Green marketing without greenwashing

Talking about environmental benefits in times of scepticism

Marketing and environmental protection are two seemingly very different worlds. But they can profit from each other. A good marketing campaign can boost the sales of environmentally friendly products and more generally increase the environmental behaviour of consumers. Conversely, environmentally friendly products can engage consumers on an emotional level, which is a dream for every marketer.

Unfortunately, the latter has stimulated marketers into developing 'greenwashing' messages which are misleading consumers by exaggerating the environmental advantages of a certain product or service. This is often easy to do, given the difficulty in understanding all of the complexities involved in identifying the actual environmental burden of a product and the ignorance of many consumers in this field.

On the longer term however, such greenwashing can seriously harm the credibility of products since consumers are often more sensible than marketers think. Geenwashing can also affect the credibility of environmental protection in general as well as of green marketing messaging - more and more consumers see it as nothing more than a way to mislead the buyer. The final result is a general increase in cynicism regarding all things environmental.

Making green money

Paul Williams gives a striking example of annoying greenwashing on the MarketingProfs Blog. A hotel tried to convince him of their environmental commitment by not washing the towels and sheets every day. Yet at the same time they obviously did not pay attention to energy efficient lighting, heating, and cooling. It was very clear, as far as Paul Williams was concerned, that the only green the management had in mind was the profitability of the hotel.

So what’s wrong with making extra money while saving the environment? Well, I would say it is certainly better than making money without saving the environment. The problem is that examples like the hotel cited above send a message that is lacking in sincerity.

Five simple rules

On the same MarketingProfs website, Jacquelyn Ottman developed five simple rules for green marketing. You should:

• Know what your customer is really concerned about
• Show them that they can make a difference
• Be transparent, honest, and authentic about your product
• Reassure your customer about the product’s performance
• Consider if they are ready to pay a price premium

Coming back to the example above, the credibility of the hotel’s green message would be much higher if they:

• Left the option not to change towels and sheets every day to the customer
• Rewarded the customer for making the energy savings choice, for instance with a free drink at the hotel lounge
• Incorporated this measure in a complete culture of energy savings and environmental consciousness in the hotel

Of course, the immediate profit of such a strategy would be less. But you could consider it as a free marketing campaign that might even bring a little profit on its own and that could benefit the popularity of your hotel in the longer term.

The holistic approach

Ms Ottman also notes that if you want to capitalize on the image of 'sustainability' nowadays, you should think and act holistically, instead of focussing only on functional environmental benefits. You should develop an integrated culture of sustainability that is supported by all of your shareholders and employees. Only by doing this you can overcome the strong scepticism of consumers and make legitimate claims about the environmental performances of your products. If such a culture is present, marketers can surely help you in developing well-crafted messages to communicate this to your customers. But if you are not following such an integrated approach, every attempt to make your company or brand sound authentically 'green' will lack credibility in the end, even with the best marketers.