You Gotta be Careful When Making Green Marketing Claims

When TerraChoice's Six Sins of Greenwashing report was released last fall, it brought with it whispers of green fatigue, and raised the specter of Big Business Bullsh--. Could it be that corporate co-opting of sustainability had led to a market full of misleading claims and outright lies? Go figure. But as the public's sustainability discussion moves along, governments are getting involved in an attempt to curb the marketplace. So if you're one of the many companies offering up green claims, it's in your best interest to start paying attention to what you can and can't (or should and shouldn't) say.



The Six Sins of Greenwashing report analyzed over a thousand green claims made by businesses, and found that only one was legitimately honest. The rest committed one or more of the following sins:

1. The sin of hidden trade-offs
   Focusing on one environmental benefit while ignoring other essential issues.
   
2. The sin of no proof
   Lack of third-party auditing to back up any claims.
   
3. The sin of vagueness
   Using words and claims with broad or multiple meanings, resulting in an essentially meaningless claim.
   
4. The sin of irrelevance
   Making a green claim that is already inherent to the product or service being marketed, as though there's something special about this one.
   
5. The sin of fibbing
   Outright lying.
   
6. The sin of the lesser of two evils
   Making claims within a product category that is inherently environmentally damaging (i.e. no matter what green claims are made, the product is by definition bad for the environment).
   

The PDF report (also available here) offers recommendations for both marketers and consumers. The ultimate goal is to prevent consumers from becoming so jaded by misleading claims that they give up on green or sustainable businesses altogether.

In addition to TerraChoice's recommendations, both the U.S. and Canada have issued their own guidelines. Our neighbors to the north go beyond the legal requirements for Canadian labeling compliance, offering fairly in-depth recommendations for businesses who make particular environmental claims. The PDF report is a useful tool no matter what country your business operates in.

Our own government also offers guidelines for environmental claims in advertising. Regulated by the FTC, the bulk of these guidelines are legally binding, although I haven't done the legwork to determine just how frequently and under what circumstances these laws are enforced (keeping up with the marketplace's now ubiquitous green claims would certainly pose a challenge for any organization). An even more detailed guide is available on their site, but be aware that the FTC is in the process of updating these in response to the rise of the green marketplace.

Addressing Your Own Green Claims

Though boning up on the federal regulations is a must for any business flirting with green claims, it's not just the government's ire you need to worry about. Speaking the truth is essential to ensure credibility among your own customers. So, once you understand what you can and can't say, you ought to take a look at what you already are saying. At the very least, you need to ask yourself:

• Are my claims specific?
• Are my claims clear and understandable?
• Are my claims verifiable by a reputable third party?
• Do my claims accurately represent the purchasing issues a customer might face when buying my product?
• Do my claims provide enough context for the customer to make an informed decision?

And remember, if you're not sure you can back up what you claim, don't bother saying it. For more information about gauging just how green a business is, see The Case-by-Case for Sustainability.

The Girl Effect

Drunk Driving Campaign

Nice environmental installation from Jupiter Drawing Room for Arrive Alive South Africa. These appeared in nightclub restroom stalls:



[Via Osocio]

Flags of the World: What They Really Stand For

Here's a striking ad campaign for Grande Reportagem making the rounds. It features lush yet no-nonsense representations of various country flags, with a small map legend inset in each. Reading the copy reveals a much larger truth than the viewer was likely prepared for. It's everything I love in (information) design: subtle, commanding, and quietly thought-provoking.



The campaign comes from Draft FCB Lisbon.

"Making Good Use of Bad Rubbish"

Here's a great little example of creative thinking:



[via via com it]

Marketing Requires Research

Creative Director: Let's go with a cinema theme for the new Hennessey ads.
Copywriter: Sure, we can make the ad look like a movie poster...
Creative Director: What'll you call it?
Copywriter: How about "Lost Weekend"...it has a classy, luxurious devil-may-care feel...
Creative Director: Go with it.



Result: An ad for cognac referencing a movie about alcoholism. Oops!

[Via adfreak]

It Shouldn't Take Revenue-Sharing to Do a Good Job

A recent BusinessWeek article tackles the growing trend among advertising agencies of trading their standard fees for a stake in their client's business. The idea is that the ad agency will have a greater incentive to produce effective work if they get a chunk of the profits. While proving ROI has always been a sore spot for marketers, this method isn't exactly the best way to solve the problem of ad efficacy.

While advertising tends to be a different ballgame than other forms of marketing (corporate ID systems, for example, or direct mail), the idea that it makes sense for ad agencies to go into business with their clients is ridiculous. Pick a business, and do it well.

More to the point, though, I have to take issue with the article's underlying premise:

"Marketers have little reason to care about the performance of a campaign after the client doles out their fee...[Anomaly's] unconventional approach of treating marketing campaigns more like intellectual property to be licensed than commodities to be sold could disrupt the long-held model of a nearly $150 billion industry."

I think BusinessWeek is conflating two different issues. Designers and writers have long fought for our rights to our own work—copyright protects the author of any work until said author chooses to sell or give away some or all of those rights. The public—and apparently BusinessWeek—has a poor understanding of copyright and IP; clients often think they're buying ownership of a given creative work rather than limited usage rights. Unless the contract stipulates otherwise, they're not.

To claim that this process of licensing individual rights to a work—which is actually quite standard in our industry—is somehow the same as trading those rights for a royalty is to misrepresent the business relationship. You can trade rights for a fee, or you can trade them for a percentage of future profits—either way, though, the individual rights remain unchanged.

Someone needs to point out to Anomaly's partner, Carl Johnson, how bad it sounds when he says ""When we own the IP or we share in the revenue, you can bet we're going to work all day, every day." So what exactly were you doing for your clients before this arrangement? It's no wonder Bill Hicks called us marketers "the ruiner of all things good." The nature of our business is communicative. If we're not listening to the response to what we put out there to make sure we've gotten the right message across (in other words: making sure we get results), then we're simply not doing our job.

Imagine a Billboard Cemetary

Imagine a city with no outdoor advertising: the billboards become naked skeletons, bare taxicabs and buses drive past leaving you with no final message, there are no posters, or flashing neon, or cardboard cutouts begging from you and teasing you and screaming for your wallet/mind/soul. When you close your eyes and imagine this new city, does it look something like this?











Welcome to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the mayor has outlawed all outdoor signage. He's been called a fascist for doing so, hailed as a visionary, and generally gotten a whole lot of publicity. But will it work? Will stripping the city bare really mark a "victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash," as writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo described the new law?

I can think of three possible arguments against the ban:

1. It restricts free speech.
2. It ignores the possibility that advertising might actually add to the public good.
3. It will put an industry out of work and affect the livelihood of thousands of small businesses.
   

Of course, the first argument goes without saying. But the government knows this already: one city councilman admitted that "some people are going to have to pay a price" for what he described as a "complete change of culture."

And what about the second argument? Is it possible that advertising isn't all evil? (Bill Hicks is rolling over in his grave as I type.) Gustavo Piqueira is a designer who "worries that much of the 'vernacular' lettering and signage from small businesses—'an important part of the city's history and culture'—will be lost." I think this is a valid point. Hand painted signs, storefronts and artisan vendor advertising all add to a visual language that is inevitably unique to the community that produces it. Can it be ugly? Sure. Should it be banned? Not so sure.

And, of course, there is the final question of money; only time will tell if the law will put people out of work and negatively impact Sau Paulo's economy. I suspect it will cause more problems than it solves, although the government does expect to slowly allow a more regulated advertising industry back on the streets.

But more importantly, it raises some interesting questions about what is and what isn't culturally worthwhile. Will stripping away ads while leaving the physical framework really look better? And will it impact consumer habits? I have to admit that I'm excited that a city as large as Sau Paulo has actually taken such a dramatic step to find out, regardless of whether or not it's the right step. Some questions you just can't answer without actually acting first.

Dinosaur Marketing Gets a Makeover

Billboard advertisers have long struggled to overcome the limitations of their medium. They've tried to get past the one-directional messaging option afforded them—flashing a giant, flat message at random passersby—by adding cute little bells and whistles that include:

• Changing LED-lit messages
• 3-D figures that extend past the standard confines of the flat plane
• The ability to text your own message to the billboard
• The ability to play a video game on the billboard
• And other clever tactics to grab the viewer's attention for just a split second (sorry)

Now, however, marketers are moving beyond eye-catching content into eye-catching media, quite literally. The latest billboard technology actually catches viewers' eye movements, and tracks and stores the information. This reminds me of the recent Mini Cooper campaign that uses an RFID chip to identify passersby and customize messages just for them.

I don't know about you, but I find this trend disturbing. It seems like social networking gone haywire; advertisers assume that because technology allows us to spy on each other (sorry, connect with one another), we should. I've always enjoyed living in the city because of the anonymity: you can walk down the street and blend in with the crowds around you.

This is a great example of unintended consequences: is it worth alienating a portion of your audience by forcing them into a particular relationship with you? Is this any different than relying on risqué content that might offend? I'm not sure, but the former seems much, much worse to me.

Old Navy and Others Co-Opt the Indie Voice

Admit it: what did you really think when you watched that Nike commercial so many years ago featuring the Beatles' Revolution? Was there a pang in your heart at the idea that one of the most fiercely independent and revolutionary bands of the modern era had sold out?

While the concept of integrating rock music—a universally "outsider" area of our culture—into mainstream commercials was completely new at the time, none of us bat an eye anymore when the likes of The Who start shilling for Hummer. We can thank the megaconglomerates, of course, who own the TV stations and the recording companies and who often even have a stake in the products themselves. Bands' entire careers are now made by their big debut on the latest iPod commercial. So why do I find myself wretching violently at the latest wave of corporate co-opting of the indie voice?

I'm referring, of course, to the bold-faced misrepresentations found in commercials and ads from Virgin Mobile, Old Navy and others. These ads inevitably feature a narrative voice of some sort exhorting the joys of the indie scene. They seem to whisper in your ear it's okay, you can buy our products because we get you. We've got cred because we know what "indie" means. And, as usual, the irony of a corporate chain store touting indie street culture falls on deaf ears.

• See how Old Navy pretends they're capable of producing a "cult classic."
  
• Virgin Mobile sympathizes with neighbors faced "newcomers who want to change Bed-Stuy into some sort of yuppie strip mall."

The most maddening thing about these ads is not that companies are taking this approach, but that they are so brazen about pretending they are something other than what they are. It's simply dishonest.