The Real Truth About Green Marketing
By Ruby Gates
MarketShift Strategies
I was explaining to a friend the other day about the difference between marketing and green marketing. And truly there is no difference. Online and offline strategies, tools, data analysis, market research, positioning and branding are all the same. What sets green marketing apart –if we agree to call it that- is the intention behind the marketing approach.
Marketing is really about creating and controlling perception. It is the daily component in our lives designing and leveraging our identity for huge profit gain. Done well, marketing claims victory to that final nanosecond of consumer choice
But where marketing is at its finest –where it is a virtual art form and taps some of the most creative minds available- is at the strategic level. This is the moment when the blueprint of the consumer brain is superimposed over our collective identity, our mutual need and the subsequent feeling of loss we are all supposed to feel if we buy the other brand. At the moment we make that purchasing decision, our neurons are battling it out to see where we belong and with whom we identify. The string of products in our cupboards and parked in our driveways connect us to one big pool of “togetherness.”
Look closer and see how you identify with others driving the same car you drive. A friendly toot of the horn and slight wave as you pass each other on the road -a breezy affirmation that you both belong to the same club. Or the quick scan you give to your neighbor’s groceries as he loads them on the check out stand. Oh! I buy that peanut butter, too and by that mere fact I will save your life if you so choose it necessary. We are joined by some consumer marketing brilliance that connects us to some communication stream hitting just the right part of our brain. We’re practically related by this point.
Which brings me back to the basics. Strong marketing departments rely on this simple boiled down fact that we all want to belong -to one another, to the tribe, to the look and to the identity of looking like we belong to something. Our primal need for a continuous feedback loop that we’re not alone is the sole nugget that fires a successful marketing strategy.
This is why companies funnel millions of dollars into market research. If we can determine what motivates your identity, we can sell you anything, because the pain of living without identity will eclipse that small part of your brain that argues why you don’t really need that $1000 leather purse that looks like a craft bag from the 70’s.
The Little White Lie
Green Marketing, by its very nature, is not any different than its sister, Marketing. In fact, it’s just another term that joins the ranks of the ever-growing range of greens this and that. The label Green Marketing is a marketing ploy to make us think that This way of marketing is better than That way of marketing due solely to the pejorative “green.” It’s supposed to make us feel we’re doing the right thing. The old marketing trick doubling back on itself and restructuring its own identity much in the same way BP renamed itself Beyond Petroleum. Did anything really change? Well…that’s debatable, but there is the percieved promise of new brand identity. Marketers are smart enough to realize this trick is just as effective within our own institution.
What sets the role of marketing to a higher level, one that for now I’ll call Green, is intention. Extraordinary marketing suspends traditional short-term gains for long-term harvests. True “Green” Marketing motivates on the intention to educate the marketplace on ecological indicators related to products. This approach empowers us to make informed buying decisions based on the ecological footprint of the product’s creation, use and eventual expiration. It is a marketing blueprint that eschews persuasion in favor of education.
Simply put, Green Marketing is about enabling us to care deeply about our consumption through education.
Just like we all want to “belong,” we also have the same core values. None of us want to wear our Monolo Blahniks or Birkenstocks in a world void of the basic decency and right to clean air, water and food. But traditional marketing techniques gear us to think of who we become if we purchase a product, not the vital role we play in supporting ecological economies and earth positive forms of profitability.
Green Marketing enables the consumer to understand the role a product has on our eventual collapse or survival and empowering the consumer to make a choice from that point. Remember how the consumer was armed with choices once nutritional labels were mandated? Suddenly we had control over the amount of fat, sugar and salt we fed our bodies. Green marketing is the product’s nutritional label for the environment.
And if that means we begin moving towards labels identifying products’ CO2 emissions, waste stream impact and other eco-indicators, so be it. Suddenly, “fat-free” doesn’t mean as much as “Zero-net energy consumption”. This shift in consumerism places the demand back on business to operate and produce responsibly and profitably. Both can coexist.
Remember, there was a day when consumers cared less about sugar content and mono-saturated fats. We’re quick learners. Give us the tools to make an informed choice. Green marketing embraces the responsibility of raising our participation in the stewardship of the earth’s future.
In turn, the consumer’s responsibility is to be informed. Understand the information. Agree with it or not. But make an informed consumer choice when you buy that next car or those oranges grown in South America. This isn’t a departure in consumer models. A capitalist market is set up to respond to the demands and trends of the market place.
But be mindful: If marketing cannot shift the market to respond ecologically to consumer choices, then it is not Green Marketing. Because in the end, our consumerism is the most powerful tool we have in creating earth positive changes.
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