In our last post, we saw that one way to combat the shift in values during the recession is to move green benefits to the back of the list, to match the downshifted values of your customers.  However, one "customer" who's moving green benefits to the front of the list is Barack Obama.

Of course, Obama is budget-constrained like the rest of us.  But at least with regard to climate change, he clearly "gets it" on environmental issues.

• On the campaign trail he spoke of alternative energy in relation to saving the planet.
• One of his first actions as President was to cancel as many of Bush's anti-environmental policies as he could.
• He put billions into the economic stimulus bill for clean energy and other environmental priorities.
• His Energy Secretary is Steven Chu, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist.  (An Energy Secretary who actually understands energy!  Imagine!)

As the stimulus money starts to flow, some of it may flow your way — either directly or indirectly.  Obviously, this would be good for your business, and you would be wise to make moves to make it happen.  Besides that, though, is there any way you could leverage Barack Obama?

Yes, there is.  Obama legitimizes environmental concern.  On election night, he said we face the challenge of "a planet in peril."  And you can leverage that legitimacy in your marketing.  "The president has said we face a planet in peril.  Acme acne cream allows you to answer Obama's call to help, ensuring both a clearer face and a cleaner planet."

President Obama has called on all of us to help.  He has said he can't solve the problems facing us alone.  If you can position your products as part of the solution, then enlist the participation of your customers in answering that call, you can leverage Barack Obama to keep your turf green (environmentally and financially!) during this difficult economic dry spell.

Look for statements by the president about the environment that relate in some way to your own company's mission.  (No doubt there will be many more as time goes on, so repeat your search every few months.)  For example, search Google for:

+obama +environment
+obama +planet
+obama +green -dress -gown

Add keywords to your search that are pertinent to your own product areas.  See if you can find quotations that you can work into your marketing.  If you can help your customers join Obama's green team, you're doing everyone a favor.  (As we say at Brilliant Green Marketing, "Better for the planet.  Better for you.  Brilliant.")

How else can you adapt your marketing to the new green market as it suddenly turns a dangerous dry brown?  Read our next post to find out.

In our last post, we explored how you might counter the economic downturn by reminding your market that collapses don't take turns — and the environmental crisis is as dire as ever.  Getting this across with impact may help, but you can do more.

For example, try moving the green aspects of your products to the side or the back of the benefits list.

To you, the environmental benefits of your products might be their most important merits.  These green benefits may be important to your customers, too, but in bad times they are less likely to be the most important benefits of your products.  So if you've been leading with these benefits, move them alongside others.  And if you were already presenting them alongside others, you might even want to move them to the back.

Being better for the planet is great.  Indeed, it's crucial.  But in hard times, emphasize instead those aspects of your products that are better for the customer as a separate individual, rather than as a member of society.  (I emphasize "as a separate individual" because of the tragedy of the commons, which is precisely what we're up against here.)

Start with the assumption that, on the average, your customers' values will have shifted from green values toward money, from community values toward personal, and from long term toward short term.  This suggests a hierarchy or sequence in which you should present benefits — tempered by how strong and direct a particular benefit is.

• Your products are less expensive than alternatives, right off the shelf.  (Lucky you!)
   
• Your products are less expensive in the long run, because they last longer.
   
• Your products are less expensive in the long run, because they use less energy, refills or other resources — they have a lower operating cost.
   
• Your products are less expensive in the larger picture, because they render products in other categories unnecessary, or preserve other items or cause less damage.
   
• Your products are safer or healthier for family and pets.
   
• Your products other personal benefits, relative to competitor products or alternative ways of meeting the need.
   
• Purchasing your products now will put in place a system your customers will want down the road, preventing the cost of starting over, or will keep in place a system already instituted.
   

The sequence here is not hard-and-fast, and the list is not complete, but you get the idea.  The point is to rethink the competitive benefits of your products from the standpoint of a prospect customer who has come to feel that buying green is temporarily a luxury they may not be able to afford.  Their attention will be more on costs and benefits to themselves rather than the planet — so show them advantages in terms of costs and benefits to themselves!  Align the presentation of benefits with your customer's new priorities.  It's as simple as that.

And what about the green benefits themselves, when you finally get to them on the list?  How do you present them?  Less as a reason to buy than as a reason to feel good about buying.  "And oh, by the way, when you purchase Acme acne cream, you can feel good knowing that washing your face will put fewer toxins into the ocean that might ultimately poison the polar bears."  (Adapt to your situation and work on the wording, but that's the attitude to convey.)

Does this offend your sensibilities of what's really important?  Then get over it.  First of all, if your customer's self-perceived needs are not important to you, you shouldn't be in business.  But even from a green standpoint, this rearrangement of your benefits list — pushing green benefits towards the back — is not a betrayal of your own green values.  Rather, it's currently your best way to serve and preserve them.

Our next post will explore further ways to sell green during the economic meltdown.

In our last post, we saw that the economic downturn will make people less green -- in effect, at least — in their values and purchasing decisions.  (Of course, when it comes to purchasing decisions, "in effect" is the reality.)  This bad news is undoubtedly not news to you, but it may be helpful to have deeper insight into the psychodynamics behind it.

What can green marketers do about this?  Before we can arrive at good strategies, we've got to hold fast to the right attitude.  Sure, the situation we're facing is bad for green business.  But what is green business?  Why are you green in the first place?  Early on, we defined "green" as better for the planet.  That means that "less green" is worse for the planet.

That's where we need to keep our attention — in how we think, and especially in how we communicate.  Nobody will care that your business is in trouble, but people still ought to care that their planet is in peril.  Remind them of that, and you'll at least catch their ear.

Collapses don't take turns.  Right now we are facing an economic collapse, but we were already facing an environmental collapse (climate, biodiversity, fisheries, forests, farmland — you know the list.)  The environmental situation was dire a year ago.  It was more dire six months ago.  Is it any less dire now?  Did the impending environmental collapse politely step aside to make room for the newly arrived economic collapse?

Of course not!  Economic collapse may have shoved aside environmental collapse in people's minds, but it didn't shove it aside in the world "out there."  So to the extent that people are now less green in their thinking, the economic collapse has caused their minds to become misaligned with reality.  That's dangerous for anybody — including your customers.

In reality, we have not shifted from facing environmental collapse to facing economic collapse.  We have shifted from facing environmental collapse to facing both environmental and economic collapse.  The fact that the economic collapse is already upon us does not make the environmental collapse any less imminent.  In fact, the environmental collapse is not "on its way" — it's already here.  It's happening at this moment, on an enormous scale.  It's just hidden behind an ever-shrinking facade of affluent appearances.

Nor is the environmental collapse separate from the economy.  In the skyscraper of civilization, ecological services are the foundation and first three stories, the economy is floors four through ten, and all the rest of society is built up from there.  When the foundation and first three floors crumble, what will happen to floors four and above?  If bailing out the banks is hard, try bailing out the ocean!

Most informed people would still agree that saving the environment is important.  But many would argue that fixing the economy is now more urgent.  That's the cognitive error we as green marketers must strive to correct.  One urgency has not displaced another; rather, the urgencies have multiplied.  Unfortunately, the human mind does not easily comprehend multiple urgencies, but that's a reality our species must now outgrow — or else (as Hobbes put it)  we'll soon return to a world where life is nasty, brutish and short.

In the end, even realizing all this, people may still make less green purchasing decisions due to budget constraints.  But the first step in stemming the tide is to help them keep straight in their thinking.  Keep them in touch with the planet.  Let them feel its scream.

Is that all we can do to market green effectively in the new green market?  No.  Read our next post for more.

Three great forces are colliding at this moment in history.  You, as a green marketer, are privileged to have even better than a ring-side seat to this spectacle.  You're right in the middle of the smash-up!  The three forces are these:

The Green Revolution

In our last post, we saw how precarious the funding for green science is over the long term.  We also saw that sustained, systemic action — based on sound science — is necessary for effective environmental action on a scale that can save the planet.

What does this mean?  The green wave is not enough!  The green wave is a wave of environmental concern, but we need a green revolution of effective environmental action on a coordinated, global scale.  This requires sustained public awareness and understanding of green issues, and also sustained public valuing of the science needed to enable that understanding and support effective solutions.

Erratic attention, strangled science, stop-gap funding, and on-again, off-again crisis responses will not solve our environmental problems.  The green wave is based on a recognition of the fragility and vulnerability of the environment, but the green wave itself is fragile and vulnerable. 

The green revolution is even more fragile and vulnerable.  It depends on sustaining the green wave of environmental concern in the face of ongoing distraction and sustaining public valuing of environmental science in the face of an economic downturn.  What a sales job that is!  Who could possible pull it off?

Green Marketers to the Rescue!

Well, who knows better than professional marketers how to keep capturing attention to the same old thing in countless new ways?  That's part of a marketer's job.  Nobody is more capable of keeping green issues — and the understanding and values surrounding them — alive in the public mind over the long haul.

Sustained, systemic action is necessary — and that requires ongoing stimulation of public attention, by calculation as well as crisis.  Now, what would you call ongoing, calculated stimulation of public attention to maintain environmental concern and drive effective environmental actions?  Green marketing!

In other words, sustaining the green wave comes down to green marketing.  We as green marketers are to a significant degree keepers and stewards of the green wave.  It is a great responsibility and a noble calling.

So now marketing professionals must take the skills we've learned over a century of practice and apply them not just in service of our company and customers, but also to sustain the green wave itself.  Green marketers, arise!  It's time to prove our worth to Mother Earth.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

Attention Deficit Disaster

In our last post, you saw — unless you are very unusual — that you can't hold your attention steady for a minute.  We also said that to stabilize our species in sustainability would require sustained attention by the public for a century.  We asked, if attention can't be sustained for sixty seconds, what could possibly sustain it for a hundred years?

The obvious answer is — nothing.  And if that's the case, we're doomed.  So let's see if we can find a non-obvious answer.

Attention is drawn by change.  Immediate change.  Change now.  That's true of individual human attention, and also of the baby bottle from which we all nurse, media attention.  Environmental changes are monumental, but for precisely that reason they are generally not fast — at least on the scale that captures human attention.

For example, global warming should register in human consciousness as a HUGE change.  And when we hear about it or think about it, it does, and we realize it requires a huge response.  But as we continue to hear about it, it sounds more and more like NO change.  Even the weekly ice-sheet collapse soon sounds like just more of the same. 

And then our attention shifts.  "If the economy tanks, I'll lose my job."  "Who's winning American Idol?"  Attention — how fickle it is!

From the standpoint of long-term planetary health and human survival, nothing is more urgent than green issues.  But from the standpoint of human attention — in the face of war, recession and football — nothing may seem less urgent than green issues.  The ark which must save our species (and other species too) floats on the green wave, which is fed by the fickle waters of human attention.  If  those waters change their course, the green wave subsides, and the human experiment fails.

Of course, after each time that the green wave subsides, it will arise again as another environmental crises hit us.  But then each time, it will be swamped again by boredom, distraction, attention fatigue and other personal and community crises — for example, the current economic meltdown.  So the wave will rise and fall.  Even if it grows overall, it will grow unevenly, in fits and starts.

Systemic Action And Science

This will cause the kind of erratic response that is our habit, causing both inefficiency and ineffectiveness.  That will be compounded by competition for resources.  As the 21st century unfolds, and crises increasingly crash upon us on all fronts, there will be insufficient funds to deal effectively with each of them symptomatically in a crisis-response level.

Resources will be sufficient if — and only if — problems are dealt with rationally, strategically, systematically and systemically at a root-cause level, for two reasons:

1. Proactive preventive action is more cost-effective than reactive crisis response.
    
2. Even though each problem has multiple causes, most of our major problems have several causes in common.

Unfortunately, everything in our history, habits and nature suggests that in the long haul, over the course of this century, we will not achieve the sustained public attention required for this rational, strategic, systematic and systemic approach, but will instead continue to respond with erratic crisis management.  If so, we're sunk.

But it's even worse than that.  Dealing with problems rationally, strategically, systematically and systemically requires more than just sustained attention on the problems from an action point of view.  It also requires sustained attention from an analytic point of view, in terms of sustained, well-funded scientific research.

Changing a situation strategically requires understanding its causes.  Otherwise, we're just flailing in the dark.  Effective environmental action — whether by government, industry or individuals must be based on good science, good sources and good sense.

Unfortunately, the science on which effective green action depends is also at risk.  In fact, at this very moment it's under heavy fire..  Republican presidential candidate John McCain rails repeatedly against "pork" and "earmarks" in the federal budget, but there is one example he pulls out almost every time to show how ludicrous our budgetary waste has become.

John McCain:  We're never going to spend three million dollars again to study the DNA of bears in Montana.  I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but it's not going to happen again!

He makes it sound so silly.  Bear DNA in Montana!  But this is not a paternity issue or a criminal issue.  It's science regarding an environmental issue.  And it's McCain's favorite example of the kind of "pork" he'd totally eliminate from the federal budget! 

If he were to state the facts of the case and argue it on its merits, that would at least be honest, but it's revealing that he feels no need to do so, and disturbing that he's right.  As I write this, it seems likely that McCain will lose the election.  But the very fact that he can win cheers again and again with this insidious line — playing upon public ignorance — shows how precarious the funding for green science is over the long term.

This is not just serious.  It's ominous.  Poisonous!  See our next post for the antidote — and how it involves you.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

In our last post, we saw why the green wave — a wave of growing environmental concern — arose in the late 20th century, not sooner or later.  The 29th-day dynamic which we explained may make us feel that the green wave is inevitable, leading us to take it for granted. 

But we shouldn't.  The green wave is all about sustainability, but is it sustainable itself?

The green wave is fed by two converging trends — rising awareness of green issues, and rising severity of the issues themselves (led by global warming in both cases).  These trends are not independent — the second (severity) feeds the first (awareness) through drawing increased attention to green issues.

If these were the only dynamics operating in today's world, the green wave would indeed continue to grow inexorably.  And in the long run it will, because human activities will continue to make environmental problems worse, and only an extreme change of course can begin to gradually make them better.  So on the surface, it seems the dynamic we have outlined will continue — worsening environmental problems will draw more attention to green issues, leading to greater concern — an ever-growing green wave.  And that sounds great for green companies!

But notice that it all depends on a sustained and growing attention paid to green issues.  Worsening green problems will indeed draw the public's attention, but so will other things, like war, terror attacks, economic problems, personal financial struggles, and the deliberate distractions of sports, celebrity and entertainment (to name just a few).  In this ongoing battle for attention, what will win?

Attention is indeed the ultimate battleground.  Take a minute now — exactly a minute, timed by your watch — to keep your attention fully on your watch.  Specifically, on the seconds as they tick by.  Don't let your attention stray — and notice how far along in the minute you are when another thought intrudes, as it almost surely will.

Well?  How did you do?  How many seconds did you last?

If you can't keep your attention on your watch for a minute, what will keep the public's attention on green issues for a century?  That's literally the question of the century, because it will probably take about a hundred years to stabilize humanity in sustainability.  So that's the question on which our future depends.

The question of the century!  Read our next two posts for the surprising answer.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

In our last post, we said there are two reasons why the green wave — a wave of growing environmental concern — is hitting us now, rather than sooner or later.  The first was the 29th-day principle of exponential growth, which we described last time. 

Today we discuss the second reason:  the combination of population growth, technological growth and economic growth over the past couple of centuries has created a 29th-day situation for many environmental issues.

Among the first to recognize this, with an emphasis on resource depletion, was Club of Rome authors Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows in their 1972 Limits to Growth.  The specific numbers they plugged into their equations have needed repeated revision — as they themselves expected — but their basic argument still stands.  Their calculations, based on published resource estimates at the time, predicted that we would soon start running out of several key resources.

Here's why it's happening now.  Any aspect of the environment — oil reserves, atmospheric carbon, fish in the sea — exists in a finite quantity.  In some cases (iron deposits, diamonds) the quantity is relatively static, consisting of material that just stays there (until we remove it).  In other cases (river water, forests) the quantity can vary and is maintained by a dynamic balance of input and output.  In either case, if humans alter this aspect of the environment at a rate which accelerates exponentially, it will approach its limit in a curve that follows the pattern of the 29th day.

Over the past 300 years, the combination of industrialism, industrial agriculture and scientific medicine kicked human population growth into exponential overdrive.  Simultaneously, especially over the past century, commercialism, consumerism and advancing technology also drove per capita consumption exponentially.

Of course, everything consumed is made of materials extracted from the environment, and all of its byproducts eventually return to the environment.  So the exponential growth of both population and per capita consumption meant that the total human impact on the environment — impact/person x number of people — grew explosively during the 20th century.

This made it inevitable that in terms of the 29th-day principle, a whole host of environmental issues — from wilderness to resources to pollution — would reach the late 20s of their 30-day count during the 20th century.  It's no accident that the pioneers of environmentalism — Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, Rachel Carson and so many others, on issue after issue — all sounded the alarm within the last 100 years.

The pioneers, of course, sounded the alarm around day 27, not day 29.  And so they were often ignored.  They were not the green wave, but they initiated it.  And as the century rolled on, and issue after issue hit day 29, it grew to a mighty swell.

So what day is it today?  It varies with the issue — for some it's just day 27, for others it's early 30 — but there's one thing we can be sure of.  The 21st century is crunch time.  As world population continues its mighty heave, while simultaneously capitalist commerce and consumerist culture sweep across the planet, we face an avalanche of 30th-day catastrophes that even today few can conceive.

But at least people are at last waking up.  Finally, in the nick of time, we can count on the green wave to save us.  Or can we?  Read our next post.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing