Does a history of progressive social and environmental responsibility compensate for recent environmental abuse?

Green Mountain Coffee is staring into the face of this question now with criticism of its environmentally noxious single-use coffee pods that work with its Keurig brewing system.  Last year, more than 80% of Green Mountain’s $803 million in sales came from the nonrecyclable, nonbiodegradable coffee pods.  A New York Times article says this year the company “expects to sell nearly three billion K-Cups, the plastic and tinfoil pods that are made to be thrown away — filter, grounds and all — after one use.”

Since its founding in 1981, Green Mountain Coffee has practiced progressive sustainability. It offsets 100% of direct greenhouse gas emissions, contributes 5% of pre-tax profits to nonprofits, runs a biodiesel fueling station and developed a hot-beverage cup with a compostable lining. I regret that I didn’t cover this when I interviewed Mike Dupee, Green Mountain Coffee’s vice president of CSR because I think he would have given it a fair shake.

This brings up several questions:

1. Does this discount Green Mountain Coffee’s other sustainability initiatives?
2. What’s the proportion of impact to image?
3. How should Green Mountain Coffee handle this?
4. How does brand acquisition impact the parent brand’s sustainability image?

• Does this discount Green Mountain Coffee’s other sustainability initiatives?
  Not at all. $2 million in support of supply-chain communities is still $2 million. But, conversely, the company’s history of social good doesn’t neutralize the environmental cost of its products. There isn’t a sustainability ledger that balances good actions against bad.
• What’s the proportion of impact to image?
  This is the ever-delicate balance of impact to image of impact. I argued that Microsoft’s and CVS’ social impacts outweigh the public’s perception of them. But more frequently, brands have a disproportionate focus on image over impact. Reputation is a benefit of corporate social responsibility, but it’s also an objective. Green Mountain Coffee’s sum image as a sustainable company is up for grabs because its sum impact is tilting toward the negative. So, while there’s not a Sustainability Ledger, there is an Image Ledger where good cancels bad and bad cancels good.
• How should Green Mountain Coffee handle this?
  Transparency and communication should come before the solution. Green Mountain Coffee should claim the problem rather than arguing that the K-Cups have an environmental benefit. The company’s chief executive Lawrence Blanford says brewing one cup at a time means less wasted coffee at the bottom of the pot, which reduces the overall environmental impact per cup of coffee.

  By claiming the issue and working publicly toward a solution, the company can take a leadership role in waste reduction against its single-use-coffee competitors and reclaim its identity as an environmentally aware–if not environmentally friendly–brand. One heretical suggestion is to educate consumers on the issue and poll their willingness to pay more for biodegradable packaging, switch to reusable coffee filters or recycle the pods through pre-paid mailers.
  
  So far, Green Mountain Coffee is prototyping a pod made without plastic and aluminum foil and conducting a life-cycle analysis to understand the environmental cost of the pods. The analysis should be used to drive viable solutions rather than to downplay the K-Cups’ environmental cost.  If Green Mountain Coffee uses the analysis to vindicate environmental claims rather than to guide sustainability, it loses. Levi’s is a good example of what to do. When a life-cycle analysis identified consumer behavior (washing and drying the denim) as the highest environmental cost, Levi’s didn’t smirk and say, “Whew, not our problem.” Instead, it launched Care to Air, an awareness campaign and contest to shift consumer behavior in favor of the environment.

• How does brand acquisition impact the parent brand’s sustainability image?
  Green Mountain Coffee pulled a reverse Coke-acquires-Honest Tea-to-polish-its-image when it purchased Keurig in 1996. I’m going to leave this topic for another post, but it’s an unexpected example of how brand acquisition significantly impacts the parent company’s sustainability image.

Green Mountain Coffee is still a progressive company that other companies can learn from, but it’s facing a serious challenge as it grapples with how to lower or neutralize the environmental cost of its biggest revenue generator. We can learn a lot from what happens next–let’s just hope it’s a story of What To Do Right.

I’m not the first to make the case that crowdsourced social good contests should retreat quickly into the night.

• They’re inefficient at creating change;
• Their current popularity has diminished the value they bring to companies and brands;
• Consumers are fed up with them (how many vote-for-me solicitations do you get a week that make you feel more like a brand pusher than a change agent?); and
• For the money and hoopla they involve, they should accomplish more than marketing the company and channeling money to (often unvetted and under-qualified) projects.

Whether you agree or not, the next question is, What’s the alternative?

First, it’s helpful to understand what these contests do offer. They’re big and loud. They attract participants, voters, supporters, media and millions of tweets, blogs and Facebook likes. Through this lens, they do provide bang for their buck.  And they only require what many companies excel at–assembling the resources to design and run a colorful marketing campaign and to write checks to the winners. Deep-root partnerships, familiarization with target communities and evaluation and reporting on the awarded funds aren’t required.

So the new question becomes What’s an alternative that can offer companies the same level of virality and visibility without skimping on substance?

Looking for an alternative campaign format is too myopic. Instead, companies should look at a broader level of engagement that supports social responsibility as a business (not just a marketing) strategy.  Admittedly, this sounds obvious, but how can companies do this and still get their marketing kick?

I suggest that companies focus on developing long-term partnership that support a social enterprise abroad. Transferring energies from internal competitions to external investments* allows companies to explore and develop for new markets (BoP populations offer significant market opportunities), test new products, improve resource efficiency and ensure ethical supply lines.  Even thought these partnerships take place outside of the United States, companies still have ample opportunity to relay their work with these communities to American consumers.

P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water program, led by P&G employee Dr. Greg Allgood, is a strong example of a corporate initiative focused on external impact that’s successfully connected American consumers to its work in developing communities. An education portal and upcoming social media campaign to fund clean drinking water for its partner communities and veteran organizations tackling this cause are two storytelling mechanisms.

*This post is the current culmination of several conversations I’ve had with leaders in social enterprise and CSR over the past few weeks, as well as Tim Ogden’s evocative article, in which he talks about external investment vs. internal competitions.

What do you think? Maybe I’m biting off something too big to chew, but there’s something bigger and better than crowdsourced contests that needs to be wrestled down.

The offer:

As part of a publicity push for its carbon-neutral ENVIRONMENT Papers line, Neenah Paper launched a sweepstakes to win an eco-trip for two to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica and a chance to ”go hard core and experience conservation in the heart of some of nature’s most fragile environments.”  The lucky winner is promised the “opportunity to help make the world a better place.”  Just your contact details are required to enter.

Neenah is also awarding three $100 gift certificates to randomly chosen participants who take a five-question quiz “designed to test their environmental awareness.”

The glitch:

I can almost hear the light bulbs flicker as marketing conceived the contest. From some height, a trip to an eco-resort connotes care for the environment. The winner’s tour of Neenah’s joint reforestation project to preserve old-growth forests will underscore the company’s commitment to sustainability.  And bases will be covered with the purchase of carbon credits to offset trip emissions.

But the train derailed when Neenah’s marketing team split marketing from mission. Because the trip is a publicity ploy dressed in hemp, it has a lot of holes.

Some holes are more superficial; I don’t equate a resort stay to going “hard core” and there’s no explaination of what the “oppportunity to make the world a better place” means for the winner (a carbon-neutral jeep ride through the forest doesn’t cut it). While other holes indicate lack of an authentic commitment to environmental preservation.  Most notably, although the contest announcement and microsite are the perfect opportunity for Neenah to talk about its preservation work, there’s no mention beyond the project’s name and partners. I want to know how is Neenah helping preserve this area? What’s the project’s specific goal? How is Neenah evaluating and reporting success?

Finally, the quiz that’s “designed to test environmental awareness,” focuses only on the environmental qualities of Neenah’s ENVIRONMENT paper. That’s not environmental awareness, it’s product knowledge.

What I would do if I ran Neenah’s marketing team:

1. Offer more. Instead of paying for two random individuals to stay in a resort, I would offer a group of influencers–students–the chance to compete for the trip by creating awareness campaigns, fundraisers or school projects in support of conservation.  Once in Costa Rica (and downgraded to more rustic accommodations) the group of high school or college students would physically contribute to the project, observing firsthand the fragility of the endangered environment.
   ..
   The outcome would be an educated, mobilized and impacted group of individuals who’ve already demonstrated their environental compassion (and raised visibility for my company, Neenah) through their contest submissions.  And now, my company has a cohort of people who have been touched by the brand and have internalized the company mission. This cohort of brand evangelists and potential conservationists comes with a network of family, friends, fellow students and teachers–call it a customer base. (I never said it wasn’t marketing).
2. Undress it. (This is the point on transparency.)  I don’t cover marketing and publicity motives in false opportunities to help the world. It’s fine to hold a sweepstakes and offer an eco-trip, but it’s not a valid sustainability initiative. I would call the quiz what it is: questions about the environmental attributes of a new line of paper.  Now, not disguised as an environmental awareness quiz, it’s a great tool to promote the product’s sustainable qualities.
3. Be explicit. A top rule in cause-related marketing is to be explicit about the program.  I would communicate how Neenah is supporting conservation efforts (if with money, how much and for how long), what the company’s intended impact is, what it’s accomplished so far and how it’s measuring success.
4. Involve the nonprofit partner.  It’s a good move to include your nonprofit partner. It usually means there’s legitimate commitment to an issue. Plus, I can leverage a combined network to promote the program and potentially offload some of the planning and programmatic logistics.

And you? I’ve had fun conceptualizing this campaign, but what would you do differently?

To build brand awareness and identity, the Close But No Cigar company is interested in creating several cause-based community events. Close But No Cigar (CBNC) brings in an expert to ask what cause it should support.  Based on the company’s response to several questions, the idea man returns with several areas that the company might be interested in based on its mission.

CBNC says, “Thank you. This is great. We’d like to create an event based on one of these causes.”

“Wonderful,” says the idea man. “Which cause did you most connect with?”

“You would know which cause is most popular since you’re the expert. We’d like to go with the cause that people care about the most.”

The idea man thinks:

a) Great, I can do some research and voila, I’ll know the cause;

b) I hear crowd-sourcing is popular; I’ll just crowdsource a cause;

c) This could be rough. I can’t make a company care about something and it’ll be pretty obvious if it’s throwing dollars whichever way the wind is blowing;

d) I’m approaching shaky ground. Should the fact that CBNC brought me in as an outside consultant have been a tip that it’s not truly invested in any issue? Or

e) What’s that Henry Ford quote…whether I think I can or think I can’t, I’m usually right…. Okay, so this could be an opportunity to change the way CBNC thinks about social responsibility and the role of cause in marketing.

Where does your mind go?  If it goes to ‘danger zone’ options C, D or E, why?  And can the idea man turn a company’s interest in cause (albeit for branding purposes) into something of value?  What’s his best approach?

My goal with this post was to talk about the importance of authenticity without beating you over the head with the over-used term. Did I succeed?

a) yes
b) no
c) what you really should be talking about is ___________________.

On a wall in Honest Tea’s office is a Chinese proverb that cautions Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it. It’s a prescient warning given the story I’m about to tell, but the lesson I want to highlight is that when you invest in sustainability as an image rather than a mission, you’re going to be disappointed.

Honest Tea was created 12 years ago as refreshing, non-sugary alternative to soda and syrupy fruit juices and teas. The teas are all certified USDA organic, eight varieties are fair trade certified and the bottles are made from fully recyclable plastic. In 2008, Coca-Cola’s Venturing and Emergy Brands group bought a minority stake, for $43 million, in the company.  Coke’s purchase was influenced by consumer demand for healthier drinks.  The trouble started several months later when Coke noticed that the Honest Kids’ products prominently stated “no high-fructose corn syrup.”

Coke felt this reflected negatively on the majority of its products, which contained ample corn syrup, and pressured Honest Tea to change or remove the phrase. But Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman felt that the lack of corn syrup, as well as the tea’s organic ingredients, was central to the product. Coke’s suggestions (Honest Tea retains ultimate control over its products) went against the tea maker’s principle to provide consumers with products that are not highly processed.  The linguistic debate continues today (you can read more here).

Coke, and others like Unilver, Clorox and Danone, has acquired or bought shares in smaller sustainability brands as an entry point into the sustainable market segment. From an initital marketing perspective it makes sense. But that’s the problem. Sustainability is not marketing. And while you can market sustainability, you can’t fake sustainability that you don’t really believe in or stand for.

Coke hung a metaphorical banner proclaiming its social responsibility in front of a belching factory.  But as soon as the clouds parted and the leeching factory loomed up behind, Coke’s values and priorities were revealed, and they didn’t have much to do with honest-tea.