Reigniting the Green Flame

November 16th, 2010
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In this year of fiery political passions, the word “revolt” is in the air.  However, I think Ad Age inhaled a whiff of the zeitgeist and incorrectly applied the term to consumers supposedly cooling in their ardor for green products.  “Has Green Stopped Giving? Seeds of Consumers Revolt Sprouting Against Some Environmentally Friendly Product Lines” trumpets the headline of a recent Ad Age article.  A couple paragraphs into the article, the author quotes Timothy Kenyon, director of GfK Roper’s Green Gauge study who more judiciously describes the current situation as “green fatigue.”

Yes, some green product lines, such as Clorox’ Green Works and SC Johnson’s Nature’s Source have faced setbacks.  And yes, Frito-Lay has had to rejigger the compostable SunChips bag that emitted a sonic boom every time you extracted a chip with less than perfect technique.  But green products have had some victories too lately.  What about Seventh Generation products getting access to the shelves of 1,500 Walmart stores?  And the article mentions “Method’s sales hike so far this year after a tough 2009.”  Revolt?  No.  Fatigue?  Maybe.

Fatigue doesn’t quite nail it for me though.  It implies that there are people once excited by green that are now onto something else.  I think you can say that about journalists and pundits who helped fan the flames of green hype but not consumers.  The Ad Age article talks about the “Gartner hype curve,” with the green market moving from the “’peak of inflated expectations” to the “trough of disillusionment” but I think that applies more to bloggers (yes, I know I’m in that group) than to American shoppers. 

So why is fatigue an incorrect term to use with consumers?  Because the vast majority of consumers didn’t have “green fever” to begin with.  They had nothing against green products per se, but green just wasn’t on their radar.  And if green products weren’t on consumers’ radar in 2009, after many more months of an anemic economy, they’re certainly not on most consumers’ radar now.  Green products picked up the lower hanging fruit but the higher fruit may be, if not out of reach, then in need of a tall, sturdy ladder and advanced picking techniques to get. 

So what should we call the current green marketing situation, the green slackening?  Or the green reality check?

Green Marketing 3.0 for green’s blues

Green marketing maven Jacquie Ottman has blogged that “Over time, mainstream companies entering the market espoused what I call the “planets, babies and daisies” approach (despite doing otherwise on established brands) mostly likely believing such imagery represented a price of entry into a market they didn’t understand and were not quite comfortable playing in.”  Let’s call the “planets, babies, and daisies” approach Green Marketing 1.0.

So, what’s Green Marketing 2.0?  Jacquie again provides a good definition: “Now such brands as Green Works or Tide Coldwater are realizing that the name of the game is doing what they do naturally—leading with messages of primary benefits, while bringing in environmental messages as secondary.”   By primary benefits, Jacquie means the main product features people consider when buying a product.  With detergents, it’s going to be cleaning ability and price.  So an environmental message can be seen as a tie-breaker for many mainstream consumers.  And for other mainstream consumers, products’ relative greenness is a total non-factor in their purchase decisions for a wide variety of reasons including a perception that buying green has no relevance to their lives.

Must a product’s environmental friendliness forever be relegated to the role of tie-breaker at best in mainstream consumers’ minds?   Maybe not.  I say let’s revisit Jacquie’s “planets, babies, and daisies” but don’t throw the baby out with the planets and daisies.  To really succeed on a wide scale in America, green products either need to establish their superiority on conventional, non-green product features such as effectiveness or price (very tough) or make green more relevant to people’s everyday lives (tough but not impossible).  If green marketers can build the case for how their products are healthier for baby and Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and…, then the greenness of a product becomes a primary benefit rather than a secondary one and the higher hanging fruit now becomes more attainable.  That’s Green Marketing 3.0.

Green Marketing 2.0 has helped green products find new audiences by creating green products that work and are affordable but we may be starting to see the limits of this approach, at least in the current environment.  To ascend to the next level where green goes truly mass market will require Green Marketing 3.0, where buying green is tied to the health of both humans and polar bears.

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Advice to the Betrothed (Walmart & Seventh Generation)

July 30th, 2010
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An unusual pairing not quite as strange as that of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett was announced on Monday.  Walmart has decided to carry Seventh Generation products.  For a company with $150 million in 2009 sales, this decision can potentially multiply Seventh Generation’s revenues.

To make the marriage work, Seventh Generation and Walmart need to overcome two challenges:

1. Walmart customers need to become aware of Seventh Generation products.  When I showed mainstream women Seventh Generation product samples in a marketing research study Green Meridian did, many responded as if they were looking at moon rocks.  Seventh Generation and Walmart will have to aggressively work to raise women’s awareness of the products, despite SG’s imminent presence on the shelves of thousands of Walmart’s.

2. Seventh Generation has to give mainstream women compelling reasons to switch from their current cleaning products.  This is going to involve education.  Lowering prices to at or near parity with leading brands, as Seventh Generation has done, gets you only so far.  Seventh Generation will have to convince women that its products work at least as well as the cleaning products they currently use and that using SG offers significant health advantages. 

Jeffrey Hollender, Seventh Generation’s founder and Chief Inspired Protagonist, acknowledged recently that making it onto Walmart’s shelves is only the first step:

New access to our products will do some of this work, but not all of it.  We’re also partnering with Walmart to advance our shared sustainability goals in part through participation in a Walmart working group focused on improving the safety of chemical-intensive products, and we’ll be helping Walmart educate shoppers about why the product choices they make matter so very much.

Before I go further, let me state that stereotype of Walmart’s shoppers as being working class people with less education is a bit outdated as the recession has forced many more well off, better educated people to venture into Walmart for the first time.   However, it is probably not a stretch to say that Walmart’s customers overall are less educated, less eco-oriented, and less wealthy than the customers of Seventh Generation’s traditional haunts, upmarket sophisticated stores such as Whole Foods.  Although Seventh Generation’s experience selling products to Target and traditional supermarket customers should be good preparation, Seventh Generation faces a large challenge in succeeding at the level Walmart will demand. 

Just try it

So how does the pride of Burlington succeed in middle America?  I asked shopper marketing expert Nancy Alexandroff what she would advise Seventh Generation.  Here’s what she said:

I think there are two key success factors for Seventh Generation: Generate awareness followed by lowering the perceived risk.  Awareness can be generated using targeted in-store media.  Usually awareness is best created by mass media but do they have the money for extensive TV?  I’m not sure.  Radio’s an option – drive time or a.m. in high CDI (category development index) markets.  Radio can be affordable and a good way to reach mainstream green moms who are driving the kids around town. 
 
Then, lowering the perceived risk of purchasing is best done by putting the product either on deal or offering a coupon, or both.  The coupon has to be a cents off coupon, and the purchase requirement has to be easily met (one bottle).  No “buy one, get one” deals.  Who wants to take the chance of getting stuck with TWO bottles of something that you end up not liking? 

A coupon or discount may lower the barrier to trial but Seventh Generation also needs to give consumers a reason to try their products in the first place.  How does Seventh Generation succeed in its proclaimed goal of “helping Walmart educate shoppers about why the product choices they make matter so very much” and convincing shoppers that their products are better choices? 

Convincing consumers Seventh Generation products work can result from successful product trial but convincing them that Seventh Generation products are meaningfully healthier is a more complex sell.  The company fortunately has experience in this arena and already has a tool to help consumers make sense of confusing product labels.  Their Label Reading Guide (shown below) explains why some of those hard to pronounce ingredients may be hurting them, their families, and the environment. 

In addition, Seventh Generation’s 7Gen Blog provides a platform to both educate and interact with customers.  Some interested Walmart shoppers might find their way to the 7Gen Blog.  Finally, Walmart will likely provide opportunities for Seventh Generation to educate consumers in the store.

  

Medical assistance

While a formidable education campaign can be crafted out of a combination of social, mass, and in-store media, I can’t help but feel that the educational effort will be lost on a lot of shoppers.  In-store education is challenging with all the distractions of a busy retail environment.  And once the shopper leaves the store, you’ve got the motivation barrier.  How many shoppers will take the time to peruse the informative online materials provided by Seventh Generation and others?

That’s where doctors come in.  Huh?  Yes doctors, namely pediatricians, gynecologists, family practice doctors, internists, and allergists.  And the nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and RNs that work with them. Although the eco-friendliness of Seventh’s Generation’s products is a nice bonus, Green Meridian’s research shows that it is rarely a significant factor in mainstream women’s household cleaner selection process.  There is a group of mainstream women that want to green up though and many of these women consider cleaner healthfulness when shopping. 

You may have noticed that I shifted the conversation from “consumers” to “women.”  Why leave men out of the discussion?  There are many factors that make us guys less germane (sorry) to this discussion:

1. Women more often than not are the primary cleaners of households and thus the most common purchasers of household cleaning agents. 

2. Women are often more engaged in health issues than men, not only their own but also those of their children and husband.

3. Women and children are particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of cleaners.  The Internet is abuzz with discussion about a study that came out last week in the international journal Environmental Health, which suggests that using household cleaning products may contribute to an increased risk of women developing breast cancer.  And children are more vulnerable to toxic agents because of their size and the immature state of their metabolic pathways.

Teaching the teachers

Asking a trusted expert (i.e, healthcare provider) is often preferred by many women to parsing large amounts of fairly technical information on one’s own on the Internet.  Even if a woman is motivated enough to do the research, in the store and online, it’s not easy for a layperson to separate what’s meaningful from what’s not for one’s particular household situation. 

Make no mistake.  Conversations between patients (or their parents) and doctors about the toxicity of products brought into the home are already happening.  But how equipped are doctors to have these conversations?  The science is evolving and the wide scope of many medical professionals’ practices, particularly the more primary care-oriented ones, requires them to stay current on a vast array of conditions.  They only have so much bandwidth available to understanding the threats posed by household products.  Doctors (and nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and RNs) need some help.

I must have missed this class in med school

Before Seventh Generation and others can educate healthcare providers about the health implications of ingredients in household cleaners, they first need to understand how much doctors currently know about cleaner ingredients.  To what extent do doctors and others know about the ties between various cleaner ingredients and health risks?  What types of healthcare providers know more?  What types know less?  Do they even believe cleaner ingredients pose a significant health risk?  Once companies have this baseline understanding of providers’ knowledge and perceptions, they can then set education goals.

In future posts, I will discuss ways Seventh Generation and other green marketers can bring Household Cleaners 101 to the medical community.

What do you think?  Should makers of green household products spend promotional resources on educating doctors and nurses?

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Paging Jared Fogle

July 8th, 2010
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Dear Jared:

How have you been doing?  Still svelte?  It’s been awhile since you were a constant presence on our TVs with your tale of how a two Subway subs-a-day diet helped you lose a whopping 245 pounds.  The exercise you added to your daily routine didn’t hurt either.  You were an inspiration to millions of overweight Americans.  In fact, Subway says that thousands of people wrote the company to tell of their weight loss, with a total loss of 160,000 pounds.  The company’s site informs us that this is equal to 10,000 marching band tubas!

Subway made a lot of money from your weight loss.  Your work on behalf of the company was a smashing success, and Subway’s 2000 sales exceeded those of the previous year by 18 percent.  In 2001, they rose another 16% and you became a well-recognized national phenomenon.  Subway’s since moved on to promoting Five Dollar Footlongs but I hear that you continue speaking on Subway’s behalf.  Jared, you’re also quite a mensch.  Rumor has it that you started the Jared Foundation to combat childhood obesity.  Very nice.

A modest proposal

Jared, life’s been pretty good to you and you’ve certainly given back.  Also, I know Subway still keeps you busy traveling 200 days a year but if you have some spare time, it would be great if you could help the environment too.  I know, asking one man to tackle obesity and our environmental problems is a tall order but you’re a natural.  I see that you try to eat organic produce when you can.  In addition, your employer has a sustainability program called “Eat Fresh.  Live Green.”  So you have at least dipped a toe into the sustainable living pool.

Why you?  “I’m the obesity guy, not the green guy,” you might protest.  No, Jared you’re Every Guy.  I’m sorry but Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio just don’t cut it.   Us regular guys relate as well to them as we do to the oil-soaked pelicans and dolphins that darken our TV screens.  But Jared, you we relate to.  If you committed to a green lifestyle, think of the possibilities.  Maybe we’d get off our fossil fuel-burning butts like when you made us put down our boxes of Krispy Kremes and get out of our Barcaloungers a decade ago.   

Picture this

You turn your home green with the help of several green product manufacturers.  From your house’s paint to its flooring to the food in your refrigerator, low impact choices will be everywhere.  These companies get free advertising and you get some wonderful gifts for your impending nuptials.  However, your going green isn’t going to be enough by itself to get the rest of us to take the plunge.  You have to show us the benefits.  When you restricted your diet to Subway subs and lost all that weight, the potential benefit of eating Subway subs was made clear even if mathematically an n of 1 means squat.

This is definitely going to be a bigger challenge.  There will be no irrefutable before-and-after pictures you can produce to show the benefits of going green.  How about a before-and-after estimate of your home’s carbon footprint?

However, there might be health benefits that you can document such as keeping your weight off with all the organic produce you’re eating.  Also, maybe you and your future wife will have fewer respiratory problems from the lack of paints containing VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and the use of less toxic cleaning products.  Keep a journal and see if you notice any other positive health effects of going green.

And let’s talk money.  Alright, you’re getting all these green goodies for free; so rebates and tax breaks may not be in the offing for you. However, you should see your utility bills go down and you may be able to spend less time and money maintaining your home.   When it comes time to resell your home, you should be able to fetch a higher price for it.   And let’s not forget those sponsoring companies that might be eager to pay you to work your pr magic for their products. 

Besides being healthier and more budget-friendly, a green home may also be more comfortable since heating and cooling will be better distributed throughout the house.  And have you seen some of these green buildings?  They are pretty easy on the eyes too.

And then there are the intangible benefits to your psyche.  Perhaps you’ll feel the satisfaction that comes from doing your part to lessen your impact on the environment.  And the patriot in you might get a kick from denying revenues to nations that produce both oil and a hatred of the US.

Will all this lead to a happier, healthier, more fulfilled Jared?  Just maybe.  What have you got to lose?

All the best, Jeff Dubin

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Selling Green Products to Skeptics, Worriers, and the Apathetic

June 24th, 2010
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It has been well documented that an increasingly vocal minority of Americans (British too according to a recent New York Times article) think that the threat of global warming is overblown, nonexistent, or at the very least, not manmade.  Then you have the many Americans that believe global warming is happening at an alarming rate, and those who think it is happening but who are not that worried about it.

It appears that lately the arguments of global warming skeptics have been winning new believers as Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway describe in the blog Yale environment 360 :

“In recent months, as the U.S. Senate prepared to consider climate and energy legislation, there has been a stepped-up effort on a broad front to belittle the overwhelming evidence of human-caused global warming…In the case of global warming, there is strong evidence that this contrarian campaign is enjoying success, with recent polls showing that more than half of Americans are not particularly worried about the issue and that fully 40 percent believe there is major disagreement among scientists about whether climate change is even occurring.”

Still, things have to be kept in perspective.  Green Meridian’s Sustainability in the Mainstream study found that only 9% of women solidly agreed (i.e., 6 or 7 rating on 1-7 scale) with the statement, “Global warming is not really a problem.”  And another 6% mildly agreed with it.  Not exactly an avalanche of doubt about global warming.  In addition, a new survey by the Political Psychology Research Group found that “huge majorities of Americans still believe the earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it.”

Should green marketers be concerned about climate change skepticism?

Perhaps.  But an even greater threat to green marketers’ efforts is apathy about climate change.  The Sustainability in the Mainstream study shows that consumers that believe we have serious environmental problems and who are worried about them are more likely to want to buy green.   Note two things:

  • The study shows that believing that environmental problems are serious, by itself, is not usually enough to motivate women to buy green.  It’s got to make them apprehensive as well.
  • I said “want to buy green” rather than just “buy green” since there are many women that want to buy green but haven’t yet for several reasons (e.g., high price, poor brand awareness, etc.) having nothing to do with products’ environmental impacts.

 

What’s a green marketer to do?

First, companies can fund programs that educate the public about climate change as Hewlett-Packard did with the National Environmental Education Week.

More immediately, green marketers should segment consumers on their attitudes towards climate change and other environmental issues since receptivity to green products is tied to consumers’ eco-attitudes even if products’ greenness is usually a secondary driver of purchase decisions. 

As I said before, both a belief in the seriousness of global warming and other environmental problems combined with a substantial level of worry about the environment predisposes a consumer to be more interested in buying green.  The diagram below shows a simple scheme to segment consumers using these two attitudinal dimensions.

 

Have segmentation, will target and message

Thinking about consumers in terms of both their beliefs and level of environmental concern helps us to develop appropriate targeting and messaging approaches.  Let’s look at each group:

Skeptics:  A product that touts its greenness may tick off these folks.  As Erich Schwartzel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said, “Not everyone’s going to love it when a company goes green.”

  • Recommendation: Proceed with caution.  Unless your green claims play a small role in your product’s messaging, be very leery of devoting too many resources to attracting the Skeptics.

 

Apathetics:  Whether they believe global warming and other environmental issues are serious is irrelevant.  This group focuses almost exclusively on conventional product features and if you can offer superiority on these, then Apathetics will flock to your product. 

  • Recommendation:  Evaluate how compelling the non-green story about your product is.  If it’s strong enough, Apathetics may be receptive to hearing it.

 

Worriers:  Much of your opportunity will be with this group but you have to be clear about the type of consumer in this group where your greatest opportunity lays.  Worriers are not homogenous.  There are those that walk their worried talk and those who do not for a variety of reasons.  If you can effectively address these reasons – most commonly high price as well as low green brand awareness & availability – then the latter subgroup should also be a target for your brand.  And for almost all Worriers, remember that you had better be able to offer appealing product features beyond eco-friendliness.

  • Recommendation: Figure out whether your product is better suited for the Worriers already buying green or those who would like to buy more green (or both groups).  With the already green, you need to build a story for why your green product is preferable to other green products.  For the green aspirants, you have to first understand the barriers preventing this group from buying green and find ways to lower them.

 

The Mushy Middle:  In the Sustainability in the Mainstream study, 53% of women rated 3-5 their level of agreement with the statement “I think the planet is in very poor shape.”  The slightly more moderate statement, “Global warming is not really a problem” had 32% of women rating their agreement 3-5.  Despite the passionate talk of the pundits on both sides of the issue, as marketers we need to remember that many Americans are actually somewhere in the middle.  Many may believe global warming is real and manmade but that doesn’t mean that it is one of the chief concerns in their daily lives.

  • Recommendation:  If you decide to target them, approach the Mushy Middle basically as you would the Apathetics but also add a dash of environmental messaging.  The MMs may not be that worried but they do believe that something’s not kosher with the environment.

 

The bottom line

I wouldn’t let climate change skeptics affect your green marketing campaign since the rock solid skeptics are relatively few in number still and it would be a huge uphill battle to first neutralize their negative perceptions of your green product and then make them positive.  As far as apathetic consumers and the so-called Mushy Middle, you have to first decide whether they should be targeted and if they should, what non-environmental story you’re going to tell them about your product.  Finally, you must decide whether to just target worriers that have already gone green or those who want to as well.

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Using Social Media to Promote Green Products

May 26th, 2010
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Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are undeniably becoming increasingly important to marketers as more and more people spend increasing amounts of time communicating via them.  For green marketers, it may seem particularly natural to target the ostensibly sophisticated, hip upscale green consumer through these media.

While social media should be an important part of the green marketing mix, data from Green Meridian’s Sustainability in the Mainstream study should caution green marketers against overreliance on it.

When asked what their favorite ways to learn about green products were, various types of social media were pretty far down the list of information sources preferred by women including those women that most frequently purchase green products, the so-called Frequent Greens.

 

Such old school sources as Consumer Reports, product labels, and advertising trumped blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.  Less green women reported that they relied on social media even less than their greener brethren for information about green products.

Indeed, marketers such as Marc Brownstein, president of Philadelphia ad agency Brownstein Group, warn against transferring all or most of a brand’s ad spending to social media.  He asks, “How will customers find you?  Why should they care about your product/service?  What are you going to do when your competitors crank up their promotional spend and start taking your customers?  This message is simple — the short-term delight of not spending any media dollars on advertising will surely have a long-term effect: brand erosion.” (“Overreliance on Social Media Will Damage Your Brand”, Advertising Age, May 10, 2010)

Don’t give up on social media

However, while it doesn’t make sense to bet the house on social media that doesn’t mean that social media are without value.  Other data from the Sustainability in the Mainstream study suggests that women understate the role recommendations and, by extension, social media play in their purchasing of household cleaners and personal care products. 

We see a pretty strong relationship between the amount of green cleaners and personal care products women buy and the degree to which their friends and others recommend green products vs. non-green ones (i.e., high derived importance in marketing research geekspeak).  Thus, the extent to which a woman buys green household cleaners and personal care products is likely driven partially by recommendations.  It is quite conceivable then that women’s cleaner and personal care brand choices are also influenced by recommendations.

We may think we’re independent, logical arbiters of what products best meet our needs but the reality is we often depend on a little help from our friends (and families and neighbors). Green marketers need to leverage consumers’ social networks, which social media have vastly expanded, to get the good word out about their products.  Just make sure not to forget about older, less sexy promotional channels in the process.

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Mainstreamers Who Want Greener Cleaners

May 13th, 2010
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There are women in the mainstream (i.e., defined as those women making green cleaner purchases less than half the time) that are primed to increase their green household cleaner purchasing if the conditions are right.  They represent a significant opportunity to green household cleaner marketers because:

  • There’s a lot of room to grow their green cleaner usage from current modest levels.
  • These women want to green their cleaner purchases.

These so-called Greener Cleaner Aspirants were one of four segments identified in Green Meridian’s qual/quant marketing research study Sustainability in the Mainstream that we fielded with over 650 women at the end of 2009.

So why, among the four segments, did Greener Cleaner Aspirants especially catch our eye?  In short, because they are most in flux and that spells opportunity for marketers.  With Green Cleaner Aspirants, green product marketers have the chance to grab customers who currently buy modest amounts of green cleaners but want to change that.  With the other segments, it’s more a battle between brands than one between “brown” and green products.  But with Green Cleaner Aspirants, it’s Green vs. Brown, which presents a valuable opportunity to tell the story about the green benefits of your products.

What’s more, if we look at the future green purchasing levels women predict for themselves, we see that Greener Cleaner Aspirants may account for half the growth of green cleaner purchasing in the future although only 23% of women are GCAs.

 

Who are the Greener Cleaner Aspirants?

  • More likely to be middle-aged (45-54) and less likely to be older (55+).
  • Tend to more frequently live in the West & Midwest and less frequently in the South. 
  • More prevalent among married and single women and less among divorced/widowed women.
  • Represent somewhat greater portions of Hispanic/Latinos and Asians than Caucasians.

 

How do we know Greener Cleaner Aspirants are primed to buy green?

  • They say so: They agree with the statement, “I’d like to buy more green household cleaners than I have but have been unable to so far.”
  • They’re worried: While not as worried about the environment as those women already purchasing a lot of green cleaners, nonetheless they are significantly more worried than other women.
  • They feel their purchases can make a difference:  Like so-called Frequent Green Cleaner Purchasers, Greener Cleaner Aspirants feel that buying green can help the environment.
  • Green cleaners are viewed positively by GCAs on two key product features:  Cleaner smell and healthfulness are important to GCA’s and these women tend to view green cleaners as being better smelling and more healthful than brown cleaners.

 

So why aren’t Greener Cleaner Aspirants’ cleaners greener?

  • High price: Price is the barrier to greater green cleaner purchasing most frequently cited by Greener Cleaner Aspirants.
  • Out of sight, out of mind: Greener Cleaner Aspirants in particular often blame poor green brand awareness and availability on their modest purchasing of green cleaners.
  • Perceived inferior effectiveness:  A large minority of Greener Cleaner Aspirants say that green cleaners’ poorer performance vs. that of conventional cleaners prevents them from buying green more.
  • Pro-environment attitudes left at the store door: Greener Cleaner Aspirants often worry about the environment and feel their purchases can make a difference but only about a quarter say they often think about cleaners’ environmental impact when buying cleaners.

 

So how can you convert green attitudes into green purchases?

  • Don’t price your products out of the reach of Greener Cleaner Aspirants.
  • Make Greener Cleaner Aspirants aware of your brands and make your brands available to them.
  • Establish your cleaner’s effectiveness bona fides
  • Show how your products empower Greener Cleaner Aspirants to make the environments in their personal lives as well as the one on Planet Earth more healthful, allaying their worries.
    • Build a case for the healthfulness of your products inside the home.
    • Build a case for the healthfulness of your products outside the home.  An environmental message could resonate with these women if you make your green products part of their consideration set by addressing price, effectiveness, and accessibility issues.
  • Inform these women about your green products through favorable reviews by respected third parties (e.g., Consumer Reports, scientists, newspaper/magazine articles) as well as compelling information from you.

 

Greener Cleaner Aspirants want to buy greener cleaners.  Help them do it.

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Cuyahoga

April 22nd, 2010
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Cuyahoga, gone

Let’s put our heads together, start a new country up,

Underneath the river bed we burned the river down.

This is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang,

Take a picture here, take a souvenir

               -Lyrics from REM’s “Cuyahoga”

A news item on my Yahoo homepage today, in homage to Earth Day, reminded me of the days when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire and Dennis Kucinich was mayor of that city rather than perennial presidential candidate and fodder for late night comedians. (Well, he might have been the butt of Johnny Carson’s jokes too back in the late ‘70s.)  Oddly enough, that was the good old days for environmentalists where powerful images galvanized people to demand that the government clean up the environment.

Melting glaciers and Rocky Mountain lodgepole pines dying from a pine beetle infestation don’t hit most people where they live, like Cleveland or LA.  The Yahoo article featured a photo of boat captain that offers cruises down the basically clean Cuyahoga.  And Los Angeles residents “only” have to contend with peak smog levels that are one-third as high as they were 40 years ago. 

And what we northerners have seen recently doesn’t give us Average Joe’s a lot of confidence in the eggheads who swear that climate change is afoot.  “I’ve got 12 inches of global warming in my driveway for ya’, Al Gore!”

I have to see it to believe it

To mobilize the masses, environmentalists need to present people with lots of compelling images.  I quoted art therapist Cathy Malchiodi in an e-newsletter from a couple months ago:

Sigmund Freud observed that dreams, feelings, and thoughts are experienced predominantly in visual form.  Images are part of our earliest experiences, and many of our preverbal thoughts are in images. 

Images are clearly powerful but some images are more powerful than others.  I think many people see glaciers and polar bears and think, “yeah, that’s a shame but I really have more important things to worry about.”  Climate change is also starting to affect people, mainly in other parts of the world, now.  What about pictures of Kenyan farmers and their children that are suffering because the rainy season hasn’t shown up in three years?

Alright, the skeptic says, we’ve been bombarded by pictures of suffering Africans for years and they may not get the reaction out of people they once did.  Well, let’s look at the United States then.  American gardeners are also experiencing climate change first-hand as the USDA gardening zone maps that spell out what regions are safe for various plants continually change.  Massachusetts oranges anyone?  And hikers out West have seen their favorite hiking spots laid waste by the aforementioned beetles.

And if you’re the indoors type and can’t bring your eyes to places where climate change is evident, don’t worry, climate change has come to your eyes.  Many say that the hellish allergy seasons we’ve had recently are tied to climate change. 

So why isn’t all this ocular evidence sinking into our national subconscious more?  Are the signs of climate change too subtle?  (My red, itchy eyes beg to differ)  Or is their link with climate change too subtle?  Or is the link not believable by many?  Yes, yes, and yes. 

Well if visual reminders don’t work, perhaps auditory ones will.  Michael Stipe, do you have another hooky song about the environment in you?

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Should Green Marketers Take a Page from Pharma’s Playbook?

April 2nd, 2010
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 “I have a son who when he was younger had respiratory issues so I would try to keep things as natural as I could for him.  I think if you are keeping a clean surface, you are able to do that without all the chemicals.” – 45 year-old woman, Dallas

“I’m sensitive.  I get light-headed, feel like I’m suffocating, and I have bad allergies.  I will move to other products like Simple Green.  It works and smells clean but is not overpowering.” -59 year-old woman, Philadelphia

These quotes from interviewees in a recent marketing research study conducted by Green Meridian point to something many consumers know.  If you or another member of your household has bad allergies or asthma, then conventional cleaning products are a no-no.

In addition, scientific evidence of the harmful nature of toxic cleaners is mounting.  A recent article in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology says house cleaning may make one’s asthma worse.  Article author Jonathan A. Bernstein, M.D., of the University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine says, “women with asthma should be routinely interviewed as to whether they clean their home and cautioned about the potential respiratory health effects of these activities.”

Children are a group that is seen as particularly vulnerable to the chemicals in cleaners.  Air pollution testing conducted for the Environmental Working Group (EWG) revealed that cleaning supplies used in 13 key California school districts can cloud classroom air with more than 450 distinct toxic contaminants, including chemical agents linked to asthma and cancer.  

Asthma in children has become a particularly worrisome issue as its prevalence has increased dramatically recently, particularly in low income urban areas.  According to a recently published study by researchers at George Washington University, in 2008 1 in every 7 children – or 10.2 million – had asthma.

So why aren’t sales of green cleaners skyrocketing?

There are many reasons why conventional cleaners still have a commanding share of the market:

•The often higher price of green brands

•Low awareness of many green brands

•Consumer loyalty to tried-and-true cleaning products

•A belief that green products don’t work as well.  When it comes to cleaning products, many consumers feel that harsh smells and teary eyes are the price you have to pay to get a germ-free home.   In this respect, green cleaners are sometimes seen as having a serious health liability since they are unable to disinfect like their more toxic brethren.  Especially with the recent H1N1 outbreak, killing germs is seen as Job #1 of cleaning products. 

•Many people simply don’t have chemical sensitivities other than an occasional tearing of the eyes or short-lived choking when they get a strong whiff of a powerful cleaning product

Still, can’t green cleaner marketers be more aggressive in their health claims?

Perhaps.  But let’s first look at some of the factors holding them back.

For starters, makers of green cleaners are walking a tightrope.  If they are too aggressive in marketing their products’ health superiority, conventional cleaner manufacturers can cite green cleaners’ lack of disinfecting ability.  Recently S.C. Johnson, maker of Fantastik, accused Clorox of being misleading in claiming that its Green Works product line worked as well as conventional cleaners.  The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus agreed with S.C. Johnson and recommended that Clorox discontinue its claims or modify them to state a “more qualified message” because Green Works did not perform as well on the “toughest grease” and did not disinfect like many traditional cleaners.

And speaking of Clorox, how much hay should the makers of Clorox bleach make of the dangers of traditional cleaning agents?  This is yet another tightrope that companies which make both more established conventional cleaners and newer green products must walk.

And what about the “pure green” companies, like the Methods and Seventh Generations, that aren’t marketing green products side-by-side with conventional ones?  Even they have trod fairly lightly in making health claims.  Method’s People against Dirty campaign focuses more on remedying the perceived inability of non-green cleaners to effectively clean than on the health benefits of using Method cleaners.  Seventh Generation, however, dives into the healthy home theme in its Protecting Planet Home ad campaign but the advertising is spare on specific health benefits.

Why not do something harder hitting?  Well, there’s the aforementioned Achilles heel of not being able to disinfect.  Seventh Generation, though, would seem to have that problem licked with its new line of plant-based disinfectants but Method and other cleaners still have that shortcoming.  Then there are regulatory constraints on what health benefits can legally be claimed in advertising.  And finally the answers to some of the questions marketers at these companies are asking may militate against a more emphasis on their products’ health benefits:

•What product features are most important to consumers?  Where does healthfulness rank?

•Should our advertising be more positive or negative in tone?

•By trumpeting health benefits too loudly, do I risk niching the product as being only for consumers with respiratory problems?

Sorry, but I can’t help but feel these marketers are leaving something on the table.

Why not go “pharma” on the market?

We can debate whether or not green cleaner manufacturers should play up their products’ health benefits more with consumers.  Indeed, as I’ve shown, many good arguments can be made that greener cleaner manufacturers are already talking with consumers about the health benefits of their products in the optimal way.

OK fine.  We’ll continue our consumer conversation another day.  But what about doctors, nurses, pharmacists, chiropractors, and other healthcare providers?  Allergies, asthma, and other respiratory problems certainly occupy a significant share of healthcare providers’ time and energy.  And data – the real peer-reviewed data that professionals respect – is growing that a key trigger of respiratory problems are the chemicals found in many cleaning agents. 

How many healthcare professionals are seeing the data?

In launching its line of plant-based disinfectants, Seventh Generation noted the laudatory words of Stanford pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, “It is increasingly important to protect our health and that of our children by implementing good hygiene practices and using disinfectants around the home that are effective without the use of harsh chemicals. Seventh Generation’s disinfectants are a historic product introduction for consumers and the industry.”

Yet Dr. Greene was talking primarily to consumers.  Is Seventh Generation also having Dr. Greene speak at the annual meetings of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology or the American Academy of Pediatrics?  Perhaps the company is doing this.  If so, great.  If not, medical education is something they may want to explore.

 “Yeah, but we’re a consumer products company not a drug company.  We don’t have Merck’s money or expertise in this area and in the big picture, doctors are relatively unimportant for the purchase of our products.”

With as many as 45 million Americans suffering from chemical sensitivity and 34 million suffering from asthma, are you sure? 

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Double Jeopardy

March 17th, 2010
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Familiarity may breed contempt in many situations but with green products unfamiliarity is what often breeds contempt.  A recent study by consulting firm Green Meridian compared how women with limited access to green products (either through low awareness of green brands or poor green product availability where they shop) view green products with women that don’t feel cut off from green products.  The study found that “isolated” women viewed green products more negatively than their connected counterparts. 

In particular, 29% of the so-called “connected” women saw non-green household cleaners and personal care products as superior to green ones on price while over 50% of the “isolated” women said that non-green products were priced better than green ones.  Even with something as concrete as price, perceptions truly are everything.  A similar dynamic was observed with women’s perceptions of green products’ effectiveness and smell relative to non-green products.   

By the way, effectiveness, price, and smell were the product features most frequently mentioned by women as the ones they use to select household cleaners and personal care products.  So differences in perceptions of these features really matter.

Based on what?

So how are “green-detached” women arriving at their impressions of green products?  Their opinions may be shaped to some extent by old experiences that may not square with today’s natural product realities.  Green marketing guru Jacquie Ottman in her book Green Marketing says:

Gone are the dimly lit general-type stores with cluttered aisles, bulk bins, and limp organic vegetables.  In their place are scores of cheery health-food and specialty stores that carry a dizzying array of branded natural foods and green general merchandise.

Although many of these hippie era stores may be gone, memories of them can have strong staying power, particularly for consumers that are middle-aged and older.  Also, many product categories have experienced an influx of green products very recently and people’s green product impressions may be based on their experiences with one or two older products.

The outsized influence on perceptions of forerunner products, such as green product pioneers, has been documented by researchers.  In a 1988 paper that appeared in Advances in Consumer Research, Professors Gregory Carpenter (now at Northwestern) and Kent Nakamoto (now at Virginia Tech) suggested “that, in many cases, early entrants frame the consumer’s perceptions of [a] product category, thereby defining the rules of competition.”

Paging Dr. Freud

For green marketers to effectively address the negative green product perceptions bequeathed by the green products of yesteryear, they have to understand the psychological forces giving these products so much power over people’s minds.  So what forces may be operating in the unconscious of green-detached women?

  • Primacy effect refers to the tendency for the first information received to carry more weight than later information on one’s overall impressions.
  • Although stereotypes are often discussed in terms of unconscious biases we have about certain groups of people, we can also extend this concept to how some people feel about green products.  Where do stereotypes come from?  Cognitive psychology theory holds that connections between people, products, etc. and perceptions made often enough in the conscious mind eventually become unconscious. According to Yale social psychologist John Bargh, stereotype formation is particularly prevalent in situations where “conscious choice and decision making are not needed.”  Perceptions of green products and organic food co-ops have formed and entered the unconscious of many people because they have not been needed in most people’s daily decision making.  The challenge for green marketers is how to challenge stereotypes that have been locked away in the vault of the unconscious for so many years. 
  • Familiarity bias is a preference for the familiar.  According to an August 2008 article by a group of Jacksonville University researchers, “When making a purchasing decision, consumer confidence is usually higher if familiarity with a particular brand is higher.” 
  • Loss aversion describes the situation in which the desire to avoid losses outweighs the desire to experience comparable gains.  Many women view whatever health and environmental benefits may accrue from using green products as not being the worth the potential for being lighter in the wallet and saddled with an inferior product.

 

A few possible ways to combat green product stereotypes

  • Directly attack perceived deficiencies:  According to Carpenter and Nakamoto, perceptions are malleable when experience with products is limited.  That means that effective marketing has a chance to substantially change long-held conceptions of green products among those people who have little experience with them.  And addressing negative perceptions head-on may be the way to go. Drugmaker Allergan Inc. did just that in 2007 to address the common stereotype that injections of Botox freeze the face, preventing users from making expressions.  In response, the company launched an advertising campaign dubbed “Freedom of Expression.”
  •  Expose yourself:  Psychotherapists use “exposure therapy” to treat anxiety disorders with the thinking that repeated exposure to the source of anxiety will ultimately lessen the source’s ability to generate anxiety.  In the same way, repeated exposure to green products may make them seem less foreign, challenging stereotypes and weakening the familiarity bias that has led many women to view green products less favorably.   The increasing ubiquity of green products may eventually pay off in improved perceptions of them.
  • Gain credibility through reviews in mainstream publications: Professors Mogilner (Wharton), Vohs (Minnesota), and Aaker (Stanford) have studied how nonprofit firms are stereotyped, an analogous situation to that of green products.  Like their green product counterparts, nonprofits are typically viewed as “warmer” than for-profit companies but they are also viewed as less competent.  One way to compensate for this competence gap, they found, was to be favorably reviewed in an established mainstream publication like The Wall Street Journal.  Likewise, less green women would likely be more swayed by a favorable cosmetics review in Vogue, say, than one in Greener Living.

  In short, stereotypes are strong but they can be overcome.

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Crunchy Conservatives and Hummer Liberals?

March 3rd, 2010
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One of the hoariest political stereotypes is that of the conservative voter who believes global warming is a hoax and who drives a big gas guzzling vehicle.  And, on the other side, is the liberal that is ultra-concerned about the environment and who tools around in her Prius with the Save the Whales bumper sticker.  A recent study by Green Meridian that looked at the green purchasing (of household cleaners and personal care products) as well as the underlying attitudes of over 600 women suggests that while certain facts support these stereotypes, many do not.

First let’s be clear about political labels.  Many more women identify themselves as middle-of-the-road (25%) or independent (29%) than either conservative (19%) or liberal (14%).  More American women perhaps have a party preference, though, than these numbers would indicate.  Political scientist John Petrocik of the University of Missouri says that Americans “prefer to think of themselves as independent-minded and inclined to judge candidates on their individual merit.  [But] very few Americans lack a party preference.”  So while the Green Meridian survey does not capture which way the independent and the middle-of the-road folks each lean, there are still some interesting learnings to be gained from looking at the political affiliation data.

So Liberal ≠ Green?

One would think that people that label themselves liberals are the greenest of the green in terms of what they buy and how they think about the environment.  And self-proclaimed conservatives would be at the other end of the spectrum.  Sorry to disappoint but the truth is a lot murkier than that.

Myth Destroyer:  Green Meridian found that similar proportions of conservative and liberal women are Frequent Greens, those women that buy green household cleaners and personal care products the greatest percentage of the time.  Middle-of-the-roaders buy like conservatives and liberals do.  The green purchasing champs, albeit by a moderate amount, are those women calling themselves political independents.  The apathetic “don’t know/don’t care” women are the least green. 

Myth Confirmer (sort of):  Although proportionally similar numbers of conservatives and liberals are Frequent Greens, a greater percentage of the remaining liberal women aspire to be greener consumers than their conservative peers.  However, in terms of aspirations to green up, middle-of-the-road women have both conservatives and liberals beat.  And again the winner is….the independents.  Not only is a greater portion of independents currently green but also a greater portion of the remaining less green independents want to be more green (43% vs. 33% of  less green women overall).  The politically apathetic women also tend to be apathetic about becoming more green, with a similar green aspirant percentage as conservative women.

More murk in the attitudes

Again, the liberal vs. conservative comparison yields a mixed bag.  Liberals, like middle-of-the-road women and independents, are more likely than conservatives and politically apathetic women to acknowledge that we’re facing serious environmental problems.  However, the difference between conservatives and liberals narrows on how worried about the environment each group is.  In terms of feelings of responsibility for the environment, liberals and conservatives are about the same with independents and middle-of-the-roaders actually feeling more responsible.  Finally, true to stereotype, conservatives are much more likely of conservatives than the other groups (41% of conservatives vs. 27% of women overall) to agree that their religion teaches them that we need to be stewards of the earth.

Again, more evidence of why you should be selective in judging a woman by her political label.

Not to pile on liberals, but the Wall Street Journal also recently took a swack at stereotypes about liberals.  It appears that Boulder’s city government is having a tough time changing the earth-unfriendly behaviors of many of the city’s legendarily liberal citizens.  Old behaviors die hard even for dyed in the sustainable wool liberals.

So should green marketers be happy with crumbling stereotypes?

No and Yes.  No, because targeting’s become a lot tougher.  Green marketers cannot automatically assume that the traditional liberal precincts are going to automatically be their most logical audience.  

Political independents (and to some extent middle of the road women) should be a group of great interest to green marketers.  To add to marketers’ targeting challenges, these are not the easiest groups to demographically define.  The Green Meridian study shows them to be similar in demographics to the nation as a whole.  And, the definition of a political independent, like the definition of green, can be nebulous. 

Perhaps dividing these groups further by political leaning would clear things up a bit.  Given what we’ve learned about conservatives and liberals, though, we shouldn’t be too certain.

And now for Yes:  Green marketers should be happy that opportunities in the mainstream for abound and the most successful marketers will figure out how to reach those green-receptive consumers that exist across a variety of geographies, ethnicities, educational levels, and incomes.  Thus, green marketers need not fight a battle to the death with each other for a relatively limited number of green consumers confined to the Boulder’s, Berkeley’s, and Burlington’s.

The successful green marketer will be the one that looks well beyond the archetypal well heeled, well educated liberal.   And in doing so, marketers should give at least as much billing to green products’ health benefits as to their environmental ones.  In addition, product value and effectiveness have to be front and center in messaging.  Finally, package labels should be readily understood by people that may not have a college degree.

Bottom line: Use the red vs. blue dichotomy sparingly when marketing green.

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Jeff Dubin

Founder Jeff Dubin

Jeff developed the Green Product Adoption Framework™ to strategically assist green marketers in capturing more consumers for their green products.

Jeff applies groundbreaking research to help green marketers bridge the gap between consumers' environmental attitudes and their green purchasing behavior.

Study

Sustainability in the Mainstream: Moving Green Household Cleaner & Personal Care Products to Center Stage

This syndicated January 2010 research study explores women's purchasing of green household cleaners and personal care products.

It shows marketers how to achieve mainstream market success by effectively leveraging drivers of and confronting barriers to green buying.

"Sustainability in the Mainstream" is based on Green Meridian's fall 2009 quantitative research with 628 women and in-depth interviews with an additional 35 women.