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

In our last post, we outlined some new shades of green.  Here are five more, and they  have something in common.  They all reflect the new ways that people become green.  As the green wave sweeps through the media, school system and culture, it touches "mainstream" people who were mostly missed before.   (I've coined the names.)

Go-Along Greens — Followers (social conformers) who adopt green values as it becomes the thing to do.  Go-along greens are not driven by deep thought or deep feeling, don't usually have a deep awareness, and are not deeply committed.  However, as long as the culture goes green, the go-alongs will go green too.  Be glad they do!

Indoctrinated Greens — Young people growing up green because they are taught green in school.  More and more, teachers and schools are going green, from kindergarten on up.  And the earlier green is encountered, the more it is taken for granted, just like multiplication tables — which in the age of calculators may not be taken for granted at all!  Indoctrinated greens may be passive or passionate, shallow or deep, but they believe.

Pressured-Parent Greens — Try staying comfortably basic brown when your kids are indoctrinated green!  This time, youth's righteous rebellion has right on its side.  Indignation and logic are a powerful combination.  Rather than resist, a whole generation of parents is retrofitting its attitudes to reality, thanks to this new children's crusade.  That's not to say the parents aren't thinking for themselves.  Many are.  But it's often their kids who force them to confront green issues.

Newly-Converted Greens — The newly converted — to anything — are often the most fervent believers, and the green wave is leaving huge numbers of newly converted greens in its wake.  Green old-timers have been doggedly fighting global warming since the early 80s.  The newly converted hear that the planet is roasting and exclaim, "Something's got to be done!"

Global-Warming Greens (or Climate-Change Greens) — These are basically single-issue greens.  The world is confronted by a host of complex, interrelated environmental, cultural and social-justice issues, but the media has locked onto climate change as the one to talk about now.  It's a good choice — arguably the most urgent — but this narrow focus tends to miss the complexity of the situation and the need for whole-system solutions.  Still, global-warming greens are a significant, vital component of the green population and marketplace.

It's clear that the many shades of green — both classic and recent — are not sharply distinct.  Some overlap conceptually, and even when they don't, a given individual may show two or more shades at once.  Still, each shade is an important component of the green landscape, a nuance which green marketers can't afford to ignore

In our next post we'll explore even more.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

In our last post, we outlined the several shades of green uncovered by a Roper survey in 1990.  Since then, important new shades of green have emerged.  We'll cover some here, and more in the next two posts. 

Dark Greens — Believe that environmental problems are an inherent part of industrialized capitalism, and seek radical political change.  Tend to believe that  industrialism inevitably lead to consumerism, alienation from nature and resource depletion because of its emphasis on economic growth.  (Adapted from Wikipedia). 

Light Greens — See protecting the environment as primarily a personal responsibility.  Focus on personal transformation and lifestyle choices rather than political activism and reform.  (Adapted from Wikipedia).

Wait!  That's too clear and simple!  Let's add some confusion.

Lite Greens (or Light Greens) — Another name for greenwashing, painting harmful products with a green veneer in order to fool a gullible, green-hungry marketplace.  This is a greater crime against people and the planet than products which don't hide their harmfulness.  It must be fought, for it undermines both the effectiveness and the mission of green marketing. 

Although the terms lite green and greenwashing are typically applied to businesses, they can equally be applied to individuals — and will be, more and more, as it becomes chick or cool to be seen as green, and uncool or worse to be seen as basic brown.

Eco-Radicals — Convinced that industrial/consumerist momentum is too great to be stopped in time without confrontation (e.g., Greenpeace) if not violence (e.g., Earth First!).  Basically, edgy/cynical, highly committed dark green.  Eco-radicals have more impact in the green movement than in the green marketplace.  The ultimate mission of green marketing must be to disprove the eco-radical premise, but that dream is still far in the future.

Bright Greens — Convinced that we must redesign not only human society but even nature itself into a single integrated system based on principles like "cradle to cradle" product lifecycles and "no waste" industrial processes.  The old nature is dead, and the new nature will be human-designed, if we are to have a worthwhile future at all.

The fundamental values of bright green are sustainability, economic growth, social justice and human quality of life.  Although nature is used as a model for efficient processes, nature and natural are not values or goals in-and-of themselves.  (See Wikipedia as well as Worldchanging, by Alex Steffen.)

Viridian — Convinced that to turn things around fast enough, we must market green successfully to people as they are, with their current habits and values.  That means we must dress green up in sexy consumerist garb, outcompeting consumerism on the latter's turf and terms.  Rather than adapt people to green, we must adapt green to people.  (See Wikipedia as well as The Viridian Manifesto, by Bruce Sterling.)

These new shades of green, as well as those we'll discuss in our next two posts, reflect recent changes in the green marketing environment.  For example...

• There was no point for a company to greenwash itself lite green when nobody cared whether they were green or not.
   
• Bright green and viridian couldn't have emerged when green solutions were clunky, low-tech or anti-tech and green consumers were anti-consumerism. 

This shows how dramatically the green landscape has changed in less than two decades.  This change is still accelerating.  Since each shade of green is an attitude, you must know these shades — and where your customers fall in the green spectrum — or your marketing will speak to people who aren't there, and miss many of those who are.

In our next two posts we'll explore additional new shades of green.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing

If you're green — that is, if you're a green company, or marketing green products or services, or marketing to green customers — it's important to know just what green means.  In our last post, we showed that definitions of green differ in scope, from narrow to broad, and gave our own broad definition.  There are also different shades of green, differing in attitude. 

The classic breakdown comes from a 1990 Roper survey, nicely summarized by Jacquelyn Ottoman in her seminal work, Green Marketing (second edition, 1998).  The following, modified and condensed from her book, shows the "green spectrum" of the 1990s.

True Blues (or Deep Greens) — Hold strong environmental beliefs and live them. Believe they can personally make a difference in curing environmental ills.  Follow environmentally safe practices themselves and attempt to influence others to do the same.

According to Ottman, true blues (deep greens) come in three shades themselves.  (Her terms show how times have changed.  Health concerns are increasingly mainstream, as reflected by their growing presence in most supermarkets.)

Planet Passionates — Focus on issues relating to land, air, and water. They recycle bottles and cans, avoid overpackaged products, clean up bays and rivers, and boycott tropical hardwood.

Health Fanatics — Focus on the health dangers of environmental problems, such as cancer, genetic defects and tissue toxin buildup.

Animal Lovers — Protect animal rights. Boycott tuna and fur. Check to see if products are cruelty-free. Likely to be vegetarians.

Greenbacks — Willing to pay extra for environmentally preferable products.  Worry about the environment and support environmentalism, yet feel too busy to change their lifestyles.

Sprouts — Willing to engage in environmental activities from time to time but only when it requires little effort.  Rarely choose a green product if it is more expensive, and even then are willing to pay only slightly more.

Grousers — Do not believe that individuals play any significant part in protecting the environment. Feel the responsibility belongs to the government and large corporations. Will not pay more for green.  Comply grudgingly with environmental laws.  Feel that the environment is someone else's problem, so why bother.

Basic Browns — Not tuned in to the environment, and not convinced that environmental problems are all that serious.

That was the green spectrum one to two decades ago.  Since then, things have moved fast and far.  We are now in the early stages of an explosion of green awareness and concern, and while the shades outlined above still exist, the demographics and percentages of the 1990 Roper survey are obsolete.

Not only the demographics have changed.  Green itself has evolved conceptually, leading to important new shades of green.  We'll cover these in our next post.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing