“Green Marketing”

• Definitions range from communications/positioning to operations.

– “Attempting to sell to a particular segment that responds to a particular attribute” e.g., green energy produced from renewable sources sells to consumers who ascribe value to it and are willing to pay a premium.” (DTE)

– “Marketing something because it has environmental appeal. Better: Zero to Landfill, e.g., closing material loops, re-evaluating business models. (Commercial perspective and environmental benefit, but not mutually exclusive.” )(Plug)

“Green Marketing”

• “Green” has negative connotations—and this gets in the way when communicating to consumers and internally.– “Usually means it doesn’t work as well and costs more money” (Plug)

– “People involved in selling green are hesitant. They fear that selling green can hurt the company. We are looking for leaders who can help change that mental model.” (HD)

“Green Marketing”

• It’s risky—communicating and not communicating– “Nike is one of the most targeted companies in the world. If we say too much

about what we’re doing, then we open ourselves up for more grief. They (e.g., Greenpeace) would find the 99 things that we did wrong.” (Nike)

– DTE scored in bottom quartile in a corporate reputation survey of U.S. utilities re: env. performance, env. risk, and env. liability. “Wow! What are the implications there? Is it really about performance and risk and liability, or is it a communications issue? Is there a good relationship between share price and this?” (DTE)

Your Challenges

• How to Make the Business Case

– “We’ve got a green rubber compound..less toxic and cheaper. In trial. “We’re about making business more valuable and less damaging. It’s very much the business case. Just do the right thing is not a good enough reason to do it.” (Nike)

– “How do we play a role in renewables, and can we make money there?” (DTE)

– “Some benefit (of green power) is outside of Plug as enterprise.”

– “Customers want it but are they willing to pay for it? The market isn’t big enough.” (Visteon)

» Cont’d...

Your Challenges (cont’d)

• How to Communicate with Consumers?– “As far as the sustainability piece goes, we don’t know whether consumers want

to hear about that. There is some value, but do we do mass communication or specific communication?” (Nike)

• How do Marketing and Education for Sustainability Fit Together?– “The trick is, there are some issues we’re going to have to educate people on.

We’re going to have to look at our consumer base, know and understand the level they understand the issues, and target our products at that level.” (Nike)

Your Challenges (cont’d)

• How to Get Recognition for What We Do?– “We’ve made a commitment to reducing our emissions 5% below 2005 levels

(including offsets) but we got very little publicity.” (DTE)

• How to Motivate Internal Stakeholders to Communicate Green?– “There’s such a barrier internally that people don’t believe they have the

background knowledge to communicate what they are doing, or don’t believe it’s truly important, e.g., for the retailers.” (Nike)

– “We need to do a better job of flagging the things we do internally and externally, e.g., $30,000 cost savings in plant managing unused chemicals…Most people don’t have any idea that these things are going on. It’s hard because we don’t have a culture that encourages us to brag about things.” (DTE)

» Cont’d...

Implementation Needs

• Tools, materials and processes– “There’s a huge void of (product development) tools, and primarily a lack of

materials and processes that are friendly and affordable.” (Nike)

• Measurements– “We’re trying to put some measurements on our efforts. We want to be able to

quantify what we mean when we say green. We want measurements and quantifications as evidence against arm waving.” …We are thinking of introducing an environmental product declaration for our products.” (PW)

What Wasn’t Mentioned in the Interviews

• Design for Environment (DfE); LCA• Eco-labels (lack thereof, desire for)• Reverse marketing/take back• Syndicated research• New processes for developing products• Successes of other companies you admire

Towards Phase II

How do you want to define this project?

What questions do you want to answer?

Some possibilities...

Going Forward

• How do we identify consumer needs vis a vis sustainability? How are these different or similar to their desires for quality, performance, etc.?

• How do we get traction internally for sustainability? In what ways might we leverage each others’ stories to make the business case?

• What are the implications for our product development processes?

• What metrics can we use to measure our success/greenness? How can we define success?

Going Forward

• How can we work positively with government to help us create the markets we want to be in? (Kate’sQ)

• How do we market our products? What is the role for environmental and sustainability benefits, what is the role for consumer benefits, performance, quality, etc. ? Are they the same?

• What new alliances may need to be formed to achieve our objectives?

• How can we nurture and protect our “eco-innovators”?