Micah Solomon

There is an urgency and importance to getting your green marketing right – before customers everywhere become completely cynical.

The solution is straightforward (no, that doesn’t mean easy), according to this watershed post published initially by Seth Godin on Seth’s Blog and almost immediately turned into a new lifestyle riff (without attribution, but hey, that’s how you know it’s a watershed) by The New York Times.

Here’s the crux: as marketers, every green message we send out needs to include a number, even if it’s an imperfect number. So here, as published on Seth Godin’s “Seth’s Blog”, is:

The Coming Backlash Over Green Marketing

Micah points us to this campaign from Tumi Luggage. Buy some nylon luggage, they’ll plant some trees (one tree? A bush? It’s not clear how many trees per suitcase). It’s entirely possible that Tumi’s campaign is nothing short of generous, but as a consumer, it’s awfully difficult to tell.

………………………UPDATE………………………UPDATE……………………..

Business Week called Tumi to follow up on this point, and the answers from the Tumi spokesperson aren’t pretty. Surprise: buying nylon luggage doesn’t actually help the planet. Business Week’s phone call shows exactly why the numeric concept (see below) is crucial–Micah

………………………UPDATE………………………UPDATE………………………

{SNIP}

Consumers aren’t stupid (we’re dumb sometimes, but not stupid.) So, when the backlash hits, when every single brand has used up some green angle, then what?

Here’s what’s missing: a number. When you buy a fridge, there’s a big yellow sticker with a number about relative energy consumption. Now, we could argue all day long about how to figure out the right number (should the number on the fridge include data about the amount of energy needed to make the fridge in the first place?) but an imperfect number sure seems better than no number at all.

Drive to Philadelphia: 150.
Take Amtrak: 22.

Stick with the lightbulbs you have throughout your whole house until they burn out: 175.
Replace them all now with something better: 142.

Organic strawberries from California: 88
Frozen strawberries from California: 80
Apple from Dutchess County: 4

Read Seth’s entire post here: sethgodin.com/sg