Nielsen Online’s latest green marketing study measured buzz in social media/blogs who focus on sustainable business: Production Process, Waste, Fair Labor/Trade Procurement, Sourcing and Shipping’s carbon footprint across the globe. That may sound a little crunchy granola to wholesalers focused on price points, breaking lots, shaving dropshipping costs, etc. But aggregate consumer demand for greener lifestyles is marching up the supplier chain, to manufacturers above us and retailers below.
Nielsen’s green buzz report helps us understand what’s important to consumers, by pulling opinions and searches on sustainability from over 70,000,000 blogs, message boards, review sites and communities in Sustainability Through The Eyes and Megaphones of the Blogosphere. Here are highline tips on Green Marketing, from Nielsen Online’s report and other green market watchers. Sustainability blog Triple Pundit says, “For too long business thought of itself as separate.”
Source fairly but use a small voice. In the Food and Beverage category of Fair Trade (sourcing commodity coffee beans), social bloggers applauded Dunkin’ Donuts’ soft voice in sourcing beans that are 100% Certified Fair Trade. But they are skeptical of the loud self-congratulations used by Starbucks for its identical fair trade purchasing. (Starbucks was too greenwashy, covered below.)
Country-of-origin product sourcing IS an issue. Ask pet food, toothpaste and children’s toy importers in 2007. Lead-paint and toxic contamination of toys imported from China became regular product safety warning news stories. While the largest toy resellers (Dollar Stores, specialty toy merchandisers) tested import toy lines to soothe buyer fears, brand China took a big hit. U.S. toy buyers were stunned by a fact of global free trade: Domestic toy makers – Hasbro, Lincoln Logs – had shut U.S. manufacturing sites the previous five years for cheaper, offshore production.
Forbes editor for China Robyn Meredith suggests DIY quality control. For American companies who buy Chinese goods and put American brand names on them, the import market is still Buyer Beware. Meredith says China’s product safety laws are not enforced, and the business environment among Chinese suppliers to U.S. factories is “cutthroat.” She notes that 30% of the world’s toys came from China in 2000; but by 2005, 75% of ALL toys were Made in China. And the reality is that wholesalers and resellers must track import safety. Health and safety standards are not currently enforced by either government … or it only comes after-the-fact, when bad news has already tanked sales.
Honesty is the most sustainable policy. It sounds like anti-marketing, but what about a clothing manufacturer that set up its corporate web site to Pro/Con rate its own products, warts and all? That’s exactly what Ventura, CA-based Patagonia clothing company did with its Footprint Chronicles. Under “The Good,” Patagonia shows its Wool 2 Crew sweater: Wool from well-run New Zealand sheep ranches; Dyes free of heavy metals; Fair Labor sewing factory. Next to it, under “The Bad,” Patagonia lists the long carbon/energy footprint this Wool 2 Crew leaves through four countries, from commodity wool shipments to dyeing and sewing to Port of L. A. and a Distribution Center in Reno, NV … a 16,200-mile hegira from sheep to shopper; design to delivery. Not sustainable.
Just what you’d expect from an up-brand, high-priced clothing manufacturer, right? But this is by design. Patagonia states: “Our reason for being is to make the best product and cause no unnecessary harm.” Bloggers in the search marketing world hear echoes in Google’s corporate mission “To index the world’s information” and “To do no evil.”
Using technology for transparency. Google announced in Fall 2007 that it could pop up at neighborhood gas stations with driving directions to local sites, merchant ads and compared gas prices. Sounds user friendly. Some bloggers suggest instead that Google use that muscular localization technology to track the carbon footprint of, say, food products, expanding the “locavores” (locally-produced-food eaters), using tech for sustainable, local farms vs. factory-farm agri-business.
A network of “environmentalists, ecological economists and green entrepreneurs” that calls itself Adbusters.org wants this same use of online technology to build a better bar-code scanner for cell phones, helping us make green purchase decisions: Pick a product, swipe the code, get Green light (sustainable product) or Red light (manufactured with sweatshop labor or pesticides.)
Bottom line is: Look at carbon footprints and sustainable ops down the entire manufacture-to-sale chain. Even warts like Patagonia’s 16,000-mile sweater get points for transparency and honesty.
Color sustainable clothing green. Demand for nontoxic clothing and sustainable design grows as part of the apparel industry’s buyer decision path. New green demands have to do with how clothing was made, from fibers to sewing shops, herbicides to non-toxic dyes. See: Summer Rayne Oakes, an Alternative Resources major who turned fashion model and eco-style icon. Her consulting firm SRO found a 50,000% increase in eco-aware clothing designers since 2002 … not counting musician Bono, whose organic clothing line Edun appears in traditional trade show spaces (NY Fashion Week).
Speaking of green apparel trade shows: The Global ECO — Environmentally Conscious and Organic — Apparel Trade & Fashion Show debuted in Las Vegas barely a year ago (May 2007). ECO is an Environmental Wholesale Trade Show, focused on earth-friendly fashionable clothing designs, sustainable textiles, eco products and green information. (Another ECO mission is to help conventional retailers convert under-performing retail space into green boutiques.) Pioneer ECO exhibitors include Bamboo Eco Wear, Fiberactive Organics, Organic Cotton Company, Paper and Nature Products. See www.globalecoshow.com for info about ECO Las Vegas in August 2008.
Greenwash peels. Greenwashing is a business’ attempt to mislead about its environmental practices or benefits of its products/services. Sometimes it is in-your-face, such as a multinational oil company claiming it is eco-friendly, using flower power images in corporate ads. (Nielsen’s qualitative assessment of greenwash threads tagged this “Incongruous with Company/Industry.” Ahem.)
In the Retail category on reducing excess product packaging, Nielson’s tracked bloggers gave credit to Wal-Mart for at least trying with a plastic bag reduction program; but this green action was viewed with suspicion when consumers weighed other parts of W-M policy, such as labor and healthcare, or its sometimes predatory relationships with its own suppliers. (Competing retailer Target was rated more green – not greenwashed – for the same plastic bag recycling action.)
Suspect greenwashing spills over to non-profits, whose motives are clear (Breast Cancer Research), but whose co-marketers are not, such as promising donations to girls’ health if we buy the retailer’s personal care products. As noted above, both Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts source Fair Trade coffee beans. But Starbucks is judged to use “excessive PR” to broadcast its “Doing Good.”
This final tip to wholesalers goes back to transparency and consistency in green marketing. As Jessica Hogue, Nielsen Online’s research director put it: “Bloggers are a highly skeptical consumer group. They are quick to condemn greenwashing when they suspect companies misrepresent their environmental impact with aggressive PR campaigns.” Still, green is the way the world goes.