Jacquie Ottman's Green Marketing Blog
Method’s New Laundry Detergent—A Drop in the Bucket?
Posted on February 07 2010 by Jacquelyn Ottman
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 …
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Opportunities for Marketing to the Green Consumer
Posted on January 09 2010 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Consumers buy over $200 billion of natural personal care and cleaning products, organic produce, hybrid cars, fair trade coffee, compostable plates and cups, and other green products and services.
Please join me on February 4, 2010 (in New York City) for Opportunities to Market to the Green Consumer. Network with members of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club and other senior marketing professionals from New York. Listen to green marketing practitioners from HSBC, Ozocar and Sundance Channel talk about opportunities to build green brands, innovate new products and services, and contribute to the bottomline. I’ll be moderating the panel and …
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Hey, Nestle: Don’t Communicate—Eco-Innovate!
Posted on November 20 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
If only Nestle had used good green marketing efforts and communicated its efforts to green its bottled water business sooner, it wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in now. Right? Wrong!
Contrary to what Kim Jeffery, CEO of Nestle Waters, laments to BusinessWeek, the real issue with bottled water lies in consumers’ minds (and the advocates who influence them), not in pricey carbon analyses showing that lightweighting the plastic bottle is the solution to reducing the environmental impact of bottled water. The real issue simply stated is that it’s environmentally wasteful to ship water across …
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Apples Versus Oranges: To Compare or Not?
Posted on October 14 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
I received an email this morning from a frantic manufacturer of laptops: "We need to finalize a green marketing claim for an ad we're preparing. Our laptops use less energy than desktop computers. Should we make the claim? Help! We don't want to be accused of greenwash!" (Note: Company name not included and category has been changed for confidentiality - but you'll get my points!)
On the surface a comparative green marketing claim such as this one looks pretty innocuous. However, dig a little deeper and you find some issues.
There are two of them: one related to comparing "apples …
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Is There a gDiaper in Your Baby’s Future?
Posted on July 31 2008 by Sydnee Grushack
Can anyone topple the disposable diaper giants? The makers of gDiapers promise an attractive, well fitting, convenient diaper that can be flushed, home composted or tossed. All parents want a diaper that is easy to dispose of, safe, absorbent, and affordable. Can gDiapers provide all of this with less load on the planet? Let’s see how the facts stack up.
Diaper Facts: Sustainable vs. Conventional
There’s no doubt that disposables are the easiest to use. All you do is undo the plastic tabs and toss the diaper into the trash. Cloth diapers …
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Address Sustainability or Risk Not Being Sustained
Posted on July 22 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
In an age where sustainability has begun to assert itself across the consumer and business-to-business product spectrums, those managers who fail to respond to social and "green" initiatives will find their brands swiftly barred from consumers' hearts and pockets.
Films like Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth are radically altering the marketing landscape. In response to such media, McDonald's has launched a bevy of healthy alternatives, and the market for hybrid and alternative fuel (ethanol/bio-diesel) automobiles is booming. This method of creating change through media has consumers better informed than ever. The result? Companies are forced to shape up, …
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Déjà Vu All Over Again - Part II
Posted on July 22 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Last month I discussed some of the green marketing missteps that we keep repeating no matter how many times we should have learned from hard experience that such tactics fall short. I suggested that rather than repeating these mistakes, perhaps the best solution is to move forward with new product innovations that truly transcend green marketing claims and eco-labels.
In fact, pursuing a course of eco-innovation - new product concepts with the potential for significantly enhanced consumer benefits and significantly reduced environmental impact - might be just what the planet doctor has ordered.
For example, as product innovations …
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Controlling Interest
Posted on July 22 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Consumers' desire to control a world that's increasingly viewed as spinning out of control lies at the heart of green marketing. If they didn't feel that greener products made a difference, there would be no market for organic produce, non-toxic cleaners, or Energy Star-qualified appliances.
Getting Your Consumer to 'Bite': Green Marketing Strategies
Empower your consumers with messages that underscore the difference they make as one consumer or in concert with all the other consumers of your products.
Be dramatic. The direct mail …
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CFLs: It Takes a Team to Market a Lightbulb
Posted on July 16 2008 by Sydnee Grushack
CFLs have become the quintessential example of a mainstream green product. As proof, as of October of 2007, Wal-Mart announced that it had surpassed its goal of selling 100 million CFLs by the end of 2007, three months ahead of time. However, this accomplishment was not so easily attained. The current success of CFLs is due to the innovation and commitment of a virtual “village” of manufacturers, designers, and marketers.
Remember those early CFLs? Too many consumers were reluctant to pay $15 versus 75 cents for an incandescent, despite promises of hefty savings over the life of the bulb. …
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Sustainable Branding in the 21st Century
Posted on June 05 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Just got back from the Sustainable Brands 08 Conference, in Monterey, California. Over 550 people gathered to hear about the latest trends, see the leaders in sustainability speak, and learn about new tools to conduct their business in a better way.
I had the honor of keynoting the conference. Several of the points I made were iterated by many of the speakers and by participants via their insightful questions from the floor. So there's a lot of consensus out there about what are the issues that we need to be dealing with …
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What Green Marketers Can Learn from Prius’ Success
Posted on March 30 2008 by Jacquelyn Ottman
Hardly a week goes by without Toyota’s Prius making green marketing headlines. Let's take a step back and analyze why this product has been so wildly successful, attracting a broad swath of consumers — and not just deep-green ones — like a powerful magnet, all the while creating a new definition of automotive cool. By Jacquelyn Ottman
Let’s start with the car itself. Its distinctive styling and unique silhouette acted as a moving billboard for the new technology. Inside, passengers get all the creature comforts they expect from pricier vehicles (including BMWs from whom they stole some market share) like …
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