Okay, so John Grant never says it exactly like that, but I would argue that his book The Green Marketing Manifesto is nothing short of revolutionary. Here’s why:
Let’s start with marketing – yuck. Even books and blogs that want to teach you how to do it better tend to apologize in the process. Michael Port wants us to get more clients ‘Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling,‘ and Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communications has been quoted as saying ‘What Makes Marketing Hard? #1: Eww, it’s Gross.’ Of course they both go on to say how it’s not really that bad, but they’ve got their work cut out for them.
The photo says it all.
We pretty much hate this guy. Nobody wants to be sold, and this guy is obviously a total sleazebag.
What’s interesting about John Grant is that even though he’s both a marketer and a total fan of sustainable products, services and marketing, he also hates THIS guy.
He doesn’t want to be sold ‘green’ any more than he wants that guy’s ordinary laundry powder. He especially doesn’t want to be sold a green image, since ‘Image marketing [uses] all manner of creative devices to make the product or brand seem more special than it actually is. That’s what selling means.’ (79-80)
He makes a strong case against any form of greenwashing, but what really gets him excited is something more radical: he identifies a revolution (which I’m pretty sure John Lennon would approve of ) that he believes is already in progress, but that needs to be applied vigorously to the world of sustainability.
web 2.0 powers the revolution
It all starts with that microphone our salesman is using. This is the ultimate in one-way communications, or ‘broadcast culture.’ He talks, we listen. He might manipulate us, coerce us, reassure us, or pretend he’s our friend, but it’s always him talking while our only choice is whether or not we’ll buy.
This kind of one-way broadcasting is rapidly being replaced by the interactivity that is enabled by web 2.0 technologies. Grant calls this New Marketing, and it appears in formats such as ‘virals, branded events, social networks, user-generated content, brand utilities.’ And most importantly for him, ‘there has been one simple shift: from selling to sharing enthusiasm’ (133) in a world in which ‘there is no audience, only actors.’ (137)
In other words, Mr. Sleazebag is replaced with this:
Companies like eBay, Amazon, and open-source applications such as OpenOffice and Linux are good examples of this process in action. They don’t advertise or rely on brand images, ‘they just work great’ (196) and they count on consumers, users and co-creators contributing, spreading the word and improving their products and processes along the way. As Grant would say, ’sharing enthusiasm,’ and in the process flushing out the dishonest, overpriced and unreliable. This kind of fundamental transparency and participation radically shifts the terms of engagement for all of us.
what’s it got to do with sustainability?
There are a few layers to this one.
EFFICIENCIES: Our single biggest problem is that we are wasteful. We use far more resources than we need, and produce monumental amounts of waste (including by-products like greenhouse gases). If we can sort this one, our collective ecological footprint will be reduced dramatically.
Grant believes web 2.0 is the perfect tool for this job: ’The internet has been so successful so fast because it has tackled existing inefficiency; for instance, matching buyers and sellers better. The same is true of ways in which our lives and arrangements are needlessly environmentally wasteful.’ (52)
TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY: Greenwashers beware; if you’re lying about the ‘greenness’ of your products and services, someone will find out. And they will tell everyone, more or less instantly.
Consumers also expect increasing disclosure from companies, and some remarkable things are happening already. Clorox has recently added lists of ingredients for all of its products onto its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) webpage. Not just its Green Works line of products, but even plain old toxic Clorox bleach. Walmart’s Sustainability Index is also an exercise in transparency. We can expect to see more of this in future from other companies.
BELONGING: Has mass consumer culture been a lonely place? Grant thinks so (along with many others), and thinks we’ve been trying to buy status to replace a lost sense of belonging, with dire consequences for the planet: ‘We waste to prove we aren’t poor.’ (248) So perhaps as we get more connected again, through the ‘tribes,’ ‘villages’ and first-hand connections that are created in web 2.0, we’ll have less need to overconsume to fill the void.
CREATIVITY: If we hope to minimize the effects of climate change and other environmental problems, we need to change, and we need to do it quickly. To get there, we need everyone’s best creative thinking and problem-solving skills. What could be better for this than the open-source movement that draws on the wisdom of crowds? And now there’s an official creative commons for sustainability where companies are working out how to share intellectual property, the GreenXchange.
Creativity is important for its own sake too: ‘The green products, services and businesses of the future are creative, in a sparky, thrilling way. . . . They represent a turning away from the oppressive uniformity of mass-produced culture.’ (289) It’s already happening: where would we be without all the creativity to be found in YouTube, Flickr and Photoshop, eBay and TradeMe, and sites like etsy.com?
grant’s ‘vision thing’
He’s got one, and its both infectious and compelling. Little did I know he’d make a perfect poster boy for ’sanguine sustainability,’ although he does have a strong sense of urgency about our need to address the issues very soon (as he explains in this short video clip ). He lays out an attractive path for green marketers, and for new and more sustainable ways for all of us to live.
His central message is this: ‘we have a dual challenge: innovation, to create something radically different and better, and then making it feel intuitive, familiar and easy to adopt. The means to do this are simple to describe but difficult to execute – we need lots of brilliant ideas.’ (211) Or, as he states it at several points in the book, not to make the normal seem green (greenwashing), but rather to make the green seem normal.
Here’s just a small sample of things he talks about: What would enable businesses to profitably provide power-tool libraries or car-sharing and motivate consumers to borrow/share rather than buy? How could a restaurant that featured in-season local produce, takeaways in deposit refundable boxes, and green lifestyle education become the ‘it’ place rather than a fringe hippy hangout? And how can companies profit by selling objects that are built to last, rather than relying on planned obsolescence to generate new sales? Product-service systems have been proposed as one model; more on that in a future blog post.
What would it take to make these ideas seem ‘normal’ rather than greenie weird? Send in all your brilliant ideas for the world to see. In the meantime, if you’re curious about green marketing, or if you dare to consider a sustainability revolution, I’d highly recommend this book.
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part of the air we breathe.
