ecohegemony

The Lost Art of Authenticating Real (update)

Well, the redesign I had planned for Ecohegemony has yet to happen.  I can't imagine you're too upset. I've been thinking a lot about the impending TEDxDirigo (http://tedxdirigo.com/) talk for a few reasons.  

1.  We're (SOAP's) on the cusp of launching (with some cool new partners) a public event series of our own.  It will be very un-TED, departing from the complacency and predictability I think the monologue format brings with it.

2. I'm starting to warm up to my talk and have been wrapped up in several arguments about "green marketing" as a concept and practice.  Most of these arguments are purely in my head.  Others are me mumbling to my computer while reading my blogroll.  Green marketing isn't dead (as Joel "Twitter Pun Champion" Makower claims.  But I think it might be dangerous.  My talk explores why.

Here's the talking points, kind of a talk discography of hits (or lily pad as Seth at #ValicoGroup calls them).

1. Blizzards
2. Greenpeace
3. Whale Nerds
4. Winking
5. Simulacrum
6. Porn
7. Don Draper
8. Gary Busey
9. Cows and Acrobats
10. Authenticity
11. Buy Local
12. Instagram
13. Aaron Sorkin
14. Total Recall
15. Cause Marketing
16. Hungry Ghosts
17. Rolex
18. 2 Tools:  Acknowledge and Math
19. 1:1
20. Leapfrog Strategy
21. Happiness
22. Profitability
23. So. Cal in the 70s
24. Sk8ers
25. Corporate Trust
26. Blizzards
27. Winks
28. Second base
29. Green Marketing    

In this format it looks schizophrenic.  I may well be.

 

Is Cause Marketing a noble distraction from CSR?

The last in my 3-part series for Environmental Leader on the noble distractions of csr came out yesterday.  I imagine this one might raise some hackles.  I imagine this because Cause Marketing is the strategy darling of the Capitalism with a Human Face crowd.  Simply, it is one of the best and most current marketing tools out there.  It is loved because it is effective and noble.  But it may not be the best CSR strategy.

And maybe it doesn't claim to be.  Maybe it's not supposed to be.  Maybe Cause Marketing is icing on the cake of CSR.  I'd be ok with that if it were true, but most of what I see as Cause Marketing are bolt on marketing programs (hence the name).  The winners of this years HALO awards will not likely fall into that category. And participants at this year's Cause Marketing Forum will disagree with me for sure.  And they will hold up examples of how wrong I am.  But I think it would be easier to find examples of Cause Marketing that are CSR veneers.  These veneers actually distract companies from activating Authentic CSR programs with (not for) their companies.

Read the fill articles here.

 

 

3rd Party Certification - Another Noble Distraction of CSR

My second of three parts on strategies to develop authentic CSR came out on Environmental Leader yesterday.  Here's a link to the first on looking at Transparency.

Here's the lead-in:

This three part series is designed to inspire dialogue around the values of Authentic CSR. “Authentic” is not used as a precondition for “ethically better.” Rather, it is used as an internal strategic gauge/guide – i.e. what does successful CSR look like when driven by your company rather than some perceived public leaning or external standard.  I argue that there are noble distractions (such as 3^rd party certifications) of CSR, and that the distractions carry unnecessary costs and exposures that are detrimental to both corporate financial and sustainability goals.

There are upwards of 700  3^rd party certifications or ‘trustmarks’ designed to validate marketing, operational or materiality claims.  Consumers are asked to navigate this din of ecolabels.  In theory, trustmarks exist to make sustainable consumption more accessible, but they are so ubiquitous that they create a kind of white noise that end up cannibalizing their own intent.  This white noise is as prevalent for business as it is consumers.  For corporations, 3^rd party certifications offer external bars that may ultimately be distracting from businesses.

One way in to this discussion is to understand that the cultural condition that creates the necessity for these marks is actually the absence of two other conditions.

1.     Absolute trust

2.     A functioning panopticon

“Absolute trust” has not exactly been the hallmark of capitalism. From Robber Barron industrialists to ENRON, the narrative of capitalism is littered with abuse and obfuscation. How else to explain government intervention in CEO salaries, FTC Greenguides, the EPA, plummeting consumer trust and rising consumer expectations? And while ethical business is part of the new social entrepreneurialism, it may in fact be too high an expectation – a false footing – for the “rest of business.” 3^rd party certifications were created as a stand-in for corporate-consumer trust.

Classically, the panopticon is a type of prison building structure designed to allow an observer to watch all prisoners without the prisoner knowing if they are being watched or not.  In the panopticon, everyone assumes they are being watched so everyone behaves. More modernly, panopticon is a metaphor for technology – a deployed set of observational structures (updates, tweets, check-ins, links and predictive behaviors)…  Perhaps we are closer to a functioning panopticon than we think…

But for now, business has the tool of the ecolabel to work with as both measure and measurement of its commitments to CSR principles.  So how do these well-intended external standards become noble distractions to the business of business and sustainability?

Certifications like USDA Organic, FSC, Cruelty Free, FairTrade, Good Housekeeping, etc., exist for businesses to legitimize their claims. In this scenario, they become representations of a trust you do not enjoy.  But they are also marketing shortcuts – a quick identifier for the consumer that you have achieved some (any) standard.  But they are standards set outside of your organization. At best, they serve to benchmark your company against your competitors (have vs. have not).  At worst, they are distractions from core measurements set from within the company that could help the company achieve better-aligned sustainability goals.

Read the full article here.

One more to go for this series:  Cause Marketing

 

All marketing is synthetic: customer craving and sustainability

Over at one of the LinkedIn groups I belong to, Dean Crutchfield asked "Does a Brand need a Logo."  It set off a bit of a shitstorm of traditionalist designers who said "1000% YES" and others who were willing to play around with the idea.  1000% doesn't leave much room for debate.  But debate we did.

As a thought exercise, I thought the question was glorious.  Some people explored the space a bit, looking at celebrity and Generic Brands and the absence of any logo as a new form of logo.

For my part, the question reinforced a longstanding (unpopular with marketers) view that marketing is a barrier between brands and consumers.  Marketing is synthetic after all.  It is a replacement for the real thing, a reminder, a mirage.

I see saw the thread (and the question) as a large and modern challenge/opportunity for marketing and marketers. We (as the latter) are conditioned to think of representations of the brands we promote. We design things that stand-in for our brands. We use metaphors (symbols, icons, colors) too communicate brand, rather than exposing consumers to The Real (in a very soft Lacanian sense).

We talk of "experiential branding" as a goal, and research supports that consumers want authentic experiences with brands, but - in this light - marketing becomes a barrier to brand-consumer connections.

Is it possible to conceive of a brand that has no synthetic representation of itself?  Is it the same for sustainability?  Is there any replacement for The Real?  Is anything else not acceptable?  Can sustainability exist without talking about it?  Can a brand?

 

using a problem to solve a problem

If I were to tell you that I could cure malaria but I needed to exploit women to do it, would you provide me the budget?

That's the theory behind XZ, a Russian group that uses beautiful women to draw attention to social problems.  It's not clear if this is a company or a stunt or a group, if it is run by the women (does that matter?), if they are well paid, etc. etc.

I suppose this is situational life-boat ethics.  And corporations must make a living on those decisions and keep "everyone" happy at the same time. 

 

 

greenmuteing - greenwashing's wicked uncle ernie

I first heard of greenmuting in through Cohn and Wolfe.  At the time I ignored it as kind of jargon fashion.  But it seems to be a real problem.  There is a nice mention of it within the context of this good podcast from EthicalCorp with Richard Reed, president of Innocent brands recently purchase by CocaCola.  At the end (it's only 17 min and worth it), Reed talks about Innocent's relationship with Coke. 

I like Reed's framing of "Coke is doing so many great things, but they can't talk about them because they will get into trouble." I guess that's greenmuting. Seems to me that exposing (exploring) the authenticity of a culture could create the opportunity to have these conversations.  Coke may be too big to have those conversations - this is a real problem created by scale.

Of course, greenmuting is also a great strategy for greewashers.  Writing for Treehugger, Loyd Alter sums it up nicely:

(Greenmuting is) A new form of false modesty, an "Aw shucks, its nothing, we are doing great things but you won't believe us so we won't bother you about it"? 

That is part of Authenticating what is Real - mitigating the problem of scale that stifles real conversation.

 

Promotion strategy: Building the bike as you ride it.

It used to be that a Creative Director and his team built a campaign, tested it, perfected it, and then handed it off to the client all gassed up and ready.  No more.

Today, campaigns are prepared and they evolve within the very stream created by said campaign.  Social media and the consumer call for dialogue demand this.  Today, we adjust campaign based on thousands of points of feedback (trick is listening to the right feedback) and move forward toward the next smart and lucrative adjustment.  It all happens very fast. 

And it can only happens with a solid agency relationship.

This is one reason why we are seeing an up-tick in retainers between agencies and clients.  Successful campaigns today are dynamic, requiring a very close and open relationship.  They require collaboration (agency - client -  customer) to create the campaign together on the fly.  This only happens under a retainer.  If you're still working project x project with your agency, you're not seeing the full value of your campaign.

The hegelian dialectic of sustainability? Where are we?

Oversimplified, the Hegelian Dialectic goes something like this:  Everything is a pendulum and the pendulum swings back and forth between extremes and eventually comes to rest in the center.

Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis

Abstract- Negative - Conflict

and:

Over-consumption - Green at any Cost - Stasis/Sustainability

My question is:  Where are we in the sustainability swing?  If we know, we can know what's next and how to expedite it. 

I want to argue that we are just between Over-Consmption and Green at any Cost.  We have a ways to go before we get to Sustainability.

But of course the diactect repeats itself into a battle of infinite regress and, hopefully, improvement.

 

 

@LOHASted and @theSOAPgroup speaking together at Outdoor Retailer Winter Market this week.

Ted Ning and I will be running a workshop at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in January.  Here's a quick marketing blurb on the presentation.

How to Grow Sales and Slow Global Warming With One Strategy:  Insights into the LOHAS marketplace and customer activation.

This isn’t a lecture or a talk.  It’s a workshop.  If you want to sit on your hands, it’s not for you.  But if you want to roll up your sleeves and get dirty while learning about a lucrative market and innovative strategy to tap into that market (and slow down global warming at the same time), then, by all means, show up.

Ted Ning (LOHAS) and John Rooks (The SOAP Group) will introduce markets and marketing concepts that will create Corporate, Civic and Cultural value for your brands.  You will crowd-engineer campaigns that will set you apart from your competition (they’re not in the room are they?).

Walk away with market insights and fresh ideas to activate your customers to be sustainable on behalf of your brand.

I'm looking forward to taking some runs with Ted and introducing the outdoor market to doing More Than Promote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing with scale and reality and sustainability.

The concept of scale is important to sustainability:  At what scale (if any) does sustainability break?  What is it's optimal size?

The concept of reality is important to sustainability:  What does real sustainability feel like?  Does it hurt a little?  Feel good?

A more interesting question might be:  At what scale is sustainability most real? 

Only buying locally?   That's very real, but hardly scalable.  Encouraging everyone to switch to a new green(er) product?  That's scale, but unlikly to become real, real quick.

It's an argument that quickly folds in on itself.  Check out an entertaining view of this argument (albeit with dolls and murder) as narrated by John Waters.