Our friend Jacqui Ottman just posted an interesting and astute blog about the SunChips noisy bag brouhaha. Consumers, it seemed, complained so loudly about the noise of the compostable packaging that it’s been all but abandoned. Too bad on at least two levels.

They jumped into the green market with something that they called “environmentally preferable” and  then the moment some voices were raised, they overreacted to undo it all.

I agree with Jacqui that maybe they should have tried explaining it all better but there might have been another tack they could have taken. Use that noisy bag as a way to make a little noise about how they were doing something better for the environment. Maybe a commercial not only about biodegradability, but about the pride you will feel making all that noise and being recognized as someone who is doing things better. I don’t think that bag is going to cause terminal deafness especially to a generation that plays their music so loud that the bass speakers in car next to you can cause your car to rock.

They could have said, “Make some noise for the environment!” and asked us all to sign up. The SunChips bag noise could have been a rally call. And for fun, they could have offered Sun Chip earplugs or earmuffs as premiums when the sound of cheering bags gets too loud.

As a creative guy, I can imagine all sorts of over-the-top executives using the bag as New Years Eve noise-makers or teen age alarm clocks or even as a ring tone for your phone. How about a chorus of SunChips bags crackling to the tune of “America the Beautiful”? That has viral written all over it.

First thing I learned about making communications effective was turning any disadvantage into an advantage. Think of it: A snack bag as a badge of honor.  That seems the perfect marriage for a consumer base that would love to live a little greener, if we could only make it easy for them to do it. It’s like having your chips and eating them too.

Thumbs up or thumbs down for SunChips’ decision. We want to know.

Bookmark to:

There are some intelligent choices in the marketplace today, and as green is becoming more and more prevalent, we’re seeing the prices reducing – and efficacy rising. This Women Of Green podcast features MJ Jolda, the Vice President of Marketing at Marcal Paper Products, a leading manufacturer of household paper goods from 100 percent recycled paper. They have introduced an Environmental Facts panel on their “Small Steps” packaging that details information like recycled paper content, how much chlorine bleach was used for whitening, and the use of chemical-based additives like fragrances and dyes.

This whole effort came out of talking with many many consumers, mostly women, on what they want and don’t want in green.

Listen in to her responses to these questions:

Most of your customers are mainstream consumers – what I would call medium to light greens. They would purchase green but it has to really make sense.

What did you learn in your research about what it would take for them to make a green purchase versus a conventional one?

Women buy 80% of the products in our household, that’s tremendous economic power. So how can we rally those women to really have an impact in the marketplace?

How do we educate women, mainstream women, on what’s really happening when they buy that conventional product?

You have said that one of the biggest threats to the environmental consumerism movement is misinformation, or what’s often called greenwashing. How can we really make an impact in the marketplace if so many manufacturers are just spinning a marketing story without the environmental reality behind it?

I love Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles. What is Marcal doing or not doing well that you would like to change or improve?

About MJ Jolda: She is the Senior Vice President for Marcal Paper LLC, the nation’s leading manufacturer of household paper goods from 100 percent recycled paper. An industry pioneer, Marcal has used recycled paper to make paper towels, napkins, facial tissue and bath tissue since 1950. MJ is responsible for the Marketing and R&D efforts for the Marcal Small Steps brand. MJ’s 20-plus-year track record of brand revitalization spans a wide range of consumer products, concentrating in food, household cleansers and OTC/HBA.

MJ’s links:

Profile of MJ Jolda in Advertising Age

Marcal’s Small Steps website

Bookmark to:

It’s easy to point your finger at Coca-Cola’s environmental effort and use your middle finger instead of your index finger. But when one of the world’s largest fillers of landfills, that’s where 75% of all Coke bottles end up, adopts the PlantBottle, a more eco-friendly bottle made in part from sugar cane and molasses, we should all drink to that. 

This move alone doesn’t make Coke a green champion but it certainly will help make them less of a culprit. And all that green money they’ll spend to promote it will help to get the environmental message out to a much broader segment of the population. We should all hope this will start a trend in the beverage world and their competition will follow, as they usually do. Since we started writing the Green Marketing Blog, our hope was to help marketers take their messages and their products more mainstream so the green world becomes the everyday and not the alternative world. 

A marketing professor interviewed for this article said, “Anything you wrap in green is going to sell.” I don’t agree. Green, as we’ve said many times before, needs to make sense if it’s going to be viable for the long haul.  If not, it will stay on the fringes and that’s not where the real change takes place. 

Irv

Bookmark to: