American Apparel Makes Sustainability Sexy

American Apparel has done it again. Its new Creative Resuse line has pushed the boundaries of green branding to create a seamless integration of sustainability and soft porn.  Targeting young hipsters and their slightly older sisters with 70′s inspired, rainbow-coloured spandex basics, American Apparel is once again leading with its triple bottom line.  Domestic production (in downtown LA) saves on shipping costs, minimizes environmental impact and allows for quick response to market trends and a just-in-time supply chain. The company also has industry leading work standards and benefits for all employees including factory, retail and administrative.

The Creative Reuse line (launched on Earth Day) uses scraps of fabric from its regular lines to create a collection of small, perfectly ‘repurposed’ pieces.  The line features neck ties, bras & undies, sashes, scarves and scrunchies (when did it become okay to where scrunchies again?).  Their ‘Bag-O-Scraps,’ is a small bag of multi-coloured and textured fabrics that retails for $8 US.  A product with almost 100% profit margin (minus negligible fixed & variable costs). Scraps that would have otherwise been thrown away, now generate revenue and further the brand’s socially and environmentally responsible image.  And their crafty, too-much-time-on-their-hands hipster target market is loving it. AA even has on-line tutorials to make the aforementioned scrunchies and undies at home.  The concept has all the right elements in place – consumer engagement, interactivity, sustainability and sex-appeal.

A great example of how a multi-national clothing retailer is using sustainability to build its brand and better its business, this is a new league of sustainable innovation and an inspiring case study.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain: the power of organized consumerism

Um, am I the last person on the planet to find out about Carrotmob?  This ecolitical group out of San Fran has figured out how to effect change by mobilizing conscious consumers to dangle a metaphoric carrot before businesses to motivate them into sustainability rather than stick-beating them into it.  Watch the video for the full deets but basically, they get a group of people (or a ‘Carrotmob’) to spend all their consumer dollars at the store that agrees to allocate the highest percentage of their ‘Carrotmob day’ proceeds to greening their business i.e. energy retrofits, facility upgrades, recycling programs etc.  The idea is that these people are going to shop anyway, and they don’t care where, so by rewarding the greenest business, they are ‘voting’ with their consumer dollars in a corporate sustainability election.  How great it that?  The concept, while still a microcosm, is scalable and what I think could be the start of an important paradigm shift.  Watch the video and let me know what you think. For more info on Carrotmob check out their website: http://carrotmob.org/

A New Normal

I just read an article in FASHION’s April issue called “An Education… on green.” Beauty editor Lesa Hannah writes on the ‘eco’ beauty product trend and how through her research she’s discovering which ones are the real deal.  Her most interesting point is that we’re used to beauty products performing a certain way – shampoo should lather endlessly and mascara should last infinitely.  But as Hannah says, “We just never really stop to think a) how they do it, and b) if they should.  She calls the way green beauty products work as ‘a new normal.’  Maybe our expectations of products are too great and that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.  Bleach-based cleaning products are effective and affordable, but they are toxic and pollute the water supply. Pesticide-pumped steak is juicy, flavourful and readily available, but contains hormones and chemicals that harm our health.  So, an organic apple might be slightly smaller, more expensive and possibly worm-holed but that is how apples should be, not endless rows of massive, shiny orbs stacked high on store shelves.

The article, focused on beauty products, goes on to describe the attributes of the personal care products we’re used to and the inevitable trade-offs consumers will find in their kinder, chemical-free counterparts.  But some of them don’t seem like trade-offs at all. For example, the shelf-life of green moisturizers is short, but this gives women an excuse to shop more often.  ’Green’ brands aren’t able to make fluorescent nail polish colours like zinc pink and pylon orange, which is fine by me because 1985 called and it wants its nail polish back. And for shampoo, the green stuff may not froth like the others but that means less time spent rinsing it out, using up water, wasting time and watching those long beautiful strands slide down the drain rather than hang out on your head where they belong.   Don’t sound like a trade-offs to me.

So what I (and Lesa Hannah) are saying is that while we may not be used to green products (and lifestyle choices) they are still good in their own way.  Once we begin to appreciate the good things about them and incorporate them into our lives, they will even become normal – a new normal.

Green Guilt

It’s common green etiquette to not make people feel bad for their ‘ungreen choices.’  For example, if your date shows up in a hummer, you don’t slam the door in his face.  If a co-worker gets her Starbucks in a paper cup, you don’t say, “left your mug at home, eh?”  It’s hard to be 100% green and most people are doing their best.  It is not your job to judge others because none of us is perfect.  But maybe we should?  A little green guilt could go a long way.

A recent anti-drunk driving campaign features an actor walking around the city and at the office with a full mug of beer.  It reminds us of the embarrassment and shame you would feel if you got a DUI, had your license suspended or worse, hurt someone as a result of your drunk driving.  It’s effective.

Guilt has long been a social marketing staple.  Advertisers use it to dissuade people from behaviors that could hurt them or society.   So why not sustainability?

At a recent job, almost everyone biked to work.  Smug, disapproving eyebrow raises directed at car drivers caused most to find alternate modes of transportation.  A positive outcome from a negative process.  A cup of peer pressure combined with a pinch of guilt is the perfect recipe for behavioural change.  In the same way that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death, they are also more afraid of looking bad in front of others than of causing climate change.

This contradicts an older post I wrote about how ‘fun’ is the key to making sustainability stick.  Fun works well for teeth-brushing and broccoli eating but undermines the seriousness of saving the planet.

Maybe we should stop being so polite and start being more judgmental?  Last week I witnessed a CEO dig a banana peel out of a garbage can and say to his employee: “Don’t worry, I’ll put this in the compost for you.”  That certainly sent a message.

Today, smoking, drunk driving, unsafe sex, shoplifting and sport hunting are generally frowned upon.  But, they wouldn’t be if no one had formed the first frown.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest

Since opening over a week ago, the 2010 Winter Olympic games in Vancouver have already received an avalanche of negative press about how they are not as ‘green’ as promised. Recent articles in Newsweek.com and The Economist online said that despite efforts to offset the games and mitigate emissions through sustainable design, the overall carbon footprint of the games will still be massive.  This is true of any event on this scale.  The international travel generated alone is enough to make a serious dent in the green games argument.  It’s been said that the greenest games would be NO games at all, and a close second would be to hold them in the same place every time to avoid building what is essentially a brand new city every two years.

Perhaps the next best thing after no games and recycling locations is an Olympic games that leaves behind a legacy of green buildings and city infrastructure that will decrease the city’s carbon footprint in the long-term.  This was Vancouver’s goal. Already deemed one of the ‘greenest’ cities in the world, Vancouver and its sustainable urban planning style coined ‘Vancouverism,’ wrapped in its naturally lush, green West Coast package seemed like the perfect choice to host the greenest games ever.  The goal was to set the bar for all future games and realize the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) third pillar of ‘environment.’

And, VANOC has done it.  A visit to the Sustainability page on its website shows that they’ve done more than any previous Olympics, and followed through with their commitments despite the recessionary climate in which they were forced to work.

So, why all the negative press?  This is a communications issue and not a sustainability issue.  The biggest environmental headline around the Vancouver Olympic Games is the lack of snow.  But this was caused by elNiño and there’s nothing Vancouver could do about that.  The other big story is the carbon footprint of the Olympics as mentioned above. But, in fact, this is the first time in history that an Olympic games has been offset at all!

Perhaps the most novel and important thing VANOC is doing to prove its legitimacy is measuring the impact of its initiatives. Past Olympic Games implemented sustainability initiatives, forgot all about them when competitions were taking place, and then months afterwards published long-winded sustainability reports to be hidden deep in the bowels of the IOC’s website.

VANOC, on the other hand, decided to show publicly and in real-time (while the events are actually taking place) the energy being used and carbon being emitted by Olympic venues.  They did this with the Venue Energy Tracker (www.VenueEnergyTracker.com) created by Vancouver’s Pulse Energy. This was risky because it fully exposes their new and retrofitted buildings to public scrutiny.  But, this also represents full transparency, which is half the story with corporate sustainability.  It also signals to the world their pride and confidence in what they’ve done.  The only disconnect is that they have not communicated this (well enough) to the general public and press.  They have achieved sustainability and are fully and transparently measuring and publishing their progress.  But, it seems nobody is paying attention.

So, if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, did it make a sound?  Of course it did. And if Vancouver puts on a truly sustainable Olympic games, but the press and public don’t know about it or understand it, were they really sustainable?  Yes. But, the miscommunication is a real shame because the message goes beyond a sales pitch for Vancouver tourism.  It is a case study for contemporary, sustainable urban development. It says, look at our city – we’re not perfect but we’re doing some really exciting things here that, if adopted by every city, on a world scale, could have an important impact on slowing climate change.

MapChange 2010

As many of you know, I did my summer internship at Change Advertising, a cool sustainability branding and innovation firm in Vancouver, BC.  A couple years ago they published MapChange 2008 – a brand map study that showed (visually on a perceptual map) the difference between consumer perception and brand reality with regards to sustainability. In other words, which brands were getting credit for doing green when they really weren’t and which were doing green but weren’t getting any credit for it.

During my internship I worked on and wrote the report for the 2nd edition, MapChange 2010 – a study that looks at brands’ actual and perceived sustainability across 12 different consumer sectors like banking, shipping, food products, apparel etc. The results were  really interesting.  Brands that are truly green were not necessarily perceived that way by consumers and brands that aren’t green benefited from a positive halo effect that often surrounds popular brands like Apple for example.

The information in the study is valuable for brands because they can see what their consumers think of them, how they stack up to their competition and how they could do better.  It’s also useful for consumers to see the truth about their favourite brands and be introduced to new, greener ones.  Check it out on Change’s new website http://getmapchange.com/

Charmin’s Stealth Bomber Sustainability Branding

Charmin’s latest ‘So good you can use less’ campaign has accomplished the evasive Bermuda Triangle of sustainability branding – ecology, economy and quality.  The campaign concept is that each sheet of Charmin toilet paper is so soft and thick that you can use fewer sheets to accomplish the same, um, job.  This communicates the quality of the product to the consumer and the economy of using and buying less toilet paper.  It also, simultaneously explains its sustainability.  It is important to note that Charmin is not ‘leading’ with green here, but is still leading with its core value proposition quality (softness + strength). But, the green is still an important, underlying benefit.  This inconspicuous, authentic message is effective sustainability branding at its best.

Kudos to COVERGIRL?

I wanted this post to be a real ‘Kudos to COVERGIRL’ to support their new Clean Make-up for Clean Water Campaign but when I went to the site:  http://www.covergirl.com/clean/landing.jsp and read the details, I realized that I had to trash it, just a little bit.

The campaign is a partnership between P&G’s successful COVERGIRL brand and Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) an organization mandated to provide clean, safe drinking water to kids in developing countries. Initially I thought that because make-up is made with water this could be a good fit, but the campaign has nothing to do with that. It isn’t about the water used to produce the product or use it. It’s also not about ethical sourcing or clean water infrastructure development and doesn’t propose any meaningful, long-term solutions for the global water crisis.  COVERGIRL donated a lump sum of $500,000 to CSDW and opened a competition on its website for people to create videos about how they would “make the world a better place.” COVERGIRL will donate a week’s worth of clean drinking water to one child for every video submission. This is a nice idea but I can’t help but thinking that it is manipulative. First of all, a $500,000 contribution from a company (P&G) that made $79 million last year is merely symbolic. Also, one week’s water for one child per video submission also seems, pardon the pun, waterered down. Realistically how many submissions will they get? Maybe 50 – 100? That’s clean water for one week for 100 kids at best. Also, the charity they picked focuses only on kids and the campaign site features a beautiful CG model surround by equally attractive black kids.  What about the adults in these countries who need clean drinking water to survive long enough to take care of these children?  Are they drinking river water while beautiful CG models feed their kids Evian in front of P&G cameras?  What bothers me the most is that COVERGIRL knows that people won’t analyze the details of the program like I have but will ‘perceive’ the company as being altruistic and progressive.  CG and P&G will benefit in a major way from the positive press this campaign will generate. Despite its lack of substance, being associated with a high profile, well publicized CSR campaign will improve COVERGIRL’s reputation with consumers and put a positive spin on the brand which, as intended, will lift sales. It’s better than nothing I suppose and why would they invest more in a campaign when they can achieve their desired results by doing a little?  In that respect, I can’t blame them and, they are still doing more than many of their mainstream cosmetics counterparts.  So, I extend a partial kudos to COVERGIRL.

The Swiss Army Knife Life

As a recent b-school grad I struggle with the glaring contradiction between capitalism and environmentalism.  The sole purpose of business is to make money for stakeholders and the traditional means to achieve this is physical growth.  Growth is usually achieved by increased outputs.  It is this global zeal for growth that has caused climate change and the environmental crisis.

As a marketer and an environmentalist I wonder how we can grow business, strengthen the economy AND stop climate change at the same time?

One solution is an idea I call the ‘Swiss Army Knife Life.’

The smaller the space you live in the less energy you use and generally, the less money you spend on stuff and energy, the more you can spend on experiences.  Most people realize that experiences make us happy, not stuff, but then why aren’t more of us doing it?  The roadblock is the relentless organization, thought and planning that is required to live this life.

As hunters and gatherers it’s human nature to want acquire, collect and catalogue objects.  But we have long evolved from our caveman ancestors.  I have lived in both big houses with lots of stuff and now live in a small space with barely anything.  I cannot tell you how freeing it is to be rid of clutter and junk. When your physical space is uncluttered, your mind is uncluttered and you are free to be more positive, optimistic, innovative and open.

The Swiss Army Knife Life requires finding creative ways to make fewer tools and objects fulfill more functions. For example, I have one pot that I make most meals in and boil water for tea.  I have a couple mugs, wine glasses, knives and forks etc.   That’s it.  Kitchen stores are the antithesis of the Swiss Army Knife Life.  They are full of new products and gadgets invented to perform functions that could easily be performed by existing products.  You wouldn’t want redundancy in your language or literature so why would you want it in your home?

The real opportunity I see here is for brands.  As people increasingly covet this simple, evolved, minimalist lifestyle they will start demanding new products that fit into it. Apple is a great example.  Almost every product it sells is sleek, streamlined and minimalist – attractive, multi-functional and built-to-last.  People don’t need to replace them as often and generate less waste and energy.  Also, they are generally happier with the products and more loyal to the brand.

The hottest topics in design and architectural magazines are small spaces.  “Small Room, Big Style,”  ”Think Smaller,” “What you can do with 400 sq feet.”  People are trading sprawling, suburban estates for small, city spaces.  I saw a home decor show about a family of four who lived in 450 sq feet in Manhattan.  Every single counter top, eating surface and lounge area literally folded in onto itself or tucked away entirely making the space look clean, open, modern and actually kind of big.  The parents slept on a hide-away Murphy bed and the kids’ cribs looked like trunks and tripled as storage and coffee tables.  This is a little extreme but a perfect example of how people are realizing that living the Swiss Army Knife Life can make them happier and healthier AND decrease their environmental impact.

‘Save Your Logo’ Campaigns: Authentic CSR or Greenwashing?

I’ve read a lot lately about big brands starting CSR campaigns to ‘save’ the endangered animal species in their logos. For example, Coke and polar bears, Lacoste and crocodiles and Jaguar. Interesting how many of these established brands’ logos were invented decades ago when the species were not endangered symbols of decreased biodiversity and damaged ecosystems but were still representative of animal kingdom dominance, power, and strength. I wonder if this sudden interest in these long lost brand beasts is genuine environmental engagement or a form of greenwash devised to earn brand brownie points? Real sustainability initiatives are baked into the brand. The idea behind this is that to really be successful, a business’ sustainability and core competencies should work together. Therefore, the better the business does the more sustainable it is, and vice versa. Innovating ways for green to generate more profits makes for a long lasting win win situation. That’s why I’m suspicious of ‘save your logo’ campaigns. They seem like an add-on rather than real, strategic sustainability initiatives. But, if these brands’ efforts actually are successful in preserving endangered species and improving brand image at the same time, then perhaps they are truly achieving the green to gold authenticity. At this point, it’s too early to tell.