I guess my fear
was that this could easily have become Greenwash Phase II with corporate
business extolling the virtues and successes of their CSR green initiatives and
marketing professionals celebrating how they had ‘cracked green’, and how green
thinking would mean big green profits. I think my concerns represent how
cynical we’ve all become, assuming that big business would never even consider
changing its ways, and that there will always be a massive divide between those
who care about people and planet, and those who just focus on profit. But how
wrong was I?

Be part of the
solution

The day was
kicked off superbly by Jonathan Porritt, founder director of Forum For The
Future , who apologised for starting on a grey note but had to point out the
fact that big business and its marketing was responsible for a big part of the
environmental problem and so had a responsibility to be part of the solution –
and fast. He mourned the fact that the “I shop, therefore I am” mentality was
still so strong in our culture and athough awareness was up on ‘buying better’,
the idea of consuming less was still very taboo.

He called for
business to:

offer truly
sustainable products and services and so put substance into their messages

engage (properly)
with consumers and help encourage a change in habits

and stop avoiding
the big issues!

Then marketeers
and advertisers were told to change their own cultures first, otherwise how
could they possibly advise their clients on green issues in the market place?

Don’t just stand
there…

He was followed
by David Hieatt, founder of Howies, who managed (brilliantly) in just 20
minutes to show that you can do the right thing, be innovative, make high
quality products and still do good business. He warned against relying on
principles to sell products, that good design was really important and that
honesty was key to any brand nowadays – however hard they work, he admits that
Howies still makes an impact on the environment via its business practice,
nobody is perfect. On a positive note, and to lead by example, he then
announced Howies’ plans for all their jean buttons to be made of recycled car
door panels as of next year and the imminent launch of their ‘Hand me down’
range. The concept is great – clothing made to last. When you buy say, a
jacket, you enter into a contract with Howies to keep and maintain the jacket
[not dispose of it when it gets a bit old] and in return they supply a spare
zip and guarantee to keep the cloth in stock so that you can always get it
repaired, so giving the jacket a lifespan of 10-20 years.

He concluded that
whilst this was all very exciting, they are still a small company and that the
biggest change will have to come from within the mainstream, and ended with a
classic quote from Dick Dastardly… “Don’t just stand there, do something!”

The scene having
been set, the conference continued with a surprisingly similar tone as were
heard from:

Philip Gould,
Philip Gould Associates

John Grant,
co-founder of St Luke’s, planner, consultant, author

Michael Bremans,
chief executive, Ecover

Eugenie Harvey,
founder of We Are What We Do

Adam Morgan,
partner, eatbigfish

Naresh
Ramchandani, Karmarama founder and Guardian columnist

Ben Terrett,
co-founder, The Design Conspiracy

Michael Johnson,
Johnson Banks

Marc Sands,
marketing director,The Guardian

Matthew Anderson,
group director of brand and communications, BSkyB

Russell Davies,
Open Intelligence Agency

Dr Arlo Brady,
special advisor, Freud Communications

Steve Howard,
chief executive, The Climate Group

- with
introductions by Greg Nugent, marketing director, Eurostar

Meet the kids –
face the future

The day was
filled with poignant, and at times very personal, radical thinking around the
biggest issue that faces us all. Around half of the presentations featured
either pictures of, or references to the speakers’ own children and our
generation’s legacy to them. The question that haunted most speakers was that
if they did nothing now would their
children turn to them in the future and ask “Daddy, you knew this was all going
on. Why didn’t you do anything?”

It felt like a
very big penny had dropped, and that advertisers and corporate marketing
big-wigs alike were all facing something of a new truth, embracing the
realisation that they have a serious responsibility to change the way they do
business and interact with consumers. Yes, their brands’ survival now rely on
getting the business culture right as well as the message, because the
consumers will decide the future.

There was open
admission that Greenwash is history as a strategy for communication, and that
if business is to say anything ‘green’ it MUST have substance behind it. If
not, the consumers will let them know how they feel, in no uncertain terms. Ad
boys were told to get tough with clients and stop taking vast sums of cash to
make their clients’ short term thinking sell ‘green’ as the new black – there
was even a call for agencies to form a club which would, by ethos, refuse to
work with clients who did not truly commit to a long term approach to their
business doing ‘better’… that caused some tremours in the room, I can tell
you… reality took a big bite…

Applied Green
certainly flicked some switches.

Now, to counter
any CSR cynicism that the previous paragraphs may have stirred, the summary at
the end of day was a conclusive admission that, for once, nobody really knows
what the way forward is. There was self confessed confusion [even fear] that
there’s no ‘handbook’ for this one, and that there is a need for leadership of
some kind to ensure rigour and authenticity, co-operative working and idea
sharing, and an awareness that the problem was not going to get solved
overnight with a new green logo – so decommission greenwash now.

What was
refreshing was that I didn’t leave thinking ‘oh no, the mainstream have worked
out a way to really milk ‘green’, and convince consumers it’ll all be ok.

We have an even
bigger fight for authenticity and sustainability on our hands’. A 2008
conference was hinted at and I think the Applied Green concept could be a very
powerful tool in monitoring the change in big business attitudes on a yearly
basis, as we all step into the unknown. My congrats and support go out to Greg
Nugent at Eurostar and all those at Campaign and Marketing who brought together
this festival of minds.

‘Substance,
honesty and co-operative thinking towards better business’ may well be the new
agenda.

Let’s hope.

Simon Bottrell

Network Development Director, Ethical Junction

NOTE: The
speakers’ presentations from the day were planned to be posted online in blog
format to encourage ongoing debate, and as soon as we have any details of this
we will post them on Ethical Pulse.

Tags: fashion, finance, home

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 10:36 am and is filed under Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.