On many occasions attempts by companies to adopt green marketing techniques and tools only result in claims of green washing. As marketers how can we prevent ourselves from such claims and help consumers understand what they can expect as part of the green marketing experience.
Suzanne Shelton in her July 13 2009 blog post on greenbiz entitled “Green marketing: A two fold lesson in perception and reality” http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2009/07/13/two-fold-lesson-perception-and-reality recalls how despite carrying out a green a printing and distribution process a mailing recipient still queried the greeness of their marketing efforts because it gave off a slight odor and the envelope in their mind appeared to be plastic.
Many of us know that in many cases, green and non green collateral on its return from the printers can give off a slight odor but our customers do not. We took delivery of some boxes of one of our corporate publications which are printed on recycled paper and vegetable inks etc but they had such a strong odor we could not sit with the boxes next to us. We never had any comments back from the magazines readership but I can imagine many did wonder what chemicals it might have been omitting.
We did debate not printing anything – by far the most sustainable thing to do – but staff and clients like to have materials to take away – so abandoned that idea. Memory sticks with information on don’t solve the problem because they are far from sustainable.
So what can we do to solve the issues we face. I think the biggest thing we can do is be transparent in this case this would mean detailing the processes and components that have gone into making or producing something, but also detailing why we made the choices we have and what this means for the consumer. Creating a policy that clearly states the sustainable parameters you are working to and highlighting any deficiencies in your approach is key along with how you plan to continually develop and improve marketing to make it greener going forward. Providing a point of contact for consumers and clients with queries is also important so they can get their questions answered is also key to preventing unnecessary claims of green washing.
Would it be possible to give clients links to publications on web sites and leave them to make the decision about printing or not?
This way your company is being green.
We do often provide clients with links to publications on websites but on the whole we tend to find that people prefer hard copy – we do offer electronic versions of some of our publications which have received lots of positive feedback. Unfortunately website links are not particularly useful in a face to face sales situation or exhibition where people like to take things away and work through information. We did try exhibiting with an electronic display kiosk, website link and no hardcopy literature but the feedback was negative from visitors and staff who were at the exhibition booth.
I think what you say in the fourth paragraph is something that crops up everywhere. It does seem to be that the easiest thing to do is just abandon all hope with hard copies. The problem is, as you say, that clients often like to have a hard copy to hand.
I’ve also heard the arguement that to truly appreciate your client you should also appreciate that they might not know how to use a computer! As such, it makes relying on PDFs and flash magazines impossible. Whether you belive it or not, it’s certainly something we’ve had to think about.