The colour green. A colour many of us love. Green is a representation of everything that is natural, fresh and one that belongs to the flora that makes the world what it is today. Sadly, green is also a colour that is progressively inching towards representing malicious intent in the world of business and marketing.
The word that defines this negative use of such a vibrant colour by the world of business is greenwashing. A term that represents the misuse of the word green and all that it stands for. The green monster is here. In our midst already.
Let me introduce you to this creature of our making. In the beginning, the use of green was benign. It meant everything positive. Until international bodies that represent the cause of green kept using it, all was well.
It was still all good when governments of countries kept using it. And then the tide turned: Corporate bodies and brands jumped onto the bandwagon, and greenwashing as we know it today, has become a menace of no small proportion.
Greenwashing then is the use of the colour and the benign strokes it represents to further brand image, corporate sales, brand interest, brand franchise and a lot more. The green monster then has three facets to it: the good, the bad and the ugly.
While the good is all about the use of the language of the organic, the mindful, the sustainable and the good-for-the-planet, bad greenwashing is all about being vague, talking without proof and at times going off on a tangent into the realm of prose and poetry even. And the ugly avatar of this green monster is everything that is a skin-deep green.
Talking green for the sake of talking green is the new habit, oftentimes spurred on by the top management in organisations. The CSR monies that lie there in the corporate kitty help spur this monster on. Interestingly, brands today use the green language strategically to further their brand offerings, and in turn the revenues that accrue.
Corporate India has just about discovered the joy of greenwashing, and I think it’s time to look at everything one must avoid in this green space, which is getting cluttered with every brand and his uncle wanting a piece of the green pie. Here is my take on the do’s and don’ts. Needless to say, there are more don’ts than do’s.
When I look at this space of greenwashing, it is interesting to see that the ‘reddest’ of categories seem to be adopting the greenest of words and phrases. Cement companies, the air-conditioning industry, bottled water brands whose products are made from PET, fast fashion and industries that pollute more and purify less are the first to embrace the language of green advertising, green marketing and green PR.
Very clearly, brands in these categories are very sensitive to the fact that they do a fair bit of harm, and seem to want a greenwashed avatar as soon as possible. These categories, their brands, the advertising agencies and creative geniuses that work for them are quick to do the needful. The solutions brought to the table seem to be just as rustic and quick.
Grab the category and its negatives, pick those initiatives that make the company look a lot less ‘redder’, put all of it into the advertising washing machine, set it to wash-and-dry and pour in the green detergent to make it all happen. Viola. A new campaign is ready. The category looks greener than ever before. The company looks green. The brands go green. Nearly everything looks green. At times even without being green enough even.
Greenwashing today has two variants. Firstly, there is the category of sensorial greenwashing. Here, brands use items you can see, touch, smell, hear and taste to showcase green effort. And then there is the emotional greenwashing technique. Out here, brands pick the realm of imagination. Here, the sky’s the limit. Creative genius comes into play.
The terrible aspects of greenwashing emerge when you see folks in fast fashion use it to their advantage. There are branded players in the space of fashion wear who promote the green movement. They pitch products that are very well thought-out at the back-end in terms of procurement of materials and manufacturing practices. But they fail at the front-end. Some collect used garments. And yet most others encourage buying and adding more garments to the wardrobe.
Ultimately, junk from this space goes into landfills that are expanding by the minute, if not by the second. It is here that I question the clean intent of these players involved in active and buoyant greenwashing. In many ways, the ultimate and real green mantra in the space of fashion wear must be the “Do Not Buy More” theme. The “Buy Responsibly” theme even.
Sadly, in many such instances, green is the bait to bring in new customers. Imagine an inverted funnel. The narrow, long tip of the funnel is facing upwards. This is the bait/green end of the funnel. Brands advertise the green message and consumers trickle in.
Once in, the broad end of the inverted funnel is where the joy lies for the brand. Out here, you have lured the consumer in from the narrow tip of the green message, only to offload all of them into the non-green end of the funnel, where the mass offerings lie. Red offerings, if I may call them that.
At the end of it all, what must a brand do? There is so much noise in the space of green. Must you participate or not? And if so, how far must you go?
My view is a purist one. A simple one. I do believe every brand and every company must have a green program in place. It must pursue this route with passion. This “route to the future” must not be a “route to the market”.
It must be an internal program that does all the good things in the realm of green, without talking about it to the outside world of consumers. You must be green. You must do green. But don’t tout it to your customers. And for heaven’s sake, don’t advertise it the way you do. It’s time to hush your green work altogether. There is respect in ‘greenhushing’. For the sake of decency, hush it up folks.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc