We live in a world of instants. Instant gratification, instant information, instant connections.

When it comes to your green brand, there is another instant you have to honor.  The need for your brand message to instantly communicate its promise of value to everyone it meets.

A brand must do many things all at once.

It must communicate, compel, intrigue, be meaningful, relevant and educate all at once. That’s a lot to ask of a tag line and graphic approach. But it still has to do it, and do it instantly.

Especially now in our instant age, your brand position has to reach out and grab your audience and steal their attention from the millions of other bits of information flooding their synapses.

The big question for you is, does yours?

Do you have to make me work to understand what you are trying to tell me? If you do, you lost me. I’m already down the block and on to something else.

Is your offer vague? Are you speaking to me or at me? Do I have to guess what you really mean? Are you using generic eco statements like “Green Done Right” or “Saving the planet one ‘whatever’ at a time”?  They’re not greenwashing in the traditional sense. They just wash over you and leave little or nothing behind.

It’s better to say something dull but educational than something slick and meaningless.  But whatever you do, say something for your green brand that I can get instantly.

To add some zest to this request, we at Mind Over Markets are challenging you to TAKE THE GREEN MARKETING CHALLENGE. 

Here it is: Send us your green message (logo, tag line, graphic, copy), and we’ll evaluate it here for free. That’s right. A team of three (Art Director, Copywriter and Account Manager) will thoughtfully assess your brand and we’ll post the results here. Then all of our readers can join in on the conversation too. That’s thousands of dollars of consultation for free to those who are courageous enough to step up and put their brand message on display. 

Let the games begin.

(Send your submission to: carolyn (at) mindovermarkets (dot) com).

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Back by popular demand, we’re starting our monthly Green Marketing Labs in Denver, CO in March. These fun, interactive, real-life marketing laboratories will give you the insights and tangible solutions you need to make your marketing meaningful in the maturing green market. So bring your questions, bring your challenges, roll your sleeves up and have some fun. 

This Mind Over Markets series is sponsored by CORE Colorado and takes place Saturdays, 9 am to 12 noon. Each lab is $40 or for $130 you can do all 4 and save 20%. Here’s the line-up.    

Lab 1: Developing Your Marketing GPS (Green Positioning Strategy) – Saturday, 3/27

The green market has matured since Kermit was King with his “It’s Easy Being Green” campaign. Now over 1,500+ new products enter the market each year. It ain’t so easy anymore. How will you break through the clutter? How do you position your product or service so it’s not another “me too”? In this marketing lab, you will: 

Obtain a clear understanding of the current green market – its obstacles and opportunities

Identify how meaningfully different you are from your competition

Uncover the advantages that result from using your product or service

Identify your key target audience(s) and the rational and emotional reasons they buy your product or service

Develop a strategy statement to effectively communicate your message to your target audience(s)

Lab 2: Creating a Compelling Green Brand in a Crowded Market – Your Positioning Line  – Saturday, 4/24

The most powerful asset a company can own is its brand. It is the marriage of all the elements of how your product or service will be presented in the marketplace. It says, “This is what I stand for.”  In this marketing lab, you will learn how to: 

Drill down to the creative core of your product or service and turn it into a powerful communications theme

Take your Green Positioning Strategy and develop a clear and compelling positioning line    

Integrating your brand message into all your marketing materials   

Lab 3:  Creating a Compelling Brand in a Crowded Market – Your Visual Identity – Saturday, 5/22 

No branding effort is complete without the investigation and development of a compelling visual identity for your product or service. Your visual presentation, which includes your company logo and website, is way more than “pretty pictures”; it’s a visual cue that quickly and effectively communicates your company’s personality and what it stands for in the marketplace. In this marketing lab, you will learn how to: 

Create an accurate visual identity based on your brand’s positioning strategy and line

Create a graphics standards that will serve as a guide to ensure your consistent use of design elements, formats, and templates in all of your communications

Integrate your visual identity into all your marketing materials

Lab 4: Creating Persuasive Messaging for Social Media – Saturday, 6/19

To make it in social media, you need to unlearn the rules of traditional marketing messaging. No more hard sell. No more creating customers. What you are creating are relationships instead. And those relationships can be your single greatest sales force. In this marketing lab, you will learn:

How social media is used by entrepreneurs and business owners

Why you need to serve, not sell    

Why content is still king and how to make your marketing messages compelling

The importance of relevancy and frequency

How to integrate your brand message into your social media marketing

“It’s like having your own Marketing Department!”

                                                     - David Wolf, Wolfs Bagels

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The Luna Collection from Erin Adams Design

Building green and selling green in tough economic times might sound counter intuitive but the reality is, it’s not. A recent survey conducted by National Real Estate Investor in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council showed that sustainability in commercial real estate is growing in leaps and bounds.

More than 88% of developers and 86% of corporate executives say they consider green design to be as or more important than it was before the current economic slump. In fact, LEED certified projects showed an impressive 47% increase over the previous 12 month period.

These buildings represent 273 million square feet of new construction and major renovation on commercial and institutional properties, up from 133 million square feet the previous year. Another 25,608 properties totaling approximately 6.3 billion square feet are currently registered with the LEED, up from 1.3 billion square feet last year.

The reason for these green spikes are much more personal than they are planetary. Green can be a major selling point to investors and tenants alike. These initiatives not only offer significant and measurable savings in terms of energy usage, but contribute to the health and well being of the people who live and work in your project.

Healthier materials, paints, finishes, carpets, cleaning supplies and more natural lighting make contributions that are becoming more accepted, more desired, and more understood each day.

Healthier surroundings contribute to greater well being, less sick days, and therefore greater productivity of those who will spend a majority of their time inside what you build.

There is no question that green is the way to go, the question really is how healthy and robust your communication of all that will be to your investor, purchaser or tenant base. Of all the green things you may be considering building into your project, green messaging might be the most important one of all.

After all, one of the keys to selling is educating. So much of the green message has focused on what’s in it for the planet that people often forget it’s just as important to focus on what’s in it for the potential purchaser or renter. It’s important to remember that green is not just a physical thing, it’s also a state of mind. It’s the place where value can be added in a very measurable sense.

Be sure not to make the mistake of assuming that just saying you’re green is communicating your message. Put your green communications in human terms. Tell your customer base why you’re going green and what that’s going to do for them.

Of course, talk about tax credits and energy savings, but also talk about how your green initiatives help control the one environment it’s possible to exercise the most control over. The one we live in or work in each day.

Talk about the added-value thinking green has brought to your current project or the ones you’ve created in the past. And remember that people don’t want to live in or invest in a laboratory, but want esthetics along with everything else.

Recently, an ultra green residence was built in the town I live in. It was loaded with green features including solar panels that tracked with the sun, a zero-energy loss envelope, no paint or carpet, water reclamation systems — the works.

Unfortunately, they forgot one thing.  The WOW factor. For $2 million. people want something that’s not only efficient but stunning. And that’s what was left out. Instead of natural stone, granite or marble floors, they went with ceramic tile. Instead of finding ways to maximize the heat output of stylish, architectural fireplaces, they went with highly-efficient wood stoves.  Lots of heat, but no fire. It all looked good on paper, but not as good in the living room.

The point of marketing green or building green is to take all the available technology and make it human and accessible — and above all beautiful. Just look what designer, Erin Adams, is doing with her recycled glass mosaic tile and home furnishings. You see, you can have your cake and eat it too. 

Remember that green means alive, vibrant and healthy. And that includes your communications. Don’t just go earth tone and tell me you’re saving the planet. The market and people’s understanding of the green message has progressed far beyond that.

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Click on Carolyn to hear Eco Jingle Bells

So we’ve gone a little goofy with our holiday video. So what. It’s been a wild year and sometimes you just have to, well, cut loose and have fun. So warm up your vocal chords and sing along with us. We promise, our eco version of Jingle Bells will bring a smile to your face. 

From all of us Mind Over Markets, wish you much happiness and prosperity this holiday and New Year. 

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In today’s rapidly expanding green market, there is no greater challenge facing marketers of green goods and services than making their brand or service relevant to the here and now. One thing is for sure, it won’t be saving the planet one “whatever” at a time. Not in this time of economic concern and green fatigue.

To help you navigate this rugged road in the maturing green marketing, we’ve launched GREENTELLIGENCE, our news and viewsletter that brings green marketing down to earth. In it, you will find green marketing case studies, highlights from our Green Marketing Blog, a Brand-Aid offer, and more.

We, at Mind Over Markets (better known as MOM), have a simple philosophy. We believe in bringing logic to the ecologic message– creating sound strategic reasoning that results in shifting consumer purchase habits. So read on! And if GREENTELLIGENCE ends up on your “must read” list, remember to sign up to receive it each month. And if you really like it, pass it on to a friend.

Enjoy!

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Like many of us, when the notice from our utility company came offering wind energy to us at a slightly higher cost, we signed up right away. We figured it was a clean and sustainable way to get electricity and help the environment at the same time.  According to an article in The New York Times, to date over 1,000,000 customers have volunteered to pay more for this type of power, but it seems a lot of that has been hype, not hope. 

Florida Power and Light had a program called “Sunshine Energy”  with more than 38,000 customers which was terminated by the Florida Public Service Commission after an audit found that 76.4% of the money taken in by this program went to administration and marketing costs instead of to building more solar facilities and generating more clean, renewable energy. 

A California based advocacy group called the Utility Reform Network reported, “There is little evidence to suggest that customer subscriptions have resulted in any new additions of renewable power.”  And that is the shock, not only to energy customers but to all of us in the green marketing space. 

These blatant green claims, all wrapped up in slick marketing campaigns, do more than turn off energy customers, they have the potential to turn off the greater population to many green claims and products. And this hurts us all. 

We speak a lot about green marketing and one of our primary rules is transparency and walking the talk.That means if you say something about green or sustainability, you need to back it up with action. If you claim something, it had better be supported by facts.  

As green grows, so does the danger to the entire movement. Couple that with green fatigue, greenwashing and empty meaningless claims, and green can go the way that low-carbs went. What happens is that once someone is duped by a green marketer, they don’t just turn off that message, but potentially get turned off to the green movement and we all suffer the consequences. 

Everyday the airways are filled with messages that confuse us all. Look at the  current healthcare debate and all the special interest groups pouring millions into bending your opinion one way or the other. No wonder the average person no longer believes what they read and hear.

If you want the green movement to succeed, and your product or service along with it, all of us need to be the green police and be sure that what green says, green does. It would be a tragedy if companies like Florida Power and Light are instrumental in pulling the plug on what all of us have worked so hard to accomplish. Take my word for it, it is much harder to bring someone back in once they have been disappointed than it is to bring them in from the start.

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Following in the footsteps of Paul Newman’s book Shameless Exploitation , the message below is our version.  We promise we won’t make a habit of it but hey, we’re a marketing company. Sometimes we can’t help ourselves.  

If your green product or service is experiencing one or more of these seven symptoms, you may be suffering from a common branding ailment, Message Deprivation. Warning signs include: 

• Irrelevantitis
• Strategic deficit disorder
• Acute me-tooism
• Chronic loftiness
• Message myopia
• Persistent invisibility
• Mainstreamophobia

After helping companies with these distressing, sometimes chronic symptoms for more than 10 years, we have found one trusted prescription that has been effective over and over again – especially in the maturing green market.

Relevancy. Making your product and message relevant to the here and now. One thing we know for sure, it won’t be saving the planet one “whatever” at a time. Not in this time of economic concern and green fatigue.

The solution will be bringing your message down to earth, taking it from a cause to a because, and making it meaningful to the issues, concerns and needs of everyday people’s everyday lives.

To do that, you have to leave traditional thinking and messaging behind. You have to let Kermit return to his lily pad and expand your message beyond the planet to include the people living on it. 

That’s the kind of Brand AID we offer at Mind Over Markets. Every day for every client we bring logic to ecologic and appeal to the heart and the head in equal measure.

THE DOCTOR IS IN! Call Mind Over Markets (better known as MOM) now for a free ½ hour check-up. We promise you’ll feel better in the morning. This prescription expires December 15, 2009. Call 505 989 4004 or email us for urgent care.

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Want to see greenwashing in action? Than cast your eye on Nestle Waters YouTube videos about bottled water: How Much Water Does it Take to Make Bottled Water?

In this dubious video, the company outlines how water conscious they are, because less water goes into a bottle of water than into the making of a latte. When I hear stuff like that, it’s not the caffeine in the latte that keeps me up at night.  

Maybe the water usage is down, but what about what all that water is going into. Plastic bottles. You can’t be an environmental champion when, as the largest bottled water company in the world, your plastic bottles end up chocking our landfills and littering our environment with their plastic debris that will take centuries, if ever, to decompose. As if the landfill issues weren’t bad enough, how about the vast pollution trail that comes along with plastic bottle manufacturing? 

They start their life in an oil field, get transported in a huge oil tanker (remember the Exxon Valdes?), get trucked from ports to refineries, get synthesized into toxic chemicals that become plastic in a plastic manufacturing plant — which is in itself an ecological nightmare. For something so light in weight, that little plastic bottle has a pretty heavy footprint.  

It’s actually shameful to see a company spinning a tale with so long a pollution trail. Instead why don’t they put their efforts where it might matter? Into the development and production of a biodegradable plant-based bottle. They do exist.  

If companies like Nestle don’t get it by now, they really should begin to see that consumers see through these spin doctored messages. And actually begin to resent the tale tellers. Horizon Dairy found that out when their happy cows really weren’t too happy. And neither were many of their customers who found that out and organized a boycott against their products.

Things like clean coal and water-saving bottled water might sound good on paper, but they sound like bull-produced natural plant food to most of us.

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This is a guest post from (drum roll, please) Chris Brogan, author of “Trust Agents,” but better known as the “rock star” of social media.  

The marketing game has changed. It used to be all about mass communications and a tight message spread across every medium you could afford. The goal was to hit as many people as you could touch, and hope for a low percentage of them to convert. Who knows? Maybe you’re STILL doing it that way. If so, how’s that working for you? If you’re looking at trends, the new growth and success in marketing is coming from niche marketers who understand their community and can protect you along the way.

My area of knowledge is in using social media tools and methods to build sales opportunities, increase engagement, and converting audiences into communities. One way to accomplish this is by writing compelling blog content that opens conversations that may lead to potential lead conversion. Not every bit of the content is designed for sales. There’s a relationship component to all this as well, but the point to building great content for a business is to help that business earn attention, gain a reputation, and develop trust.

Find the right niche marketer, who has a strong relationship with the community you’re seeking, and partner with these organizations for your success. I’m writing this guest post for Carolyn Parrs and team at Mind Over Markets because I was so taken with what she and the organization were doing in the space of green / ecological marketing. In this new space, marketing is about connecting and building relationships that yield. Your opportunities are tied to how you choose to reach these markets, and how you intend to take your first steps towards earning their trust. Instead of selecting based on price, seek some results-driven guidance from marketers who you feel will know your audience’s challenges and reservations, and select them. That’s what I do.

–Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, LLC, and co-author of the NYT/WSJ bestselling book Trust Agents. He blogs regularly at chrisbrogan.com

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