Last Tuesday I attended the launch of Connecting Green Alliance’s new brand name, The Intertwine. Metro President David Bragdon introduced the new brand at the Keen world headquarters to a crowd of perhaps 75 people, including U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley. The Intertwine “is our connected network of parks, trails, and natural areas in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metropolitan region.”

I was there to observe the launch and the new brand from the branding perspective (I view brands as experiences; everything you see, feel, hear, touch, smell, think about a company, product, or service, comprises brand).

The good:

• The launch presentation: It focused on people and how they fit in The Intertwine. Each slide depicted a contributor to The Intertwine’s creation - government and Metro officials, nonprofit representatives - on the backdrop of their favorite natural area and with a sign stating what they like to do there. It presented a great overview of what comprises The Intertwine, what agencies contributed and support it, and what all you can do - perfect for the audience of internal stakeholders. And at a great venue.
• Brand name: I like the absence of the word green or similar from the new name. The meaning of “intertwine” fits with what the name represents, reaching for the higher, meta level.
• Logo: Sockeye Creative did an adequate and clean, if not the most original, job. (Has everything in design been already done?)
• Collateral: I applaud the minimalism, at least at the launch - brochure, buttons, two handouts, and poster signs.

The rest:

• Two launches: The event targeted people who were involved in creating the network. The Intertwine will be launched for the public in the fall, on National Parking Day, inexplicably after the main outdoors season.
• Brand name: Turning verbs into nouns (or vice-versa) is always tricky, as it creates another hurdle for a new brand name. I’m not sure The Intertwine pulls it off, but perhaps it’s just a matter of getting used to it (which begs the question whether the brand name is right, if I have to get used to it). My idiosyncratic association when I hear “twine” is a hockey net.
• Logo: While the mark elements suggest the area’s four counties fit together into a coherent piece, I fail to see a network. The mark also suggests a right-left rotation, which grinds against the left-right flow of text. Finally, the nitpicky me says the subdued earthy tones in the logo render inconsistently on different media.
• Website: The complete, interactive version is due for the public launch on September 18, 2009. Now I’m three months without maps, themed itineraries, and resources.

With that said, whatever they’re called or whether I like it, I have and will continue to enjoy the natural areas, parks, and trails the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area has to offer. I invite you to do the same: this summer, visit Portland!

In the meantime, whether you’re from the Portland area or not, please share your thoughts about The Intertwine in comments.

***

Other event documentation:

• Recap on BikePortland.org. Check out the comments, too, proof that even in the People’s Republic of Portland, people have mixed feelings about their government. Also note the new brand name has trouble resonating, though the commenters are hardly a representative sample.
• Photos by Scott Mizee aka npGREENWAY

I normally don’t read corporate sustainability reports, and even if I did, I’d hesitate to review one. But when I saw the ShoreBank Pacific 2007-2008 Sustainability Report and Integrated Financials (”Report”) in my inbox, I resolved to suppress my habit. My motivation: I was curious because I’ve been watching ShoreBank Pacific for a while.

The bank’s mission is to “profitably assist businesses, and through them their communities, to be sustainable in economic, social, and environmental practices.” It makes loans to “for the specific purpose of improving the health and vitality of our communities and strengthening the rural-to-urban economic link within the Northwest.” To that end, the bank uses the Natural Step framework to evaluate the long-term impact of each customer’s business on the world around it, i.e. not only a company’s financial but also social and environmental aspects.

What does a triple-bottom line bank say about its sustainability efforts in the middle of a recession which originated in finance?

The Report is only the second accounting of the bank’s sustainability practices and accomplishments. Written in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative framework, it is an internal self-assessment, unverified by any third party (self-reporting is one of the reasons I avoid corporate reports). The Report compares the 2007-2008 period with the previous 2006 period, detailing the bank’s efforts, accomplishments, and improvements in the areas of

• governance - who’s who
• buildings - 2 out of 3 are LEED certified
• services - primarily banking and consulting for sustainable businesses and nonprofits
• business - the financial performance summary indicates the bank is doing well, save for some non-performing assets
• sector focus - the bank focuses on fishing, agriculture, energy, and building and building materials
• Mission Assessment Program - visual evaluation of customers’ improvements (+5%) as well as a self-evaluation (+12%)
• carbon impact of operations and environmental initiatives and policies - the Planet bottom line (travel, energy, office operations, waste management, built environment, and more)
• community - Community Reinvestment Act-rated involvement
• employees - composition, compensation (both getting gender-balanced), training, development, benefits
• communications - primarily the EcoNotes newsletter
• partners
• financials - more detailed look at the bank’s finances

The Report also highlights a number of the bank’s customers and their efforts in sustainability, and profiles the bank’s “Science Officer” (sustainability officer) Kathleen Sayce.

The bank does have a lot to show for itself in terms of sustainability. Its systemic view of business should be a model, and I’m glad to see it highlighted in case study after case study. It measures and accounts for its own and its customers’ efforts and accomplishments. It makes money, works to limit its environmental impact, and benefits its community. It’s a change agent, which works to continually improve its triple-bottom line.

In addition to sustainability, the bank knows its marketing (corporate-speak is another reason why I rarely read corporate communications like reports). As can be expected, the Report’s language is positive and upbeat, though thankfully without being annoyingly back-patting. The Report highlights only the good stuff in detail, while shortcomings are presented as generalized opportunities, as in “We recognize that we have areas for improvement, and welcome the challenge of becoming a more sustainable company.”

Admirably, the Report states it “isn’t only about highlighting what we are doing well, but perhaps more importantly, what areas need improvement.” However, in contrast to 20 or so pages of detailed information and hard data about past performance, the goals for the 2009-2010 reporting period are summarized in a single-page table with scant metrics. It seems the bank will only compare its accomplishments from period to period and not against measurable objectives. Perhaps a good alternative would be to state the objectives next to the accomplishments rather than separating the two.

Of course, there’s only so much a company can or should say about its inner workings. Yet only one other Portland company’s sustainability report has crossed my desk - New Seasons Market’s short Sustainability: Walking our talk, Progress to Date - 2009 - which, in a city whose economic development strategy seeks to “build the most sustainable economy in the world”, is a bit underwhelming. (If you know of any other sustainability reports by Portland-based companies, please post the links in comments.) The mere publication of the Report is, therefore, a good thing.

Have you read this report? What do you think? How does it stack up against other sustainability reports? And, how do triple-bottom line companies’ sustainability reports compare with traditional companies’ sustainability reports?

Whether you’re a Sustainable Marketing Blog subscriber or a casual reader (on a “read by”), I appreciate your reading and commenting on the content here. Like you, I have a presence elsewhere on the web, too. Let’s connect!

• Connect with me on LinkedIn
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Other places I frequent less, but use every now and then (there’s only so much time in a day after all):

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Thank you for being a part of my and the Sustainable Marketing Blog community.

Sincerely,

Peter Korchnak

“People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must.” –Michael Mandelbaum, via Thomas Friedman

In his Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business, Joel Makower bemoans the studies on American consumers’ attitudes about purchasing green products: for decades research has shown consumers want green but are not actually buying it. Makower lists two main reasons for the gap between concern and consumerism:

1. the communication of what difference consumers are making when purchasing green products; and

2. the perception that beyond their environmental attributes green products deliver inferior benefits.

In other words, sustainability has a marketing problem. I’ve identified a few additional, and very much inter-related, marketing barriers to the adoption of sustainability. Each of these opens new opportunities for more successful communication and adoption of sustainability.

• Push. Sustainability gets pushed to consumers by impersonal brands trying to capitalize on the new market. Green- or rainbow-colored ads, commercials, pop-outs, and other interruptions overwhelm consumers, as does the multitude of claims. There’s too much selling and not enough storytelling and conversation. It’s lazy, ineffective, and ‘old’ marketing, which treats people like wallets not the individuals they are.

• Social proof, or, rather, lack thereof. If people don’t see other people like them engaging in sustainable consumption, they won’t do it. Keeping up with the Joneses is a powerful instinct, but people need to know how the Joneses are doing. A hybrid in the driveway is one thing, knowing the neighbor’s energy or water consumption (or savings) is another.

• Messaging. Sustainability often comes in a holier-than-thou, self-righteous mantle, seemingly ignorant of people’s dislike of being preached at or be told what to do. Similarly, guilt tripping or fear mongering to induce consumption of sustainable products will fail in the long-run.

• Complex product. Sustainability is complicated, what with its systems thinking and triple bottom line and closed loops. When you try to sell the triple bottom line to single-bottom line consumers, it’s a tough bottleneck to overcome. What’s more, human mind is not designed for thinking; thinking takes energy away from other capacities, which are more important for survival, like memory, sight, or movement.

• Curse of knowledge. The more you know about something, the more difficult it becomes for you to communicate it to anyone who doesn’t. You think everyone knows what you do, so it’s hard to imagine they don’t, and your language reflects your vantage point. Sustainability speaks like that.

• Idea acceptance. People are more accepting of ideas that align with what they already know and believe, and resist or suppress those that conflict with their views. The barrier is particularly high when people digest information in an analytical, as opposed to story, mindset. Ironically, conflicting information can also reinforce the original views.

• Adoption of innovation. The adoption of innovation starts with innovators and early adopters; further adoption by the early and late majorities is a numbers game whose success partly depends on overcoming other barriers to adoption. Marketing to the middle of the market is, of course, attractive, but in order for a new product to be mass-adopted, the snowball of adoption must be rolling first.

• Saturation. Or, too much green. Sustainability has become so ubiquitous consumers no longer see it or even choose to ignore it. Green - sustainability is supposed to be green…or is it? - has blended into the background. It’s all green noise.

• Backlash. To people on the outside, sustainability looks like a major bandwagon, with all sorts of companies jumping on to make a buck. Every bandwagon creates a backlash, it’s almost natural. Post-greenwashing, trust disappears easily and is tough to regain.

What other barriers to the adoption of sustainability can you think of? Please share in comments.

The downturn is hammering a lot of people and businesses. Spending and donations are down. Layoffs and foreclosures are ravaging communities. Industries across the board are suffering. Yes, things are bad and will continue to be for a while. I get it, I’m affected just like the next person or business.

I can’t help but see, though, that the recession has become a convenient excuse for everything that’s going wrong.

True, a lot of what goes in your personal or business life results from events beyond your control. You can do nothing about some things and you accept that. Yet the recession is a result of a myriad of individual actions, not some intangible macro forces. Accepting responsibility is hard, so it becomes tempting to blame the recession for everything.

The line between experiencing a diminished sense of self-efficacy and resigning yourself to it is thin. If you doubt your abilities to affect change, you’ll avoid taking difficult action; if you think you can’t do it, you won’t even try.

The same goes for business. Take graphic designers. My copywriter friend Mike Russell went to a graphic designers’ Meetup group recently to find it a depressing affair, with freshly laid-off young souls commiserating over microbrews. Earlier this week I heard Josh Nusbaum, the graphic designer in my networking group Bridges, say he was close to being unable to accept new business. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Another example: The Atlantic reports Americans are “pulling consumption into the home” and “feathering their nests”: products/services, which enable people to consume leisure in the comfort of their homes, still sell. Netflix, home/personal electronics, prime food, quality cookware, and other “affordable luxuries” are registering relatively good sales.

Businesses doing a good job of satisfying needs - and I mean real human needs, not manufactured wants - do well. Some products do that in boom times, others in busts. Just as every company experiences seasonality, every company experiences the economic cycle differently. The Netflixes of the world do well in booms and in busts. The number and popularity of food carts in Portland, Oregon are exploding. Try to get the new Prius without a waiting list.

More generally, if the recession has hit you hard and you don’t have a solid, people-focused marketing strategy, well, it’s not just the recession that’s at fault.

Sustainable businesses have a tremendous opportunity these days. Social responsibility is their middle name. Let’s get to work.

A friend recently asked me to do something I have no bandwidth for. I agreed to do it almost without hesitation. Why?

The episode got me thinking about the role and use of the three classical modes of persuasion in marketing.

Logos = Rational argument

The logical argument appeals to your rationality when making decisions. It uses data and facts to prove its point. The information is easily verifiable. In sustainable marketing, the rational argument may revolve around price (discounts, deals, buying in bulk), cost savings (compact fluorescent light bulbs, energy-efficient equipment, double-pane windows), or, to a degree, environmental benefits (% of recycled content, chemical composition, organic).

Every statistic or fact can be presented in a number of ways, however, which is where greenwashing comes in. The rational argument also infuses decision-making with a market evaluation framework; offer rewards for the purchasing decision and you’re stuck having to cultivate loyalty with more rewards. Using rational arguments also runs the risk of customer flight if competition comes up with a better deal, or, as with too many green products, performance fails to meet the expectation.

Pathos = Emotional argument

The emotional argument aims to elicit an irrational, emotional response based on some deeper alignment between the source and recipient. Emotional appeals without value, attitude, or belief alignment will fall on deaf ears. Positive emotional appeals tend to be more effective, as do arguments emphasizing immediate reward. Emotional arguments - think children, puppies/kittens, forests/meadows/fields, happy families, healthy people, wind turbines/solar panels - create positive associations with products or services. Negative appeals, emphasizing negative future consequences of present inaction - the-sky-is-falling argument - are less effective, though fear marketing seems to be here to stay.

The danger in using emotional arguments exists if they have no foundation in reality, if there’s no there there. Emotional exhaustion can also be an issue: how many puppies can the consumer stand? Similarly, overuse of stimuli may lead to resistance or blindness to them; if you see puppies enough times, you cease to see them.

More often than not, the rational and the emotional argument go together in marketing: the emotional argument generates the pull and the rational argument confirms and helps rationalize the decision. For example, by buying this product I’m helping the planet and I’m saving money.

Ethos = Character argument

The rational, emotional, or rational-emotional arguments lend credibility to the source of the message, be it a person or a company. So while the logos and pathos originate in the message, the character argument is connected to the communication’s participants. More accurately, the character argument springs from the recipients’ trust in and respect for the information source. Where the rational argument checks out and the emotional argument pulls the right heart strings, trust begins. You’ll do anything for someone you trust, even if the rational argument is false and the emotional argument is transparent (puppies, once again).

The three arguments are closely intertwined and interact in a complex chicken-and-egg dance. You can’t have credibility without correct data; you can’t generate a positive emotional response without being trusted; and so on. Yet the character argument is the strongest and the most sustainable of the three. Sure enough, it rests on the logos and the pathos, but it acquires its own shape, based on trust and respect. It injects a measure of social norms into the decision making, it’s more contextual, more community-based. It is, in part, a moral argument and as such it appeals to something higher than logic or emotion; you can refute a statistic and you can resist an urge, but morality is beyond you.

I agreed to do what the friend was asking not because he had a rational argument (it will be good for your business), or an emotional one (you’ll make the world a better place), both of which he could have made. I agreed because of who asked. If your sustainable organization’s marketing is to succeed, your customers must buy from you not because of any logical reasons or emotional appeals, but because of who you are.

This guest post is from Stuart Foster who blogs at TheLostJacket.com. If you’re interested in guest posting on the Sustainable Marketing Blog, please email me your guest post idea, and let’s take it from there. Thanks!

***

How do you deal with a high end brand online? The very nature of being online insists that it be accessible to everyone. But what if you have positioned your product as something that everyone wants to aspire to? How do you realign those brand goals with the online world of accessibility?

Premium brands like Coach, J. Crew and LL Bean are struggling with this conundrum. So, how do you create a community around a brand that is limiting? Be honest. You have a brand that everyone wants to be a part of. You can use this to your advantage.

How? The notoriety and recognition are already there; use it to your advantage. You just have to know how to pitch the product. For example, I’d love a Burberry or Lacoste shirt. If either brand let me demo their products I’d gladly do so. It would be an interesting case study for marketing position AND the quality of the clothes speaks for themselves.

Experiential marketing (and allowing individuals freedom over how to use the product) will take your brand to another level. Have fun with the product: let people destroy it, personify it, create random videos about it. The key is going to be letting go and being honest about your minimal level of knowledge within the space. If you’ve created a great brand identity you will be amazed at the amount of help you will be able to rely on from the pre-existing community.

Nothing would be cooler to me then Lacoste coming out and saying: “We’d love to be online in a major way. We just don’t know where to start. What do you suggest?” Plenty of evangelists exist, they just need to be appropriately catered to and leveraged.

What are some suggestions of ways you can effectively engage an audience with premium brands beyond the ways that I just mentioned here? Would you go viral video, blog, branch off from your Ajax site? Get creative!

Stuart Foster is a marketing consultant in the Boston area. He specializes in brand management, social media, and blog outreach. He authors a blog at TheLostJacket.com and is a Social Media Strategist at Mullen.

You’ve been working hard to get the word out. It’s out. Now what?

I hear “getting the word out” stated as an objective all the time. We need to get the word out. How do we get the word out? What are the best ways to get the word out? New products/services or initiatives typically fall victim to the getting-the-word-out approach. Nobody knows about this amazing new gizmo, let’s get the word out, quick!

Before you dash to get the word out, ask yourself these questions first:

• What is the word saying, what is it about?
• Does anyone care, about the word or what the word is saying?
• Does anyone want or need to know what you’re saying and what you’re getting the word out about?
• Does the word you’re getting out mean anything to anyone?
• What’s the benefit of what the word is about?
• How does the word fit into other things you’re saying (sentence, paragraph, story)?
• Is what you’re saying or talking about making the world a better place? Is it necessary?
• What do you expect the word’s recipients to do once they read the word?
• How are you measuring the success of your getting-the-word-out effort?
• How will you know the word achieved its goals and objectives?

In fact, forget about getting the word out. It’s push, and you can only push so far. Create something people will want to hear because it means something to them, and they’ll pull the word out of you when and where and how they want it.

Word.

I read about marketing, business, and sustainability somewhat haphazardly, picking up recommendations from colleagues or online. To gauge what books are considered must-reads, I recently ran an informal poll on LinkedIn (Sustainability Professionals and GreenBiz.com groups, and Green Business Answers) asking, “What three books from the last 10 years would you recommend as basic texts on sustainability in business?” The exercise yielded 33 responses, recommending 39 books. Here’s the tally. Some books are more than 10 years old, and some respondents recommended fewer/more than 3 volumes.

1.) 5 mentions:

• Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value and Build Competitive Advantage by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston

2.) 4 mentions:

• Cradle To Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Brangart
• Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins

3.) 3 mentions:

• The Business Guide to Sustainability: Practical Strategies and Tools for Organizations by Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard
• The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability by Paul Hawken
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman
• The Next Sustainability Wave: Building Boardroom Buy-in by Bob Willard and Hunter Lovins

2.) 2 mentions:

• Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit by Al Gore
• The Sustainability Advantage: Seven Business Case Benefits of a Triple Bottom Line by Bob Willard and John Elkington
• The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and Theodor Seuss Geisel
• Sustainable Value: How the World’s Leading Companies Are Doing Well by Doing Good by Chris Laszlo

5.) 1 mention:

• A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity by Nicholas Stern
• Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future by Jeff Goddell
• Biomimcry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus
• The Bridge at the End of the World James Gustave Speth
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner
• Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems by Hart Stuart
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
• Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs
• Eco-industrial Strategies: Unleashing Synergy Between Economic Development and the Environment by Edward Cohen-Rosenthal and Judy Musnikow
• Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything by Daniel Goleman
• The End of Nature by Bill McKibben
• The Entropy Law and the Economic Process by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
• Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution by Auden Schendler
• Getting to the Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing, How Business Can Lead the Way to New Possibilities by John E Renesch
• Good News for a Change: How Everyday People are Helping the Planet by David Suzuki and Holly Dressel
• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein
• Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow’s Crisis…Today by Russell L. Ackoff, Jason Magidson, and Herbert J. Addison
• Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts by Marc J Epstein, John Elkington, and Herman Leonard
• Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model by Ray Anderson
• Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick by Ken Iverson
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment by James Gustave Speth
• The Report of the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, that was published by Oxford University Press
• Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business by Joel Makower and Cara Pike
• Sustainability: The Corporate Challenge of the 21st Century by Dexter Dunphy and Jodie Benveniste
• Toward sustainable development by Jeroen van den Bergh and Jan van der Straaten
• Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical’s Toxic Century by Jack Doyle
• The Truth about Green Business by Gil Friend

I’ll be reviewing some of these here over the next few months.

***

UPDATE, 6/22/09: I received a few more responses after posting. The stats and tally above reflect the new votes. The intro is new too, following a glitch during the update.

A recent New York Times Happy Day Blog post reminded me how the need to be in control and actually being in control matter. Research has demonstrated that when people lose control over their situations, they get depressed, stressed, and sick. The need to be in control is so strong that people are prone to feel in control even when they aren’t.

The recession may make you feel like you don’t have control over the future of your sustainable organization. You’ve buckled down because everybody else has and because you lack certainty about what’s going to happen next. You feel powerless, in the face of the large macro forces shaping your environment.

Do this: 1) Accept that some things are and will always be beyond your control. Quit stressing about what you cannot change. 2) Then, take charge. The world needs you and what you have to offer.

Which brings me to marketing. Your customers are buying less or stopped buying altogether. You’re losing customers and new ones are ever harder to come by. Is this really the time to stop or scale down your marketing efforts? I’m not saying step up your marketing or do more with less. I’m saying do the best with what you have. I’m saying do marketing more smartly, more efficiently, and more effectively.

Simply pausing, taking stock, and analyzing your options will give you the sense of control you crave: What are you trying to achieve? Who are your customers, what are their needs, and how can you best satisfy them? What are your competitors doing these days? What strengths and positive trends (yes, they still are out there) can you capitalize on? What weaknesses can you work on fixing while the economy gets out of the ditch?

Basic questions, all, but uncertainty comes hand in hand with fear. Fear paralyzes. Paralysis eliminates control. Take it back. It’s not about fate. It’s about your individual action.

If the recession takes the wind out of your sails, it’s time to start rowing or start the engine. You know where you’re going, right?