Green Marketing: What’s Done Responsibly Changes the World

Written by Gerardo Gonzalez, Public Relations student at the Moody College of Communication, UT-Austin. His teacher reportedly gave him a grade of ‘A’ for this piece, which includes an interview with EnviroMedia Co-founder Kevin Tuerff.

“Sponsorship of reforestation campaigns and a series of ads that educate the public about the benefits of maintaining our forests is the key to our brand’s success. The objective is to build our client’s brand awareness and increase customer interest in environmental sustainability.”

At some point in your incoming career as a UT Moody College of Communication graduate, this type of objective will most likely lead your firm’s latest advertising/PR campaign. If carried out effectively, the campaign is sure to do some good for the natural world and raise awareness for the brand. It will be important to let people know that you’re out there and making a positive impact on the environment.

In today’s social climate, the environmental intent is sure to appeal to many consumers. According to research conducted by Cone Communications, up to 71% of American consumers consider the environment when making purchases.

For several years now, companies and brands have been taking advantage of such high consumer interest in environmental issues. They modify their products into more ecofriendly choices or take up an environmental cause and promote it heavily.

Known as green marketing, this practice has the potential to improve our world. As advertisers and public relations practitioners, we will be tasked with putting a green spin on our employed brand at some point in our careers. As an opportunity to influence socially responsible advertising and public relations it is important to be educate yourself on this topic.

Just as with traditional marketing, green marketing has evolved since first being coined over 30 years ago.

In 1975, just a century following the first waves of environmentalism in the US, the American Marketing Association (AMA) gathered a group of marketing practitioners and academics. The group conducted a workshop to “examine marketing’s impact on the natural environment.” The discussions prompted at the workshop lead to the publishing of “Ecological Marketing,” one of the earliest books on green marketing, and many more to follow on the same subject.

Over the next several years, reports were released and terms were bounced around scholarly discourse until green marketing finally emerged as the term for daily use sometime in the 1980s.

As of 2016, the green marketing practice has changed dramatically due to improving methods and evolving technology. To put that into perspective, Steve Jobs first unveiled the first ever Apple Macintosh computer in 1984, just a few years before green marketing came into prominence.

Of most common approaches, recyclable and biodegradable packaging may be the most familiar. But brands invest many resources to more broad campaigns.

The Italian clothing company Diesel ran a series of print advertisements in 2007 to prompt social discussion around a key climate issue. Titled “Global Warming Ready,” the ad campaign featured models striking poses amidst well-known locales affected by climate change.

The Toyota Prius is another example of successful green marketing. Advertised on its superior fuel efficiency and lower emissions, the Prius is now a popular standard for sustainable automobiles.

The ubiquity of this trend suggests good news for the environment. For PR and advertising students, this is an opportunity to change the world. Ideally, all we need to get started is to work on a well-planned green campaign. What better way to help the environment than through the work you are passionate about?

But the landscape of green marketing is not a practice that wholly benefits the environment.

Green marketing includes all branding messages claiming that a product or service is beneficial to the environment. This includes all claims — legitimate and falsified — and in the clutter of today’s advertising environment distinguishing between the two is a task for both consumers and regulators.

In the late 1980s the FTC had to step in and issue guidelines to clear up which advertisers were legitimate and which advertisers were making false claims about the greenness of their products.

Lucy Atkinson, assistant professor of advertising at The University of Texas at Austin and a notable expert on the green marketing trend, offers her own perspective on the trend.

“Green [marketing] still encourages consumption. It never tells us to stop consuming, just to consume differently, smarter, better. I think the only solution to the environmental crises we’re facing, like climate change, is to reduce our consumption.

But that is very difficult and contradicts everything we’re taught and socialized into as Americans. That said, I think something is better than nothing,” she says.

In this case, better-than-nothing has still significantly advocated for a more sustainable planet.

Adopting packaging made of recyclable materials reduces waste and pollution. Ecolabels standards effectively motivate brands to improve their products to earn the benefits of these labels. Eco-sponsoring allows companies to affiliate themselves with worthy causes by sponsoring the movements or undertaking them themselves.

Kevin Tuerff has made his significant share of contributions to the environment through work in marketing. As the President and co-founder of EnviroMedia, an advertising and public relations agency that advocates for environmental and public health, he has led projects with impressive results.

Tuerff does not expect this trend of green marketing to slow down anytime soon.

“Interest in the environment is higher than ever before. Younger people in particular are more concerned about climate change than any other age group,” he says.

Before forming EnviroMedia with co-founder Valerie Salinas-Davis, Tuerff devoted much of his career to acting as an active spokesperson for the environment.

One major project he and Valerie started is the Greenwashing Index. It is a website that allows users to post pictures of ads and rates the ads for being authentic or false based on user responses. The website allowed Tuerff and Davis to submit comments to the FTC, 20 of which ended up on the updated Green Guides.

You’ve probably heard of leanwashing. Companies exaggerate or lie about the health benefits of their products to appeal to more health-conscious consumers. Greenwashing is the environmentally-friendly counterpart of leanwashing. Products and brands tout claims of environmental-friendliness when the goal is always to be seen first as environmentally friendly rather than make an actual effort to help the environment.

Greenwashing is about a recent a practice as green marketing itself, which makes sense because goodwill efforts often do have imitators. Volkswagen was recently found guilty of doing the imitating.

In a cheating scandal so impressive it has awarded VW with up to billions of dollars in fines, the automaker invested huge sums into an advertising campaign that showcased “clean diesel” cars that were apparently only clean when inspectors stopped by to check the cars. The public outcry at being deceived has forced VW to repeal thousands of trendy cars.

Other minor cases don’t quite reach the dramatic ambitions of VW but still make an impression. “Green” packaging is common. But the certified labels and environmental claims frequently do not truly reflect the actual effort made into making the packaging sustainable.

In 2013, Coca-Cola was accused of greenwashing for advertising a new “plant bottle” that was not made out of nearly as many plant-based materials as the company claimed. Not surprisingly, the advertisement also makes an appearance on Tuerff’s Greenwashing Index here.

Greenwashing brands don’t just misinform customers and halt potential progress toward a healthier environment. The effect expands past just the main players.

“I think they poison the well for legitimate green marketers,” says Atkinson, “If consumers start to lose faith in the truthfulness and efficacy of products labeled as green, then the whole industry suffers. Even those that are legitimately green and better for the environment will see consumer backlash.”

According to a report published by TerraChoice, an environmental marketing agency, up to 95% of green products are not really green at all.

At Enviromedia, Kevin Teurff and his team only work with genuine green marketers. “Our environment is too important to greenwash,” he says.

He may be right. Today’s generation of young people are much more invested in the environment than ever before. And while no one can settle on middle ground with the global warming controversy, it is still much better to reduce our carbon footprint regardless.

Legitimate green marketers seem to get the point. But greenwashers are just as persistent as the students who put a lot of time into planning a way to cheat on upcoming exams.

They seem to neglect the fact that the same effort could be applied to actually putting in the work for the benefit of more.

So just how can you expect to change the world when it can be so easy to lose sight of what you’re campaigning for? Lucy Atkinson may have the answer for that and the idea is fairly simple. “Be honest. Don’t oversell or over-promise. It may get you somewhere initially but it won’t last. Consumers won’t forgive and they certainly won’t forget.”

Keep that in mind when asked for input on the company’s latest campaign objective.