May 2007
Important Changes or Just a Green Image?
Constant messages urging individuals to live and consume green are having a noticeable impact. In a recent survey of 1,525 British adults by the marketing company WPP, 80% of respondents said they believe it is important that companies are environmentally friendly.
However the very ubiquity of the green message may be leading to its own problems. The messages given out are sometimes becoming unclear and leading to confusion. For example a government advertising campaign encourages us to recycle – yet many councils do not operate a recycling collection scheme. At the same time we are discouraged from making short car journeys if at all possible. Thus we are left with a dilemma. Apart from building up many weeks worth of rubbish to recycle in one go, there seems little we can do to appease the guilt felt when driving to the local recycling point, or when throwing recyclable rubbish away with the rest of our household rubbish.
On the high-street the difference between the public’s willingness to act green, and of knowing how to act green, is even clearer. In the same WPP survey 23% of those interviewed could not identify a single step a company could take to make itself green. A report based on the survey suggests that UK consumers' understanding of what it actually means to be green is "shallow, confused and easily swayed by company messages".
How far the rise in green branding reflects integral change within companies and how much is part of a marketing campaign is up for debate but the WPP survey suggests that ‘going green’ could certainly be exploited as a successful marketing campaign. Many of the brands perceived by the public as green in the study include the colour green in their logo and/or use more natural packaging for their products. Body Shop, voted the greenest company in the survey has both. Being seen as modern and likeable also seems to bestow a green halo effect on companies such as Virgin and Google who scored highly. Included in the report's top 20 UK green brands list are supermarkets, petrol firms and an airline.
There are big rewards for companies that promote themselves as green, with green brands being perceived as having higher quality and consumers say they are prepared to pay a "green premium" for them.
Wal-Mart, the largest and possibly most vilified retailer in the world has recently been proudly proclaiming its green credentials. Changes include the reduction of packaging on some toys, ethically sourcing some foods, and the selling of organic produce and energy-saving light bulbs. So successful has been their campaign that the Prince of Wales, who has long campaigned for sustainability, spoke at a Wal-Mart led address on going green in London in February.
However there are plenty of critics who, although welcoming the changes suggest they have not gone far enough, and have been implemented for the wrong reasons, and mainly to combat falling sales because of bad publicity.
With high-street bands whose green bark may be louder than their bite, and with mixed messages as to what we can do as individuals to increase our personal green credentials, are we all making as big an impact in the fight against global warming as we would be led to believe?
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