Recently in Startup Green Marketing Category

Conversations with Green Gurus puts green marketing into a new perspective. Looking differently...creates new ideas for the new reality facing us.


Green marketing is a matter of prioritization for both companies and consumers. It's time to think of green marketing differently. It's not about whether people with "pay more" for green.

It's about a tipping point in our civilization. Green motivations include such strategies as...

• Avoid risk
• Save money
• Improve health
• Disclosure of key metrics
  
• Survive!

Do something!  Try something better! 

"Green marketing is about solutions and making progress!" says Grant.

Where's the beef? Well...meeting value, that is.

Architect Scott Simpson described a concept KlingStubbins called a team structure and the industry now calls Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The concept is key for a collaborative project approach, but its importance is more universal. The phrase that stuck with me was "decision-ready information".

Decision-ready information consists of the key facts required for a meaningful, final decision about a subject to be decided.

In an IPD project, major decision-makers are expected to attend every meeting, so that decisions made in the meeting have meaningful buy-in and closure. These meetings can be intense, not to mention very expensive.
 

It's the responsibility, therefore, of each team member to bring decision-ready information for the decisions on the agenda.

Wouldn't this information design approach make meetings more valuable...and engaging!

The green marketing opportunity here is to demonstrate the sustainability, incentives, and cost saving attributes of your green solution.  Manufacturers can arm their representatives with decision-ready information.

Think about what information -- what key metrics and performance demonstration --  about your product might drive project decisions, and make sure it's available in an easy format for your representatives to bring to the table.

Read more at BuildingProductMarketing.com

Deborah Fleischer, founder and president of Green Impact, works with mid-sized companies to launch green initiatives . In a recent entrepreneur's coaching event, she observed three key challenges common to many of the companies she spoke with.

1. Lifecycle assessment (LCA): LCA is an approach that considers the cradle-to-grave lifecycle chain involved in producing, using and disposing of a product or service. It forces you to consider materials use, energy consumption and related greenhouse-gas emissions of your product, packaging and transportation decisions.

While larger corporations might have the resources to tackle LCA head on, across the board, the start-ups were struggling with easily accessing good data to help them estimate the key impacts associated with their entire value chain.

A few LCA resources for start-ups to consider include Sustainable Minds, Earthster and EIO-LCA.

2. Packaging: Many of these clean tech products require packaging and pushing for recycled content and avoiding plastic is a challenge for a CEO with twenty other competing priorities.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a great resource on this issue.

3. End of life: Thinking about what happens to these new "clean" products at end of life is challenging. How do you create incentives to get consumers to recycle or return a product? One of the start-ups was considering a rebate program and another planning on using a mailer to make it easy to return the product at the end of its life.

Read more at Matter Networks

Deborah Fleischer, founder and president of Green Impact, works with mid-sized companies to launch green initiatives that encourage innovation and grow market share.

Sun Marketing

GrEEnCollarEdu.net, a service of HVACReducation.net

Mercier Corporation

Carlstrom Productions, Inc.

Green Mary

Orangehalo

Republic Flag

Community Environmental Services, Inc. (CES)

Native Springs Nursery

Oster and Associates

Macus Trade

Atlas Embroidery

Echo Paper Store

Green Career Tracks

Starting Up Green

Cliff Allen Consultant

Michael Lemke Consulting

HVACR Education

Intelligent Nutrients (IN), includes an authentication component in its packaging. This Minneapolis-based start-up markets a certified-organic line of personal care products such as pure-seed face serum.

Unique Product Identification Numbers

From the day Intelligent Nutrients's product was made available to consumers, the bottles, cartons, cases, and pallets have all carried unique identification numbers tied into the Digital Authentication, Track and Trace (DATT) system from Verify Brand LLC.

"DATT emerged from the pharmaceutical industry, where certain drugs have to be tracked every step of the way. It's an extremely effective defense against diverters and counterfeiters," says Rick Goldberg, IN Directing Manager.

A Verify Brand solution will help detect and deter counterfeiting and diversion, isolate other unauthorized activities and support improved forward and reverse logistics management, e.g. recalls, returns and warranty claims. A Web-based brand protection solution for product authentication and improved product tracking can identify and isolate the location of counterfeit, adulterated or diverted products, isolate an issue and support real time responses to these events. This dramatically increases barriers to entry for both current and potential counterfeiters and diverters. In fact, the mere presence of this system can deter would-be counterfeiters or drive current offenders away.

Item level unique identification of products, grouped through parent-child relationships for distribution efficiency and easy access to Web-based authentication will provide a currently unavailable level of visibility into the movement of products throughout the supply chain, up to and including the point of use and when returned to the manufacturer for whatever reason.

All system are constantly monitored, logged, analyzed and viewed or reported dynamically. This enables Verify Brand and the brand owner to dynamically and in real time:

• Identify and locate counterfeit or diverted product
• Identify less than trustworthy supply chain partners
• Verify returned product authenticity
• Manage contract manufacturing
• Track product movement
• Initiate or manage product recalls
• Measure system usage patterns and frequency
• Determine who is using the system (or not) and where
• Measure and monitor customer buying activity and patterns
• Adjust or increase system usage where needed
• Pinpoint system usage abuse or problems
• Obtain valuable data and feedback from the supply chain and customers
• Improve non-security related supply chain management activities, e.g. inventory management
• Disseminate targeted brand and marketing messages
• Provide data for a regular and quantifiable Return on Investment

More info:  Verify Brand and Intelligent Nutrients

I an an active affiliate marketer for select companies and I have made it a habit of glancing over the Associates Agreements before I commit to adding the company's products to my websites, but I hadn't worried too much about them... until this came up in an affiliate agreement:

Get your exercise while you get your message around town!

Advertising bikes are a new medium of communication.  Bicycle billboards are designed to be   fun, exciting, eye catching and respected by the public for the human power required to ride all day long.

One company in Australia has developed Bicycle Billboards as a sustainable form of outdoor advertising they can be directed to a wide variety of markets.

www.spaceads.com.au

But... sustainable isn't just about the fuel used in the vehicle that drives around town.  Or the vehicle.  It is also about how the signs are made -- do they use environmentally and socially responsible materials and processes?  It is also about the safety of the bikers and the other people on the street.  And it is about the messages on the signs. 

If all those considerations are also carefully and thoughftfully taken into account, bike advertising could be considered respectful messaging.  

Sustainable Brands Conference
May 31 - June 4, 2009
Monterey Conference Center
Monterey, CA
SPONSOR:  Sustainable Life Media

Sustainable Brands '09 is an international event discussing the rapid rise of sustainability as a driver for revenue growth and brand equity in the 21st Century.

Despite negative world news, the climate is more ready than ever for smart, sustainable brands to pick up steam and take the lead into the future. 

Hear from some of the deepest thinkers who are paving the way for sustainable brands - from futurist and economics iconoclast Hazel Henderson on Building a Win/Win World, to Mathis Wackernagel (2007 Skoll Award Winner for Social Entrepreneurship) on ecological overshoot. From Dacher Keltner (PhD, Stanford, and author of "Born to Be Good") on the evolutionary sensibility of altruism, to Tom Szaky (CEO, TerraCycle) on creating profit from trash. And, of course, that's just the beginning. Get a sneak peek at some of the over 60 faculty we're in the process of bringing together.

SB'09 is where the most forward looking business thinkers, brand strategists, designers, sustainability executives and communications experts gather to craft new strategies, solutions and stories that will better serve the needs of today's - and tomorrow's - global marketplace. Whether we are discussing sustainable bonfire brands like Seventh Generation, Living Homes, New Belgium Brewery and Nau, or large global innovators like Wal-Mart, Coke-a-Cola, Steelcase, Clorox, HP and Unilever.

KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz
President and CEO
Sustainable Life Media
650-344-9693.
Event website: http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/events/sb09

The Wall Street Journal updates us on how online advertising is becoming more of a Do-It-Yourself strategy. Is selling 250,000 impressions for $63 really sustainable for the advertising community?

THE CASE STUDY: ...the ad was seen more than 250,000 times. Quickly, Bonobos sold out of Clarks, at $120 a pop. Total cost for the ads: about $63.

Facebook is only one of a rising number of self-service ad options. There are new entrants such as AdReady Inc., AdBrite Inc. and AdItAll LLC. MySpace, like Facebook, is offering do-it-yourself ads that marketers can tailor to individual interests on the social-networking site. (MySpace, like [The Wall Street Journal], is owned by News Corp.)

Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit and Google have new self-service ad options for the opposite side of the equation -- for Web publishers who want to attract advertising to their sites.

The rising number of self-service options underscores the expanding market for display ads, the graphic- and video-heavy ads in fixed spots on a Web page. The market for display ads reached $5 billion in 2007, according to market-research firm eMarketer Inc. That is far less than the estimated $8.6 billion in spending for text ads tied to online search. But in coming years, the mix is expected to tilt in favor of display ads, thanks to the rise of online video and the increasing push of brand marketers such as car companies into the display market.

But for the majority of mostly small- and medium-size businesses, it remains too difficult and expensive to buy display ads. To create an ad, businesses have to navigate the 15 standard sizes and half dozen standard formats and design something that will be eye-catching. They have to pick which Web sites or networks to buy ad space from, test multiple ads, track which ones draw the best consumer responses and adjust marketing campaigns accordingly. Doing this alone is daunting, and paying an ad agency to do it might cost thousands of dollars. Sites such as Yahoo Inc. often require advertisers to promise they will spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on advertising. SOURCE: Wall Street Journal

As a publisher of original content and aggregated news, I cringe at some of the prices being paid for search ads...there comes a point at which publishers can no longer afford to create quality content that is supported by bargain basement advertising.  Hopefully, the ad networks will be cognizant of that fact and the plight of the traditional media who are now feeling the sting of cheaper online advertising will serve as a warning and guidepost for what can happen to online content development. 

We don't have to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!