Taking green digital

Tips on how to get your green message across using social media

The digital revolution presents a golden opportunity for any company wanting to engage with consumers about sustainability issues. NGOs are already using the range of available social media – the online technologies (such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other – to great effect.

As individuals become ever more powerful in ‘streaming’ the information they want and filtering out what they don’t want to hear, any successful green marketing strategy should place digital at its core. But how?

It's not an ad

First, we need a dramatic shift in our appreciation of what ‘marketing’ might be. Social media shouldn’t be ring-fenced as a stand-alone activity.

All communications from companies or brands will be consumed by consumers without them drawing any conscious distinctions between media type, content type or whether the placement was paid-for or ‘earned’. So our activity within social media must be a natural extension of what we do elsewhere: an approach we call ‘inline communications’.

Get in touch

Second, green communicators must create carefully conceived content that resonates with particular communities. We need to craft and deliver credible and interesting stories that are truly compelling to our audiences, so that they are driven to share – or narrate – those stories within their communities. Then we can create and drive advocacy.

We must also bear in mind that carefully created content doesn’t necessarily have to be content in the traditional sense of the word. Content in this instance could just be presence: an individual providing one half of a potential conversation.

Be organised

Third, we must organise internally to maximize the effectiveness of any social media activity. Digital communications are a grey area when it comes to mapping responsibilities according to traditional marketing groups; social media particularly so.

Tight and detailed internal guidelines and procedures are required to ensure social media communications are not duplicated or in conflict with other corporate messages or behaviours. Otherwise, a company risks finding itself in a fine mess in pretty short order.

The golden rules

Based on our experience in creating and managing social media programmes for clients, the critical success factor for any social media marketing activity is for it to be REAL. If it seems or feels inauthentic, it will fail.

Success in the social media environment isn’t about buying digital real estate and using it to shout about how great your products and services are. The guiding principles for any organisation venturing into social media are:

• Be active
• Be everywhere
• Be nice

So what does that mean, in real terms? By ‘be active’ we mean you must participate in genuine conversations. You cannot throw money at social media marketing and expect it to work. The traditional notions of communications planning and deployment are comparatively pre-historic when looked at in the context of the social media environment.

In order to gain momentum and begin shifting perceptions, it isn’t enough to ‘advertise’ what you do or what you think. Rather, it is essential to be you. Don’t just say it, do it. In this sense, digital marketing is no different to authentic green business. It must be core DNA, not a bolt on marketing tool.

Being everywhere means exactly what it says. If your organisation is going to convince its target audience that it is what it purports to be, it must do so everywhere online. Being active everywhere means you are giving itself the best opportunity to provide constant, contextual, responsive and valuable content within each and every available target community.

Finally, ‘be nice’. This tells us how we should act while we are active, everywhere. It may sound trite, but businesses that adopt the attributes of ‘niceness’ when communicating online can only succeed.

After all, if you’re generous with your time, are courteous, listen, don’t interrupt, help people achieve what they want to achieve and make people smile – in short, if you’re nice – then people will want to hang out with you and they’ll want to introduce you to their mates. This simple maxim applies as much to digital communications.

Any organisation that demonstrates the core attributes of personal niceness online – those that run online campaigns that are inclusive, non-judgmental, even-handed, polite, respectful, courteous, humorous, empowering, supportive, interesting and engaging – will be infinitely better placed to succeed than an organisation that doesn’t.

Companies that are committed to real, embedded sustainability have already accepted the virtue of being active, everywhere, and nice. They would be missing a trick if they did not deploy the quiet revolution that is changing the way in which audiences receive information, for good.

NGO campaigns – Better the devil you know?

Brendan May and Tony Juniper discuss the role of campaigning NGOs in supporting or undermining multistakeholder initiatives

At the end of last year, two global multistakeholder initiatives came under heavy fire from campaigning NGOs. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) found itself and some of its members being targeted by Greenpeace, dissatisfied with its slow progress in creating a sustainable palm oil supply chain to feed the growing demand for this commodity in a range of cosmetic and food products.

At around the same time, the much older Forest Stewardship Council once again found itself under pressure. Friends of the Earth UK went so far as to stop recommending FSC to its members. This was a major tactical shift, as FSC has long benefited from the support of environmental campaigners to a degree that similar groups in other sectors could only dream of.

Friends of the Earth’s change of heart on FSC was considerably more surprising than Greenpeace ramping up the pressure on the RSPO, which has yet to deliver the kind of sectoral impact seen since the creation of the FSC in the early 1990s. Yet Greenpeace has also long been a critic of coalitions it regards as weak. More than ten years after its creation, even the Marine Stewardship Council has yet to win the support of the group’s campaign chiefs.

But are these campaign groups right to pull the trigger on global initiatives that enjoy significant buy-in from conservationists, scientists and leading industry players?

No multistakeholder initiative is without its faults. And it is impossible to please the multitude of players in any sector, be it forestry, fisheries, palm oil or climate change. But campaigners should be careful that the headlines they grab in tarnishing the image of certification and labelling programmes do not actually retard their very objectives, namely the conservation of ecosystems and protection of livelihoods.

The world is now entering a period of environmental change unprecedented in speed and scale. The transition to an economy that dramatically reduces the causes will be complex, controversial and one that has many losers. The changes will need to occur at several simultaneous levels – in policy and law for example, but also in culture and expectations among the public and private sectors. In this context, campaigners who set out to undermine efforts to change sectors through processes such as FSC and RSPO need to ask themselves some important questions.

Point the way

Firstly, is there a better alternative? By ending its support for the FSC, what does Friends of the Earth now believe its supporters should do when buying wood and paper products? Not buy ones endorsed by the many inferior schemes out in the marketplace, surely. And for all its faults, there is no forum other than the RSPO that will ever bring together all the major growers of palm oil in south-east Asia with its major users in Europe and the US. Although one or two companies can always move outside a process by exceeding its requirements, organisations like the RSPO are critical if the mass mobilisation of a whole sector is to be achieved.

Secondly, what message does this send to business? Undermining a general consensus and process is a sure-fire way to let business off the hook when it comes to adopting higher standards. If all the NGOs involved disagree with each other, companies start to wonder what point there is in trying to help. Killing the credibility of eco-labels and certification schemes gives business a handy licence to carry on as normal.

Thirdly, what will refusal to engage mean for the initiative? There is no doubt that campaigning NGOs bring important insights to any sectoral initiative, often helping raise the bar when standards are being established and auditing processes designed. That ongoing engagement is vital in achieving the very goals campaigners demand – namely ever stricter standards in the name of sustainable supply chains. Effectively removing themselves from the debate can only slow down that process of continuous improvement.

Campaigning NGOs need to hold multistakeholder initiatives to account. But they must also act as signposts to their members and the consumer at large. Increasingly, consumers simply want easy, clear guidance on what they should do to help achieve more sustainable consumption. Campaigners have a vital role to play in proving that guidance. If you’re buying wood, choose FSC. For seafood, MSC is the gold standard, and so forth. Too often it seems that the search for a hard-hitting campaign comes into conflict with the signposting role NGOs can play. And a signpost that doesn’t tell you where to travel is useless.

Brendan May is managing director of planet 2050 and a board member of the Rainforest Alliance.

Tony Juniper is an independent sustainability adviser and is the former executive director of Friends of the Earth.

PODCAST (Ethical Corporation)

Ethical Corporation's John Russell discusses with Tony Juniper, former Friends of the Earth Uk Executive Director, and Brendan May, Managing Director of Planet 2050, why NGOs should better balance idealism and pragmatism

Please click on icon to the right to play.

Green business: 5 reasons for recovery

Brendan May on why sustainability seems to be surviving the downturn, and even prospering

For those of us who earn our living from sustainability, it’s very risky to assume we are unaffected by the global economic turmoil that graces the front pages and news bulletins on a daily basis. The crisis has implications for the prosperity of the environmental cause, as it does for every product, service or movement. But I would argue that the doomsayers and sceptics who argued that green business would be an early casualty of the credit crunch appear to have been proved wrong.

Here are five reasons why:

1. Yes, they will…

There’s little doubt that the political change sweeping the United States partly explains continued corporate attention to issues like climate change. At barely six weeks old, the new administration will take some time to provide a clear sense of what it will and won’t be able to achieve in combating the relentless rise in emissions.

There will be many debates and trade-offs ahead. But the ‘chatter’ around the Obama phenomenon is, for now, sufficient for the business community to assume that the old rules will no longer apply, and that scrutiny of their environmental performance will increase rapidly in a way that was inconceivable under the previous regime.

Obama has filled his administration with climate experts – not only have the sceptics departed, but they have been replaced by people who not only believe the science but in some cases can claim to be its architects.

The global politics of the climate debate have changed for good. As climate discussions intensify ever more in the run up to December’s Copenhagen summit, it would be no surprise if environmental sustainability once again plays equal fiddle with financial sustainability in the world’s media. The business community, in the USA and beyond, knows that it will be asked to play its proper part.

2. Greener is cheaper…

There is of course an ironic benefit to the sustainability movement from the current economic caution. Times of austerity and last year’s commodity price volatility have turned many people firmly off the fossil fuel based economy.

In a period where the prevailing wind is to consume and waste less, it does not take a huge leap of imagination to link failed commercial structures with failures in our ability to treat the earth’s resources with respect.

Combined with the economic stimulus plans being crafted, many of which place the search for new clean technologies at their heart, it is unlikely that people will look back on this global recession as a bad thing for the sustainability movement.

3. Meanwhile, back in Arkansas…

Another reason lies in a place called Bentonville, Arkansas, home of course to Walmart’s global HQ. Three years ago, Lee Scott turned the course of that company’s direction. He said all the right things, attracted the right cautious support from NGOs, and certainly secured the attention of the world’s media. Even sceptics conceded that it was a good start, but rightly pointed out the proof of the pudding would be in the eating.

Steadily, Walmart has begun to implement its strategy. The most significant recent development is that all suppliers to Walmart are now being required to step up to the plate on sustainability – rightly so as Walmart cannot possibly reduce and eventually neutralise its environmental footprint without its suppliers doing the same.

This supply chain pressure is being felt by anyone who aspires to supply Walmart with anything – and very few firms don’t supply them with something. In the next couple of years, expect to see all sorts of companies who didn’t have a sustainability strategy or carbon footprint measurement system to develop these in fairly short order. It’s pure commercial necessity.

4. Tweet tweet…

Another reason companies are not abandoning environmental priorities is that they simply cannot afford to take their eye off the ball.

One thing that won’t disappear in a recession is hard-hitting NGO campaigns. Especially now they have the cheap option of social media at their hourly disposal.

Indeed, an effective NGO strike on a business is likely to have a far greater impact in a downturn, when there is such intense competition between companies for market share.

One thing that won’t disappear in a recession is hard-hitting NGO campaigns. Especially now they have the cheap option of social media at their hourly disposal.

Environmental NGOs have an opportunity to exploit civil society’s inevitable dissatisfaction with businesses and governments at a time when both are being heavily blamed for a mixture of excesses and incompetence.

That makes it imperative for companies not to reduce their efforts to attain ever-higher standards of good practice.

5. After the storm

Lastly, the smart company will already be thinking about how it looks when gradually life returns to normal.

How wasteful it would be to have to start all over again with the process of embedding good, sustainable, business practices into an organisation, when all along keeping up the effort would not only have saved money but provided a powerful communications platform with which to re-emerge at the end of the dark times.

Legislation, consumer interest, media coverage, NGO scrutiny and investor pressure are all headed in one direction – more not less green.

Therefore no matter how difficult things look and feel in these long winter months, the smart thing to do is to prepare the recovery strategy, with sustainability at its heart.

When the world returns to financial health, which it surely will, there will be two types of company left: those fit for purpose and those fit for nothing. The fit for purpose company will be an environmental leader, ready to embrace a new world order.

How to look good green

10 green marketing tips by Brendan May.

2008 was the year of green marketing. Despite the downturn, expect ever more of it in the year ahead. Brendan May offers 10 eco-marketing tips

There are few companies these days that don’t want to be part of the sustainability discussion. They can’t afford not to be at the table. Increasingly, businesses are moving beyond sitting in the right conferences and meeting the right NGOs to finding the courage to get out there and market themselves as green champions. In many ways that’s a positive development, but it can come at a heavy price.

So here’s a rough guide to avoiding the pitfalls of peaking too early when it comes to communicating green prowess.

1. DO check that the environmental movement is as impressed by your initiative as you are. Spend (a lot of) time listening to what the key barometers of opinion, like environmental NGOs, expect of your business, and adjust your practices accordingly, within reason of course. Think about the people the media will call for a counter view when you launch your big green campaign – and make sure they’ve heard about it from you first. It’ll improve the quality of what you’re trying to do, as well as giving you some much-needed independent endorsement when you go public. Sometimes, the best you can hope for is neutrality, but aim for more.
   
   
2. DON’T over-claim. Ever. If it’s a small step towards a bigger goal, say just that – don’t give any room for creating the impression you think you’ve done enough if you know you haven’t. Check that one part of your business isn’t in major conflict with the good work you’re talking about in your marketing campaign.
   
   
3. DO involve your employees. They are your greatest advocates. Countless companies spend resources telling the outside world how responsible they are, without the people on the shop floor having a clue about the good work going on. If you have thousands of employees, think about the net effect of all those people chatting in the pub about their job and what their company does. You can reach millions through good employee engagement, as well as motivating a work force that expects its bosses to be engaging on issues they read about every day.
   
   
4. DON’T be a one-hit wonder. One green campaign will have little lasting influence on reputation if it shrivels away, dies in a drawer and has nothing to follow it. Building green credentials can take years, and the best companies become ever bolder in their goals, and louder in their communications.
   
   
5. DO be authentic. There’s nothing that raises eyebrows more in this cynical sustainability world than a corporate affairs suit with green ‘talking points’ in his pocket. Authenticity is the key. If there are challenges in going green, be honest about it. If you think too much is being asked of your company, say so and say why, and explain the gains you think you can achieve for sustainable development. Tell it like it is, not how you think people want to hear it. There’s nothing so refreshing as a transparent, accessible, honest business leader. You may even change the minds of people who disagree with you. Marketing speak won’t work, so be yourself.
   
   
6. DON’T forget the power of digital. Communications have moved online. Social media is the new currency. Campaigners are using it effectively; companies should be too. Find compelling content that can mobilise online communities and get traction for your green credentials. Ad spend and press releases are becoming less and less effective as the role of online search takes stories directly to individuals at the touch of a button. It’s very cost effective, too. So be a twitter, not a twit.
   
   
7. DO measure success, and use it to secure ever more leadership momentum behind sustainability. Track perceptions of all your key audiences, be they customers, NGO stakeholders, investors, employees or the general public. Successful green marketing reaches all of the above, and in doing so it increases sales.
   
   
8. DON’T be nervous. Not everyone is going to stand up and applaud you, and you’ll probably take some hits from those who would rather your business didn’t exist at all. It’s all part of the rough and tumble of the environment movement. Don’t let one misleading attack put you off – after all, if you’ve done your homework you know you’re right, don’t you?
   
   
9. DO sit down with journalists and get to know them. Build relationships, don’t bombard them with email proclamations you think they’ll find interesting - they often don’t. Take them for a coffee (or something stronger if you like them), and chew the fat. You’ll find their copy a lot more balanced in your favour if they think you’re actually worth listening to. Tell them things they haven’t heard before. Invite them in to see for themselves how good you are if they don’t believe you. Make friends, not ‘contacts’.
   
   
10. DON’T give up. The work is too important for quitters.
    
    Green marketing without designing the politics in advance is like walking into a gas factory whilst toying with a cigarette lighter. You may pull it off, but your chances are low. Get it right, and the rewards are huge. Above all, be transparent and authentic. If you need a training course to be those things, then ignore tip number 10!

Change Must Begin Here

Agencies need to make sure their own ethical policies are sound before promoting those of their clients

PRWeek, September 2007 - Download article in PDF format

The PR industry's unique skill lies in building, maintaining, enhancing and often rescuing the reputation of its clients. And corporate responsibility has become seen as one of the most effective tools in supporting these efforts.

Be it an ethical transgression, environmental excess, abuse of employee relations or supply chain scandal, PR professionals increasingly counsel their clients to embrace ever bolder corporate responsibility strategies to build trust with stakeholders. These stakeholders now make up pretty much the entire spectrum of the audience that any company needs to address: investors, NGOs, media, legislators and, of course, customers.

This is the age of the blog, internet activism, a revitalised environmental movement, a risk-averse investor community and a media that salivate at the first hint of corporate malpractice. The rules of the game have changed for good. There is no escape for the corporate laggard.

The case for corporate responsibility and the tireless pursuit of sustainable business practices is now firmly established. Very few companies now believe they can ignore the environmental and social agenda completely, although some embrace it with a good deal more conviction than others. Yet still the role of the PR industry in the CSR world is viewed with suspicion.

Recently, I was at a lunch with three friends, all of whom would (I think) acknowledge that after several years in the environmental NGO community I am not one to puff loudly about clients' achievements when their CSR standards fall short.

Yet as lunch wore on, the usual jokes about my being a 'PR man, spinning my clients' came flooding in. Normally this would not trouble me, but in this case the friends in question numbered two respected CSR journalists and one member of the shadow cabinet. PR and CSR, for them, sit uneasily in the same sentence.

I have some sympathy with this view. Our industry has done a better job promoting clients than it has itself and we have paid scant attention to the reputation of our own profession.

And it's not hard to see why many journalists regard some of the CSR communications that target them with suspicion. The problem with CSR is that it doesn't conform to the traditional PR rulebooks. There are no quick media hits in CSR - those who try the quick-fix approach without having done the hard work behind the scenes end up with worse reputations than when they started. We need to shape cultures, not just headlines.

Increasingly, there seem to be new golden rules emerging about what works and what doesn't when it comes to communicating CSR. The first is to deliver the goods before you communicate. The best example of this is Marks & Spencer and its award winning 'Look behind the Label' campaign.

The second is that to catch the eye in an overcrowded media marketplace already tiring of Al Gore, ethical shopping bags and carbon offsetters, any CSR initiative needs to be big, audacious, bold, iconic and above all, unexpected.

The third is to remember that no matter how well you behave on one issue, if you don't sort out the less exemplary behaviour in other parts of your business, every minute, pound and PR fee spent will be wasted.

And last, but by no means least, never underestimate the ability of a well meant programme to unravel if buy-in and participation has not been secured from that sprawling mass of groups often called 'civil society'. Jargon though the term may be, the frontline NGOs and pressure groups have the power to undo months of work in a day of campaign action. Better to adjust your behaviour to meet their needs than ignoring them because you have plenty of money to spend on PR.

A huge growth industry of CSR consultancies, think-tanks, ratings agencies and sector-specific initiatives has flourished thanks to the widespread acceptance of the notion that 'if you're not at the table, you're on the menu'. So we need to assert our voice at that table, to overcome that undercurrent of cynicism that still surrounds PR's activities. We need to get our own houses in order, and develop a credible point of view on these crucial issues in order to really help our clients transform perceptions and stereotypical misjudgments of their activities. In doing so, we can be leaders, not followers, of the trends we have thus far failed to influence.

Pay the piper but get the right tune

Public relations firms are yet to develop a credible voice for explaining their clients' good work on sustainability says Brendan May

Ethical Corporation, September 2007 - Download article in PDF format

Leonard Bernstein, the celebrated conductor and composer, loved recalling the cynical attitude of his father to his young son's desire to become a musician.

Bernstein Snr had hoped his "Lenny" would be drawn to the safety of the family's beauty parlour supply business and dismissed music as the preserve of Jewish klezmers, a term Leonard Bernstein said meant "something a little bit better than a beggar". Klezmers, he said, were fiddle players who wandered from one bar mitzvah or wedding to the next, picking up a few kopeks here and there. For the young Bernstein's parents, the musical profession lacked nobility.

In the most puritan corporate responsibility circles, the public relations industry is too easily characterized as the klezmer at the wedding.

Wrong as this may be, it is fair to say that the PR world was sluggish to respond to the seismic business changes that came with the advent of corporate responsibility and sustainability in the 1990s.

With some notable exceptions, most communications agencies chose to ignore the changes that were happening around them. In turn, some PR companies themselves became targets, confirming the maxim that "if you're not at the table, you're on the menu". For all the creativity the industry deployed in other disciplines, when it came to corporate responsibility, safe and conservative strategies were chosen instead of bold, iconic gestures.

PR professionals were slow to join the corporate responsibility movement, mistaking it for a bolt-on to add a new angle to a dry story or product. Non-governmental organizations were fodder to lend credibility to unambitious initiatives. And "crisis management" too often obstructed long-term planning, despite the fact that better plans would have meant fewer crises to manage.

As a result, PR firms cast themselves in the role of business friend, leaving criticism to those outside the corporate tent, notably NGOs. A more useful role might have been that of "critical friend", a function many of the more moderate NGOs now perform themselves.

Tough brief

Large multinational PR agencies face many challenges, some easier to overcome than others. Any global agency thinking seriously about corporate responsibility must ask itself tough questions:

Should there be no-go client areas? If we refuse to work on a case where a client's actions are perceived to fall short of ethical expectations, what of the right to a fair hearing for all sides? Would failing to take on controversial cases risk impairing the quality of public debate?

Should a PR firm look beyond its own environmental footprint to account for the footprint of campaigns it devises?

How does the industry adapt to new client conflicts that have emerged around issues such as climate change?

Today's commercial battle lines are no longer drawn simply around which product offers better value than another. Themes like climate change, supply chain ethics and health have placed seemingly unrelated brands on ethical collision courses. With companies racing each other to top environmental rankings and ethical investment indices, a supermarket chain is competing with a mobile phone operator or oil company as much as with its sector peers.

The industry as a whole has not yet developed an overall point of view on these complex challenges. To become a credible voice at the table we must step up our collective response.

We are well down the path of tackling the easy part of the agenda - reducing our carbon footprint, providing our pro bono expertise to the non-profit sector and giving clients the best advice on how to maximise the communications potential of their CSR efforts. Increasingly our clients will demand the same standards from us that they demand from any other supplier - concrete proof that responsibility is as deeply interwoven in our business practices as it is in theirs.

Our industry has huge power. It engages daily with key decision makers and, importantly, budget holders who determine the face of corporate behaviour. They are, sometimes unknowingly, some of the influencers who will determine what our planet will be like in 20 years' time. The challenge for PR firms is to devise, mobilise and activate ever bolder communications strategies that are in keeping with the urgency of global challenges. We must prove the cynics wrong.

The young Bernstein rejected the safety of the family business and chose music, of the noblest kind. The world was a better place for it. I know from personal experience that PR is a noble profession. But as an industry, we need to do much ore to prove it.