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April 1, 2015
How to pitch environmental performance to your market
Terry Swack
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - 1:00am
Thanks to industry drivers and growing demand, environmental performance has taken its rightful place alongside functional performance, cost, aesthetics, safety and other criteria in product creation and purchasing.
Now it is time to include it in marketing.
Consumers and B2B customers — tired of greenwashing — are beginning to demand scientific evidence and rigorous methodology to support manufacturers’ green claims. So, marketing needs to go beyond mere claims to include verified metrics of environmental performance — delivered in a way purchasers can understand.
Volumes of international standards lay out the rules for measuring, reporting and publishing environmental information about products. These reports are referred to as declarations or disclosures. They are detailed, often lengthy technical documents.
But environmental disclosures have been intentionally created separate and apart from the other information manufacturers create to market and sell their products.
The word disclosure suggests the unveiling of information the owner would prefer to keep hidden. Indeed, synonyms for disclosure include words such as confession, exposure, leak, betrayal and declaration. Many manufacturers feel this way, which is why uptake of marketing with scientific evidence and metrics has not been rapid.
Legal issues about disclosing hazards and concerns about numeric results that aren’t actually comparable among products are keeping many manufacturers from being transparent while asking "What’s the value?"
Increasing reporting on a product’s environmental performance, especially in North America, remains voluntary and optional.
But if the only way today’s standards programs allow for providing information is in the form of a technical disclosure or declaration, the value proposition will continue to be difficult to make. It’s a stick, not a carrot.
Read more at GreenBiz.
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