Greenwashing: the buzzword for 2009

You’ve heard it here first. The marketing term for 2009 will not be Green. But Greenwashing.

What is greenwashing? Simply put, greenwashing is the act of selling your product or service as being “green”, but in essence, there is no true environmental net benefit for the planet or society.

Wikipedia has a great article about greenwashing you can read

here.

I want to talk about greenwashing in terms of the marketing backlash, and potential disaster it can spell for your business.

You will be seeing many businesses green branding in 2009. For starters, it is a hot selling point now and for good reason.

We are all becoming more conscious about the damage we are doing to our society. And, with the election of President Obama, environmental policy is suddenly coming back to the forefront in the US.

Many companies will seek to ride this green wave to profit.

Now, there is nothing wrong with green branding to increase profits. In fact, I hope that people make BILLIONS going green.

But greenwashing is what we are more likely to see in 2009, and if you aren’t careful you will get caught greenwashing and your business might never recover its reputation as a result.

If you want to go green –even if it is purely for marketing purposes- it has to be seen as a sincere commitment to improving environmental standards across the board of your company and the planet.

Here are 8 important green steps you can take to ensure that you are really going green, and not just greenwashing:

1) Redeveloping your products using mostly or only environmentally sustainable materials
2) Phase out all products or services that you cannot produce or provide in an environmentally friendly way
3) Upgrading your infrastructure to use mostly or only green energy
4) Re-engineering your products to use mostly or only green energy
5) Selling only organic and green products
6) Ground your sales staff, and hold only virtual online meetings. No more flying across the country needlessly
7) Spend the money and get green certified. You can learn more about green certifications here. There might be provincial or state certifications you can look into as well
8) Ensure that your business participates in carbon offset programs

You’ll notice what is NOT listed above: things like emailing invoices instead of printing them out and mailing. Things like email signatures that say: “Please think of the environment before printing out this email.” Empty actions such as only using recycled paper.

Those are baby steps. And steps that your business should be taking whether you are going green or not. These are the LEAST we can ALL do for our environment.

You’ll also notice something else: going green in a marketable way really is not for everyone. Not because it’s not a good thing to go green (and you should regardless). Going green will do nothing for your brand if you are an administrative company like a legal firm, accounting office, or IT company. You have to either be producing a green product or service for it to make sense in a branding perspective.

Going green is about a firm commitment to have an environmentally sustainable and positive business offering. It means sacrifice and re-engineering entire business models and processes. It means a lot more than just recycling your junk mail.

In 2009, going green is going to be big. But getting caught greenwashing is going to be even bigger. If you are going to develop a green brand, make sure you do it right. If not, you will be risking your reputation in a manner that it may never recover from.

Yusuf Gad
President, a5MEDIA inc
http://www.a5media.ca