Actions Speak Louder Than Leaves and the Evolving Meaning (Memeing) of Green

Thursday

Jul022009

No. Don’t worry, it’s not another line about “it’s not easy being green.” But Kermit does have something right when it comes to messaging in a green saturated media market. Kermit is here for a different reason, he played an important role in bringing green back to the mainstream. Yes, that’s right, Kermit is to “green” as Justin Timberlake is to “sexy.”

Since Kermit went big at the Superbowl for Ford (seen here above), all we hear is green this, green that. You may ask, “how long will green last?” Is it a fad, a movement, or meme? (Read the definition of meme).

With biofuels coming under question, nuclear power being considered by environmental groups, farmers standing in front of wind turbines, and Oprah and Matt Lauer screaming “green is good” from the center of pop culture news, one has to wonder, how is meaning of “green” evolving in today’s society? And, will it stick, or, will we get sea-green sick?

Update on the Insider Conversation

When Madison Avenue resurrected Kermit from his coastal wetland to do a commercial Ford unknowingly re-introduced green to the masses. The Kermit ripple effect sparked conversations between little, and even big groups of creative people (including Ecofusion), sitting in fields, conference rooms, and/or creative spaces doctoring the DNA of the “green” message. For those of you who don’t follow the conversation happening inside the ad agencies and communications firms regarding this conversation, here is a little summary update from the folks at Ecofusion....

“Don’t Think of a Leaf”

(from our friends at egg)

Agencies cultivating green product messages early in the game moved on from “leaf and grass” branding a year or so ago, if not years ago. Those who just jumped on board the “green branding” bandwagon are planting trees, grass, and leaves on every website and magazine cover you can find, creating the equivalent of a smart mob looking for “green” on Getty and iStock. As our friends at egg wrote, “Don’t think of a leaf.” If you haven’t read this article, please read it. It says it all. Our response to this great article is this:

Tip #1, #2 and #3....Don’t think of a leaf! Seriously, while leaves are just picking up in the main stream, they are starting to float away down the cultural steam as people start to become weary of the green goo. For examples on how we’ve branded away from this trend see our most recent work completed over the last year with Cobalt Biofuels and our own project emPivot.com.

In summary, green is good but when branding you may be beating people over the head with stereotypical symbols and imagery to say that your product or brand is green. More on the complexities of this further on. Now on to Blue!

Go Green, Then Go Blue – Thanks to Walmart and a Billion Consumers

Argg, just what we need, another color in the Crayola box, right?

Well, this is controversial but also something to seriously consider. From Adam Werbach, the former (and at the time the youngest ever) President of the Sierra Club and now the head of Saatchi and Saatchi S (formerly ActNow - Walmart’s green communication firm of choice), comes a call for the “Blue Movement.” Werbach calls for a billion person consumer movement that goes beyond “green.” Blue means people must live and shop knowing that their personal choices affect their immediate community and everyone else within that community and beyond. This “Blue Movement” calls for people to make every-day choices in what they consume, how they act and how they engage their lifestyle within this new integrated social-economic mind-set system. Check out his speech on video and his most recent article, Seeing Green? Maybe It’s Time to Go Blue in Advertising Age.

Some argue that Blue isn’t the brain child of Werbach (we liked egg’s take on it way back when in their post Feelin’ Bloovy) but like in his storied past, maybe Werbach’s the messenger tapped to lead the shift.

Green is Growing Up

This is where you get confused. The “don’t think of a leaf” theory is just that at some level, a theory. While you should move away from it, some the biggest brands are benefiting from it right now. We’ll watch the “Blue Movement” grow (they’re not asking us to throw out green), but we also think that the leaf isn’t totally out yet.

Black Enterprise published their first green edition this past year, something we’ve been waiting for, for a long time. The edition has spawned a new on-line section of BlackEnterprise.com, BEing Green (branding seen above).

NBC et. al, still gets a good return on a green tinted logo, an MSN Green leaf, and even Wal-Mart, Werbach’s favorite client, is just starting to talk green; no move toward blue yet. All of the green cliche still has its impact for the big players and there’s more to it than just ad dollars. Heightened awareness is a good thing. It is simply shocking, and very impactful across mass media, to hear Matt Lauer referencing with glee his story about plastic bags during one of his Today Show interviews.

The problem for you if you’re not a major media conglomerate or big business is that you’ll get lost in the mix and no one will be able to differentiate between Green somethin’ or other and Green(enter name of your service here).com.

The moral of the story, people are still figuring out this “green” thing; this is good. The green DNA is evolving, be aware — a metamorphoses similar to what Werbach philosophically espouses in his call for a “Blue Movement” — so work to move beyond the cliche symbolism that often accompany movements such as the green consumer movement.

Why? If the green movement becomes only a character of itself, like some have suggested is happening to Martin Luther King’s icon, then in a similar way the “green leaf” while powerful might also threaten to dilute the important messages of sustainability.

What Does It All Mean? Eco-fusion as an Era of Evolution

The environmental “movement” like any “movement” has evolved into more than a movement, it is a era of human development. In 1999, when we conceived, named, and branded a company called Ecofusion, we were predicting that like at no other moment in history “eco” or “green” would begin to fuse with all parts of human society.

Almost nine years since our inception (it took five years to launch as a full time business in 2005) the societal eco-fusion is well underway and as result stereotypes and myths about environmentalism have changed. The myths and stories of hippies and granola began to fade in the late 90’s as organic began to take hold of the consumer movement and companies like Whole Foods dominated new consumer market places. While most environmentalists predicted a policy back-lash during the early Bush years in the US, we’ve also experienced the eruption of the “green” sector into mainstream where Clean Tech is one of the fastest growing investment sectors in the world. It maybe a reaction to lack of policy, or it might be timely coincidence in what others predicted, to the dismay of many enviros, as the death of “environmentalism.”

Actions Speak Louder Than Leaves

Authenticity counts. From all of this discussion, we believe this is the core for a brand to survive in this growing world of green icons. No matter what, green or blue, people want to make a difference as consumers or citizens because they realize, now like never before, that humans do have an impact, within every system of their existence. Companies who claim to make less of an impact can add a leaf to their logo or put a tree on their website, but what really counts to a consumer or citizen is if your product or campaign really makes less of an impact. Or in the case of Wal-Mart, can you make an impact on your supply chain that is beneficial to the environment and small and local businesses?

The reason “green” has evolved at such a pace recently, is because the largest and smallest of change makers in the for-profit and non-profit sector decided to take action. Real action that changed people’s lives; green power options in electricity bills, organics at Safeway, and donations that directly impact people like those passed through Kiva.org (just to name a few).

Ultimately, the groups and businesses that helped evolve “green” stopped talking about what was wrong and showed people how to do something right. Considering that, the real evolution in the “green” conversation will take place when actions speaking louder than leaves. Until then it will be hard to see the forest through the trees.

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Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 10:43AM

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