers to pave a way forward.
Eco-labeling challenges
More than 400 different eco-labels or green certification systems are now on the market. Questions such as which label is better, which product is safer for the environment and what does a label even …Read more...
Toyota’s Prius: Different Strokes for Different Folks
Posted on October 12, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
The mainstreaming of green brings with it the need to segment audiences. As marketing efforts behind the Toyota Prius demonstrate, targeting messages to specific consumer groups can broaden appeal.
When launching the Prius in 2001, Toyota opted to target not the green-leaning drivers one might expect, but rather tech-savvy “early adopter” consumers. Featuring a beauty shot of a shiny new car parked at a stop light and illustrated by the provocative headline, “Ever heard the sound a stoplight makes?” an introductory print ad emphasized the hybrid car’s quiet ride (and specifically the fact …Read more...
Focus On Consumer Self-Interest to Win Today’s Green Customer
Posted on October 05, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
If your green ads showcase the now tiresome images of babies, daisies, and planets, your messages will likely be irrelevant to mainstream consumers. Eco-imagery may have tugged at the purse-strings of “deep green” consumers, but their lighter green counterparts, who make up the bulk of the market, want to know how even the greenest of products benefit them personally. While the environment may be the underlying reason a product was created or upgraded, it will likely not be the primary motivation for consumers to choose your brand over those of competitors.
Avoid green marketing myopia
In other words, don’t commit …Read more...
Doing Cause Marketing Right
Posted on September 20, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Once considered a short-term promotional tactic, cause marketing is now a mature, long-term strategic business practice that can enhance brand image and boos
t sales. Most importantly, cause-related products give businesses an impact that goes far beyond mere tax-deductible checks (philanthropy).
Several successful brands are making social causes central to their business. Consider the enormously successful TOMS One for One campaign, which gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of their rubber-soled alpargatas shoes they sell.
The monumental success of cause marketing campaigns thus …Read more...
Why Empowering Children is Key to Green Marketing Success
Posted on September 06, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Good green marketing is all about making an investment in the future of the planet by promoting sustainability and protecting the environment. So it is only natural that successful green marketing campaigns can and should involve children, offering an opportunity for building life-long brand loyalty.
TerraCycle, the innovative New Jersey outfit founded by Princeton University dropout Tom Szaky, first made headlines in 2006 by selling fertilizer made from worm poop to The Home Depot and other major retailers. They now put non-recyclable items such as food wrappers to work …Read more...
Don’t Let Skepticism Stifle Your Green Efforts
Posted on August 10, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Ask businesses why they don’t tout green achievements more often, and their answer will likely be fear of greenwash.
Before you let such fears deter you from making investments in sustainable technology or promoting your green achievements, consider how difficult it is for any advertiser to gain consumer trust.
Consumers have always been skeptical of advertising. Take the food industry, for example. Food brands have long been under government scrutiny for their advertising claims. Today, companies are getting smeared for overpromising health benefits, leaving consumers confused about what’s actually true. But we don’t …Read more...
Why Guilt Won’t Sell Green
Posted on August 01, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
In the midst of a national energy crisis in 1978, U.S. president Jimmy Carter took to the airwaves in a cardigan sweater encouraging Americans to conserve energy by turning the thermostat to 68º F. His campaign failed because of its link to deprivation, and because it represented a threat to the upward mobility and prosperity that is America.
While some may question the idea that “bigger is better,” most Americans have not historically been willing to reverse their hard-won struggles to “have” for a future characterized by “have not.” It is a fundamental rule …Read more...
How Consumers Can Share Responsibility for Greening
Posted on July 18, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Tom’s of Maine can make the toothpaste more natural, but they can’t force consumers to turn the water off when they brush. Coke can make the bottles recyclable, but only consumers can drop them in the blue bin. Sun Chips can make the bags compostable, but only consumers can see that they get to a composting pile instead of a trash can.
Communications can fill this gap. With life cycle risks escalating over time, green marketers must now educate their consumers on how to use and dispose of their products responsibly. And empirical evidence …Read more...
Let the Consumer Decide “What is Green?”
Posted on July 01, 2011 by Jacquelyn Ottman
You hear a lot of talk about the “sin of the hidden trade-offs.” I’ve got news for you, folks. Greening—like life itself—is all about the trade-offs! No product is 100% “green.” So, considering that all products use energy and create waste, green is a relative term. One product is green-er for someone at some time in some place.
Green is Relative
For instance, cloth diapers might not cause any trees to be chopped down, but they do use a lot of hot water. Disposable diapers don’t use water but they do clog …Read more...
