Socially and environmentally responsible business is great for the environment and can also be good for business.

Genuine green businesses offering environmentally friendly products and services have huge potential for growth as more and more consumers make purchasing decisions based on environmental impact.

But in a world of increasing consumer cynicism and intolerance of green business claims that are little more than ‘greenwashing’, it is essential for genuine environmentally friendly businesses to get their green marketing right if they are to see a change in their bottom line.

Green marketing is a critical part of any eco-business strategy, but how many green businesses market themselves in a way that their customers understand and identify with?

What I am talking about is explaining to your customers the green benefits of using your products and services and not just extolling the virtues of your products’ green features.

If, for example, you make environmentally friendly garden furniture, don’t repeatedly tell me that you use FSC-certified wood to make your chairs and that your manufacturing process meets X, Y and Z industry standards.

Tell me that by purchasing your chairs, I will be happy in the knowledge that I have not contributed to the destruction of the world’s rain forests.

That’s what I care about and that’s what motivates my purchase.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use industry standards and accreditations on your products and in your marketing literature…they are, after all, the rubber stamp on green marketing and they show me that your green claims are genuine.

But they should not be relied upon as the only method of communicating your green credentials as they do not adequately tap into the emotional reasons behind my purchase.

The biggest mistake you can make with your green marketing is thinking that the rubber stamp of environmental compliance is all your need to verify your green business claims and sell your products and services.

And don’t fall into the trap of assuming that because I want to make a green purchase, I understand all the technical jargon and industry terminology relating to sustainable business.

Talk to me about your passion for the planet and protecting the environment and how this is echoed in your products and services. It’s our common ground and is a language we both understand.

And it’s what sells.

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Ladies, ladies. When it comes to lingerie shopping, you can forget gel padding and multi-way straps – they’re soooo last year.

On top of every twenty-first century woman’s list of bra must-haves in 2008 should be the ability to power an iPod.

And thanks to the international lingerie brand, Triumph, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

Yup, bizarre as it may sound, you can now add ‘photovoltaic’ to your list of demands when shopping for a new bra.

I haven’t quite got my head around the refillable water pouches and whether they allow you to adjust your bust size according to your thirst levels, but what works for the camel…

The eco-bra is likely to have limited appeal in its current form because putting clothes on over your lingerie renders the solar panel useless. So not great for those women missing the exhibitionist gene.

But it certainly gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase ‘girl power.’

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As Ma Yanjun drained the dregs of his sixty-sixth bottle of beer, there was probably nothing further from his mind than hitting the international headlines for what he chose to do with the collection of beer bottles that his taste for lager had accrued.

Ma Yanjun had a problem – a lack of hot water to the family home for bathing and showering.

Thankfully for his family and for those living in close proximity, Ma Yanjun found the solution to his somewhat fragrant problem at the bottom of a beer bottle.

The accidental entrepreneur invented a solar-powered heating system from 66 empty beer bottles and a handful of hosepipes, which he attached to a board and connected together to allow water to pass through them. He then installed the system on the roof of his house so the sunlight would heat the water as it passed through the bottles before flowing into the bathroom as hot water.

Now to the casual observer, it might seem a little absurd to suggest that a beer bottle could be the answer to a family’s daily cleansing difficulties. But Ma Yanjun didn’t think so and he wasn’t wrong. He successfully generated enough hot water for all three members of his family to shower every day.

And, as Albert Einstein once said, “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

And he knew a thing or two.

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Who’d have thought that the strength of a brand and a few chocolate fishes could transform my dislike of ice cream into a full-blown, cool and creamy love affair?

Having spent an entire summer working in a path-lab testing ice cream for the bacteria that cause food poisoning, it’s fair to say that I went off the stuff for a good while.

Yup, for one long hot summer as you were reaching for the tropical Solero in the heat of the midday sun, I was reaching for the agar, breaking off a chunk of supermarket own brand choc-ice and placing it in a petri dish in a rather whiffy incubator for a week to test for e-coli.

The things you do for money as a student.

So for a number of years, the sight of ice cream in any of its many guises turned my stomach. That was until I discovered Phish Food – a genius creation from the ice cream gods that are Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

From the very first day I crunched through one of those delightfully rich fudge fishes buried deep in the swirls of chocolate ice cream, squishy marshmallows and sticky caramel, I was hooked.

And since that day, my love for Ben and Jerry’s – the brand and the ice cream – has grown and grown.

I love far too many of their ice cream flavours than is good for my diet, I love the concept of the ‘flavor [sic] graveyard’ and I love their approach to socially and environmentally responsible business.

Ben and Jerry’s is a company that doesn’t mess about when it comes to green business (or managing its ‘eco-hoofprint’, as they call it).

Their packaging is made from 90% renewable materials and is recyclable, they use sustainable transport and source locally wherever possible and they’re even working to help cows become less windy.

But they don’t stop at reducing their own carbon footprint. In 2005, the Ben and Jerry’s Climate Change College was launched under the ingenious banner of “If it’s melted, it’s ruined.”

The idea behind the college was to build up an international network of climate conscious citizens and to inspire grass-roots practical action on climate change. Each year, one young adult from every participating country wins a place in the college where they receive nine months of business mentoring and get to implement their own solution to climate change.

The college is a great way of nurturing the green business minds of the future so that more and more of the products on sale are environmentally friendly and business activity has less and less of an impact on the planet.

Ben and Jerry’s is a great role model for any business of any size wanting to do more to protect the environment.

Their proactive, transparent approach to environmentally responsible business and preventing further global warming is a real credit to a company whose sales go through the roof when the sun shines!

For me, there is no udder ice cream than Ben and Jerry’s.

Now that’s brand power.

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Well I’m a little late in blogging about this one as it’s been a hectic week but trust me, I’m as dumbfounded now as I was at around 9:20pm last Wednesday when ‘Team Renaissance’ from The Apprentice announced their killer idea to take the greeting card industry by storm.

It might have occurred a week ago, but it’s as fresh in my memory as if it I’d just emerged from the relative sanctuary of the back of my sofa. It went something like this…

Right, we need to come up with a new greeting card occasion, develop some cracking designs and then persuade some top-notch retailers to stock our cards in their stores by the truckload.

Well one out of three ain’t bad. Unless, that is, you’ve declared on national television that you are the best business thing since sliced bread (or should that be caster sugar?).

Now honesty compels me to admit that the designs the team came up with were quite amusing.

But what, pray tell, were they thinking when they decided to spread the word about the ‘need to be green’ by running off a big pile of cards and then attempting to sell them to some of the biggest names in the industry with a strategy that seemed to revolve around little more than a vitriolic attack on their green credentials?

Not one of the super business savvy apprentice wannabes stopped to think about the blindingly obvious clash of generating a card-sending occasion to preach the environmental message.

Even when one of their own team members admitted to sending fewer cards in an attempt to be more environmentally friendly, they still didn’t twig.

And in the rush to chase the green pound, they forgot to ask one critical question. Who in the name of Sir Alan did they think would buy and send their cards?!

Anyway, greeting cards are soooo last week. I’ve just about managed to prise my curled-up toes from the carpet and feel ready for this week’s challenge.

And being thankful for small mercies, last week I got my very first peek up a Scotsman’s kilt.

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I’ve just been reading in PR Week how three big names in the PR industry this week became the ‘recipients’ of the kind of PR stunt they’re usually involved in planning and executing.

Ogilvy, Lexis PR and JCPR were, I would imagine, slightly taken aback when an orang-utang dropped in to each of their London headquarters.

Now no one really relishes an unannounced visit from a client, but the furry orange visitor was not actually a client of any of the agencies. He (I am making gender assumptions here) was part of a publicity stunt organised by Greenpeace.

The orang-utang was sent to each of the offices to deliver a letter, which called on the agencies to put pressure on one of their clients – Unilever – to change some of its business practices.

Greenpeace is unhappy with Unilever’s choice of suppliers who, it claims, are responsible for the continued destruction of the Indonesian rainforest.

Mariana Paoli, a campaigner for Greenpeace was reported in the PR Week article as saying:

“…Being socially and environmentally responsible should be an issue for leading PR companies, just as it has become for so many of their clients.”

While I agree with this statement, let’s not limit it to the ‘big players’. Small PR agencies working with small businesses have the exact same responsibility, I would argue. A small business is equally as capable of making a bad decision about the impact its activities have on the environment. Don’t we small PR agencies have exactly the same responsibility as our larger counterparts?

I certainly think so.

And I think the Chartered Institute of Public Relations agrees with me. I don’t recall seeing anything in their recently issued ‘environmental sustainability communications’ (green PR) guidelines differentiating the responsibilities of the big PR agencies from those of the small or micro-agencies.

Right, time to put the kettle on. I’ve got a monkey coming for tea.

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Save the planet – become a vegetarian!

Well that’s according to Sir Paul McCartney anyway.

If Macca is to be believed, we need to become a nation (world?) of carrot-munchers in order to tackle climate change.

OK, so it’s slightly flippant of me to refer to vegetarianism as carrot-munching (I was, after all, one myself until the smell of bacon the morning after the night before got the better of me). But are we really supposed to believe that the flatulence of our native Friesians is the cause of the UK’s contribution to global warming?

Flippancy aside, I think this latest piece of advice on what we should be doing to protect the environment and reduce our carbon footprint raises a serious point about how the effects of human behaviour on the planet are communicated and discussed and subsequently reported in the media.

Sir Paul is quote as saying, “I would urge everyone to take this simple step to help our precious environment…”

Let’s think about this for a second. It might be a “simple step” to a long-time, passionate vegetarian, but to the average meat-eating punter who lives for roast beef and Yorkshire puddings on a Sunday and the ‘kill or cure’ rasher sandwich after a heavy night on the beer, it’s not that “simple”.

Asking people who have eaten meat all their life to “simply” give it up is, I would argue, a very BIG step. Failing to recognise this can do more harm than good in the battle to get more people to be climate conscious.

Views around climate change tend to be polarised around two extremes: on the one hand you have those who believe that it definitely exists and if we don’t do something soon we’re all doomed, and on the other hand there are those who dismiss the whole idea as little more than scare mongering and science fiction.

For the great mass of people in the middle, the bickering that goes on between these two extremes of opinion is a real turn off and just results in them tuning out of the green debate altogether.

If we’re serious about being green and getting more and more people to think about how they can reduce their carbon footprint, then these are the very people we need to be engaging with – not alienating!

And the key to engaging people is to find the issues that matter to them, things they are passionate about; not telling them that something completely alien to them is a “simple step” that should be adopted without question.

So if you try and retune someone’s radar to your agenda you’re on a [cow] hiding to nothing. To be successful, you need to understand what people care about and retune your issues to those things.

Right, I’m off to do my research into whether a field full of farting cows produces more methane than a field full of vegetarians.

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Well it’s good news today for those of us who enjoy a drop of the brown stuff every now and again and are always on the lookout for environmentally friendly products.

Adnams brewery announced today that it has launched the UK’s first carbon neutral beer. ‘East Green’, as it is called, apparently has less than a penny’s worth of carbon emissions per bottle, which the brewery has pledged to offset.

The barley for the beer is grown locally in East Anglia (Adnams is based in Suffolk) and the brewing takes place at an eco friendly site in Southwold. The steam generated during the brewing process is recycled and used to heat 90 per cent of the next batch to be brewed.

So it sounds as if East Green might be the tipple of choice for the climate conscious beer drinker.

It’s just a pity that Adnams has chosen one of the FTSE100 companies most likely to indulge in greenwashing to stock the beer.

Anyway, I’m off to find my bottle opener. It must be beer o’clock in the world somewhere…

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So who do you think are the winners and the losers (washers) when it comes to green business credentials?

According to a green washers and green winners survey, Marks and Spencer is considered to be the FTSE100 company with the most favourable green business credentials.

Tesco, on the other hand, was ranked as one of the top companies most likely to indulge in greenwashing.

These are just two of the findings in a survey by Chatsworth Communications, which polled 1,500 journalists, political groups and sustainability experts on the green credentials of the top 100 FTSE companies.

The clear message once again is that, if you’re going to lay claim to being a green business and promote a green image of your company with a green public relations campaign, you simply must follow this up with action.

If you don’t, you are likely to face great criticism and damage to your business reputation.

So don’t be a loser (I can say that word, unlike last week’s wannabe apprentice, Ian Stringer).

If you are going to ‘do’ green public relations, do it as a winner, not as a washer.

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These days it seems that not a day passes by without some reference to the environment and global warming in the media.

And with PR consultants (myself included) banging on about ‘piggy-backing’ on topical news and issues, it’s easy to see why many businesses are tempted to jump on the green bandwagon, labelling their goods and services or business practices as environmentally friendly.

But a word of caution: if the green claims you make about your business cannot be substantiated, you could be accused of ‘greenwashing’.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) recently published a set of guidelines on ‘green PR’, which include a warning about greenwashing.

The term ‘greenwash’ is used to describe business activities where more time and/or money is spent on promoting being green than is spent on actually adopting more environmentally sound business practices.

And greenwashing really isn’t good for business.

Certainly, it may result in an initial flurry of sales from green consumers hungry to buy environmentally sound products from eco-friendly businesses. But in the long term it will do more damage than good to both sales and reputation.

When any loose or unsubstantiated green claims come to light, people will lose trust and respect in the brand, will make no further purchases and will expose the greenwashing to other green consumers.

The CIPR guidelines make a really good point about green PR: it’s OK to promote being green as long as it’s done in conjunction with actively pursuing green business practices.

So if you’re thinking of running a green PR campaign, stick to the facts. Green fiction is not good for the health of your business! Not to mention the planet.

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