To quote Adam Sandler quoting Madonna who was not quoting Imelda Marcos but rather channeling Marilyn Monroe: “We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.”
And when we material girls/boys want to do something good for our material world, what do we do? We buy it. Environmentally friendly products and services are, of course, incredibly popular now. And with that booming eco-market comes plenty of eco-posers.
If you believe all the advertising — luckily, most of you don’t — every company in North America is single-handedly saving the entire planet several times a day, at least. (By the way, did you hear about our universe-saving automatic toilet fans?!) Every ad is screaming green. Every product has some kind of spin that lets it claim a small, hopefully profitable chunk of the environmental movement.
Some products and companies actually are doing right by their claims. Some are simply trying to cash in on the latest consumer trend. It’s called greenwashing, though we find that the term “lying” works well enough and saves us from inventing yet another unnecessary compound adjective-verb thingy.
So…how to tell green friend from green faux? The answer is, proudly and not coincidentally, one of our clients here at Marlin — Green Seal.
Green Seal develops standards and provides certification for environmentally responsible products and services. In fact, Green Seal is the largest independent certifier in North America and, with the market’s rush to green itself, they’ve really come into the national spotlight. Check out this recent clip from The Today Show.
Green Seal offers consumers some much-needed reassurance on the accuracy of green claims, and gives responsible companies a little well-deserved credit for doing the things they’re doing. We (here at Marlin) have recently begun working with Green Seal, developing a complete brand strategy, updating their logo and now working on a video project to introduce Green Seal to the masses. Though, with 1.7 million hits on their website last month, it seems the masses are getting clued in pretty quickly.
Tomorrow’s GreenWeiner? Taking Out The Trash!
ADDITION: One of our clients at Starbucks just forwarded us this perfectly timed article on Ad Age about consumerism and Earth Day. Great read!
