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 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.

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