Attention Wind Energy companies. It’s not enough to talk kilowatts, wind speed and show me hunky shots of turbines. Make me fall in love. They say all love affairs begin in the mind first, and they are right.

Carolyn and our Art Director, Nicole, attended the Renewable Energy World Show in Austin recently. They noticed over and over again companies, big and small, basically spoke to the head but not to the heart of the issue. They need to remember that I have to say yes to the concept of wind energy first. I have to be willing to change my lifelong energy consumption patterns before I can say yes to turbines as my source of energy.

Tell me how old the use of wind as energy is. Think the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Tell me how practical it is now. Tell me that wind generation is easy to live with. That it is free energy. Tell me how tax credits and government programs are making it so easily affordable. How it will increase farm profits and decrease commercial and residential energy bills. Help make choosing wind a breeze for your customers. Then tell me why your version is better.

Wind Energy companies, do something that will make news. Challenge a school district to an energy audit. Show them how much they could be saving. But do it now and get your message out. The government is reported to be creating programs promoting green and alternative energy. That will begin to spike consumer interest. Make sure you have a message that will capture that interest. 

The time is now. Don’t blow it.

Bookmark to:

Imagine being in a room filled with other green-minded business owners and execs and tapping into their smarts for 3 hours on behalf of your business? That’s what our Green Marketing Labs are all about.  Our first one in Denver is happening in a few weeks. Think of it, you can saturate on Saturday in our lab and ski on Sunday on the slopes. 

Here’s what happening in our first lab. 

Green Marketing Lab 1: Developing Your Marketing GPS (Green Positioning Strategy) on March 27.

With over 1,500+ new products enter the market each year, how will you break through the clutter and position your product or service so it’s not another “me too”? In this green 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)

These 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.

PRICING: $40 per lab or $130 for all 4 labs (discounts available for CORE members).

Saturday March 27, 2010, 9:00am – 12 noon

Location: All 4 labs will be held in the CORE offices at 1801 California Street, Suite 4900, Denver, CO 80202.

Register for all 4 labs or any of them individually at: www.corecolorado.org or call (303) 894 6333

Presenters: Irv Weinberg and Carolyn Parrs of Mind Over Markets, a dedicated green marketing communications company in Santa Fe, NM. To learn more about our work, go to www.mindovermarkets.com.

Hope to see you there! Can you help us spread the word and Retweet this or share this with your community?

Many thanks!

Bookmark to:

A couple of weeks ago we challenged you right here on the Green Marketing Blog to TAKE THE GREEN MARKETING CHALLENGE. We’re happy to say we’ve had quite a few takers. Most of them green businesses that are part of the Green America Business Network. A brave bunch. Here’s what we asked:

Send us your green brand message (logo, brand line, graphic, copy), and we’ll evaluate it. That means our Green Team at Mind Over Markets will assess your brand and post the results here on our Green Marketing Blog.  Then we will open it up to you, our readers, to join in and make comments, suggestions, or add your brilliant ideas to the conversation.  Now let’s get going…     

BRANDING LINE

We’re happy to say that Terra Source Chocolates started the challenge off on a happy note. We like your branding line, “Responsibly Decadent” because it says it all and honors the real reason people love chocolate. Because it’s so decadently good. That’s a good start. A good balance of the green message and the chocolate message. So many green brands go to saving the earth as their total message. We’re happy you didn’t. Now hurry up and get your branding line integrated with your graphic and on your website because it is sorely missing there.

COMPANY NAME

Next, your name, Terra Source, does not have the same impact.

Irv (our copywriter and King): Personally, I don’t like generic names. I much prefer a name that is your claim. Terra Source could be anything, and in fact, variations of that are everywhere in the green product world. You name should be as unique as your product.

WEBSITE

Now to your website. Remember it’s going to be your #1 marketing vehicle, so use it well. Make it decadent too. Make healthy, responsible decadence part of your brand personality. Have fun with it. Be wickedly funny and charming in what you show and what you say. Define what decadence is for your customer and involve them in the process. Social media is perfect for this, just like we’re doing here.

Carolyn (social media maniac, project manager and sometimes copywriter): For instance, ask your customers and potential customers “What does decadent mean to you?” Post it right on your site, your blog, your packaging, etc. Have them join in the conversation. Create a decadent Facebook Fan page and give away some chocolate to your new fans who answer that question. Decadent is such a delicious word, you’ll get all sorts of yummy responses.

Back to your website. Right now, your web copy is as generic as your company name. There is so much good stuff to say about chocolate (its health benefits for one), that you are missing a big selling opportunity by not giving your customer permission to indulge. Tell me more about what makes your chocolate responsible. Then I can feel three times as good.  The taste, the benefits, the sustainability of it all. That’s a good story to be telling. Make sure you’re not saying what everyone else is saying.

Entice me. Visually, we all think you are missing it. Show me people eating your chocolate with a twinkle in their eye. Above all make your product photography luscious. Your current photography is a disservice to your product. Simply put, it’s not delicious enough. 

LOGO 

Your logo is another generic element. There are way too many planets in the green business logo universe today. And yours doesn’t even feature the countries that are the source of your chocolate.  If your logo is invisible, why bother? 

Nicole (our graphic artist extraordinaire): Name recognition is key in your branding efforts. Rethink your choice of fonts and typeface. Yours feel dated and hard to read. Why not use fonts that reflect your brand image – back to decadent again. Regarding your color choices on your site, one idea is to use ones that are actually ingredients in your chocolate: raspberry, blueberry, etc. This makes your color palate relevant and it enhances your brand line, “Responsibly Decadent”.

PACKAGING

Your packaging is inconsistent. Again, it needs to reflect your brand. (Are we sounding like a broken record yet?). It might be via color coding, illustration, photography, etc. Whatever you choose, let it be a marriage of elements that work together to strengthen your brand.

Irv: Mary Wells, one of the greats of advertising, once told me that good advertising is a substitute for a free sample. She was right. I want all your branding and your website to give me a taste of what you do and make me order it express shipping because I can’t wait for my first bite.

Ok, what do you think? Join in on the conversation by posting your thoughts below in our comment box.

And thank you Josie for TAKING THE GREEN MARKETING CHALLENGE.  We think you are on your way to fabulous and effective branding.

Bookmark to:

According to a recent Pew Research study, 75% of Americans think climate change is an important issue.  How important you ask?  Stunningly, it’s last on a list of 20 compelling issues, far behind terrorism and the economy. The reasons seem simple enough. Bombs exploding and banks imploding have immediate impact. Rising temperatures and shrinking icebergs do not. It will probably take Nevada becoming beachfront before climate change moves to the top of the list.

It seems these issues are not so far removed from other messages in the green world that we have written so much about. The issue of global scale and not personal scale.  In other words, if “What’s in it for me?” is not in the message as an immediate takeaway, most people won’t take away its importance. 

So much anti-reality messaging is flying around today, from Obama’s supposed death panels to the town hall fiascos of people screaming that they don’t want the government involved in their Medicare, that no one knows what to believe any more. 

Environmental Leader just reported on makers of artificial rayon clothing who are selling themselves as bamboo. Their headline read, ”FTC Charges Clothing Firms with ‘Bamboo-zling’ the Public.”  A line, by the way, I wish I had written. What’s so sad is that real change can’t take place when people think what’s really happening isn’t happening to them. It means that all of us in the green world had better do everything we can to tell the story and tell the truth, and make sure that the story gets told in ways that are meaningful and impactful to their audience.   

My advice: Make every word count. And if you can’t figure out how to do that then please hire someone who does. We cannot allow the words, green or eco-friendly or environmentally safe, to go the way of “low-carb” and “natural”.  We can’t allow the lack of information or misinformation to help glaze over the eyes of the public who will do what’s right if they know why and how. We need to make the green movement the road back to sanity, economic as well as environmental.  We need to tell the world that switching to energy efficient light bulbs not only saves energy but saves money. Wal-Mart saved more than $7 million last year alone with that one act.

If you’re a marketer of a green product, put the real and rational reasons on top of your list. We don’t only have to deal with climate change, we have to deal with mind change and priority change if we want to see real change, or pretty soon we’ll all be surfing in Las Vegas and that will be a wipe-out for all of us.

Irv

Bookmark to:

The green consumer is a thinking consumer.   They think about their values every time they make a purchase.  It’s not just their emotions that drive them; it’s their intelligence as well.   Because of this, it makes sense to tell a thinking consumer something that makes them think and something that makes sense. 

It’s important to educate them with the logical part of being ecological.   Of course, it’s important to appeal to their sense of honor and caring.  But it’s equally important to appeal to their sense of savings. 

You can’t just tell them that you’re saving the planet one light bulb at a time.   They’re too smart for that.   We’ve found that consumers relate best to issues they feel they can actually have an impact on and ones that have an immediate impact on them. 

The rapidly increasing sales of Hybrids in today’s marketplace will increasingly be driven by the prices at the pump, not just the softer footprint on the earth.   A poll by the Associated Press in June 2007 stated 46 % of Americans said soaring gasoline prices would cause them “serious hardship” and 66 % said they planned to reduce driving.  And a whopping 47% said they have plans to buy a new fuel-efficient car.  Economy meets ecology.

It really is a circle of savings that does good for everyone.  The economic saving in the green world can often be as important as the ecological savings.  And that’s a message every shade of green can understand and relate to.   Those of us in the green communications world need to open up our approaches to marketing green products.  The more mainstream we make our messages, the less lofty the promises, the wider the audience there is to listen and respond. 

After all, that’s what we really want to accomplish, isn’t it?  Getting more green goods into the world for the good of all.   And that’s something we can all profit from.

Bookmark to:

In order to understand what green marketing is and how to get your message to resonate with green-leaning people, first you have to understand what green is.

Green is about what you believe in first and what you buy second. Green is about making decisions, taking the time to ask what you really need, not just what you want.  Green people buy from their values but also buy from their intellect.  Being green asks you to think. 

Green is about economy not just ecology.  Green is a statement about respect for the place we live, the leaders we elect, the truths we tell and are told.    Green is the color of trying to do it better.  Dark green people will sacrifice effectiveness for ethics.  Medium and light greens may not.    For them, it not only has to do good, it has to work good as well. 

Green people like to think deeper and longer.  They want to want to make choices for themselves that says something about them self.  Green is about thinking first and acting second.   Green is not a side stream, it’s the mainstream.  Green is for everyone because no one wants a dirtier planet or a more dangerous place to live.

Green is about faith.  It’s about knowing that spring will come and seeds will bloom.  It’s not liberal or conservative.  It’s non-political and should remain that way.  Green is about how we treat each other and how we care about each other. 

Green is about long term thinking not short term.   It’s living as part of something, not apart from everything.  It’s about believing in a future for everyone, our kids and their kids.  It’s understanding that we are a species among other species. 

Green is education, it’s information, it’s making decisions and knowing your choices  make a difference.  It’s about being transparent.  It’s about telling the truth and knowing the truth.  Thinking green is about thinking about the future.   Talking green is about saying what’s so and acting in accordance with it.   Green is not just about the talk, it’s about the walk. 

Green is not about moving off the grid or changing your life.  It’s not even about hugging a tree although that would be nice.  It’s about trying to walk softer.   It’s about thinking about what you do before you do it.   It’s about reusing, recycling, picking up after your self or even after someone else.  It’s about all of us caring about all of us. 

Green is about appealing to the sense not just the senses.   When that hole appeared in the ozone layer it affected all of us.   It was presented as a threat to each living person not just the planet.  And science and government got together to solve it and protect our health.

Green is not about stopping industry or progress.   It’s about creating more efficient industry and progress.   It’s about new opportunities and new jobs, new careers and new technology.

It’s about fostering new thinking not holding on to old thinking because that’s the way it has always been.  It’s about asking all of us to step up and think beyond ourselves to the real values that made America great.  The spirit of pioneering a new road and a new path to the future.   It’s about our intention to care enough about our self, our children, to choose a better way.

When you know all that, taking your message to the green consumer is not an obstacle.  It’s an opportunity.   The key:  Speak to their head AND to their heart in equal measure.   

Bookmark to: