I finally read the white paper recently circulating on several green-hued LinkedIn groups, 
“Growing a Green Marketing Strategy: The Basics of Effective Environmental Marketing That Can Help Your Business and the Environment” by Washburn Communication. The paper outlines the steps to creating an effective environmental or green marketing strategy, offering useful and actionable information. At the same time, the report reinforces the principal fallacy of green marketing, both as a term and a concept: green marketing is outside-in, function-based, and uni-dimensional.
1. Green marketing is outside-in. Businesses are introducing green because of external, market pressures, rather than from internal conviction and values. Companies have realized that promoting their greenness can yield market benefits in the fast-growing LOHAS and related segments, and so they’re scrambling to incorporate environmentally-friendly practices and products into their operations. And to polish their image accordingly: green marketing aims to “connect with company mission”. Marketing must be company mission.
2. Green marketing is function-based. Coming in from the outside, marketing is treated as a function of business, rather than its essence. All business decisions are essentially marketing decisions. Rather than a set of tools, whose function is to promote the business and its offering, marketing must be a core business strategy. (See for example, “Marketing That Matters: 10 Practices to Profit Your Business and Change the World”, by Chip Conley and Eric Friedenwald-Fishman.)
3. Green marketing is uni-dimensional. Focusing strictly on the environmental aspects of products or services it aims to promote, green marketing omits the rest of the triple-bottom line, particularly social performance. Green marketing throws social benefits of business into the mix just for good measure, paying it barely any attention. Triple-bottom line marketing has depth and multiple dimensions.
The mainstreaming of sustainability has led to conceptual and terminological confusion. Sustainability tends to be equated with green, rather than the entire triple-bottom line. Sustainable marketing is a more comprehensive term and concept that expresses the depth and range of sustainability and marketing. But beware! Sustainable marketing is not the promotion of sustainability; it’s not a business function or tool. Rather, sustainable marketing is the marketing that supports the triple-bottom line – it’s a business model and strategy.
Care to share how your company uses sustainable marketing as a core business strategy?
