And the Award for the Worst Marketing Ever Goes to…
By Todd Brashear

…the green industry. The Earth-friendly products. The environmental movement. All those companies and organizations that restrict their marketing appeal to an extremely small sect of activists, hippies and tree-huggers.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m somewhat of an activist tree-hugger myself. But I’m also a marketing guy. And marketing is all about offering maximum value to the largest possible number of customers. The fact is that people buy things for very practical reasons – because they’re cheaper or they work better or they taste good.

But green marketers, by building their sales messages around touchy-feely Earth-friendliness, are missing the solar-powered boat. At a time when more people than ever should be open to buying green products, the green customer base remains stagnant with modern-day flower children.

To illustrate how badly the green industry is doing, let’s look briefly at the world we face and note that, in spite of all these issues, the industry has made marginal sales gains. Terrorism, which is funded in large part by oil dollars, has the world on edge. The Pentagon has named global warming the number-one threat to national security. The FDA and EPA recommend that pregnant women avoid several fish because of dangerous mercury levels. Endless research details the health risks of herbicides and pesticides. Gas prices have doubled since 2000. Utilities bills have skyrocketed, as well. The list of environment-related concerns has grown at a fever pitch. But how have green businesses capitalized on that?

Generally, they haven’t. They haven’t changed their marketing strategies at all. They continue to pitch themselves as the green alternatives. And most people continue to ignore them, thinking green products don’t work as well, cost too much or taste bad.

In other words, it’s not easy being green in the mainstream.

From a marketing perspective, the solution is easy. These companies and organizations need to stop pitching “green” and find the real value proposition for customers who aren’t motivated by the warm-fuzzy. That way, they’ll maximize their number of customers – and ultimately the good they’ll do for the planet. To sell fuel-efficient automobiles, manufacturers should build good-looking hybrids and sell them as a welcome relief to high gas prices. Growers should position their organic food as better tasting. Solar panel manufacturers should sell homeowners on their last electric bill ever. As far as purchasing decisions go, these types of messages resonate with people more than whether their shampoo is paraben-free.

A great real-life example of smart marketing by a green manufacturer is Austin Construction. For Texas Instruments, Austin built an environmentally friendly, 1,000,000 square foot semiconductor manufacturing plant in Richardson, Texas. But Austin didn’t sell the idea of its green facility as a warm-fuzzy. TI had a problem to solve – either figure out a way to save millions on a new U.S. facility or build a cheaper plant overseas. Austin sold TI on a super-efficient facility that saves the company a fortune in operating costs and landed the company big tax breaks. It also happens to be much better for the environment than a non-green plant, has generated lots of high-paying American jobs and makes for great PR.

The end result is a brilliantly designed structure that maximizes every square inch of productive space and heats and cools with tremendous efficiency.

Construction of the TI plant cost approximately 30 percent less than building a non-green plant, and projections show that the facility will cost the company millions less to operate, too. Turns out that greenbacks are a pretty good reason to go green. For B2B marketing, it’s much more effective than chirping birds and breaching whales.

The fact is that “greenification” could have implications throughout every part of our personal and professional lives. Instead of our current oil-based economy, believers in green business imagine an entirely new way of living – with a sustainable economy that creates new technologies, new jobs and a greater emphasis on educating our kids in math and science. They believe we stand poised to reinvent the way we live, not through sacrifices but through improvements in health, politics and economics. Sure, it sounds Utopian, but in reality, that’s not why people buy stuff.

And until the green industry learns that lesson, it will remain the worst marketed niche ever.

E-mail the author: Todd Brashear

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