Shiny Green Button

Photo credit: From Robbie Veldwijk on Flickr

Back in April, Fast Company ran this story pitting Walmart against Target in the corporate responsibility ring. Target had the advantage in areas such as sustainable seafood and human rights, but Fast Company declared Walmart the champ. Why?

One big reason is the Sustainability Consortium, Walmart’s massive effort to bring academia and industry together to develop a new standard in product life-cycle reporting. Another reason: Target had made progress toward becoming a more sustainable business, but it didn’t have a plan. Target hadn’t published any specific goals related to sustainability or spelled out how it planned to measure progress.

Now, eight months later, Target jumps back in the ring with its Here for Good initiative. The initiative outlines goals and milestones toward achieving them in four key areas: education, environment, well-being, and safety and preparedness.

In terms of size, supply chain and revenue, Walmart is so much larger than Target, it doesn’t seem fair to compare the two. But, then again, why not? There’s no doubt that competition between companies with their reach will be good for corporate responsibility in the retail sector and beyond.

Last week, Unilever announced its 2020 Sustainable Living Plan, with the financial goal of doubling its business while accomplishing three ambitious sustainability goals: to halve the environmental footprint of its products, help a billion people improve their health by encourage things like frequent hand washing and water purification, and source 100 percent of agricultural raw materials sustainably.

The plan is available online, in an easy-to-navigate, user-friendly format. The site combines Unilever’s narrative for what it wants to do and how it plans to do it with supporting data, including greenhouse gas, water and waste reporting for individual uses of 70 percent of Unilever’s products.

A key point at the heart of the story Unilever is telling: Truly sustainable growth requires a symbiotic relationship between the company and its customers. Unilever says more than two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions and half the water used in its products’ life cycle come from consumer use. When it comes to soaps, shampoos and shower gels, a full 95 percent of greenhouse gas emissions result from consumer use.

So, Unilever is not afraid of throwing a wet blanket on the hot shower, delivering the explicit message that changing consumer behavior is critical to meeting its goals.

Next year, in the U.S., Unilever’s  “Turn off the tap” campaign will try to persuade consumers to shave minutes from their showers. How the message will be communicated to consumers is yet to be revealed—it certainly won’t be as simple as those back-of-bottle directions that got us to lather, rinse and repeat. But if the company succeeds, and I hope it does, it will set a new standard for how to not only engage, but involve, consumers in successful corporate responsibility.

AHA! had a fabulous experience at the Opportunity Green conference last week. Thanks to all who made it possible, and who contributed to such an engaging, enriching couple of days. As official bloggers for the conference, our writers had the chance to see just about every session. Here’s what they learned at some of their favorites:

100 MPG is possible. Now. Meet this years X Prize winners.

Affluent consumers still seek an emotional connection with the brands in their lives. Here are a few more insights from Dwell president and publisher Michela O’Connor Abrams.

Even consumers who already have the tools to be more energy efficient need a nudge in the right direction. Smart grid experts say simplicity is key.

Corporate philanthropy is alive and well, with help from organizations like 1% for the Planet. 

Carbon mapping, with information reported right on an individual product, is the next step in the path to transparency. Find out what’s happening now.

And, congratulations to the OG competition winners: Ride-sharing startup Zimride won the innovative green startup competition; and The Life Box, creators of a forest in a shipping box, won the innovative product design competition.

Were you at the conference? What bit of insight stuck with you? Post a comment and let us know!

Today’s Wall Street Journal article titled, “The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility,” has our hackles raised around here today. The basic gist of the argument is that companies exist to maximize profits, and social responsibility puts profit at risk. The author advocates for leaving social good to government and corporate watchdogs. Here’s a tidbit:

Executives are hired to maximize profits; that is their responsibility to their company’s shareholders. Even if executives wanted to forgo some profit to benefit society, they could expect to lose their jobs if they tried—and be replaced by managers who would restore profit as the top priority. The movement for corporate social responsibility is in direct opposition, in such cases, to the movement for better corporate governance, which demands that managers fulfill their fiduciary duty to act in the shareholders’ interest or be relieved of their responsibilities.

Provocative argument, but it seems a little short-sighted and simplistic to me. What about the positive impact of CSR on brand reputation? On employee productivity and innovation? What about its potential to reduce risk? I dare say, that’s just a short list of benefits that are all in line with shareholder interests, and therefore are a reason for corporate executives to make CSR a part of their agenda. Also, the author seems to be making the assumption that short-term profits are best for shareholders. What about long-term, sustainable success and the viability of the company?

What’s your response to the WSJ article?

That’s how Gil Friend kicked off the first full day of the Sustainable Brands conference yesterday.

It was a powerful and surprising statement. It showed how far sustainability has come from the days when environmentalists were labeled “tree huggers.” Today, it’s become another part of the business landscape. Companies aren’t demonstrating social and environmental responsibility because it’s nice. They’re doing it because it gives them a competitive advantage.

Friend’s statement also emphasized the urgency and complexity of our challenge. You just can’t afford to be nice when climate change threatens to turn our home into a blistering, sooty rock. You can’t afford to be nice when you are reinventing the industrial engine of the economy.

Still, change is hard. Bruce McGregor from IDEO told us yesterday that only 10 percent of people are successful in making a change when faced with a life-or-death situation. There are an awful lot of smokers out there who can’t kick the habit after a diagnosis of cancer, and plenty of people fail to exercise and eat better even after developing type I diabetes. Just telling someone to change because it’s good for them doesn’t mean they will do it.

Now, here we all are—facing a life-or-death situation—and still drinking water out of plastic bottles, flushing bleach down the drain, driving our cars.

As marketers and communicators, the lesson is to stop talking to consumers about how they can feel good about their more eco-friendly purchase or their microloan. Only a handful of consumers buy because they want to do good for the planet, and recent research by Fruitful Strategy shows that 24 percent of people are “rejecters” of green products, purposefully avoiding products with green messages on the label. Most people are not buying or behaving green out of altruism, but because it also makes them feel more secure, comfortable or attractive—or it saves them money.

So it’s time for sustainability to stop being so nice. We have to be sustainable and beautiful. Sustainable and healthy. Sustainable and simple. Sustainable and affordable. Our future depends on it.

AHA! is heading to the Sustainable Brands conference next week, for four days packed full of CSR goodness. We’ll be reporting back throughout the week, right here on Shiny Green Button, or you can follow our tweets at http://twitter.com/AHAwriters.

Photo credit: Daniel*1977 on Flickr

Over at GreenBiz.com, Tim Mohin, director of corporate responsibility at AMD, offers insights from this month’s Ceres conference in Boston and poses an interesting question:

“If so many companies are producing data on environmental, social and governance issues, who is reading all these reports? And, what are the data being used for?”

Mohin describes a scene at the Ceres awards ceremony, when a representative of Seventh Generation accepted the award for best sustainability report in the small and medium business category and asked the audience how many people had actually read the winning report.

The response? Chirping crickets and a few hands.

But, when he asked how many people had read their own company’s report, almost all hands were in the air.

Mohin goes on to say that CSR reporting can offer more than a window into a company’s programs; it can be useful as a mirror, to engage employees and inform improvements in a company’s CSR strategy moving forward. An excellent point, but I can’t get past that first question: why should anyone read a company’s CSR report?

Mohin identifies a gap that we communicators need to fill. The data companies collect for CSR reporting is a goldmine for stories with relevance beyond employees and investors and industry analysts.

For example, we can take the data out of the report and into the real world,  putting one company’s accomplishments in the larger context of its industry and global efforts. We can connect the dots between corporate sustainability efforts and the products consumers see on the shelf. We can add texture to data about employee volunteerism by highlighting who benefits from it and how others can pitch in.

When we use corporate responsibility as a frame for a company’s larger brand story, we can encourage external audiences—consumers, suppliers, peers and even competitors— to not only read about its sustainability efforts, but support them and also consider their own.

Here’s an example from our own portfolio. We helped HP develop its comprehensive global citizenship report, but we also used the data to create a business-magazine style companion piece for a consumer audience. Would you read this?

Photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt on Flickr

As I was cruising through our blog archives the other day, I realized something. We’re two years old this month!

In our first post, Christian Hicks pondered the role corporations play—and the role they could play—in raising environmental awareness.
Since then, we’ve immersed ourselves in an exploration of how brands, communications and sustainability come together. And, we’ve challenged ourselves to figure out how they can work together in ways that are good for business, good for people and good for the planet.

To celebrate our birth month, we’ll take a look back at what we’ve discovered along the way—insights that have come from and been valuable to the communications work we do every day for our clients.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in two years, but whether we’re talking about the financial sector or technology, advertising or corporate responsibility reports, one theme emerges over and over again: even though the sustainability landscape feels like new territory for many, the fundamentals of good communications still apply. Just as we suspected.

Check out these posts from the past—still relevant today—and you’ll see what I mean. Words matter. Respecting your audience is crucial. Storytelling connects and engages people in powerful ways.

But, don’t think for a second that we writers aren’t open to something new. We also wonder, will our changing world change how we communicate?

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Photo credit: Water Lemon on Flickr

An EcoGeek reader who subscribes to both National Geographic and Wired found two very different messages recently from Kohler, the company known for its sleek, aesthetically pleasing plumbing fixtures.

In National Geographic, an evocative image of clear water splashes across the page, along with a conservation message about Kohler’s water-saving products and the URL for the company’s microsite www.savewateramerica.com.

In Wired, Kohler offers a highly stylized image of a duo in a Dancing with the Stars-style big-finish pose. They’re standing in a room-sized shower looking fierce, as nine multi-nozzle showerheads blast them with what Kohler’s product info calls “a deluge even Mother Nature would envy.”

Some EcoGeek commenters call this hypocrisy and greenwashing. Others are defending Kohler’s right to target niche audiences, which is a common and even “best” practice in marketing.

The problem here isn’t that the company is sending different messages. The fact is, it’s sending mixed messages. And, those mixed messages are reaching the same audience, not different target markets. NatGeo nature lovers like to geek out on Wired tech gear; water conservationists still like an amazing shower, but they’d prefer the low-flow variety.

As sustainability and environmental responsibility flood the mainstream, this is a fundamental communications problem that marketers will need to solve. Companies that want to do their part for the environment on one hand (Kohler offers water-saving products and also donates them to Habitat for Humanity), but who still profit from not-so-sustainable offerings on the other will want to promote both ends of the spectrum, from green to luxe.

If clients don’t integrate sustainability into everything they do, how can communicators weave it into an authentic, credible brand story? Have you had a similar experience?

Photo credit: Lel4nd on Flickr

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal contained an article about the chocolate giant Nestle’s recent troubles with activists. The issue: Nestle’s use of palm oil from a supplier accused of razing rainforests to get it.

Activists took advantage of social media outlets like Facebook and YouTube to raise awareness. Nestle responded by asking Google to remove the protesters’ videos, citing copyright violation, and threatened to delete comments from the company Facebook page. Bad idea. Nestle’s defensive actions only riled up the activists even more.

I couldn’t help but think of the situation in terms of personality types. If Nestle were a person, they would be a curmudgeonly introvert, demanding to be left alone, waving a fist and yelling at the crazy kids to stay off its property—or else.

What social media requires is an extrovert, someone who likes people, who wants to listen and engage. Someone who is interested in the conversation and the buzz that comes from pinging ideas back and forth.

Some marketing experts are advising Nestle to shut down its Facebook page altogether, according to the Wall Street Journal. But it seems like the worst possible time to shy away. Here’s an idea for you, Nestle: Hire the most outgoing, sociable person (or team) to manage your social media strategy. Give them the power to be transparent—let them blab about all the details of your progress so your customers can follow along as you take steps to address your palm oil problem. Let them get to know your critics, and treat them like friends with a bit of constructive criticism, rather than adversaries. The more open and honest Nestle can be, the better chance they have of turning their critics into champions.