In recent posts, we explored strategies you can use to adapt your marketing to the new marketplace.  These strategies are generic — any company can use them.  But general solutions can take you only so far.  To break out of the pack, you need unique strategies that no one else can copy because they derive from your unique qualities and situation.

Where can you find such strategies?  If only you had some resource to turn to, which understood everything about your company and its market.  A resource with vast strategic insight, creativity and energetic drive, that you could harness on behalf of your business right now.  A supercomputer that could not only crunch the data but deliver strategic solutions.   If only you had... your brain.

Yes, I know you're straining your brain already to cope with the current crisis.  That may itself be part of the problem — but you probably already know this, too.  You may know all about the "relaxation response" and how relieving stress can free the brain to perform at a higher level.

But I'm not talking about the relaxation response.  Not primarily.  I am, however, talking about recent research by the man who discovered the relaxation response, Herbert Benson.  The relaxation response was just the beginning.  In The Break-out Principle: How to activate the natural trigger that maximizes creativity, athletic performance, productivity, and personal well-being, Benson details steps to develop creative strategic solutions to challenging situations, time after time after time.

At Amazon, the book gets mixed reviews — some raves, but also some who say there's little new here, it's all been said before.  Of course!  If this is how creative breakthroughs happen, humanity wouldn't have gotten this far without it — and neither would you.

Almost certainly, you have your own ways to tap into your creative potential.  It's how you built your business or career.  But you may not understand the full range of principles involved, or the practices you can draw upon to get results systematically — in business as well as personal life, for groups as well as individuals.  It's a master key that opens countless doors.

So when you read it, don't sell yourself short with a swift, smug dismissal.  Grasp the whole system — for example, the way to select people for a "breakthrough network" and the rules by which they should operate.  The great thing is that at this difficult time, when money is so tight, The Breakout Principle is a way to further leverage the assets you already have — and assemblage of human brains — to answer your most urgent question:  "What the heck should we do now?"

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 recent posts, we've scanned the green landscape and discovered approximately 20 different shades of green.  Twenty!  Where has this profusion of green shades come from?  They have all been nourished by the green wave — a wave of rising environmental concern.  These days, it seems almost like a tidal wave.  Both the level of concern and the number of people who feel it are rising.  People respond to that concern in various ways, leading to the current jungle of green shades.

You may share the concern that defines the green wave.  In fact, environmental issues may be so obvious to you, and green attitudes so natural, that you have a hard time understanding any other viewpoint.  But to ride the green wave adroitly — as a green marketer must — you have to understand it deeply.  That requires stepping back for a moment, to see it in historical perspective.

To start with, why is the green wave a wave?  In other words, why is green so new?  Instead of a green wave, why haven't we always lived in a green ocean, a culture of environmental harmony?  Is it because of cities, civilization and industry?  Haven't indigenous people the world over always lived in a sophisticated harmony with nature?

Cities and industry certainly compounded our environmental assault, but they didn't begin it.  And while indigenous people were forced to reach some kind of balance with environments in which they lived a long time, they were also devastatingly shortsighted when moving into new environments.

• A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, by Clive Ponting, takes you on a guided tour of humanity's relationship with our environment, from earliest prehistory to today.  It will leave you reeling.  Whenever and wherever we have lived, we slashed and burned and killed and soiled our nest. 
   
• The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, by Tim Flannery, is a close-up look at the environmental relations of the brave, bold and brilliant people who populated Polynesia, Australia and New Zealand.  They must have been brave, bold and brilliant to venture forth on ocean voyages some 50,000 years ago.  That's the equivalent of today's astronauts — a whole society of them.
   
  But as the title suggests, they "ate their own future" again and again through failing to recognize that natural resources must be conserved.  In both Easter Island and New Zealand, they encountered a lush landscape teeming with tasty prey, and soon stripped it so bare they had to get their protein from human flesh.

So being green — that is, being concerned about the environment — is not our nature.  It's not against our nature, but it's not in our nature, either.  That's good news and bad news.  The good news is that we're not environmentally worse than anyone else, except on the scale of our impact.  The bad news is that the green revolution we're attempting is unprecedented.  We can't take comfort in humanity's green instincts.  They don't exist.

By "green" here I mean concerned about the environment, in the sense of feeling a responsibility for environmental issues — not just feeling a connection with the environment.  And by "instinct" I mean an inborn tendency  — not just one that can be acquired.  So I'm saying we don't have an inborn tendency to be concerned about the environment.  That's all I'm saying.

It's important, because green marketers need to understand what we have to work with — and what we don't.

Right here, there are lessons for green marketers.

1. We're unlikely to get very far trying to motivate people by making them feel guilty about their environmental sins.  People may be sinning against nature, but they're not sinning against their nature when they indulge in self-serving behavior that happens to damage the environment.  They're just being human.
    
2. We can't call on people's green instincts, because they haven't any.  They may have green feelings, concerns and values, but not green instincts.  Green is a cultivated taste, like jalapeno peppers and Limburger cheese.
    
3. However, many related instincts do seem to be in our nature:  self-preservation, not soiling our nest, social justice, community bonding, personal caring, aesthetic appreciation, spiritual connection, affection for certain animals, and affinity for some "natural" surroundings.  If environmental issues can be linked to any of these, there's leverage.  We can be green by linkage.  We're just not green by nature.

But why?  Why aren't we green by nature?  Why didn't the green wave arise earlier — and why is it here with us now?  Green marketers need to know, so see our next post.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

In our last several posts, we looked at the many different shades of green in the marketplace today.  From an aesthetic point of view, this creates a rich jungle tapestry, a crazy quilt of green.  But from a marketing standpoint, it creates a different kind of jungle, the dangerous kind.  You think you're green.  You think your customers are green.  But if your green doesn't match their green, you (or they) might as well be brown.

Maybe your green can match their green.  Maybe it's just a matter of presentation, of selecting or emphasizing the right facts from the myriad (true) things you could say. 

On the other hand, your problem could be deeper.  Some of the shade differences reflect real differences in values and outlook.  There could be a conflict of philosophy or identity.  And this can happen not only between your company and your customers, but also between one part of your company and another, or between your company's management and its products or practices, or between your company and other parts of its value chain that in today's transparent world increasingly constitute a part of your larger identity.

A marketing message mismatched to your customers causes trouble immediately.  But any serious values mismatch, anywhere within your company or its value chain, is trouble just waiting to happen.  It's also an opportunity for growth, though, if you know how to work with it.

The ideal is congruent green marketing, where your communications, actions and transactions with every part of your value chain, from your ultimate supplier to your ultimate customer as well as throughout your company itself, are aligned in message and values, including shades of green.  Then your marketing will pack maximum punch.

At this point you may be thinking I'm an unrealistic idealist, to talk about greening your ultimate suppliers.  Well, I did say this is the ideal.  But it's an ideal actually being targeted by companies from IBM to IKEA, as portrayed in books like Green to Gold and The Triple Bottom Line.  They care. Customers care. Shouldn't you? 

This ideal will never be totally achieved, or at best it will be touched only for a moment.  The market never stands still, and now less than ever.  So at any particular time in this ever-shifting landscape, these mismatches of values define edges you can push upon — along with more traditional economic edges — to expand your arena of effectiveness.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

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