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Green: A Gift with Purchase or Emotional Goldmine?

by Keith on February 1, 2012 · 0 comments

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?

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Backpacker to Business Class Part 1: The Flying

by Keith on June 13, 2011 · 3 comments

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?

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Happy Halloween!

by Amy on October 31, 2010 · 2 comments

I love Halloween. I love the candy. I love the costumes.  I love watching Lucy pull back the football every year in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”  But it’s been a while since we’ve had the chance to celebrate a good old-fashioned American Halloween.

Last year, we celebrated Halloween with the original mummies in Cairo, Egypt.  The year before we were snorkeling with the sea turtles in the Galapagos Islands.  And the year before that, we were chilling with the lions while on safari in South Africa.  All amazing experiences to be sure, but not a pumpkin in sight.

This year, we finally got back to basics with the Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, RI.  With our good friends Casey and Kate, we spent an evening walking through the zoo paths surround by hundreds of beautifully carved pumpkins lit up to scary perfection.

According to the zoo’s website, the Spectacular was founded by John Reckner, an Oxford, Massachusetts postal carrier.  Inspired by a Vermont farm he had seen lined with glowing jack o’ lanterns, Reckner organized the first Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular in Oxford in 1988.  The 185 jack o’ lanterns featured in this first Spectacular were carved by local residents and displayed for only one evening on a hillside behind a local school.   Today, Mr. Reckner, his family, and their crew of jack o’ lantern artists continue to bring the Spectacular to life.

If you love Halloween, I highly recommend a trip to Providence in October.  The Spectacular is a true work of art, one that will encourage you to take your own pumpkin-carving skills up a notch or two.

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