That’s my obvious answer to Korey Baker’s question on LinkedIn today: “What attracts business owners to the idea of “going green”?

To give my position credence, just look at McDonald’s 2011 Sustainability Scorecard. Of their 13 stated goals in five areas, they only met one:

“Increase energy awareness and education across the System to continue to realize savings to the bottom line and benefits to the environment.”

While they’re making progress in other CSR areas, including sustainable supply chain, employee experience, nutrition & well being, and community, it’s no surprise that the big savings are in environmental responsibility.

As I mentioned in the American marketing Association article about the sustainability scorecard, McDonald’s wins by reducing operating costs, increasing net profits, and creating a story about their sustainability that they can share with the world.

That’s how you sell “green” to a company. What’s your answer?

Look at Coke’s publicity stunt for the World Wildlife Fund with your conscious mind – and the backlash it ignited among its loyal customers – and it seems the world’s most recognizable brand blew it. Now, consider the disruption this white can created in the collective subconscious – and the attention that resulted – and you’ll see the brilliance that drives this campaign.

For more than 125 years, Coca-Cola has burned its logo and red can into our collective mental circuitry. In his book, Incognito, the secret lives of our brains, David Eagleman describes how the enormous subconscious architecture of our brain is markedly faster and more efficient – and more powerful – than our conscious mind. We think we’re in control, but we’re really not.

We’re hardwired to learn, imprint and do things without thinking, so that our clodhopping conscious self isn’t hobbled with automatic tasks. Do something often enough, and it becomes rote. If you’re even a moderate Coke drinker and you get thirsty for a soda, or you’re in the soft drink aisle at your grocer, you reach for that red can without thinking.

Now, the makers of your favorite soft drink disrupts that process by surprising your subconscious with the exact opposite of what it expects – a white can – and they’ve just triggered significant cognitive dissonance.

Your inner self is saying, “What the hell?” while your conscious brain tries to create a rational narrative around the surprise. You might not even know why you’re agitated, but one thing is for sure, it gets you actively thinking about the product and acting upon your impulses.

It’s the oldest storytelling trick in the book. Everyone from the likes of Greek mythologists, Bach, Shakespeare, Spielberg, and global marketers worth their spit have used cognitive dissonance to elicit a reaction by tweaking their audience’s implicit memory to cause an explicit reaction.

Even Coke said they were trying to be disruptive with its marketing. And it worked. Everyone carried the story, including Time, Wallstreet Journal, ABC News, Huffington Post, and multitudes of bloggers and the so-called social media elite, with alarming headlines that included words like, “consumer backlash,” “resentment,” “fiasco,” “trickery,” and even “blasphemy.”

To be fair, there’s even a Save the White Polar Bear Coca Cola Cans Facebook page.

Are you kidding me? Is any of this rational? Of course not.

Coca-Cola and the World Wildlife Fund pulled off a miraculous marketing campaign that brought greater attention to an issue that is melting in public sentiment as steadily as the disappearing ice caps, while whipping up a whirling dervish of visceral attention for a ubiquitous brand during the most competitive time of the year for consumer mindshare.

Kudos to Coke. Like the street corner magician, they pulled off a marketing slight-of-hand that everyone talked about, but nobody got.

It’s all about creative destruction, the fuel that propels free markets.

Author Tim Wu is a former tech writer from Silicon Valley who is a professor at Columbia Law School. This is an enlightening journey through the typical arch of American communications industries: From tinkering in the garage to a life-changing industry; from half-backed contraption to must-have production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single entity; from open to closed system.

Eventually, entrepreneurs and innovation smash apart the closed system, and the cycle starts anew.  Is SOPA the start of the natural constriction of the open web – the most verdant field for social innovators and communicators that we have know in our lifetime – and a natural continuation of the cycle? Will a resurgent AT&T eventually capture T-Mobile to expand their empire and once again monopolize telecommunications, another revolution in its cycle?

One of the interesting themes that threads throughout The Master Switch is the Marxist concept of ”Creative Destruction,” popularized and applied by Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter during the early to mid 1900′s. The free markets are based on creative destruction, the invention/birth, maturity and destruction of a product, service or industry, its demise caused by similar innovation that created it. Often, according to Wu, the inadvertent self-destruction of the successful endeavor that has reached the masses is at the hands of its creators whom go from risk-taking inventor to risk-adverse monolithic corporation or cartel that becomes vulnerable to individuals innovating. David falls Goliath.

“All knowledge and habit once acquired becomes as firmly rooted in ourselves as a railway embankment in the earth. The very nature of fixed habits of thinking, their energy-saving function, is founded upon the fact that they have become subconscious, that they yield their results automatically and are proof against criticism and even against contradiction by individual facts.”  - Schumpeter

As a green marketer, you are a storyteller for sustainability. You have the master switch; the megaphone to reach your customers and stakeholders. You are also the innovator and risk-taker fighting the good fight against the mindset of, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” I believe we are all still pioneering and learning how to make sustainability work. We must be the fearless inventors tinkering in our sustainability garages and continuing to challenge the status quo. We are at the very beginning of the cycle. It’s an exciting time, and one we are privileged to be part of.

Read The Master Switch and see how the rise and fall of these communication innovators and empires directly parallel the rise of green marketing and sustainability within our firms and the public conscious.

Can you share an example of creative destruction in your experience with green marketing and sustainability?

It’s not. It’s making fun of companies and brands that are eager to jump on the green bandwagon without doing their homework. Their green marketing shortcuts are laughable, diminishing the credibility of the entire green marketing industry.

At least Lorna Li of Green Marketing TV appreciates my humor. She recently invited me on her web TV show to discuss the art of green marketing.

The Art of Green Marketing for Sustainable Brands – Park Howell, Park & Co from Green Marketing TV on Vimeo.

In this interview we cover:

• Which companies tell their sustainability story well, without the hackneyed green marketing cliches
• Big brands that are failing the “got green?” test
• Successful examples of green marketing
• Egregious examples of green wash, in products that have no business calling themselves green
• Whether green marketing is really dead and if we should just give up

This revealing discussion with several real world green marketing examples, ought to help you better define your green marketing strategies and bring you closer to becoming a remarkable sustainable brand.

GoGreen Conference at the Phoenix Convention Center

Do you think you have your green brand and marketing figured out? Do you want to put it to the test? Join me as I moderate the workshop, Green Marketing & Branding: Creating Behavior Change during the inaugural GoGreen Conference at the Phoenix Convention Center this Tuesday, November 15.

GoGreen Conference Phoenix has a terrific lineup of speakers, including:

• Al Halvorsen, Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability, Frito-Lay North America
• Derrick Hall, CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks
• Phoenix Mayor, Phil Gordon
• Kevin Tuerff, President, Enviromedia

Photo from the Cafeteria Culture Blog

“Last year, I participated in the prerequisite class for Intern/Mentor, Independent Research, and researched the effects of Styrofoam on the environment and am currently still working to rid my school system of the Styrofoam lunch trays.  I have decided this year to study green marketing and how marketers reach the maximum number of consumers. I want to know how companies make their advertising and marketing greener and how these changes affect their clients.”

1. What do you find are the key factors to a successful green marketing campaign?

Too many companies are jumping on the green marketing bandwagon and not doing a particularly good job at telling their stories about sustainability. They forget the first five rules of marketing anything – green or not – from the consumer perspective:

1. Do I want and need it?
2. Does it work exceptionally well?
3. Do I get a ton of value for the price?
4. Is it convenient to buy and easy to use?
5. Is it good for my family?

Only then do the majority of consumers care about: Is it good for the planet?

Most green marketers still don’t get it, and that’s why “greenwashing,” even though most of it is inadvertent, has become such a nasty nemesis to the credibility of promoting sustainability.

Thank you, Audrey, for including me in your research for your important project of ridding your school district of styrofoam trays. It is gratifying to see young stewards like yourself know that they can make a real difference in this world. Keep up the great work.

Great Lakes Brewing Company sources its ingredients locally to green its operations

But there’s hope and help for the Coal Burgers of the world. Entrepreneur Magazine, in its November issue, features an article on the five-step guide to marketing a green business called: Selling Green. They called me as a source for their piece the day after I wrote about Coal Burger, so the information was top-of-mind. Here are writer Matt Villano’s five steps to green marketing that he culled from his interviews with marketers and business owners across the country.

1. See What Your Customers Want – Do they even care if you’re green? Bardessono, a luxury hotel and spa in Yountville, CA, made this mistake.
2. Define What Green Means to You – Green has many nebulous meanings to consumers and proprietors alike. Ava Anderson does a nice job of explaining what being natural means in their non-toxic personal care items.
3. Connect the Dots – Answer consumers’ questions: Does it work? Is it good for my budget, my family, and our planet?
4. Practice What You Preach – Are you backing up your green position with sustainable actions that matter? Green Apple Cleaners in New York walk the talk.
5. Reinvest in the Community – The old think globally, act locally adage. Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland only sources its ingredients locally.

The article is filled with case studies that demonstrate each of the five steps to marketing yourself as green. However, I’d like to remind you that being green isn’t so much about your marketing as it is about your philosophy and action. Being sustainable should be a natural bi-product of how you approach your business with planetary efficiency and healthy products as your highest priorities. That’s when your green story starts to get really interesting.

Do you have a favorite company that is doing its green marketing well? Please let us know below.

Since his passing, everyone has focused on what Steve Jobs seemingly single-handedly achieved at Apple. Sure he was a brilliant heavy-handed tech entrepreneur. But what hasn’t been talked about much are all of the people he educated, motivated and inspired within Apple who are now innovating in their next lives outside of Apple.

Matt Rogers, Founder & VP of Engineering for Nest, the creators of the learning thermostat, is one example. He has created a thermostat that learns from you, when you come and go, and how hot or cold you like the place. Plus, it’s beautiful; an ipod-like puck that is as much of a fashion statement on your wall as your Apple mobile device is in your hand.

Finally, someone in the energy world is thinking different about how to make controlling your environment and energy costs much more user friendly, a very Apple-esque concept.

I reserved mine.

I’m proud that Park&Co is one of the early adopters in The EV Project, the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in history. We just lit up two EV charging stations as part of the Blink Network from Ecotality. Now I need something to plug into it, only most manufacturers of EV’s aren’t shipping until sometime in 2012. I feel like a pioneer who’s raced too far ahead of the chuckwagon. But it’s still exciting.

What I’ve learned in the six months it’s taken, from inquiry to installation, is that the entire electric vehicle industry is still sorting itself out.

It goes something like this:

Ecotality is the manufacturer of the Blink charging station, and as part of The EV Project they were awarded a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to install approximately 14,000 chargers in six states and the District of Columbia: California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Texas and Tennessee. Chevrolet and Nissan North America are partners in The EV Project, and they have provided some matching funds raising around $230 million for the initiative.

I’m impressed with what I’ve seen of the Blink Network. When you buy an electric car, you can get a black Blink card that you swipe at the charging station. It bills your account that you set-up on their website. The site is extremely user friendly and it includes a map of the EV stations in your city.

Blink also has an app that alerts you to EV chargers as you travel and keeps an eye on your EV’s battery level. So if you’re tooling around 44th street and Indian School Rd. in Phoenix in your Volt, Leaf, Tesla, Karma or whatever EV you’re rocking, swing into Park&Co and fill’er up.

The Fisker Karma

Now I’m in the market for a new electric vehicle. But what do I get? I love the looks of the Tesla Model S. I’m intrigued by the electronics of the Ford Focus Electric. The Fisker Karma seems almost other-worldy. I’m wondering if having a gas tank to charge the Chevy Volt’s batteries is somehow cheating, or does it just make sense to get over range anxiety? And I recently checked out the more sensible curves of the Coda at the Green Fleet Conference in Dallas. The variety of styling and features of these cars reflects an industry trying to find its way.

Please share any thoughts and recommendations on what EV I should consider in the comments below. Thanks!

Halloween is the one night when normal rules don’t apply. When the kid in all of us gets that rare chance to be anything he or she wants. It’s also one of the biggest sales opportunities of the year for Goodwill. In the thrift industry, October is one of the largest months for sales. It’s the equivalent to Christmas for general retailers.

This year, Park&Co puts Goodwill at the epicenter of fall fun and creativity with the “Official Sponsor of Halloween”campaign. The fun and anticipation of dressing up comes not from what we can purchase off the rack, but from what we can invent with our imagination. Goodwill is much more than a place to simply buy a costume; it’s a place to discover a hundred possibilities for creating one. The elements of this campaign consist of TV, radio, print, outdoor and online executions, all depicting one simple message: most ready-made, ill-fitting, store-bought costumes are so lame, it’s almost frightening—and not in a Halloween sort of way.

The concept of the Goodwill Halloween campaign allowed us to take advantage of the creative surroundings here at Park&Co, lovingly called our “Creative Campus.” We transformed our offices into a studio for the all-day TV shoot. Our staff willingly served as extras, dressing in everything from chicken costumes to rodeo chaps. We built a “dressing room” for our main talent in the Creative Garage and held a photo shoot in our very own Combustible Kitchen. While this may seem unconventional, it made the campaign that much better as it was truly an all-agency effort.

And now that Goodwill has a whole new look for Halloween, what about you? What are you going out as this year? Better head to the Official Sponsor of Halloween pronto before someone snatches that green mohair suit before you do.