Green used to mean money.
More recently, green has come to mean environmentally responsible.
Once enough consumers started shopping with the environment in mind, there is an ever increasing overlap. Companies are falling all over themselves appealing to concerned consumers.
The term Greenwashing is about 20 years old and these days it appears that the majority of marketing is guilty of this practice. Some of it is easy to recognize, like British Petroleum’s transformation to Beyond Petroleum.
Other misleading or irrelevant marketing may fool even the smart people. I am still undecided about the hosting company that professes to use solar and wind power. I am not naming it because of my indecision. I bought their marketing hook line and sinker and I even joined an affiliate program because I planned to talk it up on my blog. When I sat down to do the serious research on the company, I found a lot of negative word of mouth. They are either a very mediocre web hosting company that decided to greenwash as a way to attract a niche market OR a legitimately green web hosting company that is tragically lacking in customer service and reliability. Either way, I am not recommending them.
I think that one of the catch 22s of green marketing is the fact that many environmentally conscious individuals are skeptical of ALL marketing. If you create a product that sells itself by virtue of its greenness, you have it made. Otherwise, you have to market to people very carefully.
The FTC has some pretty clear policies when it comes Environmental Marketing Claims. Other agencies and organizations have some very strict rules and auditing procedures for companies that want to call their products organic.
Organic is practically a brand. It is instantly recognized as a good thing and it has a lot of brand loyalty. This is a good thing for people with something truly organic to sell. Unfortunately, there is a lot of counterfeit Organic on the market. That’s where third party auditing and certifying comes in. It is an added cost and inconvenience for business, but it is necessary.
Scot Case, president of Terra Choice Environmental Marketing Inc., recently told a journalist that buyers need to do their homework and check out a company’s environmental track record when it comes to green products.
Sources for this post:Palm Beach Post, FTC Website
January 7th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Keep up the fantastic work! Look forward to reading more from you in the future. I think it will be also nice if you add “send to email” tool so people can forward the articles to their friends easily.
February 23rd, 2010 at 6:41 pm
The thing with using the word Organic is that there is an auditable and verifiable paper trail right back to the field where the vegetables were grown, or the camp the animal was reared in. With Green it is much easier to cheat and get away with it, as there are no such measures in place to ensure the consumer is not ripped off. Fortunately the internet has given us the power to become our own detectives, and do research on so-called green companies and efforts to ensure that they are the real deal.