Jacquie Ottman's Green Marketing Blog

Pizza by Cer té: Greener By the Slice

2010-07-29T19:35:16Z

This is a guest blog post by Jean-Claude Darne

New York’s first green pizzeria has opened it doors. Responsible consumers and pizza lovers, you can now enjoy a slice that’s made with the environment at heart. Cer té, a popular café in Midtown East opened ‘Pizza by Cer té’ on Earth Day, April 22nd 2010. To encourage us to help us spread the word they sent us a couple of pies to sample. We took it upon ourselves to put their pizza to the ‘green test,’ scrutinizing every element of our pizza experience to discover they’d thought of everything…

Before the pizza even got through the door it was already green. The deliveries came by foot (while longer distances are covered by recycled bicycle), and being New York, this is probably faster too! A cheerful deliveryman handed over piping hot Bolognese and Margherita pizzas and went on his way.

Next came the packaging. The 100% recyclable - and rather clever - boxes are designed by Greenboxny. The lid is easily detached from the rest of the box and separated into 4 squares, each serving as an individual plate. Missing its lid, the bottom half of the box folds in two to create a smaller, more convenient box that easily fits into the refrigerator! To compliment the pizza, pepper flakes and Parmesan cheese were served in tiny plant-based containers made from Natureworks Bioplastic. The menu, printed on 100% recycled paper, explains how the ingredients are always fresh and locally sourced, the flour is never bleached and herbs come straight off their “green wall”. Even the sauce is made from fresh tomatoes that have never seen the inside of a can.

Now we were more than ready to eat. No sacrifices to taste were made in the making of this green pizza! As they claim, the ingredients were fresh and plentiful and the pizzas artfully created. The crust supports the toppings without being too thick or hard. The cheese was rich but not oily and all the elements - the crust, sauce, toppings and cheese - were proportioned to compliment each other. In this instance, green = superior quality.

After we finished eating we visited their website to see what other green initiatives Pizza by Cer té has undertaken. The restaurant uses recycled materials wherever it can, all supplies and food are sourced locally, rainwater is collected and used wherever possible and their building is LEED-certified. This is the latest successful restaurant project by Cer té‘s chef and owner Edward Sylvia. This time Sylvia has taken what made Cer té‘s menu so popular - its simplicity, affordability and elegance - to create New York’s first local, sustainable and environmentally friendly pizzeria. Quite a feat! Well done to Pizza by Cer té on their accomplishments so far.

Thank you to Eric for reaching out to us and for the delicious lunch. We recommend Pizza by Cer té to our fellow pizza lovers and responsible consumers in the city. Visit the Pizza by Cer té website to find their exact location, contact details and to browse their menu. We look forward to our next order.

Plastiki Trash Expedition Meets Goal—Who’s Next?

2010-07-27T14:43:08Z

New York Times recently reported that the Plastiki has docked after a four-month voyage from San Francisco to Sydney. The brainchild of British environmental advocate, David de Rothschild, the 60-foot “Plastiki” is a sailboat pieced together from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles and powered by solar panels and windmills. His mission: raise awareness about the amount and effects of plastic waste affecting our oceans.

David was on to something when he built his environmentally responsible craft and sailed it across the Pacific. He brought attention to an important issue and exposed it in a creative way. This type of approach can be implemented again - not just with kayaks and canoes and sailboats made of problematic materials. A hotel made completely from trash recently opened for guests in Rome, Italy to raise awareness about European beach pollution.

What consumer product will be the next target? What creative construction will capture the public’s attention? A playground made from dredged up baby diapers? An aluminum mountain of Coke-cans gathered from our nation’s roadsides? An amphitheatre made completely of old Sony Trinitrons and Walkmans? Stay tuned.

Jacquie Ottman, founder and president of the NYC-based J. Ottman Consulting is an expert and consultant to industry and government on green marketing. Her latest book entitled, The New Rules of Green Marketing (Berrett-Koehler 2010) is due out in Fall 2010. Click here for more details.

Veronica Gordon contributed to this blog post.

Creating the Virtuous Cycle: Integrating Online and Offline Green Marketing

2010-07-20T13:30:20Z

This is a guest blog post by Paul Hannam.

Conscious consumers are shifting to the web even more rapidly than many other market segments. According to a report in early 2010 from Burst Media , the internet is the number one source of product information for green consumers. Almost 40% of this group prefers the web in contrast to the TV, in second place, at only 18%. All businesses and organizations that want to engage with these consumers need to have a strong online presence.

Marketing professionals are quickly adapting to this significant shift towards “online marketing” by getting up to speed on Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising, Video, Social Media and Mobile, and preparing for general decline in traditional “offline” marketing such as Direct Mail, Newspaper and TV Ads. A recent forecast from E Marketer highlights this transition and predicts a nearly 11% growth in online advertising during 2010, while a Forrester Research study predicts that interactive marketing budgets, as a share of overall budgets, will increase from 13 to 21% by 2014.

An Online-Offline Balancing Act

This long term shift to online marketing traces to many factors including lower cost, more focused targeting, and more predictable ROI. With PPC advertising, for examples, you can affordably set up an advertising campaign on Monday, test it with your target market on Tuesday, evaluate the results on Wednesday, re-launch an “optimized” version on Thursday, and scale up your campaign on Friday. In terms of tracking, measuring and fine-tuning nothing comes close to interactive online marketing.

On the other hand, this does not mean that offline marketing is dead. Indeed most successful green brands would never have reached their intended base of mass consumers without traditional media. Think of Clorox Green Works for example and how their availability in retail outlets like Wal-Mart and Walgreens have led to more sales than the best online green direct marketing campaign could ever do. Moreover, green marketing is also oriented towards local and community promotion like locally-owned stores and Farmers Markets.

So, for mass market green brands, balance is key. Green marketing professionals need to integrate both online and offline media, and establish a “virtuous cycle” where they both enhance each other. This means creating a sales and marketing process that takes advantage of the best that each medium can offer.

Multiple Touch Points

In many ways, the different marketing channels are already merging and overlapping. Consumers see TV commercials on their laptops and listen to radio ads on their iPhones. TV and radio ads direct listeners to websites for special offers, so the best marketing campaigns use multiple touch points including print, website, social media, telemarketing and mobile.

Leverage the Strength of each Green Marketing Mechanism

Each online and offline tool has its own strengths in the overall marketing process. TV is ideal for reaching a mass audience while Social Media with its unprecedented openness and authenticity represents powerful way for engaging influentials in a two-way conversation. Consider how Patagonia’s Facebook Fan Page starts a conversation with discriminating greens by laying out the honest facts about everything that is good and bad about their products.

One of my favorite examples of successful online and offline integration is Method, the upstart green cleaning and personal care products company. As described in Jacquie Ottman’s upcoming book, The New Rules of Green Marketing, they managed to secure in over 25,000 retail outlets including Target and Whole Foods purely on the strength of offline marketing.

Their Methodhome.com website, for instance, features their engaging People Against Dirty Campaign that fully leverages the power of social marketing, complete with Facebook-style photos of campaign “advocates” who participate in the mission to promote green cleaning, while interacting with other advocates through their Facebook, Twitter and Flickr communities.

To further stack up against major players like Procter & Gamble, Method is now using paid media to introduce their revolutionary spray-pump laundry detergent. Commercials on YouTube gain additional exposure and media buzz. Meanwhile, “Cleaning Tours” in Chicago, Boston, New York and other cities generate trial and reinforce the company’s offbeat style by setting up “pop-up shops” on street corners where customers can swap an old toxic cleaning product for a free Method one.

Action Steps for Onlne and Offline Marketing Integration

So consider how you can do the same in your organization and boost the impact of your green marketing. Start by setting up (and even linking—the subject of a future article) a Facebook Page, Twitter and YouTube or other social media account and connect them to your website so you have more online points of contact with your consumers.

Use Facebook for dialogue, Twitter for Tweets and YouTube to showcase your products and offline commercials. To boost your online presence, ensure your Website, Facebook and Twitter addresses are on all your marketing materials, stationery, business cards and every form of communication.

Then offer an incentive to encourage people to give you their email address or participate in an online social group. Maybe offer a coupon or discount, or a free newsletter. Or hold a contest and promote a live event or a store promotion. Coordinate the distribution of all your news and content to every channel.

Using Your Green Marketing Integration as Leverage

The more you connect your marketing channels and the more you repurpose your message for offline and online the better. When you create a virtuous cycle you establish the foundations for leveraging all your marketing initiatives and achieving long-term growth in sales. As new technologies emerge you can integrate them into this cycle, and stay at the cutting edge of Green Marketing.

Paul Hannam is president of Bright Green Leadership that provides internet marketing services to green and responsible organizations. You can contact from Paul at Paul@brightgreenleadership.com. Paul is also Chairman and co-founder of Bright Green Talent and taught environmental business at Oxford University. You can visit his website at Bright Green Leadership.

Stand By Your Cause: What Marketers Can Learn From Dawn’s Involvement In The Gulf Oil Spill

2010-07-12T14:02:09Z

Long marketed by Procter & Gamble as an “effective yet gentle” way to keep dishes free from even the greasiest of grease, Dawn dishwashing liquid was widely publicized during the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989 as an ideal way to remove residue from afflicted bird and mammal species.

Fast forward to mid-April 2010, just days before the 40th anniversary celebration of Earth Day. P&G decided to create awareness for its 30-year long support of bird rescue groups by launching a new installment to a campaign begun last July featuring $1 donations to wildlife for the purchase of specially-marked bottles supported by a dedicated website and social media. The goal: donate $500,000. But just two days short of Earth Day the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, leaking 60,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico and killing eleven workers-and untold birds and fish.

Now, in what may represent at once every brand manager’s nightmare and boon, Dawn is being drawn into the mess, with bottles appearing in photos and video footage with dead birds, and the brand is the butt of a well-publicized joke of Steven Colbert and others in the media for the “convenient timing of their marketing campaign”. Some recent studies have even found that washing the birds with Dawn doesn’t necessarily guarantee their survival once released back into the wild.

P&G now finds itself in the unenviable position of attempting to minimize risk to the Dawn brand and P&G’s reputation as an environmentally responsible corporation to boot. Pulling the campaign might imply that P&G was exploiting the link between wildlife and their “effective yet gentle” formula after all. However, sticking with the campaign continues to keep them in the midst of controversy. An alternative stance might be a call to support renewable energy and an end to oil-drilling once and for all. What should Dawn’s brand handlers do?

A call into P&G spokeswoman, Susan Baba this week indicates that P&G is in fact sticking by its campaign-a move I support wholeheartedly. Here’s why: Dawn has a unique opportunity to shift emphasis from passive support of wildlife via its planned “$1 on specially marked packages” effort to a more leader-like strategy of empowering concerned consumers to assist in the cleanup by supporting their campaign.

Check out Dawn’s Facebook and Twitter pages and now notice updates on the oil spill, detailing the numbers of birds washed and released on a certain day, as well as information on how fans can get involved. One post even details the laudable efforts of 11-year-old Olivia Bouler, who raised over $70,000 to the cause by mailing hand painted drawings to individual donors. To their credit, P&G has not attempted to link the brand any more overtly to the spill via, for instance, targeted media outreach. Instead, they are sticking to their campaign goal of $500,000 in contributions to the International Bird Rescue Research Center and The Marine Mammal Center. I support their continuing the campaign in this manner, and in doing so, proving their commitment to a cause that will one way or another, long be associated with their brand.

Lessons for Would-be Cause-Related Marketers

The sticky situation P&G has found itself in for its Dawn brand suggests that when it comes to cause-related marketing campaigns, tread carefully. Some important tips include:

Pick a cause that ties in strategically with your brand’s positioning.
Be prepared to stick by your cause when the going gets tough - this is the acid-test of exhibiting genuine support for a cause versus merely exploiting an issue for marketing purposes.
Stay focused. Avoid the temptation to stray from your cause when the going gets tough-as would be the case if the campaign were to evolve to an emphasis on renewable energy.
Heed the critics but don’t necessarily be dictated to. As P&G’s Baba reminds us, “Any program has critics, especially ones run by a large corporation like ours.”

Speaking of critics, I realize not everyone will agree with my point of view, hence a reason for writing this post. Weigh-in please. What do you think?

This article, which was first published on the Triple Pundit website.

Shannon Sutherland contributed to this post.

A Creative Way to Handle Prescription Drug Disposal

2010-07-10T19:43:10Z

As someone quite involved in issues of product takeback and disposal in general, I became quite alarmed to discover how much Percoset and Vicodin, two controlled substances, were left in our medicine cabinet after my late husband’s bout with cancer.

Not wanting to dispose of the drugs in the toilet (for fear they would contaminate local waterways) or in the trash (where the drugs would linger in plastic bags on the sidewalk in front of my Upper East Side NYC coop where they could easily be slashed), I was comforted to find that my neighborhood pharmacy would take them back. In doing so, they warned me that they didn’t have a formal take-back program; even if the drugs wound up in the pharmacy’s trash, I felt that the drugs might be more secure than if handled by my building, and at the very least I was making a statement of customer concern that could lead to action down the road.

Dispense Partial Prescriptions?

I was delighted to read in Environmental Leader today that Congress is on the job. Read this article for details. However, the issues are complicated and thorny. While they await a solution, I couldn’t help wonder if we might be able to solve the problem, at least part-way, by shifting the disposal issue to the consumption stage: in other words, why not require pharmacists to dispense a prescription for a controlled substance only half-way, giving the patient the right to pick up the remainder when it’s clear the drug will be used.

Think about it. How many times have you or someone you know been sent home from surgery with a prescription for a pain killer that was, happily, used just once or twice. You get my point I’m sure.

As Congress wends its way through what will likely take years of work, let’s in the meantime come up with other creative ideas for solving the drug disposal program. I encourage you to send me your ideas.

How We Used “Framing” to Sell the Wind

2010-06-10T13:39:37Z

This is a guest blog post written by Cathy L. Hartman & Edwin R. Stafford.

Introducing “Framing”
By aligning marketing strategies with the core values of your audience, you can successfully craft a message that resonates with a targeted public, and increase your campaign’s chances for success. This is called “framing” and it’s well illustrated in the following two case studies.

Case Study: Utah & ‘The Winds of Opportunity’
In 2003, we collaborated with the Utah Wind Working Group to campaign for wind energy opportunities. At that time, renewable energy was a concept that many Utahns considered a threat to their way of life. The majority of Utah relied on cheap coal for electricity, and policymakers were reluctant to alter the status quo. Also, their economy was structured around heavy industrial growth and activities such as hunting and fishing, all seemingly in conflict with the idea of environmental protection.

In implementing two different statewide initiatives, we found that support for our initiatives greatly hinged on the way in which each campaign message was marketed.

Aligned with Family Values
Our first campaign was successful largely because our proposal aligned with Utah’s traditional values of hard work, family, and children. Together with the Utah Wind Working Group, we proposed building wind farms as a way to increase funding for schools.

At the time, Utah was ranked last in the country for statewide public school funding because, while Utahns valued education, its citizens were unwilling to pay the necessary general tax increase. Building wind farms, however, would increase property taxes, 75% of which is directed towards the schools. This initiative resonated loudly with the public, given that children and education were considered a top priority. By appealing to the values of the target audience, we successfully garnered enough support for the State legislature to pass its first energy tax incentive in 2004.

Missing the Mark
In a 2003 attack-on-all-fronts effort to promote wind energy and raise awareness of Utah’s water crisis, we launched a campaign that highlighted the seemingly clear water-energy nexus: invest in wind energy, save water. This time, our approach was much less targeted and in turn, much less effective. Instead of the same support that came from our “wind power funds schools” initiative, the campaign was met with heavy disapproval. The Payson utility plant even mounted on the defensive, angry that the campaign placed the spotlight on already tense conflicts over water rights.

Take Home Messages
We learned a few very important lessons from these two campaigns. The first: win hearts, not minds. Our ‘fund schools’ campaign was so successful because it touched on something that Utahns deeply cared about-their children. It also allowed for wind energy opportunities without raising taxes, which appealed to the ‘self-reliant’ streak among the public and state legislators. Consequently, wind power seemed like the smarter, more valuable choice. The key ways in making personal connections, instead of more theoretical ones, as we did in the ‘Wind Energy Saves Water’ campaign.

Secondly, we learned how critical it is to consider both intended as well as unintended audiences. In both campaigns, we failed to recognize how our message would impact groups outside of the policy-makers and the public. In turn, our message was not well received by employees and utility executives. On the other hand, we were pleasantly surprised to find allies among school administrators in our ‘fund schools’ initiative, a group that was not initially considered a stakeholder when developing our campaign strategy.

Edwin R. Stafford, Ph.D., and Cathy L. Hartman are professors of marketing at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business of Utah State University.

They collaborated with Jacquie Ottman on the very respected article, “Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia” which appeared in the journal, Environment, 2006.

Now Even Your Eyeglasses Can be “Green”

2010-05-27T15:11:45Z

Look for ECOs the next time you shop for eyewear. ECO stands for EARTH CONSCIOUS OPTICS, a new line of eyewear from our client MODO. We are proud to be assisting them in their exciting launch.

ECOs come in all kinds of fashion colors (not just green!) and are made from a minimum of 95% recycled stainless steel or 95% recycled plastic. (Another client of ours, ULEnvironment has validated the claims.) Reflecting a life cycle approach to sustainable design, each pair of ECOs comes with a special box for mailing back your old glasses for refurbishing with a new prescription for the needy. And the company has arranged via Trees for the Future to plant a tree for each pair sold.

Pick up a pair at selected Pearle Vision Centers, or 2500 Wal-Mart vision centers, or Modo’s own store in Soho located at 253 Mott Street—and start to see the world differently!

P.S. Attendees to SustainableBrands10 June 7-10 had a chance to say hello to Alex Lanaro president of Modo, who attended as a presenter and exhibitor—as well as the opportunity to try on a pair of ECOs!

Jacquie and Alex model their ECOs

Give Your Stuff Away and Unclutter Your Life

2010-04-12T19:39:32Z

Wouldn’t it be great if in just one weekend, we could get rid of some of the clutter in our lives by making it available to others who need it?

That’s the idea behind Mike Morone’s Give Your Stuff Away Day, happening on May 15, 2010 all across the country.

The deal is pretty simple: Just bring safe, valuable items that you no longer want to your curb (keeping in mind that no trash, recyclables, food, drugs, chemicals, or weapons should be included) and instantly be involved in the country’s largest giveaway effort! Others will be coming around to pick up these free items, finally making use of the things of value that we no longer use.

To read more about this, check out GiveYourStuffAway.com

Doing Well by Doing Good for Your Employees

2010-03-30T21:13:07Z

Employees are more than worker bees when it comes to green marketing. They are potential advocates in the community, and engaging spokespeople for the brand. By investing their time, they become stakeholders more than mere employees. Ideally, their beliefs, thoughts and ideas should be aligned with a greater sense of brand values. Timberland and Starbucks are two companies that share an understanding of what it takes to green one’s the workforce, align employees with brand values, and turn employees into advocates.

Timberland
Timberland provides an excellent example of how fostering a positive internal environment for sustainability has the potential to foster community and a sense of shared worth. This is valuable for brand awareness, reputation and loyalty. CEO Jeffrey Swartz’s mantra that “doing well and doing good and inextricably linked” flows through every part of the brand, and that especially includes the work environment and internal culture.

In addition to buildings and production facilities that set standards for sustainability, Timberland institutes “good” community-building measures for its workers. These include a fresh produce market and an incentive-based program to reduce carbon usage. Also, employees are encouraged with paid time off to partake in community service events.

Starbucks
Starbucks also understands the value of good employee engagement. They believe, in addition to good benefits and work conditions, employees should be educated on key partnerships and practices. One example integral to the brand is C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity) Practices. This set of guidelines, along with Fairtrade and the Small Farmer Sustainability Initiative (SFSI), inspires a positive culture within and around Starbucks. This belief system leads to happier employees and consumers, as well as a greater sense of brand value.

By translating the virtues of the Shared Planet initiative internally - that “what’s good for coffee is good for the world” - Starbucks is positioning itself as the green option compared to such competition as Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds. Starbucks understands that in order to maintain brand strength and reputation, continued employee engagement and key sustainability partnerships are vital. This is part of the reason why Starbucks has been so successful at turning sustainability initiatives into returns on investment.

This post was excerpted from Jacquie Ottman’s new book on green marketing, due out in Fall 2010. Sign up here to be notified when the book is available.

Jonathan Rabunski contributed to this post.

How to Turn Passive Consumers into Brand Advocates

2010-03-30T21:04:39Z

Consumers have been traditionally viewed as a lesser species with only the power to buy or not buy. (Are readers old enough to remember David Ogilvy’s famous line, “The consumer is not an idiot, she’s your wife.”) In contrast, Method has created a network of brand advocates and pseudo-marketing consultants by engaging their consumers effectively and by tapping into a green culture. How has Method been able to turn their consumers into brand advocates, and what is the advantage of doing so?

Method uses no paid media. Instead, they use social media -and primarily an innovative “People Against Dirty” campaign to harness the popular appeal of their products. In the process, they have unleashed a whole swarm of influential and outspoken “advocates” onto the market. Because of the strength of the relationship they have cultivated, their consumer advocates freely offer advice and express their ideas on improving the brand’s products, in addition to influencing their peers.

Method advocates are for the most part, hip, young people who genuinely feel good about their purchases and, as promised, have a little more fun when cleaning ‚in other words, they are actually engaged by the cleaning experience that Method sells. It’s a product that feels fancy and fun, giving the sense that the consumer is being good to himself. But it’s not just a gimmick. Through and through, Method is authentic in terms of its sustainability practice. Their offices and production facilities are carbon neutral and wastewater free. Product ingredients are transparent and carry the EPA’s Design for Environment label. Method’s brand advocates share an appreciation of their best practice in sustainability- it is part of why they love the product.

Outlook: expect this youthful, growing green culture that takes pleasure in being both loyal and influential to continue to help drive Method’s fast growth in the future.

This post excerpted from Jacquie Ottman’s new book on green marketing, due out in Fall 2010.

Jonathan Rabunski contributed to this post.

40 Million Kilowatts in 40 Days

2010-03-23T14:37:37Z

Jenn Dolin, our old friend and client who’s now at Sylvania, invites you to take the Sylvania Earth Day Challenge. Representing a great way to get consumers involved in energy efficiency, Osram-Sylvania is challeging consumers to take energy-efficient actions at home and at work, that, in the 40 days leading up to Earth Day, will add up to 40 million kilowatt hours of energy savings.

Just visit their website, populated with easy, energy-efficiency actions for the home and office. Select the steps you’ll willing to do for 40 days, and see your energy savings grow and grow.

While you’re there, enter to win prizes like LED light bulbs prizes to national parks and a carbon-neutral trip to Disneyland.

Jenn reports they are half way to their goal. Learn more at earthday.sylvania.com
While you’re there, check out Sylvania’s other sustainability initiatives by linking here.

What on earth are you doing for Earth Day (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun)? Please let us know.

Follow Jacquie on Twitter: Twitter.com/jacquelynottman

To Sell Green, Look Beyond the Planet

2010-03-11T16:30:00Z

This past Tuesday I opened my morning New York Times and decided one of my favorite columnists, Jane E. Brody, should be selling green. Her article (which I paraphrase in tribute here), entitled, To Keep Moving, Look Beyond the Physical, describes various motivators to get people to exercise beyond the specific benefits of the exercise itself. Borrowing the motivational approach often used by commecial marketers— an “emotional hook that creates positive meaningful expectations of how exercise can enhance people’s lives, a way to feel better,” she describes such non-health motivators as enjoying nature on an early morning walk, using members of a walking group as a sounding board for problems and a source of emotional and practical support, as well as the ability to sleep better and reduce stress.

Green marketing works in a similar way. The deep green consumers are really the only ones who are motivated to buy green to “save the planet”. So, to open the door to a mass market for one’s products, one must attract the light and not-so-light green consumers; do this by stressing personal benefits of one’s greener offerings.

Do your products save money? promise better health? offer convenience? Underscore these benefits instead.

I was recently interviewed by Marketplace on this very topic. In a segment entitled, To Sell Green, Look Beyond the Planet, I share oft-quoted advice to green marketers, “Leave the planets and the daisies behind, and find the direct benefits that their products can support such as health, superior performance, good taste, saving money, or even convenience.” The environment becomes a nice add-on benefit.

The radio segment featured a representative from Clorox talking about how GreenWorks detergent is gentle on the skin. Chuck Maniscalco of Seventh Generation talked about his company’s first paid media campaign focused on how women can “Protect Planet Home”. One Mom from Los Angeles is experimenting with “elbow grease and vinegar” as a substitute for cleanser — suggesting a new green product opportunity for tough economic times.

Note: If you enjoyed this blog post, you might also be interested in What If Mainstream Greens Don’t Care by Jacquie Ottman

Jacquelyn Ottman is president, J. Ottman Consulting

Follow Jacquie on Twitter

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Defining Biobased

2010-02-19T01:16:39Z

Biobased products are getting a lot of attention lately. Who doesn’t like the idea of making products out of corn, soy and other agricultural ingredients? We are proud to be working with the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) BioPreferred program. It’s a USDA-led initiative designed to increase the purchase, use, and evaluation of biobased products, including biopolymers.

USDA defines biobased products as those composed in whole or in significant part of biological ingredients; forestry or renewable agricultural materials - including plant, animal, or marine (e.g. algae) ingredients. USDA identifies more than 4,500 biobased products (products must meet/exceed minimum biobased content) in 42 product categories as “BioPreferred designated” products.

However, are biobased products really ‘greener’? Hint: they may not be any more or less green than any other single attribute-based “green” product (Consider, for example, that organic strawberries can travel thousands of miles to your cereal bowl. Or Energy Star labelled CFLs contain mercury.)

We’ve begun the dialogue on the environmental assessment of biobased products via a public meeting held in Jan 2010 - meeting materials are available on the home page of the program’s website, http://www.biopreferred.gov

And an article by Jennifer Barry, recently published on Earth911.com does a great job of summarizing the issues, too. Check it out and weigh in on the debate!

Jacquie Ottman is president of J. Ottman Consulting, Inc., advisers to industry and government on effective green marketing strategies.

Smart-Grid Enabled Appliances will help U.S. Green Marketers Compete in the Global Clean Energy Race

2010-02-13T17:19:13Z

The global clean energy race has begun and the powerhouse economies of Asia-China, Japan and South Korea -are already proving to be key challengers. Although the United States and E.P.A. have made great strides, the Obama administration has yet to take firm action in the form a comprehensive clean energy bill, forcing conscientious businesses and consumers to carry the baton for the U.S.

On the green marketing front, the future of energy consumption in the United States lies in ‘Smart-Grid Enabled Appliances’. Invested players including government, and product and software manufacturers such as Google and Microsoft are digitizing the nation’s power grid, to make delivery more efficient, cost effective and safer for the environment. This is the ‘smart-grid’.

Next comes the ‘smart appliances’. Smart appliances can be controlled remotely by the power company. For example, the power company could lower thermostats, switch to energy-saver mode or shut down the appliance during peak demand. Smart appliances save money- imagine an electric dryer that tumbles without heat and uses only 200 watts of electricity in comparison to a conventional 500 watt dryer on maximum heat. One million such dryers could replace six coal-fired power plants.

Smart appliances are enabled to work effectively on the smart-grid. Leading in this field are General Electric and Whirlpool. GE has developed a smart water heater that is currently being used in a test market, and Whirlpool is optimistic about a smart clothes dryer, predicting one million sold during 2011.

Looking for new green marketing opportunities? Join the race today for Smart-Grid Enabled Appliances and enabling technologies.

J.C. Darne contributed to this post.

This post was excerpted from Jacquie Ottman’s soon to be released book on doing green marketing right. Link here to be notified when the book comes out.

Method’s New Laundry Detergent—A Drop in the Bucket?

2010-02-08T01:37:16Z

Method deserves kudos for its new super-concentrated laundry detergent: 50 loads packed into a trim squirt bottle and 95% plant-based. Sounds great! A major achievement that should put Tide and Wisk on notice and turn heads at Wal-Mart. But let’s not let Dropps get lost in the hoopla.

Dropps, the product of a Philadelphia-based start-up, represents what may be an even greater achievement in source reduction. Eschewing the concept of dispensing with detergent from a bulky plastic jug, 20 dissolvable detergent capsules (“dropps”) come packed in a collapsible plastic pouch. The stand-up packs are so thin, it would take 292 of them to equal the plastic waste produced from one empty jug of Tide. In addition, the detergent formula is six times concentrated to save water. The lighter packaging and detergent means on the one hand, fewer delivery boxes and trucks, and for consumers, the convenience in transport home, storage and use.

To boot, the Dropps formula is free of chlorine, NPE (a stain-fighting additive to be an endocrine disruptor), and phosphate. And it’s capable of handling all colors, fabrics, washers and temperatures. (I can attest personally for how the product works. -Makes you want to be able to “dropp” a Tide in your washer. ) No wonder its found its way to the shelves of Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and Target.

Chime in on the latest in the detergent wars…let me know what you think.

————————

Angela Wong contributed to this post.

This post was excerpted from my soon to be released book on doing green marketing right. Link here to be notified when the book comes out.

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