February 14th, 2007

Financial Times reports on Green Marketing Wave

The Financial Times of London reported this week that the biggest advertising agencies, including Ogilvy, Y&R, and Saatchi & Saatchi, are predicting a wave of green marketing campaigns as businesses compete on their environmental claims. Agencies say communicating green values is fast becoming an act of “corporate hygiene” needed to retain competitiveness and standing with customers.

This is consistent with what we’ve seen over the past year or so, with green marketing seemingly hitting a turning point in 2006. My article in Motto Magazine last year (then Worthwhile) explores this a bit and examines the differences between levels of effort and sincerity.

The agencies say environmental branding has risen up boards’ agendas, and point to the spate of recent rival green announcements in the grocery retail sector. I personally was blown away the other day to hear a radio ad from Path Mark, a large regional supermarket chain in the New York and Philadelphia metro areas, touting its efforts to source its products locally. The Path Mark near me, in an affluent NJ suburb, is slow even to embrace organic foods, let alone touting local sourcing.

As the article points out, though, advertisers that make green claims for products and services face unprecedented public scrutiny, particularly from bloggers and other web users. Our firm, SRB Marketing, will not work with anyone whose actions we believe do not match their claims of environmental or social responsibility — “greenwashing” as it is known — mainly because we consider it misleading and harmful to the public good, and also because we know it won’t benefit the client in the end, either.

Lee Daley, chairman and chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi UK, made a surprisingly strong statement to Financial Times regarding the trend: “Brands will not be able to opt out of this. Companies which do not live by a green protocol will be financially damaged because consumers will punish them. In the longer term, I do not think they will survive.”

In market research regarding green marketing, consumers’ moods varied by subject. They were more likely to be positive on alternative energy and vehicle emissions than global warming. Many were confused or apathetic because of apparently conflicting arguments.