ParkHowell.com

Archive for November, 2009

Sustainability Officers and Green Marketers Should Lighten Up When Promoting Behavior Change

Volkswagen’s new website, TheFunTheory.com, demonstrates how behavior can be changed by simply offering your customers a fun way to re-frame their experience. Check it out:

What’s in it for Volkswagen? They are providing potential customers a unique way to participate with the brand that stands for something more than just being an innovative car company. Coaxing every-day folks in to submitting their own Earth changing ideas, and then celebrating those ideas, is what Volks is all about: “Change for the better.”

From its site:

“This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

PeiWei Parking Lot signWe have often injected humor and fun into all of our work to change behavior. One small example is found in our parking lot. Our agency is located next to several restaurants, and lunch-goers were overflowing into our parking lot. Instead of posting an annoying and strident “No Parking” sign, we thought we’d appeal to their sense of humor. It’s worked wonderfully. Our lot is open again. And people often mention the signs right down to the Phoenix City Ordinance small copy that reads: SEC. 8NOLUNCH4U

How are you having fun changing behaviors?


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What You can Learn from My Journey Using Social Media for Green Marketing and Sustainability

Thanks for celebrating with me my 200th post. To mark the occasion, I’ve produced my first video blog.

My Journey in Social Media for Green Marketing and Sustainability from ParkHowell.com on Vimeo.

I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned about leveraging social media to help green marketing and green marketers become more sustainable. You’ll meet a number of great people who have helped me along the way. All of the links I reference in the video are below. Thank you for watching my milelstone of sorts. If you enjoy it, please pass it on.

  1. Lost in Space: Putting the Green Back in Green Messaging
  2. Join me on twitter
  3. Michael Gass and his Fuel Lines blog, Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media
  4. “Trust Agents” book review
  5. Chris Brogan’s blog, Community and Social Media
  6. Jason Baer’s Convince & Convert blog
  7. Sustainable Social Media For The Green Marketer
  8. View more presentations from Park Howell.
  9. How We’ve Become One of North America’s First Carbon-Neutral Ad Agencies in 5 Easy Steps
  10. Toyota Creates Powerful Green Marketing Product Demo for its New iQ City Car
  11. 12 Faces of Social Media for Sustainability and Green Marketing
  12. A Floating Island of Garbage Twice the Size of Texas?
  13. “Strategy for Sustainability” book review
  14. Repositioning a 30-Year-Old Community Clinic into a Leader in Sustainable Healthcare
  15. “High Speed, Low Drag,” and 13 Other Tips to Running a Sustainable Business in this Economy
  16. Current “A Brighter Shade of Green Marketing” Newsletter

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Frito-Lays’ SunChips is a Brilliant Example of “Doable” Green Marketing and Sustainability

This is part-three in a series of articles about the “Approachability,” “Believability” and “Do-ability” of your sustainable marketing.

SunChips sm.One of the world’s largest snack-food manufacturers, Frito-Lay, has done a remarkable job of marrying its SunChips product, brand and sustainability in a very “doable” expression of its green marketing and mission.

SunChips is a whole-grain snack that was launched in 1991, and has experienced phenomenal growth (about 20% per year). Earlier this decade Frito-Lay recognized the growing intersection among its consumers’ concerns for their health and the health of the planet.

SunChips marketers know that consumers want a tangible, functional benefit (the healthy food snack) with a green benefit. So sustainability became core to their business strategy. Their efforts started in 2007 and they knew they couldn’t do it overnight. So they managed expectations and curbed any whiff of greenwashing by branding this initiative, “One small step at a time.” Their efforts include:

  • Purchasing renewable energy credits to offset it’s energy needs
  • Using solar power at its Modesto plant
  • Reducing the environmental impact of its packaging by introducing a fully compostable chip bag in 2010
  • Supporting sustainability initiatives, such as helping to rebuild Greenburg, Kansas into the greenest town in America following a devastating tornado

As an expression of their brand, their website does a wonderful job of engaging their customers to join SunChips in making a difference one small step at a time.

“Can one person make the planet greener, better…happier? We think so. Because big change starts with small ideas… We think everyone has the power to change the world. One small act at a time. Let’s do this together.”

SunChips, with National Geographic, then invited customers to come up with the best Earth-saving idea. These ideas were ccollected on the website, The Green Effect, and each of the five winners received $20,000 to put their idea into action.

Being driven by a core sustainability mission, SunChips’ is a remarkable example of all three legs of our green marketing stool. The tangible healthy qualities of its product are very approachable, and therefore make the larger brand approachable. Powering their plants with solar energy and creating compostable packaging make Frito-Lay’s green efforts with SunChips all the more believable with no fear of greenwashing. Engaging its customers in their “One small step at a time” initiative makes it all very “doable.”

Tell us about an example of a company, cause or organization you know that is approachable, believable and doable?

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The 15-Minute Competitive Advantage for Green Marketers

The 15-Minute Innovation Advantage

Innovate 15 minutes at a time.

For most chief marketing officers, it’s difficult to see through the day-to-day anguish of this transformational market to truly innovate. In her article, “Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage,” Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business Publishing recommends that a series of small but fast innovations are more effective than one large leap.

“As many technology companies have seen to their peril, you can leap much too far into the future by seeking revolution, not evolution, leaving potential users in the dust. But steady progress — step by single step — can win internal support and the external race for share of market or share of mind. Especially if you take each step quickly.”

This is all about changing in short, fast bursts. In his book, “Strategy for Sustainability,” Adam Werbach points to a term evolutionary biologist use, “Punctuated Equilibrium,” to describe the phenomenon that many organisms experience little change until rapid events of evolution occur.

Kanter’s article is one of my favorites of the year, because it turns explosive innovation on its head. She encourages you to, “Stay a little ahead of the competition while close enough to what customers can understand and incorporate.”

She offers eight characteristics of innovations that are most likely to succeed at gaining support:

  1. Trial-able: Idea or product can be trotted out as a pilot program
  2. Divisible: Users can adopt it in segments or phases without having to digest the entire program
  3. Reversible: If it doesn’t work, you can go back to where you were for the time being
  4. Tangible: It offers concrete results
  5. Fits prior investments: The idea builds on investment already made or actions already taken
  6. Familiar: It is somewhat comfortable and consistent with other experiences
  7. Congruent with future direction: It is heading in a similar direction, even though by its nature it is meant to change things
  8. Positive publicity value: You can’t help but make everyone look good in the process

When I shared this article with my buddy Barry Bartlett, he summed it up best by saying, “With innovation, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your hiking partner.”

Tell us about one of your innovative programs that worked or was stymied.

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CMOs: Seven Ways to Save All Kinds of Green with Your Annual Report

Click on the image to see a nice example of an online annual report from Burst Marketing
Click on the image to see a nice example of an online annual report from Burst Marketing

Your annual report is your best stage to demonstrate the sustainability of your organization.

The numbers speak for themselves about your ability to survive this market environment.

How you publish it speaks volumes about your true sustainability.

Here are seven ways to save you money and go green with your annual report.

  1. Publish it Online: Most people don’t care about the pretty pictures and prophetic prose. They, like the SEC, want the numbers. So stay focused with your brand message and deliver the goods online. Rethink how your annual report works for you and re-purpose the marketing information via more innovative, user-friendly uses, including website landing pages, PDFs, mobile devices, and other resourceful channels. Checkout out Stantec. They saved about $60,000 after the majority of its shareholders told them they preferred to view it online.
  2. Produce Fewer Pages: Many clients think their annual report is a powerful marketing piece, and so they pour tons of content into it. Not very sustainable. Do you really need a 76-page report when half that number will do?
  3. Source Paper from Responsibly Managed Forests: Make sure your recycled paper is certified by the  Forest Stewardship Council that promotes responsibly managed forests.
  4. Use Recycled Paper: Kind of a no-brainer, but it’s still surprising how many annual reports are printed on non-recycled paper. Recycled paper comes in most colors, weights and finishes, from cardboard to tissue stock.
  5. Print with Vegetable Inks: Vegetable ink is renewable, looks great, use no petroleum products, and release zero volatile compounds during printing. Just make sure that your ink is compatible with the absorbency of the recycled paper you’ve chosen so you don’t have to use a large amount of ink for optimum coverage.
  6. Soy-Based Inks? Many companies, like the Rainforest Alliance, won’t use soy-based inks because the crop contributes to deforestation due to it its large infrastructure and frequent harvesting.
  7. Promote the “Greeness” of Your Annual Report: Be proud of achieving a sustainable annual report and let your customers know. It not only demonstrates your market leadership, but it also educates them on how to become greener and save money themselves. A little added value never hurt any relationship.

How much will you be saving? The Clean Air Council estimates the savings from one ton of paper made from recycled pulp:

  • 17 trees
  • 3 cubic yards of landfill
  • 7,000 gallons of water
  • 4,200 kilowatt hours (Enough to heat your home for six months)
  • 390 gallons of oil
  • 60 pounds of air pollutants

For more information about greening your annual report, along with some great case studies, read, “3 Ways to Make Your Annual Report Greener (cheaper, too)” by Ragan’s PR Daily.

How are you greening your annual report?

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