Green Around the Globe » Personal Travel Updates

Green: A Gift with Purchase or Emotional Goldmine?

Keith — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:34:39 +0000

Gift with purchase, that is how I use to describe green marketing when I began working with new business partners. I took this approach as it supported the widely held belief that the main-stream American consumer is not going to sacrifice product performance and is unwilling to pay any significant premium for a more sustainable product or service. Witness the SunChips compostable, but noisy packaging disaster from just 2 years ago. Hence, I thought of green product benefits as a “gift with purchase,” a free bonus for choosing one product over another, but not something that can represent a trade off. I had wanted my partners to think of green as the “tie-breaker”, allowing their brands to win the toss-up.

Today, I want to officially call B.S. on this logic.

The fatal flaw in this idea is that it assumes consumers are taking the time to full evaluate primary product benefits, make the determination that they are equal, and then move on to the secondary benefits. I don’t buy it. Focused and singular communications are the most impactful. Cluttered multi-benefit messages get lost and consumers’ quickly lose interest trying to wade through it all. If you have not seen the video below depicting the result of Microsoft designing the iPod box, it is a great example of this effect and worth a quick view. Just imagine how many eco-logos could be slapped on there today!

So if green is not a secondary communication tie-breaker, and it is not a primary product benefit communication for the general market, where does that leave sustainability and green marketing? I think it leaves green marketers promoting more sustainable products in a tremendous position, because let’s face it, being a tie-breaker is not that enviable of a position.

Inspiration recently came to me at the wine store as I reached for the “The Big Green Box” by Pepperwood Grove, a brand from Don Sebastiani & Sons.

The story I told myself as I bought the Big Green Box was that I wanted the very functional benefit common to all boxed wines, the ability to enjoy a glass or two at night without leaving half a bottle in the fridge, becoming slightly oxidized overnight and losing the tastiest aspects of the wine. Most bag-in-the-box wines allow you to enjoy the wine over 4 weeks from when you initially open it with no oxidation. While a nice benefit, the real reason I have recently adopted bag-in-box wines is not an increase in functionality – after all the original box wine, Franzia, has had an identical benefit for the last 25 years. Heck they even trademarked it with WineTap(R). Rather, it is the signal of quality and sophistication that a boxed wine positioned as a more sustainable and greener alternative tells me as the consumer, “you can trust me, I’ll taste good, look how enlightened I am in my eco-conscious packaging.”

I want to make the case that it is these higher order emotional benefits that are the real opportunity for green marketing to shine. Just as a higher price can be a signal of quality, so too can green benefits.

Besides box wine I have another example closer to my work at Johnson & Johnson, that of reprocessed single-use surgical devices. In this category the main functional benefit for hospital customers is significant savings, in many cases up to 50% versus purchasing new devices. And while that is a compelling case for any resource constrained hospital, it seems that the emotional benefit of reducing waste going to landfills and contributing to more sustainable operations is what wins hospitals’ hearts and minds, as evidenced by the category leader Styker Sustainability Solution’s current marketing, website and blog.

With appropriate customer targeting, a green message can allow brands to strike emotional gold.

What categories have you seen where green has or could be used to signal quality and help deliver an emotional benefit for customers?

Backpacker to Business Class Part 3: The Work

Keith — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:26:10 +0000

This is the third and final (for now) post in a series documenting the differences between traveling as a backpacker and as a business traveler. Click to see the first or second post in the series about the differences in the Flying and the Staying. Next I wanted to cover the differences in working while on the road.

This is where the real tradeoffs come in. While it would be great to stay in amazing hotels and fly business class as a backpacker, you just can’t afford to because it is so expensive. And if you are working while backpacking it is usually not for more money than covering your blog hosting costs and maybe a nice night out (in Thailand), hence the hostels and coach class seats. But since J&J is paying, I have a job to do when I get to wherever I am going. And all the sightseeing, eating in great local restaurants and even sleeping in those big comfy beds (no matter how jetlagged you are) comes second to doing excellent work.

Now with good planning and prioritization I have been able to do most of the fun things in addition to delivering great work. On my most recent international work trip to Brazil, I was able to fly down 3 days early and spend some time sightseeing over the weekend in Rio. A couple of my pictures are below.

I also spent some of that time at my hotel doing emails, working on PowerPoint decks and making phone calls. Although most of it was on Monday while it was stormy and raining.

I would also like it to be known that by taking my detour to Rio I managed to save J&J $650 off the direct flight from Newark to Sao Paulo and back. So not only did I get to enjoy the trip with a short personal stay on the front end, I saved the company some money.

And while I gave up a weekend at home with Amy, I was able to ensure that my first trip to Brazil was not entirely spent in conference rooms like this one, which turned out to be much nicer than many of the ones we have in New Jersey.

So what is your best business trip extension? Let’s hear about it in the comments below.

Backpacker to Business Class Part 2: The Staying

Keith — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:07:41 +0000

This is the second post in a series documenting the differences between traveling as a backpacker and as a business traveler. To see the first post in the series about the differences in air travel, please click here. Next, I want to cover the differences in accommodations.

One of the biggest questions people asked about our backpacking trip was, “What was it like to stay in hostels?” often asked with an intonation that implies that hostels must be dirty and terrible places to “have” to stay when traveling on a budget. So I thought I would compare my Singapore accommodations on both trips. While backpacking, Amy and I stayed at the lovely Sleepy Sam’s in the Arab section of Singapore, just down from the Masjid Sultan mosque.

We sprung for a private room ($62/night), but shared the bath, toilet and kitchen facilities with everyone. Included in that nightly fee was a simple breakfast of toast, jam and coffee, so we never really had to use the very nice kitchen.

Compare that to the luxurious Fairmont Hotel, which is located across the street from the famous Raffles Hotel, the birthplace of the Singapore Sling.

My room at the Fairmont ran $265/night, but did include a magnificent buffet breakfast every morning (which was most likely a huge contributor to the approximately 5lbs I gained on this trip despite working out 4 days in the Fairmount’s huge gym). The biggest difference probably has to be the beds. At the Fairmont there was a very comfortable king size bed with fresh sheets every 3 days. At Sleepy Sams the bed was a pretty thin mattress on a small platform. However, I will note that the free lobby wifi was MUCH slower than the wifi at Sleepy Sam’s.

All in all I am not sure that the Fairmont is worth the entire $1,100 premium that they charge over a place like Sleepy Sam’s for 6 nights in Singapore. In fact, at the Sustainable Brands 2011 Conference in Monterey, the second stop on my business trip, I learned about Google’s travel and expense system, Trips, that employs gamification principals to save the company money. As it was explained, the system works by allotting employees a set amount of funding for a trip to a city or region. If the employee is able to book and travel for less than the set amount, my understanding is that the employee has two options on what to do with the savings:

Bank the savings to use on a future trip – allowing you to stay at a luxury hotel; or
Donate the difference to charity.

If we had that system at Johnson & Johnson, I think that I may have honestly considered the option of staying at Sleepy Sam’s if I knew that I could bank the savings or donate it to charity. The potential $1,100 savings would have been a bit of an inconvenience and a little less comfortable, but if I am willing to take it on, I should share in the savings, right? What would you do? Let me know in the comments below. And if you work for Google (Kristin, I am talking to you) and I have this wrong please correct me.

Backpacker to Business Class Part 1: The Flying

Keith — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:52:32 +0000

I have just returned from my second RTW (round-the-world) trip in as many years. The first took me to 18 countries on 5 continents, took over 9 months to complete, cost me $31,124 (my half of the total) and was done as a self-funded backpacker. I just completed the second RTW trip as a business traveler. This time, the route took me east, over Northern Europe to Singapore, on to San Francisco, before the final eastern leg back to Philadelphia on June 12th. The trip took just over 2 weeks and will cost Johnson & Johnson a shade over $10,000 for me to attend a key regional meeting and an industry conference. To compare and contrast the two experiences, I will publish a series of upcoming posts about what was better, worse and just different between traveling as a backpacker and as a business traveler. Let’s get things kicked off with one of the biggest differences, flying business class.

While we did get a couple of nice upgrades on our backpacking trip, including an upgrade to economy-plus on the United flight from Chicago to Munich and the very clutch business class upgrade on Korea Air from Sydney to Seoul,

we were mostly back in economy. This was not too bad as most of the flights we took on the backpacking trip were less than 5 hours. Just enough time to read a magazine, write a blog post and maybe have a meal, as most international airlines, even the budget ones, still serve meals on flights of only an hour or two.

That is a huge contrast with my recent 18.5 hour flight on Singapore Airlines direct from Newark, NJ to Singapore, the longest direct flight in the world.

The entire plane is business class, with lay flat beds, personal entertainment systems and meals of seared tuna and fresh bread served on real china.

And while the amenities and services on the plane were a huge benefit, and made being in the air for that long not only tolerable, but downright enjoyable, it was the benefits in the airport that made the most difference in my flying experience. It all starts with the check-in. As I was traveling for business, I had a suitcase for luggage rather than my Osprey backpack, and there was no additional charge for checked bags (I am sure it is covered in the $6,500 ticket cost). I was then directed to the business class lounge which had complementary wifi, beer, wine, and small bites before boarding.

The flight was long, but covered the nearly 10,000 miles in astonishing comfort and speed. One of the key benefits of this long flight is that Singapore Air is a Star Alliance member, resulting in me achieving Silver status on US Air from this one flight. With Silver status I was able to get a free upgrade to domestic first class for the final flight back to Philadelphia, which allowed me to complete the entire trip in business/first class. And as Amy remarked when we quickly checked our luggage ahead of a very, very, long, bleary-eyed and irritated looking economy class check-in line at 5:15am in the San Francisco airport, “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure does get you a whole lot of convenience.” Not to mention a free bloody mary or two on the flight home. What do you think, is business class worth the dedication to slavishly flying one airline?

A Traveler’s Perspective on the Unrest in Egypt

Amy — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:34:02 +0000

Yes, We Can Too!

These words were splashed across the screen on CNN’s all day broadcast of the uprising in Egypt. If you had told me a year ago that one day I’d see the people of Egypt staging an uprising, echoing the words of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, I would have suggested you lay off the hooka for a while.

The hostel we stayed in is only one block from the main protests in Cairo

Because, you see, for me, the news about the civil unrest in Egypt came as quite a shock. It’s not that we didn’t see the deplorable living conditions first hand. We choked on the brown air, were approached by children in rags chanting what seemed like the only word they knew, baksheesh (tip or money), and learned about the crushing poverty during our meeting with CEDARE. We even experienced the corruptness of the local law enforcement, being taken behind the velvet ropes by officers in uniform for better photos of the Citadel only to then be refused exit without paying a bribe.

What is so surprising about the images on the news is that the palpable sense of hopelessness among the Egyptian people just one year ago seemed impossible to overcome. Never did I imagine that a people so broken and depressed could be inspired to stage such an uprising.

River on the way to the Great Pyramids

Unfortunately, what has not surprised me is the looting and destruction of Egypt’s treasured antiquities. We saw how the pyramids were strewn with trash, and how shopkeepers swept garbage into the Red Sea reefs. We grappled with the notion of a country so focused on getting through today that there was no idea of tomorrow, let alone a better tomorrow to strive for.

I am often asked how travel has changed me. My usual response is that travel doesn’t change who you are, but it does change how you see the world. Two years ago the headlines about Egypt would have been interesting, but nothing more. After spending more than three weeks there, I now feel a personal connection to the country, and find myself often wondering about the safety of the hostel owner in Cairo whose building is right in the heart of the city, or how the staff at CEDARE and their families are coping with the chaos in their country. As I watch the terrific and all too often violent images on television, all I can do is hope that the Egyptian people get the government they are seeking and begin to rebuild their country with a renewed sense of hope.

Keith with Ibrahim, his Egyptian Dive Instructor

Goals and Objectives for Traveling the World

Keith — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:00:30 +0000

Being a goal-oriented, type-A professional, I always look to define clear Goals and Objectives for any significant undertaking. I am fine with leaving the tactical elements or “details” to chance and because of that was fine with not having every aspect of our trip planned ahead of time. In fact, one of the things I miss most about our trip is that at home we are so scheduled. I know that this Wednesday from 12:00-1:00 pm I will be dialing in for a “Beyond Ecolabels: Green Marketing – Communicating Sustainability Initiatives” conference call, whereas most days while traveling I did not know what I was going to do that very afternoon.

While I enjoyed the freedom of a not having a detailed schedule, I could not spend a year without a clear set of Goals and Objectives to help guide our decisions while traveling. So before we packed our backpacks, or even thought about destinations, I set out to draft a clear set of Goals and Objectives for this great investment Amy and I were about to make. Now the time has come to see how we did. And while we were not courageous enough to share these publically at the beginning of the trip, except for some health goals below,

I feel the need to air our successes and shortcomings now that we are back. After reviewing below, let us know how you think we did. The goals are italicized with the results following.

Overall Objective: Take an unforgettable RTW trip that will be a catalyst into lives and careers aligned with our passions for a more sustainable future: Result: An unequivocal success for Keith; still TBD for Amy.

Professional Goals

Utilize this free time to explore and clearly articulate our ideal career path and goals when we return. Keith: Result: Complete, as I articulated the “Was Our Trip Career Suicide?” post I was able to come home with a clear vision of what I wanted to do next professionally.
Gain fluency and demonstrated skill in utilizing social media as a way to connect with advocates creating a “tribe” of followers. Result: We were able to successfully create a presence on social media gaining a tribe of followers and friends.
Create a website that is credible in the travel and green space:
- 1000 average monthly visitors: Result: 1,047 rolling 3 month average.
- 300 Facebook fans: Result: 170, but you can still help us by becoming a fan here.
- 200 email/RSS subscribers: Result: 154, most of which came after we were listed on almostfearless’s best of 2010 post – never underestimate the power of a fellow blogger to help drive traffic!
- Google Page Rank of 3: Result: Exceeded, current page rank is 4.
Establish professional connections with key sustainability Opinion Leaders in our relevant industries. Result: Achieved, we have been able to make connections at: Masdar City, E+Co, SME-RE, KEA and other relevant companies in the business of sustainability.
Secure placement of our story with two credible outside publications: Result: Achieved with placement of our story for GreenBiz.com and multiple articles on other blogs including Briefcase to Backpack, Almost Fearless and eLifeMentor.

Personal Goals

Create a shared positive experience that we will treasure for the rest of our lives. Result: Absolutely achieved

To ensure we are living our lives with no regrets by “seizing the day” and the tremendous opportunity that lays in front of us. Result: By undertaking this trip, something many people talk about but never do, we have proven our ability to seize the day and pursue our dreams with meticulous planning.
Connect with family and friends through visits and sharing this experience through our website. Result: We were able to spend significant time with our families both before we left and when we returned.
Challenge ourselves mentally:
- Read an average of 1 book per week each: Result: Total books read Keith = 48, Amy = 68
- Become better creative and persuasive writers. Result: The challenge of regularly writing blog posts increased our writing skills.
- Improve ability to use technology; iMovie, iPhoto, WordPress, Still and Video cameras. Result: The challenges of developing and maintaining an interactive and visually interesting blog has increased our ability to use these software tools as well as lots of practice with the camera.
- Learn and use key phrases in local languages. Result: We were able to learn key phases in most countries we visited including: hello, delicious, thank you and importantly for Keith cilantro.
Challenge ourselves physically:
- Travel in challenging conditions with patience, humor and a positive attitude. Result: For those that have heard the story the best example of meeting this goal is traveling on in hard sleeper class on 14hr train ride from Shanghai to Xi’an where Keith had a pretty nasty stomach bug and Amy couldn’t sleep. More info here.
- Keith to learn to scuba dive, completing 25 dives: Result: 27 dives completed across Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia.
- Snowboard in New Zealand. Result: Did not complete in New Zealand, but did snowboard in Dubai.
- Try surfing, hang gliding and bungee jumping: Result: We both surfed at Bryon Bay in Australia, but did not hang glide or bungee jump.
Improve physical health. Result: Keith BMI (Body Mass Index) <26 and cholesterol <200: Achieved half: BMI 25.5 cholesterol 240. Amy improved strength and flexibility: Completed couch to 5k running course.
Gain a global perspective by connecting with fellow travelers and locals. Result: Connecting with Gillian and Jason from One-Giant-Step and Akila and Patrick from The RoadForks were a couple of the highlights from our trip.
Volunteer in 2 locations as a way to further give back and fully experience the people and culture around the world. Result: We did not complete this goal.

Traveling the World Can Help Your Career

Keith — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:23:07 +0000

Despite all my concern and worry that our trip was career suicide, it turns out traveling the world and gaining a global perspective on the business of sustainability has truly benefitted my career. I am excited to announce that today I started the next step in my professional career as Sr. Product Director – Global Sustainability Marketing at Johnson & Johnson.

In this role I will have the responsibility of assisting the 250+ Operating Companies at J&J with Green marketing by translating the value of the company’s extensive product stewardship and Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) successes to consumers and trade customers. Johnson & Johnson is a true leader in sustainability, with outside recognition including a #4 ranking in 2010 by Newsweek among the top 500 Green companies in the U.S. This position will allow me to combine my eight years of marketing and brand management skills along with my passion for Green marketing. I will also have global responsibilities providing me the opportunity to work extensively in Asia and Europe, a great extension of my experience from GreenAroundTheGlobe.

I had hoped that by taking this risk and following my passions it would be the catalyst that would help me to move my career in a direction more directly linked to using sustainability as a business driver. Having that goal from the beginning allowed me to keep a sense of purpose and motivation while we were traveling and to have a compelling story for employers when we returned.

We will delve in to a more thorough look at all of our professional and personal goals from the trip in an upcoming post, but I now consider one of the main ones, “Utilize this time to explore and clearly articulate my ideal career path and goals when I return,” successfully completed.

Highlights from Japan and Australia

Keith — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:29:48 +0000

While it has been a few months in the making, I was able to finish up the highlights video for Japan and Australia. Enjoy, and you can find the four earlier trip summaries here.

Patience is What I Found Traveling The World

Keith — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:52:38 +0000

A very common question that I get in interviews or even casual conversation about our trip is, “What was the most important thing you learned while traveling?” This is a great question, much better than “What was your favorite place?” But I get the sense that my answer is not always satisfying for people. Maybe it’s a little too soft. Patience, after all, is not as exciting as learning Mandarin, but it was the most important. Let me illustrate why.

One of the first things you learn when you travel abroad is that the rest of the world, especially the developing part of it, is in much less of a hurry than we typically are in the Western world. And getting upset about a difficult situation will never, ever help things. While daily life can often seem hectic, as the streets of Vietnam do, people are less likely to be multi-tasking their way through their day. More than once, Amy and I benefited from the kindness of strangers taking the time to assist us with directions, often walking us all the way to our destination. After 16 years in a highly competitive school and professional work environment, this all seemed a little strange. I was quite used to multitasking all the time. iPhone in my right hand, Blackberry in the left hand, participating in a conference call, all while riding a train to yet another meeting in New York City was the norm. All of it seemed so important and critical, and if anything slowed me down or presented itself as a roadblock it was quickly dealt with and I moved on. Well, it is not so easy to deal with an overheated broken down bus in the middle of Turkey when you have a plane to catch in 3 hours.

In fact, if you remain calm and ask for some advice on how to deal with the situation instead of quickly jumping to what you think is the solution (which for me in that instance was the inclination to get off the crippled bus and grab a taxi) you can learn that what you think you know isn’t really that useful at all. Thanks to Amy helping me find my patience, we spoke with another passenger who told us that with the rush hour traffic a taxi was actually a very bad idea, but that jumping on the train at the next stop would get us to the airport in short order. As it turns out, if we had not solicited that advice we would have surely been sitting in a taxi, stuck in traffic and spending another day in Istanbul instead of Cairo.

So while we have rather quickly readapted to our fast-paced, frenetic lives in the States, I do feel that I have retained a small part of the patience and ability to recognize what I can affect, and when my energy is better spent elsewhere. This post reminds me vaguely of the 80/20 rule I learned while at Wharton. That is 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. The key is to take the time to recognize what is the 20% of effort that is making the difference. Slowing down, remaining present and questioning my initial reactions has allowed me to incorporate this idea more effectively into my life. Just one of the many benefits of investing the time we took for this trip, because after all it was an investment in our most valuable assets, us.

A Year’s Difference in Thanksgiving Meals

Keith — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:37:48 +0000

Being back home certainly has some advantages. One of the best is sharing holidays, like Thanksgiving, with family and friends. We were certainly quite thankful to spend Thanksgiving with them this year vs. being 6,000 miles away in the Jordanian desert. When we were in Petra, Jordan, on what to everyone else it was just another Thursday night, we found ourselves spending half the night struggling to find something that was not made from chickpeas to eat for dinner and end up settling for a chicken kebap sandwich, because we realized it was about as close to turkey as we were going to get.

Another lesson I have taken away from our trip is to appreciate the vast variety of food available to people in the developed world. Because I have always had nearly any cuisine imaginable close at hand, I did not appreciate what variety my palate craves until we had spent two months in the Middle East, eating a variation of some kind of chickpea spread, pita bread or kepab at nearly every meal. And while many of these dishes were delicious, I challenge any Westerner to eat the same 3-4 dishes for every meal, including breakfast, for two months and then on Thanksgiving not go a little crazy looking for something different and traditionally American.

Being home this year did not disappoint. We had quite the spread at two family gatherings in New York. The first was in New York City and the second was a short Metro North ride north to the town of Irvington. The picture to the left is just a glimpse of the traditional and variety packed gastronomic delights that awaited our first major holiday since our return home.

What strange stand-ins for traditional foods have you made while traveling abroad on American holidays? What lengths did you go to secure a suitable substitute? Let’s hear it in the comments.