“Just the facts ma’am.” Remember that line from Detective Joe Friday in the old Dragnet television series? It would be wise for manufacturers and marketers today to remember that quote when try to tell us just how wonderfully sustainable their products are. Rather than trying to overwhelm their audience with dubious claims, perhaps they could just give us the facts.
Let’s face it, most products today are sustainable to some degree. But no matter how much we’d like to make it so, some products are not as sustainable as others. Just because your product isn’t as green as the next, you shouldn’t feel compelled to portray it as such. You can still play in the game. After all, isn’t it all about trust and, in pure marketing terms, product retrial?
Just the other day I saw an ad for a metal product with a “wood-like” finish. Great. It is said to combine the performance properties of metal with the appearance of real wood. That’s great too. But then they had to go and claim the product would save trees. Please! Even if technically true, it’s certainly intellectually dishonest.
Rather than distorting reality to make sustainability claims that are spurious at best, product marketers would be wise to look elsewhere for real benefits. How about touting the way the product is made. After all, how a product is made can be just as important as what it’s made of. And if the there just isn’t a sustainable message to tell, don’t say anything. Not every product you make has to be fully sustainable.
If you think about it, false and wild claims affect your credibility with your target markets. Companies normally go to great lengths to substantiate the quality and technical advantages of their products. Why not be more accurate when it comes to sustainability? Why is this any different?
When we market products, we carefully analyze what the market demands and how our product matches and accomplishes those market demands. For some reason, with the green movement, some sort of myopic hysteria has taken place and we have deviated from our key marketing principals. Companies are feverishly making dubious claims about their products’ green attributes out of fear of losing market share.
Everyone just needs to calm down and think this through logically. Come up with a checklist of key (and credible) facts about sustainability. How does your product contribute to actual energy savings? Demonstrate this in simple terms. Don’t over complicate. Does your product efficiently use natural resources? If so, how? Is your product made of recycled materials, and to what extent?
Nick Glenn
President, The Green Ad Agency
December 23 2009 | What's New | No Comments »
I recently returned from a seminar in San Antonio regarding the “green issue” and what the architect is looking for. Great in theory, but there’s one thing wrong with the concept — and it’s the reason this movement will be slow to go mainstream with most product manufacturers.
The problem is that the management vision of U.S. manufacturers tends to have a short-term focus while sustainability is a long-term concept. It requires someone in an organization to step outside the box and invest in the future. Best of luck because those sorts of decisions have to made by senior management, and the higher up you go the shorter the emphasis. At the top, the discussion is about shareholder appeasement, not sustainability. There may be some mavericks out there, but by and large, most senior managers take a rather conservative approach, with a small c.
Product manufacturers are concerned about monthly sales numbers and may be thinking as far next year. Their fiscal responsibility runs to immediate ROI, which is not conducive to making a long-term monetary commitment that will probably outlive their tenure. Plus the marketing guys have to go up against the manufacturing guys, who look at something like this as too much work, and anything that slows down the line is a bad thing. They are looking for ways to cut manufacturing costs, not the opposite.
That’s why even when manufacturers get into the green issue, they only go as far as Phase 1, acquiring a LEED Statement. They look at how their current products fit, and how they can present them as being green. To my mind that’s a short-term, band-aid approach, not a green strategy – but this is the point where most manufacturers stop and declare mission accomplished.
Appointing a “green czar” is another popular form of greenwashing. Moves like this usually amount to nothing more than window dressing – an attempt to be seen as green without truly making the kind of investment that would actually make a difference. I think it’s a contradiction where we are offered a way to truly innovate the key ingredient in any enduring brand and the adoption is spotty at best.
The seldom-reached Phase 2 is where you look at the long-term issue of sustainability and define your green strategy accordingly. A cradle-to-cradle approach is probably the best example of thoroughly maximizing your efforts with what can be called a true green strategy.
Manufacturers who embrace this approach are rare, but they will eventually be rewarded for it. Genuinely joining the green movement requires a thorough analysis of where you want your product to go. You need to fully investigate where the market is trending and see where you fit. Companies that do not commit to defining their green strategy today will pay the price in the future. It’s no different from any other market trend. You need to define your product strategy or you will be left behind.
Nick Glenn
President, The Green Ad Agency
August 17 2009 | What's New | No Comments »
The concept of sustainable design highlights the effort to recast typical measures of material and product quality—cost, performance and aesthetics—to include and apply new objectives, such as ecological intelligence and social responsibility. Increasing demand from customers, product specifiers, domestic and international government agencies, interest groups, and other stakeholders underscores the significance of this expanded notion of quality.
The Cradle to Cradle(SM) framework moves beyond the traditional goal of reducing the negative impacts of commerce (eco-efficiency) to a new paradigm of increasing its positive impacts (“ecologically-intelligent design”). At its core, Cradle to Cradle design perceives the safe and productive processes of nature’s “biological metabolism” as a model for developing a “technical metabolism” flow of industrial materials. Product components can be designed for continuous recovery and reutilization as biological and technical nutrients within these metabolisms. The Cradle to Cradle design perspective also addresses energy, water and social responsibility.
Pursuing Cradle to Cradle strategies for a product, process or entire company can spur creativity and grow new business opportunities. Expanding the definition of quality by designing ecologically-intelligent products can provide competitive advantage, differentiate a brand, attract and retain customers, and reduce long-term risks.
Starting at the Bottom & Moving Up
In action, the Cradle to Cradle framework can be applied to assessing material health, recyclability or compostability, material recovery processes, renewable energy use, water use efficiency, effluent water quality, and social responsibility, as well as optimizing any of these that currently are deficient.
With knowledge of material ingredients, product developers can select ingredients with the most positive profiles and combine materials to design preferred products. In cases where ingredients fall short of a Cradle to Cradle ideal for material health, formulation changes should be attempted and alternative formulations researched collaboratively with material suppliers. This stage of ingredient optimization is required to create optimized products that are safe for human and environmental health throughout their lifecycles and include additives that do not interfere with the recyclability or compostability of the base materials. Such products are now prepared for recycling or composting within a specific system.
The manufacturer should explore various strategies for fully recycling or composting its product, which often requires connections with external partners, such as customers, retailers, recyclers, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Fully closing the loop on these materials requires their safe recovery and reformulation into new products or biodegradation into the soil.
As one would expect, these improvements may not be achieved easily or quickly. Performance and cost considerations also may prevent preferred solutions from coming into use in the short term, but at least manufacturers are prepared with an ecologically-intelligent solution once other market conditions are met. The Cradle to Cradle goal may take a long time to completely realize for a particular product, but designers, material fabricators and manufacturers should accept the challenge, establish a trajectory toward this ideal, and begin to implement strategies to help them achieve it. Leveraging ecologically-intelligent design within and across industries will help create materials and products that define an expanded notion of quality for the company, its stakeholders and the environment.
Cradle to Cradle(SM) is a service mark of MBDC.
Steve Bolton
Sr. Consultant/Manager of Business Development
MBDC
steve@mbdc.com
434-220-5607
February 09 2009 | What's New | No Comments »
Now that the green building movement is finally getting some momentum across the board, I’m starting to the word “sustainable” thrown into all sorts of building product literature. Sure, any product that allows the building to function and look as intended is sustainable, but is that what we are really asking from our products? In the green building movement, the answer is no. We want something better.
What got me started on this path was a fiber-cement panel that was being marketed in the office. Although it claimed to be sustainable, the material consisted of 25% Portland cement. Portland cement is one of the least environmentally-friendly products out there, and environmentally-leaning structural engineers are trying to remove Portland cement from their concrete mix designs. Is this product sustainable? The material looked like it was long lasting, and it was manufactured nearby. I still can’t get over the Portland cement issue. Other materials exist that would perform just as well and would not have nearly the negative impact. These are the dilemmas of the modern sustainable architect and engineer.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) have the same problem. Sure, they save a ton of energy, but no US manufacturers exist, and the lamps contain mercury. Fortunately, LED technology seems to be improving to the point where CFLs might be a temporary stop in sustainable lighting technology. Now if a LED is manufactured in the US, it would be really sustainable.
I often tell people that no perfect sustainable product exists. With current technology, everything has a trade-off. As an architect or engineer, our responsibility is to find the products that get us as close to the sustainable goals we set for the project. The LEED checklist helps us find identify those sustainable goals, but they are not the end product. Our conscience is.
JoANN BROOKES AIA, LEED® AP
Associate | Senior Project Architect
December 05 2008 | What's New | No Comments »
Along with lowering the lifecycle costs of the building, say building owners and Architect/Engineer/Contractor (AEC) Firms, the most important factor for engaging in green building is being part of an industry that values the environment. And getting that message across is where Green Marketing comes in.
The Green Movement isn’t a fringe element of tree-hugging activists – it’s mainstream, and developing more momentum every day. As emphasis grows on environmental awareness and issues such as design sustainability, it’
s clear that those who recognize this fact, and who adapt their product offerings and business practices to reflect this emphasis, are on the right path. But in a marketplace as fluid as the developing Green Market, exactly how to position your company for success on that path may not be so clear.
Fully understanding the area of design sustainability and its relevance in your product category generally requires outside help. These are specialized areas and they call for specialized knowledge.
Understanding certifications is essential. Anyone can make claims regarding their company’s green viability, but without the credibility and validation of third party certification to back it up, those claims can run the risk of being considered mere “greenwashing” –an attempt to use unsubstantiated or vague claims to superficially ride the wave of the environmental movement.
Currently, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the most important certification to consider. Their strategy from the beginning was to be the certification for the “greenest of the green,”the top 25% of the green market, and as the market goes deeper green their certification carries a lot of weight.
As the market continues to grow, other certifications and factors will undoubtedly emerge, so there’s a real need for specialists to help you gauge how your product fits in the marketplace, and how best to position it. Concepts such as “cradle to cradle” and the complex nature of a constantly evolving market make it clear that expertise across multiple disciplines is an absolute necessity if you’re going to effectively communicate your products’ “green attributes” and value-proposition to your target audience.
In a nutshell, the green market has quickly moved through the innovators and early adopters stages into the majority phases. Those who fail to get in step with this ongoing phenomenon will lose business. Careful consideration of all the dynamics of the market through a multidisciplinary “Think Tank”
Nick Glenn
President, The Green Ad Agency
August 04 2008 | What's New | Comments Off
Alternate Routes to the Green Marketplace – Landon Boone, CSI
As everyone rushes to hop on to the “green” bandwagon, I would argue an alternative means of getting a product to the green marketplace. Like any trend that picks up speed in any industry, there is often the response of throwing money at it and seeing what sticks. Obviously, a careful and strategic approach is warranted but often overlooked when there is a fear that your competitors have had a head start into new marketing opportunities. As far as how this applies to the green construction movement, it is ultimately not too complicated in my opinion. First step, identify if your product or service is indeed “green”. Who can tell you this? Most LEED AP consultants can, as well as other organizations that do the research for you for a nominal fee. Second, get your story straight. Develop a company statement on your environmental/sustainable commitments. Also make sure you have the documentation to back up the claims you have about how green your product is, and try not to “green-wash” your literature, be honest about what it is or can/can’t do. You will be discovered quickly if you mislead anyone about the “greenness” of your product. Also, take a green stance as a company overall; practice what you preach and the act of becoming sustainable as a company in and of itself becomes marketable and respectable. This is what many architects are looking for. Third, get you message OUT! Every avenue you have to architects, building owners, contractors, engineers, and interior designers, put your new message in front of them. An ad agency such as the one you are visiting now can design, package, and distribute your message. You can also use trade shows, publications, local events, and other venues to get your message to the right people. Another method which our company specializes in is continuing education for architects, interior designers, and engineers. For about the cost of a single run full page color add in an architectural magazine, you could support a one hour AIA or USGBC approved continuing education course in an online or face to face format for an entire year. This would allow hundreds, if not thousands to spend an entire hour learning about what your green/sustainable message is. After the A&E community knows that your products can help them design more sustainable architecture, you should start to see a spike in the number of projects you are specified on. In a nutshell, there are those of us that have cut direct paths into the growing green marketplace and can offer simple and efficient means for delivering your company’s message.
Landon Boone, CSI
COO, Ron Blank and Associates, Inc.
June 25 2008 | What's New | 1 Comment »
