green marketing

Over the past 12 months, Pinterest has witnessed explosive growth. The site has topped 23 million unique visitors and average site visit time is nearly 100 minutes per month, making it one of the largest and most engaging social networks around. AdAge raves that “…Pinterest has gone from relative obscurity to exalted status alongside Facebook and Twitter…”

Certain human behaviors today reflect hardwired traits that helped our ancestors and their kin over time. Such behaviors provide individual benefit, yet the collective impact of such actions can be detrimental to the environment, creating a situation not unlike the Tragedy of the Commons.

Over the past few years, we have seen the web transform from a medium that facilitates information exchange to one that enables social connections and conversation. Arguably, the recent launch of Facebook’s Timeline marks another milestone for the web, enabling a web experience more personal than ever before.

A common mantra in green marketing is that if you want the masses to buy your product, focus your messaging on more traditional attributes such as price, quality or service. A product’s “greenness” is likely secondary for many mainstream consumers. For green marketers then, the holy grail may be to offer a product that is competitive on dimensions both traditional and eco-friendly. This would result in the greatest number of products sold and greatest impact on the environment.

Earth Day is behind us and I'm digging out of my cluttered digital desktop to uncover the nuggets of value that have been hidden amid the countless pitches and come-ons typical of April's environmental hoopla. Among those nuggets: three reports and guidebooks on ... making green pitches and come-ons.

It wasn't 20 years ago today, but close enough: About this time in 1990, my book, "The Green Consumer," hit the bookstores. The book — the U.S. version of a 1988 U.K. bestseller, "The Green Consumer Guide," by John Elkington and Julia Hailes, which I substantially adapted for U.S. audiences — began with a simple premise:

“Green marketing” usually refers to using an environmental pitch to sell a product. A car creates less pollution, a paper product is made from recycled content, and so on. Results of appealing to environmental sentiment have been mixed. On one hand, the Toyota Prius has sold better than would be justified purely by the economics of the premium-priced vehicle.

by: Roger Dooley

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

The jury is in on green marketing: it doesn't work. 

Although unpleasantly glib, the 2008 BrandJunkie Survey of consumer opinion revealed that nobody really believes the environmentally-friendly branding claims of most companies. This is after such traditionally "green" businesses -- you know, like oil and car companies -- have spent many millions to brand themselves accordingly.

by: Joel Makower

A few weeks ago, I keynoted a conference of leaders from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area — corporate executives, government officials, nonprofit leaders, and at least one university president. During the Q&A portion, one corporate VP asked how to weigh the implementation of environmental initiatives that don't have attractive returns on investments. "How can I justify putting money into things that don't make business sense?" she asked.