Believe me, I’m a sucker for good old fashioned stunt marketing. So it’s no wonder that Greenpeace caught my attention on Wednesday. They draped a 2,300 sq. ft. banner down the side of Lincoln’s noggin on Mount Rushmore. According to the proudly arrested Matt Leonard on his blog, they…
“…hung this banner on the opening day of the G8 meetings in Italy, and while the Senate looks to debate the Waxman-Markey bill - the first piece of comprehensive climate legislation in the US (and industry and many Democrats have rendered the bill more harmful than helpful).”
CNN captured the stunt as it happened and interviewed park-goers to get their reaction. Judging by the anger, makes you wonder if Greenpeace’s ambitious bit of environmental marketing actually generated positive sentiment to their cause and global warming?
One thing’s for sure, they could’ve used better creative direction to make the banner resonate more with the commoner. Perhaps a thought bubble above Lincoln that said, “Is it hot out here, or is it just me?” Now that’s the kind of stuff the National park visitor can appreciate, and it would’ve gotten a few chuckles from the parking lot.
What do you think? Does this make Greenpeace look silly, radical, relevant, important, thought provoking, what…?
Recently, Melissa Anderson, Director of P.R. at the Wisconsin School of Business at UofW – Madison, invited me to participate in a Twitter conversation with professor Deborah Mitchell’s Marketing Communications MBA class. The topic was the importance of online social media to sustainability and green marketing. The Tweet-up at #bizpitch helped me collect my thoughts. Here are just a dozen ways I use social media to create a brighter shade of green marketing.
Fly-on-the-Wall: By searching appropriate keywords on Twitter, (“green advertising”, sustainability, “environmental marketing”) and then following the conversations, I can better understand the thinking and trends in the industry. I also capture quick links to relevant websites and articles, and learn what like-minded eco-conscious Tweeple are looking for. This way I know how and, more importantly, IF I can help. Plus, it helps me define the green community I want to engage.
Cheerleader: Blogging gives me the forum to applaud the best green marketing practices, (Like the Kohler toilet promotion) at least as I see them, and share those insights. GreenRaising.com is another good example.
Advocate: Social media allows us to also become advocates for those in bureaucracies. Large government organizations often have important conversations they need to have with their constituents but can’t use social media due to policy. Water conservation is a good example, where towns and cities partnering in the Water – Use It Wisely campaign can’t always engage in social media. So the campaign’s website, that we manage, does it for them.
Utility Infielder: SM isn’t only about commentary. Being a resource for identifying and sharing cool websites like Coke’s LivePositively.com, linking to great causes like Brighter Planet and featuring their badge on my blog (look to the right), or offering useful downloads like the Earth Hour to Earth Day calendar for the easy things you can do in five minutes or less to save the planet.
Organizer: With free programs like TinyChat.com, you can easily gather your world and host a conversation on the green and sustainable topic of your choosing, inviting in experts, followers, clients and interested parties.
Connector: Sean Daily of GreenLivingIdeas.com uses social media to connect eco-conscious writers and help them promote their work through podcasts and social networks. Sam Davidson of CoolPeopleCare.org connects with their followers daily with simple things you can do in five minutes or less to save the world. I use it to connect folks like these with you.
Educator: Webinars are your digital pulpit to help educate and train participants about your work in sustainability. Once produced, your presentation can be re-purposed through a blog, as a free eBook, and with slideshare, to name a few. I have recently posted my webinar, “How to Reduce your Carbon & Hype Footprints” which was part of the iGreen Virtual Conference.
Enabler:Barack Obama’s campaign demonstrated that social media is one of the greatest enabling tools of all time. Take a page from his playbook and build community around your environmental mission, green cause, eco-conscious rants, or global warming march. You don’t even need a worldclass strategist and/or web designer. You can start on Ning.
Individual: Is mass media dead? Probably not. But more now than ever the individual consumer is in control. As David Ogilvy once said, “Word-of-mouth marketing is THE most powerful form of advertising.” As a marketer of sustainable, green, and eco-conscious people, products and/or programs, consider yourself blessed to have such a powerful, far-reaching and empowering medium at your finger trips…for free. There’s something or someone bigger than us all out there, and he/she may have endowed us all with social media as THE tool that saves this planet.
What’s your 13?
If you would like to follow the tweet string from the Wisconsin MBAs, search #bizpitch. Thank you Melissa for this terrific opportunity to work with your students.
To help promote Earth Day, April 22, I’m hosting a poll to see which of these sites on environmental sustainability is the most popular. Please explore them as you find more ways to green your thing, and then vote for your favorite. The poll will close on April 23.
CoolPeopleCare.org demonstrates easy ways you can save the world in five minutes or less.
BestGreenBlogs.com is the web’s largest directory of green and sustainable themed weblogs.
Ecopreneurist.com is part of Green Options Media, a network of environmentally-focused blogs covering a broad spectrum of information for making sustainable choices.
RealClimate.org is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.
TreeHugger.com Owned by Discovery, this site is a media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream.
Grist.org where news about green issues and sustainable living isn’t predictable, demoralizing, or dull.
GreenLivingIdeas.com provides ideas, tips, and information to help you improve the environmental sustainability of every aspect of your life: home energy, green building and remodeling, cars, food, waste recycling—and everything in between.
DoTheGreenThing.com is a not-for-profit public service that inspires people to lead a greener life, with the help of brilliant videos and inspiring stories etc. from creative people and community members around the world.
EcoGeek.org publishes up to ten stories daily about innovations that are saving the planet.
Celsias.com offers tools to help people combat climate change, and bring the green community, companies and organisations closer together.
TheNaturalStep.org is a non profit organization founded with the vision of creating a sustainable society.
Conservation.org has a mission to conserve the Earth’s living heritage – our global biodiversity – and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature.
ExperienceBiOH.com Brought to you by the BiOH polyols business — a maker of soy-based ingredients for foam, The BiOH experience offers resources for you to learn and participate in helping communities and the environment.
TwilightEarth.com is dedicated to saving the the environment through schared news, deiscuss, advocacy and activism.
MoreEco.com offers a single entry point to some of the finest green online retailers whilst rewarding you for your ethical shopping habits and helping to reduce your carbon footprint.
EcoTrendSpotter.com provides readers and shoppers with the latest eco, organic, green products.
RecycleFund.com A site dedicated to easy and earth-friendly fundraising for your organization by recycling empty printer cartridges and cell phones.
HyperLocavore.ning.com Join hyperlocavore to find or start a yardshare in your town. CSAs and community gardens fill up fast. Food is expensive! Grow together!
Inhabit.com is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.
Green.com is a unique online world where people can safely gather, learn, and interact with each other.
Please feel free to share this poll with everyone you know to drive votes for your favorite green website.
Have you seen the work CoolPeopleCare.org have been doing on communicating simple things you can do in five minutes to make the planet healthier? I give them an A- for terrific green marketing & messaging (They’d have an A+ if they’d update their blog more often)
Friends and co-founders, Sam Davidson and Stephen Moseley, created the site to educate on and demonstrate the myriad of little, easy things we can all do to make a big overall difference. And they’ve orchestrated an equally impressive set of green communication tactics to engage the masses.
Here are just seven that caught my eye:
Daily email tips on what you can do in five minutes
Robust website that offers events and activities specific to your city (9th Annual Strong Beer Festival in Phoenix) with an area to post your own events
Links to other great green messaging causes like “A Pledge for a Song,” where you can download a free tune from Missy Higgins when you pledge to reduce your carbon usage by just two percent. See below for the 10 easy ways to do just that.
Sam and Stephen have done an excellent job of making their easy environmental tips as accessible to the public as possible. I leaned about them in a Homestyles magazine (my wife’s an interior designer), so their P.R. machine isn’t bad either. I hope they’re on the front end of a trend to make green marketing and messaging, and the environmental lifestyle tips at its core, as easy, accessible and digestible as possible for the mainstream.
Hey, they got my attention with beer and music.
Ten Quick and Easy Ways to decrease your Carbon Output this year:
Drive smarter – keep your tires properly inflated, go the speed limit, drive less and walk more!
Buy local and organic – the average American meal travels 1,500 miles from the farm to the plate. Be more conscious of where your food comes from and you can pollute less at dinner time.
Call your electric company and switch over to green power! Most utility companies offer renewable energy options for just a few dollars more a month.
Replace incandescent light bulbs w/compact fluorescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents produce the same amount of light as normal bulbs, but use about a quarter of the electricity and last ten times as long!
Save energy at home! Caulk and weather strip doorways and windows. Keep your thermostat a few degrees higher in the Summer, and a few degrees lower in the Winter. It makes a big difference!
Get shower smart. Install low-flow showerheads and faucets and turn your hot water heater down to 120 degrees F to see hot water costs go down by as much as 50%!
Replace electronics and appliances with energy efficient models. Look for the Energy Star label when purchasing.
Plant a tree! Planting shade tress around your house will absorb CO2 and slash your Summer air-conditioning bills.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Recycling paper, glass and metal saves 70-90% of the energy used to produce new materials while keeping more waste out of landfills. Buy purchasing used clothes and furniture you save the environment from the effects of all of the energy that would have been used to create those same products if they were brand new!
Mount a local campaign against global warming and participate at the national, state and local level. Click here for details.
Do you have a tip to add to the list? If so, comment below and feel free to Tweet away!
The BBC asked its correspondent Justin Rowlatt, “Ethical Man,” to make his family as carbon neutral as possible for one year. In the process, the now green Rowlatts offset nearly 20 percent of their carbon producing ways.
The idea of the project was to see what we can all do as individuals to curb greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming. Rowlatt and his wife say that it was an astonishingly small amount of carbon, about two tons, for the sacrifices made. “Ethical men and women acting alone will not be enough to stop climate change.”
The BBC has given Ethical Man an even greater challenge: To travel across America and save the entire world from global warming.
“I’m going on a 6,500 mile trip around the nation that brought the world the motor car, the aeroplane, the suburb, the drive-thru hamburger joint and the hot tub, in search of solutions to the biggest problem on earth.
Each American is responsible for 20 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, more than twice that of the average European. But America is also the most innovative and powerful nation on earth and, what’s more, has a president who says he is serious about tackling global warming.
The idea is simple. If we can solve global warming here, we can solve it anywhere.”
- The BBC’s Ethical Man
Here’s Where You Come In
Hey Ethical Man, if you’re coming to Phoenix, AZ we’d love to talk about our work in sustainability and water conservation. Plus, we’d love to introduce you to a couple of our friends, including Russ, the hydroponic gardener and Donal, the green mobile messaging inventor.
Ethical Man is looking for people across America to talk about solutions to global warming. If you have an idea or want to refer Ethical Man to someone you know who is making a difference, contact him on Facebook and Twitter. He’s starting his adventure in Muskegon, Michigan, of all places, and will be circling the nation looking for anybody who is or has ideas on how to reduce greenhouse gasses and curb global warming.
