The false gospel of green marketing

It was 10 July 1916. As the Battle of the Somme raged in northern France, US President Woodrow Wilson took the stage and addressed the first World's Salesmanship Conference in Arcadia, Detroit. He called upon each salesman to be a new type of solider: "Lift your eyes to the horizon of business," he declared, "and with the inspiration of the thought that you are Americans and are meant to carry liberty and justice and the principles of humanity wherever you go … go and sell goods that will make the world more comfortable and more happy, and convert them to the principles of America."

The speech, triumphantly reported in the Detroit Free Press and papers throughout the country, equated the selling of goods to the spreading of values, laying the framework for the purpose-driven sales strategy exemplified by so many marketers in the sustainability arena today. Wilson's words are eerily reminiscent of US President George W Bush's call for Americans to go shopping after 9/11 as a way to express their patriotism.

The idea that shopping should be a way to express your values and achieve social good is no settled matter. Haunting marketers is the ghost of Milton Friedman, who famously declared that, "the business of business is business", and counselled CEOs to stay away from the squishy pursuit of social good. There's endless research showing that price remains the most important product feature for consumers. Fast-fashion retailers like Uniqlo, H&M and Old Navy prove daily that consumers continue to flock to cheap clothing that may just last a few washes instead of paying more for durability. These short-sighted consumption patterns erode value for everyone, business and consumer alike. Yet in this economy, many companies can't resist.

Sustainable marketers know that we're all better served by focusing on quality, durability and timelessness. Yet many stand at a crossroads, asking whether green marketing, the misguided zeitgeist of 2007-08, is still relevant. It was a simpler time then, when the world expected one recession, not two, one banking crisis, not an endless string of failures, before it was even a remote possibility that America would elect another Texas governor as president. Oil prices skyrocketed to $145/barrel, Al Gore's famous slide presentation went mainstream, and hundreds of companies began to believe that painting a leaf on the side of their packaging would bring hoards of new customer running.

Heavy on green, low on accuracy

Marketing corporate values wasn't invented during this last green bubble of 2007-08. Veteran environmental campaigner Jerry Mander coined the term "eco-pornography" in 1972 to describe outlandish campaigns of oil companies to counter their reputations as despoilers of the planet. Greenpeace published the Book of Greenwash in 1992. Ironically, the greatest advocates of placing values and purpose at the centre of their communications were those with the shoddiest green credentials. From oil companies to exotic bottled water companies, the most fearful firms jumped into the ring, trying to pre-empt the conversation by declaring their piety boldly, like a man driving a Hummer to cover up other "inadequacies".

The trend continues among heavy resource depleters. Chevron is outdoing its highly-mocked campaign, People Do, with the affable and somewhat disingenuous We Agree campaign. In the We Agree campaign, Chevron uses actors to impersonate real people asking for local jobs and renewable energy. Their own staff members explain that they support those aspirations as well. The ads are reminiscent of British Petroleum's Beyond Petroleum campaign, which, after the recent Macondo oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, became more of a punchline than a tagline.

The period of 2007-08 took this type of greenwashing to a whole new level, with a growing belief among consumer product manufacturers that appealing to a newly activated breed of green consumers would not only benefit brand equity but create incremental sales. Fiji water, one of the best-selling premium bottled water brands, launched a marketing campaign proclaiming that "every drop is green." Really? Despite some very good conservation efforts on the ground in Fiji, there's no way that shipping water thousands of miles could ever be green.

Greenwashing occurs anytime there is more talking green than doing green by a brand. A brand's marketing of its green aspects should resemble an iceberg: only the tip is visible, but below the water's surface lies the vast majority of the good news. Some marketers greenwash by focusing on an inconsequential environmental feature, like wrapping a steak in a compostable package and calling it "climate-friendly". Other marketers adopt green packaging without changing their behaviours, like Campbell's Soup, which launched an Earth Day green-colored soup can, but didn't bother buying organic chicken or lowering the salt content. At the most basic level, these companies have ignored that sustainability is complex and has four co-equal streams – social, economic, cultural and environmental. Greenwashers often try to focus on just one of these four pillars, while obscuring the rest.

Before you conclude that all "sustainable" products are a fraud, consider the range of commendable products and services that haven't called upon the tropes of green marketing. Marks & Spencer's Plan A project ("Plan A, because there is no Plan B") swathes staffers in hipster black clothes and stays away from the maudlin use of ferns and leaves to suggest goodness. The greatest benefit for Marks & Spencer has been the effect on employees, who've enjoyed connecting their daily work to a corporate initiative that makes them proud. Ebay may be the ultimate green machine, turning used junk into valuable collectibles, but you'll rarely see it trumpet its green credentials. Ebay's new Common Threads clothes recycling partnership with Patagonia is a model for building second lives for products. Xerox produces copiers which contain more than 80% reused or recycled parts. Even though Xerox is one of the largest branded paper sellers in the world, it tries to get its customers to stop using paper and choose Xerox digital products instead. You won't see it at a green festival. AirBnB is renting rooms without having to build new hotels, but the environmental aspects of its business is largely unspoken. The common denominator between all of these businesses is that their efficient use of resources is good for their core business, even if it's not particularly important to their consumers as a marketing message.

"Green" is an aspirational destination that no brand or processed product will ever reach. Those brands that are truly on the journey towards having a positive impact on the natural and human environment are far too humble to pound their chest and declare their verdance. Instead of swathing a product in a coat of green paint and streaming out into the trenches like Woodrow Wilson called for in his speech in 1916, marketers today are better off putting the effort into reinventing their products.

Adam Werbach, chief sustainability officer for Saatchi & Saatchi, is the author of Strategy for Sustainability and tweets at @adamwerbach. He often wears mismatched socks.

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