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better should

This Blackwater re-branding story reminds me of something that should be rolling around in the back of this blog practically all the time. Just because we might grow used to green-ry doesn’t mean it’s not still happening, moving, changing forms and back again. What is it the kids say – IM N UR INTERTUBZ?

Green washing, lest we forget, is all about branding, which is itself simply a way to identify a product with an idea that triggers ‘the buy’ impulse in consumers. The trigger could be vague and smoky, like sexual allure, or it could be the promotion of a specific sort of loyalty. Either way, the ends are largely the same.

On risk of repetition but begging your forgiveness, Green washing is the branding of a product with sustainability… ecological rigamarole… renewable-ishyness – you see, what cames after the first words, like the singing trees and chirping birds, doesn’t really matter. Though it matters that it doesn’t really matter, if you follow me.

Most people don’t want to go any farther than that, and advertisers know that most people – while they’re sympathetic to the idea of a sustainable world, powered by clean renewables (whatever that means) – don’t want to go any deeper than that. Too many questions arise too quickly about the entire house of cards. We’re the perfect targets for marketing based on self-preservation, basically because we’re afraid to look under our own skirts for what we might see.

Fear not. Go ahead and think of the worst thing you can think of; I’ll wait.

P.S. Dammit! I can’t help thinking that this digression has something to do with the talk by J.P. Witkin that I went to a couple days ago. Hate it when mediums I don’t like work on me anyway.

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Zero the Carbon

A colleague at Flagpole pointed me to this, a partially, if unintentionally, hilarious article in the ATL newspaper about a shopping district billing itself as the nation’s first carbon-neutral zone. Excellent. A local firm is auditing the businesses for the their carbon footprint to tell them how much they should pay in off-sets to 1)feel better about it and 2) use the good feeling to advertise the district so that shoppers can feel better about spending money there. Rinse, repeat.

While this could be seen as the latest chapter in the annals of green marketing — another emission in all the talk about global warming — there’s actually substance behind the boast.

Is there ever. It’s paper-like, six inches by two-and-a-half.

The carbon-free zone is the result of a pilot project engineered by a local environmental company — an intricate transaction linking 18 merchants, a trading exchange in Chicago, a charitable foundation in Atlanta and thousands of acres of forest in rural Georgia.

Okay, so the landlord, seeing the genius of the plan, actually takes up paying for the audits if the tenants will pay their own offsets. Fair enough. But you see where this is going, right? No? Okay, try this.

Sandor[father-in-law of the auditing company founder] started the Chicago Climate Exchange, a market where carbon credits and offsets are traded like pork belly futures in the interest of fighting climate change through capitalism. Time magazine called him “the father of carbon trading.”

So… will off-sets allow us to just put our carbon-conscience on the credit card and otherwise continue with our as-you-were sets of priorities? It sort of answers itself. The reporter, before providing some glorious quotes from the business owners, does site the precedent of Papal Indulgences as a reasonably-related precursor. But… those quotes:

“The carbon thing wasn’t the issue. People were more concerned about the cost,” says Brian Jolly of Half-Moon Outfitters, a store on North Highland.

…

The price of the offsets ranged from $10 a year for Lulu Blue, a petite sweet shop, to $600 for Highland Tap, a steakhouse. Restaurants inevitably leave a larger carbon footprint with their sizable staffs and higher utility use.

“I’m the biggest polluter over here,” says the Tap’s general manager, Ron Haynes, who commutes 30 miles from Peachtree City [emphasis mine] and employs 35 people.

He’s still unsure whether his check bought anything more than a fuzzy feeling of virtue.

“It sort of made sense to me when they explained it,” he says. “But I do wonder what I’m doing to curb global warming. It feels like I’m just spending money to make up for the damage I’m doing to the environment. I guess it’s better than doing nothing.”

Is it? Inquiring minds want to know – not necessarily the answer to that question but, as comes up oftener and oftener these days, whether these are the only two choices. Especially when you have to live 30 miles from work.

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423 miles on one gallon

Moving one ton of freight on one gallon of diesel, that it is. But that’s the claim being made in some CSX advertising in print, online and on TV. It’s seems a little curious. I found this old-ish blog item from a [Macon?] Telegraph reporter, who got the following response from a CSX spokesmodel:

On average, railroads can move one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. This is a rail industry statistic calculated by dividing the 2006 annual revenue ton miles (1.772 trillion) by the fuel consumed (4.192 billion), which equates to the industry average of one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. (The 2006 data was the last full year for which total industry data are available.)
Revenue ton miles are those miles for which railroads are compensated for moving freight. (We move empty cars to reposition them, and we move company materials for which we are not compensated). The industry did not include fuel consumed by passenger trains — just freight trains.

There are some follow-up questions, but basically the numbers seem sound and in line with what you might intuit about using rail to move freight. Or even people. Limited stops, less wind resistance, but also… more country songs and all those great views of people’s backyards.

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423 miles on one gallon

Moving one ton of freight on one gallon of diesel, that it is. But that’s the claim being made in some CSX advertising in print, online and on TV. It’s seems a little curious. I found this old-ish blog item from a [Macon?] Telegraph reporter, who got the following response from a CSX spokesmodel:

On average, railroads can move one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. This is a rail industry statistic calculated by dividing the 2006 annual revenue ton miles (1.772 trillion) by the fuel consumed (4.192 billion), which equates to the industry average of one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. (The 2006 data was the last full year for which total industry data are available.)
Revenue ton miles are those miles for which railroads are compensated for moving freight. (We move empty cars to reposition them, and we move company materials for which we are not compensated). The industry did not include fuel consumed by passenger trains — just freight trains.

There are some follow-up questions, but basically the numbers seem sound and in line with what you might intuit about using rail to move freight. Or even people. Limited stops, less wind resistance, but also… more country songs and all those great views of people’s backyards.

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Disincentives

Disincentives are the levers of motivation we use on power companies to get them to sell us more energy than we need. We provide them by not expressing a preference against them. They are stupid in their own way. Why are light bulbs hot? Why do video game consoles automatically stay powered-up, unless we set them not to?

Greater energy efficiency – efficiency in general – is the elbow of the energy conundrum in which we are presently mired. It’s the least sexy part and yet the one which would have the most force if heartily applied to the mid-section of our wasteful nature. Whoa! We didn’t know we could do that! It’s empowering when you can get a creep off your back, especially using a tool you’ve possessed all along. And in this case, the shock itself would provide a little desperately-needed breathing room to take on the more difficult, sexier paths to sustainability like solar and wind (the T & A in this crazy, mixed-up analogy). Sensible adjustments to the way we generate, distribute and use energy even from dirty, nonrenewable sources would go along way toward highlighting and reforming the waste endemic to our ways.

Of course, the way things stand, the suppliers who generate the energy we waste desire anything but such illumination and reform. Their motives are also all about green, but the other kind. You can’t blame them (unless you recall that them = us); this is the system in which they/we operate. With shareholders to satisfy, their only incentives are for us to use more power. Why should they invest in expensive, energy-saving initiatives that adversely affect their bottom line?

The Department of Energy predicts a 30% increase in power demand by 2030. As this Time magazine article points out, the utilities that will supply this power are very aware that the cheapest new power plants are the ones they don’t have to build. But, if we give them no other alternatives than to build new clean coal-fired plants, they will oblige. We’ve already provided ourselves some pretty nasty choices by omission that have begun haunt the future, as we are loathe to face them.

We need to untangle some of the simple assumptions about status quo energy use in order to steer clear of the more complex and disasteful choices down the road regarding unaffordable new power production and out of control emissions. Realize that by not demanding less, we are demanding more.

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Beeped out*

Watching the Iggles game this afternoon, featuring multiple viewings of a Taco Bell commercial. So… they do know how much they look like pricks for having their message revolve around stiffing the coffee guy on his tip, right? I mean, some guy in line behind another to get coffee tells him that he should take back the change from paying for his latte so he can buy some crappy bacon & cheddar chalupa or whatever? The food item doesn’t matter because that’s the takeaway – stiff the poor guy who ‘only pushed a button.’ Really.

But then it segues into a Best Buy testimonial from one of their self-described geek squad installers about this one time where he gets to a job which turns out to be a party of thirty people gathered in a big house with chips and an assortment of snacks and whatever to watch the game but guess what? There’s no massive screen TV. He’s there right before game time to install it, elbowing his way through the crowd with the TV. Gets it hooked and is greeted by cheers and high-fives from the crowd. Really.

What kind of audience are and, what kind of place is this? How much do we internalize this level of Stoopid with shrugs and yes, that’s just the way it is, until it does become the way it is? This much? More? How much more? It’s aggressively stoopid and these companies aggressively identify their products with it because they know stoopid resonates with the public. Yet another ad sums up the entire philosophy best: If you don’t take advantage of these cheese combos, you’re crazy.

*It’s a family blog.

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energy flows & waste streams

in communications, that is. Whether it’s their own supply chain and carbon footprint liabilities or those of thier clients, it seems that what green means has begun to have an impact on the advertising and marketing industry other than as a must-have trend. Here’s a video from Advertising Age, with Don Carli from the Institute for Sustainable Communication saying some smart things about… sustainability.

Sustainability as an ‘actual marketing strategy for growth’ is still a contradiction to my ears; but even as practiced by W*lmart, the savvy it portends will eventually boil down to a small playing field whereupon we witness, via pay-per-view, the cage match featuring a closed system vs. messaging. The closed system will prevail and then the whole cycle will begin again with the closed system as the premise – which will change the meaning of the terms actual, marketing, strategy and growth. Then things might get interesting.