Greenwashing: Sustainable Brands vs. Branding Bandwagons

Promise I’ll get to the green tween media virtual worlds post right after my ‘Care & Feeding of Preteens’ speaking event tomorrow, (Animoto video preview here) but meanwhile, two related green scene items landed in my inbox this morning that bear a line or two!

The first was a reminder about the Sustainable Brands ’08 conference, which sadly costs more to attend than the gross national product of a small country, and eliminates authentic participation by little guys like me…

The second was an e-mail from one of our Shaping Youth Board of Directors, Liz Mayta of Starlings USA, sharing her ‘very non-green’ experience at one of the above mentioned bigwig retailers involved with the same green event.

Disconnect? You be the judge. The juxtaposition was too good to pass up without commentary. Best Buy’s Director of Environmental Affairs is speaking on the Sustainable Brands ’08 platform as faculty, so one would think their attitude toward green electronics and appliances would be, well…um…green.

Liz Mayta called Best Buy to simply see if they could recommend a dishwasher repair referral for her two-year old dishwasher she’d purchased there, since it was no longer under warranty.

After holding the line for “an appliance specialist,” he explained it would be less expensive to justbuy a new machine, than to repair her $600 one, without even asking what was wrong…She kept trying to explain it was ‘just a broken latch!’

Liz ended up finally calling a yellow pages repairman who fixed it the next day for $165…

A $435+ landfill space savings…Yo! Warning to greenwashers regarding faux pas and fallout…shore up your sales team’s handling of a “broken door latch” and train the national staff to get on the same eco-page or else be considered compost!

Thump on the head to your customer service folks, Best Buy!

Now…mistakes are recoverable, but imagine all those green teens purposely making the choice to ‘buy’ at Best Buy since the retailer is aligning themselves with sustainability messaging in the green electronics arena…and how they’d react under the same circumstances…

Bah. Who cares, you say?

Cool people care! Seems brands had ALL better get their green scene act together in full tilt customer service/media surround sound before the Sustainable Brands summit or youth will put them through the spincycle and hang ’em out to dry.

Kids do NOT like to be duped or disillusioned.

Nor does anyone for that matter…(ok, especially me)

Which reminds me…check out the poseur/sock puppet that I just outed in our comment section today, calling herself ‘Carmen’ but who is actually ‘Paola G. Chaco’ from the plastic surgeon’s office who wrote “My Beautiful Mommy.”

Yep, you remember…the kiddie primer about mom goin’ under the knife? Yeah. That one. Well, he’s her boss. Go figure. Ah…just a digital fingerprint away from a ‘lift and reveal’ moment we love so much hear in our counter-marketing endeavors…

Mark my words, fools that play the bait and switch game WILL be outed in this culture of tranparency…It’s just a matter of time and digital methodology.

Already, greenwashers should know that TechSoup’s NetSquared is putting fresh ideas in the hopper of how to ‘mashup’ digital technology to lob green splat balloons on the canvas of life to open wider dialog in this age of conversation with WeGreenWashYou…cool idea.

“Here’s how it works: you see a nauseatingly dishonest example of greenwashing near your office. You take a picture of it, and upload it on WeGreenwashYou.org. You plot the location of the billboard on a Google Map, and add a link or two to reports and articles verifying that the billboard is a blatant Greenwash. And then the fun begins: the community of users gets the chance to Greenwash the Greenwashers.”

Not quite clear if they’re talking virtual splats or real ones exactly…

…But the concept is interactive, engaging, relevant, and has a guerilla marketing flair that opens up debate worldwide with point/counterpoint opportunities to ensure everyone is heard.

Anytime there’s verifiable debate with many voices (not just mud-slinging dart-n-dash, but cogent analysis and retort that’s fair and open for all to participate online!) then it seems worthy of paying attention to in the digital arena.

Mind you, there’s already lots of greenwashing analysis out there…

From articles in Businessweek and TreeHugger’s deconstruction of The Six Sins of Greenwashing to EcoSherpa’s articles like the100% Green eco-label confusion, Corp Watch Greenwash Awards, and the cool people-polls of the Greenwashing Index promoted by the EnviroMedia Social Marketing community to vett some of this at a grassroots level with a thumbs up or down rating…

But as Sr. Editor Jeff McIntire-Strasburg of the powerful Green Options Media blog network has recently discussed with me, so far there’s not really an overview, user-friendly newbie hub with broad brushstrokes for educating mainstream participants who want to funnel their purchasing power without getting into the granular sophistication of some of the more activist-driven social debates.

We’ve been bantering about adding a ‘green media analyst’ blog slot to their newsy niche of green offerings, and yours truly will eventually be involved as one of the deconstruction pros to slice and dice some of the corporate hooey being served up to consumers in the name of eco-consciousness, when it’s really more about the almighty greenback.

So ‘beware’ Best Buy…the days of greenwashing antics without roll of the eyes reverb are numbered.

Meanwhile, if anyone has the bucks (beyond the huge list of sponsors!) to go to this Sustainable Brands event in Monterey, the slated schedule intrigues, so let me know how it goes!

From the growing list, it appears all the corporate biggies are heading there to hear best practices and how to profit from same. (Not a bad strategy in itself, mind you; I’m not knocking it, I say ‘however they can get there, get there!’)

Once a brand commits to portrayal as a green ‘lead speaker, sponsor, honcho of any kind’ with high visibility like this, it seems they owe it to patrons to have follow through with honest, thorough, universally consistent communications.

Or else?… Or else… We’ll tell the kids on you! 😉

Visual Credits: Roller/Active Rain, Eco-graphic/EcoSherpa, Netsquared, WeGreenWashYou, Cool People Care, Sustainable Brands ’08, their own sites