The best way to build a brand is to do the right thing, according to Robin Raj of Citizen Group. If you mitigate the environmental and social liabilities, critics can’t undermine your efforts.
Raj should know - his branding consultancy, along with PR firm Saatchi & Saatchi S, helped design a massive sustainability drive at one of the world’s biggest targets: Wal-Mart. The retailer’s Personal Sustainability Project (PSP) now includes 1.5 million Wal-Mart associates and has drawn wide acclaim for successful employee engagement.
The epiphany here was to reframe sustainability to a question of personal health and wellness, Raj told a packed house at Sustainable Brands '08. It was the best way to ensure broad participation in the program.
Citizen even went so far as to design a retooled corporate logo that swapped Wal-Mart’s familiar "Always Low Prices" tag to "Wal-Mart Smart: Healthier People, Healthier Planet."
Raj’s firm has been active in other regular-guy campaigns, most notably the partnership between the National Resources Defense Council and Major League Baseball. MLB is working to green the game franchise by franchise, recently inking a deal with Aramark to make concessions more resource-efficient.
MLB has since expanded the program across professional baseball, and it is now being customized and adopted by various sports organizations, including the National Basketball Association and the U.S. Tennis Association, according to Raj.
Raj has also had a productive partnership with the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles. The owners had a commitment to sustainability, which helped a lot, Raj said. In the end, they didn’t totally green their stadium - but they stapled on enough real green initiatives to make the effort credible, including a fan-facing recycling program, greener signage, and public awareness campaigns.
As with the sheer scale of Wal-Mart’s PSP effort, it’s hard to argue the cultural power of greening America’s favorite sports.
So what’s the secret to creating a culture-leading sustainability campaign? Said Raj, "Incremental change is good, but the first place to effect change is on the consumption side." Some lessons learned:
- Put policies before promotion - don’t promote your efforts until you’ve pushed your green initiatives through the supply chain and down to your consumer-facing activities.
- Sustainability requires transparency.
- Inspire top-down, bottom-up participation. (One without the other and the cake doesn’t really bake, as Raj put it.)
- Provide the practical tools (obviously).
- Frame the opportunity - identify your audience’s self-interest. It helps to bring things down to the personal level, as Wal-Mart did. The word ‘green’ is inadequate, Raj warned. Sometimes avoiding terms like this is the best way to lead forward.
- Engage cultural leaders to step up to the plate.
This last point led to a quick case study from Jordan Harris, the man who brought you the indelible image of a heavily pregnant Marcia Gay Harden stepping out of the back of a Prius on the red carpet at the Oscars. With stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz waving from the windows, the Toyota Prius was suddenly cool.
In his previously life as a music-industry exec, Harris learned the value of trendiness. Five years ago he brought his entertainment savvy to Hollywood, providing A-list celebs from Harrison Ford to Robin Williams with a hybrid-chic ride to the movie industry’s biggest party. The service has grew bigger each year, prompting Harris to take his show on the road to that other nexus of cool: New York City.
We didn’t lead with ‘green.’ We led with ‘style really matters.’ People care about aesthetics, but they equate ‘green’ with some kind of tradeoff or deprivation.
~Jordan Harris, OZOcar
In 2005 he launched OZOcar, a green car service for the Big Apple’s version of rock stars: law partners, financial executives, and media moguls. (Goldman Sachs is Ozo’s biggest customer.)
It was a natural fit, according to Harris. New Yorkers are dependent on car services and public transportation - and it’s the most high-profile media market, he explained. The fleet has since swelled from 20 hybrids to more than 100 (Fords as well as Toyotas).
Given that trendiness is by definition a short-term condition, what influence does this kind of venture really have on the wider market? Consider this: Last year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg set a goal for all of the city’s iconic yellow cabs to go hybrid by 2012.
For more research, practical lessons, and key takeaways from Sustainable Brands '08, click here!
