Important New Shades of Green, Part 3

Here are our final four — for now — new shades of green.  The first two could not have happened until environmental urgency met mainstream narcissistic self-centeredness, so I suppose they are a dubious sign of progress.  The last two reflect a deepening and maturing of green understanding — thankfully, a more reassuring sign of progress.

Rescue-Me Greens — Concerned primarily about saving humanity, and only secondarily about saving the environment.  They don't necessarily care about nature or other species as such, but have come to realize that our species can't survive alone.  This is a radical departure from "tree-hugger" environmentalism.

Protect-Me Greens — Respond to environmental hazards by trying to insulate themselves, rather than focusing on eliminating the dangers at their source (which would benefit other people as well as other species).  These people are similar to the traditional "health-fanatics" except that their environmental concerns may have a wider scope.  This shade and the previous one are more egocentric than the earlier shades of green. 

Integral Greens — Realize that given the magnitude and urgency of the challenges we face, every shade of green is necessary (except lite, or greenwashing, which is undesirable but inevitable).  Integral greens honor, appreciate and respect them all — and also market to all, appropriately according to their shade.  What matters to Integral Greens is not someone's shade of green, but the fact that they're within the green spectrum.

Brilliant Green — The "sweet spot" targeted in our own work:  Better for the planet.  Better for you.  The "you" can be the business or the consumer -- indeed, it must be both.  Brilliant Green attempts to eliminate the conflict between commercial, personal, social and environmental concerns by finding the place where these four areas of concern intersect.  It's hard to hit, but it's the business, personal and planetary ideal.

Protect-me greens are egocentric, and rescue-me greens are species-centric, in ways that few greens were before environmental threats hit mainstream awareness.  On the other hand, integral green and brilliant green both strive to resolve conflicting viewpoints in ways that were hardly imagined in the highly polarized 80s and 90s.  (Not that polarization is over —  hardly! —  but some have recognized its limitations and moved beyond it.)

Unfortunately, I can't give you demographics or percentages on these new shades of green. But they are complex and rapidly changing in any case, so the key is not to pin them down but rather ride them like the waves they are.

And I'm sure there's more shades out there. The green landscape is not a well-tended lawn, but a lush and dynamic mountain meadow. That's good.

But what does it mean to you as a marketer?  What do you do with this information?  How can you apply these insights in ways that are actually useful to you?

We'll begin to answer that in our next post.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing