Forget monsters under the bed: Kids are afraid of global warming

March 10, 2010 – 5:13 pm

Director of Insight Karen Barnes takes a look at how the youngest members of our society feel about global warming and what the implications might be for marketers.

I don’t have kids, exactly. I have two 13-year-old neighbors for whom I am a “sparent” – that means spare parent. They know I work in the sustainability world, and they talk with me about their concerns. Recently when I was thinking about getting a new car, one of them told me I should get a Prius because it helps reduce global warming. They both have told me they wonder what the environment will be like when they get older. And they worry about it.

Turns out they’re not the only ones. I just ran across a couple of studies that show kids are deeply concerned about the environment they’ll inherit. One study by Opinion Research and Habitat Heroes says that one in three kids aged 6 to 11 actually doesn’t think there will be a world when they grow up – we will have destroyed it completely. The planet will simply be gone. More than half of kids worry that the planet will be a really tough place to live because of environmental damage. That’s a lot of stress for an impressionable, vulnerable young person. They fear for their very existence.

A different survey of middle-schoolers conducted by BrainPop found that these kids feared the consequences of global warming more than terrorism, war or cancer. In fact, almost three-quarters reported that they worry about how global warming will directly impact their lives. 60% feel that more needs to be done in their communities to mitigate global warming.

As these children grow up, they will be likely to adopt green behaviors, since they already exhibit green attitudes. In addition, these children will be what some anthropologists call “natives” meaning they grew up with the idea and threat of global warming, understand the topic and incorporate actions into their daily lives more seamlessly than those people who didn’t grow up with it.

In our upcoming Eco Pulse study, we clearly see that almost half of children and parents are discussing green issues from energy conservation to global warming – and those conversations are having an impact on household choices. In fact, two thirds of those parents who are talking about it with their kids (and the kids are initiating these conversations, by the way) are making changes.

Numerous other studies have quantified kids’ influence on purchases – about $188 billion by one count – and it would be interesting to look deeper into their influence on green purchases.

For marketers, targeting kids to get to their parents is an apparently effective strategy. But most green products aren’t ones that kids would normally interact with – I mean, really, can you imagine a 9-year-old begging her mother to buy the green laundry detergent because she wanted it? So how can marketers employ this strategy? By giving those kids something to talk with their parents about and asking them to do specific things that will involve the kids. For instance, a laundry detergent marketer would be wise to get kids thinking and talking about how other non-green laundry detergents have bad chemicals that get into the lakes and streams and harm animals (28% of kids say they’re most afraid that animals will go extinct). Who wants to kill the frogs that these kids catch on warm summer afternoons?

But marketers must also be careful not to spread too much fear – these kids are already anxious. The better solution is to provide them with actions they can take to help them quell their worries and start incorporating green habits into their daily lives.

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How about going green to lose weight?

March 3, 2010 – 11:04 pm

An interesting twist on marketing green, from agency president, Suzanne Shelton:

If you’ve heard me speak or followed this blog much you know one of our mantras (based on years of research) is:  most people don’t go green to save the planet; they do it to satisfy deeper personal desires.  We’ve explored these deeper desires in a multitude of ways, following theories of behavioral science and psychology and building on feedback from focus groups and one-on-one interviews with consumers.  This exploratory work has led us time and time again to a few key drivers:

Comfort

Control

Beauty/aesthetics

Happiness

Fear of wasting

Security/Peace of Mind

Connection to nature

Community

Better health

These are, traditionally, the real reasons people go green.  Now a new driver has been put squarely on my radar screen this week (twice, no less):  weight loss.  We’ve done no testing of this, so I can’t prove that a promise of “Go green — you’ll lose weight!” will work, but I’ve seen it in action twice and thought it was worth bringing up.

A client of ours, who works in the sustainability realm, told me about several of her girlfriends reading a book from one of The Biggest Loser cast members.  It espouses eating organic foods as a way to lose weight.  Apparently all these friends were suddenly interested in pumping our client for everything she knows about going green, hoping her knowledge would somehow help them lose weight.  And Kirstie Alley has just launched a new venture called Kirstie Alley’s Organic Liaison, also espousing her organic food program and “foods you don’t put in your closet” as the key to weight loss.  (It’s a bit bizzare, but watch her welcome video below and see how she’s using “eat organic…lose weight…be sexy” as a marketing ploy.)

Again, we’ve not tested it, but based on years of sitting behind the glass at focus groups listening to hundreds of consumers talk about the reasons they go green, I think it’ll work. We know sex sells any number of products and what makes a woman feel sexier than losing 10 pounds (besides losing 20 or 30 pounds, that is)? We’ll be testing green advertising and packaging claims in our Eco Pulse focus groups next month, and we’ll be sure to test weight loss as a message and see how it plays.  We’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, if any of you have actually used this message to sell a green product, do tell!

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Millenials: Just starting to put their money where their mouths are

March 2, 2010 – 11:40 pm

Note: Director of Insight Karen Barnes takes a look at how and if campus initiatives are impacting Millennials’ green behaviors and purchases.

We hear it all the time:  “It’s the young people we need to target!  They’ll buy anything green.”

Not so much.

In our soon to be released Eco Pulse study, we see that Millennials (those aged 18-24) are just starting to put their money where their mouths are.  In fact, they do a lot of talking — and they exhibit some aspirational thinking — but they’re really only just starting to buy green products and change their behaviors.

Here are a few highlights from our study:

• Across the board, Millennials are more likely to be talking about energy and water conservation, preservatives and chemicals in food, global warming and VOCs, but those conversations aren’t producing change – yet.  Millennials are 23% less likely to have changed behaviors or made green purchases than the overall population.

• Millennials report that their green activities are most often in the Low category (0-4 activities). This may be a function of the activities we list – many of which apply more to homeowners than renters or students living in dorms.

• The green products they are buying are in a select few categories – mostly in furniture, baby products, cars, food and beverages.

• However, they’re much more likely than the overall population to be carpooling, riding public transportation and biking/walking.

• They’re also more likely to give money to environmental causes than the overall population (22%, index 169).

• And they’re more likely to support the US signing a treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, even if it raises their energy bills.

• Interestingly, this group reported that they’re more likely than the overall population to give up their computers (11%, index 157), cars (13%, index 144) or their air conditioning (19%, index 136) to help the planet.

So we’re seeing that Millennials’ green attitudes are currently outstripping their green behaviors, but expect to see this change as these young adults begin earning more money as they start their careers and build households. In fact, we already see a little evidence of this – Millennials are buying furniture and looking for green alternatives. They’re buying their first cars and looking for fuel-efficient models.

For marketers, Millennials are a prime group with which to start seeding brand loyalty. Limited by income and living arrangements, they don’t have the buying power of older groups, but they have the desire to see green alternatives. And since they like to talk, give them things to talk about with their friends – even if they aren’t buying now, they will eventually. As soon as their economic circumstances improve, they’re likely to seek out brands and products that offer green benefits. Start building those relationships now and see the strategy pay off in coming years.

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The Bloom Box: Worth all the Hype?

February 23, 2010 – 6:39 pm

Note: Director of Insight Karen Barnes examines the launch of the much-anticipated Bloom Box and adds a few thoughts to the commotion.

The official launch of Bloom Energy’s potentially revolutionary new fuel cell technology, the Bloom Box, has tongues everywhere wagging, and there seem to be more questions than answers at this point.

Here’s what we do know:

• The technology was originally developed for use by NASA – which implies it’s pretty smart stuff.
• The company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to refine the technology for commercial and residential use.
• 20 major companies, including Google, eBay, FedEx, and Wal-Mart are testing the Bloom Boxes, providing feedback and showing remarkable results.
• The company’s optimistic CEO wants to have a Bloom Box affordable enough for average homeowners to buy within the next 5-10 years. He’s pegging the price around $3,000.
• It has zero emissions and it’s wireless – doesn’t require grid connections at all.

There are reasons to be skeptical. This isn’t the first foray into fuel cell technology, after all – there are several other pioneering companies like Fuel Cell Energy that have been installing units since the 1990s. But no one has made a financial go of it yet. Fuel Cell Energy lost $71 million last year.

Historically, the biggest hurdle has been price – but Bloom Energy says it’s using cheaper materials to replace platinum and it doesn’t rely on expensive, pure hydrogen gas. The large boxes being tested today run around $800,000 and are producing five times more energy than the 3,000 solar panels on eBay’s campus.

Here are my questions (on behalf of curious citizens everywhere):

• When will these potentially game-changing devices be available to average Americans really?
• Will utility companies embrace the new technology and start installing Bloom Boxes at sub-stations instead of building new power plants? How will they work with their customers to deploy them — or will they fight the deployment as a threat to their current business model?
• What fuel source would a homeowner need to provide to make the Box work? Right now, it requires natural gas, biomass-produced gas or solar energy. How much savings are produced?
• How will the price per kilowatt compare to coal? Natural gas? Renewables? What’s the ROI for the average homeowner?

And here are my hopes:

• That it works.
• That it works affordably.
• That it works affordably and reliably.
• That it works affordably, reliably and cleanly.

Based on what we hear in our research, we know a small percentage of Americans are moving toward energy independence – and not just from foreign countries – but from utility companies. Whether it’s distributed generation from solar, wind or now fuel cell technology, Americans are reporting pent up demand for energy sources that they can own and control. In Energy Pulse 2009, 28% of Americans said they want to install solar on their homes – and solar’s more than 10 times more expensive than the projected cost of a Bloom Box.

We’ll keep our eyes and ears open as more Americans start hearing about fuel cell technology for their homes and let you know how they react.

See the 60 Minutes report on Bloom Energy here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Bill Gates and Mainstream Consumers want an “energy miracle”

February 23, 2010 – 6:30 am

Note: Director of Insight Karen Barnes watched Bill Gates’ speech from the recent TED conference. Here, she shares her thoughts on how many Americans might react to his call for zero emission nuclear power and what implications it has for marketers.

You may have heard of the TED Conference – an annual gathering that attracts some of the world’s greatest thinkers, innovators and business giants. And of course you know Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, leader of a huge global foundation and investor in new technologies.

He spoke at last week’s TED Conference and called for an “energy miracle” – the development of zero emission nuclear power that burns waste, produces cheap energy and is scalable. Renewables, Gates pointed out, offer several advantages, but the challenge is battery storage. According to his calculations, all the batteries on the planet today could only hold 10 minutes of the energy the world needs.

So he’s turning his attention, considerable influence and investment power to promote nuclear as the leading solution to the energy challenges the world faces. Gates owns part of a company called TerraPower that claims to have designed a method of generating nuclear energy that burns nuclear waste, generates less waste and produces no carbon emissions.

Oh, and Gates thinks this model can cut the cost of power in half.

Americans are likely to welcome this “energy miracle” with open arms and huge sighs of relief. In last year’s Energy Pulse we asked respondents “Why don’t you do more to conserve energy?” and the number four answer was “New technologies will soon be invented to solve energy supply issues.” Americans want a technology fix so they won’t have to change behavior. In fact, the number three reason why Americans don’t do more to conserve energy is that it’s hard to change habits.

In their heads, the equation looks like this: New products and innovations = we get to keep prioritizing our comfort and convenience instead of the environment and keep doing what we’re doing now.

Hooray, they’ll proclaim! The Research and Development guys in the lab will save us all! Hooray! When those guys figure it out, we can still keep our thermostats at 72 year-round! Hooray! Cheap, safe, reliable power and, oh, by the way, it’s better for the environment, too.

So, two things to take away:

• American consumers are squarely putting the responsibility for a more sustainable future in corporate America’s hands. They’re saying, “Hey, if you come out with a green or energy-efficient product that works just as well as what I’m used to, and it doesn’t cost me any more money, then I’ll probably use it.” So if you’re working on new energy technologies or products/services that fit into this way of thinking, you’ve got a winner on your hands.
• The second piece is that should you (or Mr. Gates) succeed in launching such a new technology, consumers will expect a lot.  They’ll expect to maintain status quo/keep doing what they do/not have to get involved while you do an Oz act behind the curtain.  This likely won’t work in actuality, so you’ll need to be transparent, clear and manage expectations at every turn.

In short, miracles do happen — they just take a lot of work and clear communication.

Posted in Energy Efficiency | 1 Comment »

Consumers prefer “natural” products, but what about products inspired by nature?

February 17, 2010 – 11:46 am

Director of Insight Karen Barnes starts exploring how today’s product engineers are inspired by some of nature’s oldest tricks and how they can shape marketing efforts.

Right now, I’m sitting on the floor of an airport, waiting for my next flight. Looking around me, this is about the last place anyone would be inspired by nature – there’s very little that’s natural here, after all. Concrete tarmac. Petroleum-based carpet. Pleather seats.

But product engineers are finding great inspiration in nature – and a new field of study is emerging called biomimicry. Basically, it means incorporating ideas from natural design into human product design and it’s gaining momentum as products are introduced into the marketplace.

As smart marketers, we know that creating products that meet consumer needs and preferences is a critical part of our jobs. And when that product has an interesting story to tell, it makes the communications and advertising component more compelling. Our Eco Pulse research confirms that the majority (60%) of consumers are actively looking for greener products, and that they prefer the word “natural” on the label. So developing products that borrow ideas from nature seems like a win-win situation, and biomimicry is starting to play a role in creating more sustainable products.

In Harare, Zimbabwe, the Eastgate Centre high-rise building takes its energy-efficient design from termites. Yep, termites. Turns out that those little guys are quite the engineers, keeping their mounds at a constant temperature by constantly opening and closing multiple vents. The Eastgate Centre uses a similar model, using less than 10% of the energy needed by a similarly-sized, conventionally engineered building.

There’s a company called Whalepower Wind Turbines (www.whalepower.com) that’s using the design of a humpback whale’s flippers to create wind turbine blades with less drag, increased lift and 20% improved efficiency. As renewable energy struggles to achieve price parity with conventional energy, innovations like this might help close the gap and make wind power more affordable.

My last example is a company called Pax Scientific (www.paxscientific.com) whose research into fluid movement – think spirals, the Fibonacci Sequence, the Golden Ratio – is producing more efficient fans, blades, mixers and impellers that move air and liquid around in systems. You can see these spiral-shaped parts in new washing machines. It’s estimated that putting these more efficient parts on compressors, pumps and motors would save 15% of all the electricity used by the US.

So what can termites, humpback whales and the Fibonacci Sequence teach us as marketers? That sometimes, innovative answers aren’t only found in the technology lab – sometimes they’re found right under our noses, in the dirt. That “new and improved” can sometimes actually be “ancient and applied in a new way.” That the old adage of “adapt, mutate or die” is true of products as well. That perhaps the next generation of product engineers will also be trained in zoology.

Incorporating biomimicry can potentially become a powerful part of your brand story, a clear and compelling differentiator and a constant source of innovation.

Posted in Green | 1 Comment »

The problem with Boulder, CO

February 17, 2010 – 11:35 am

A recommendation to the City of Boulder (and everyone reading) from CEO Suzanne Shelton

The Wall Street Journal ran a story last Friday entitled, “Even Boulder Finds it isn’t Easy Going Green.” The story focuses on the fact that after a couple of years of encouraging/incenting residents to make energy efficient choices/improvements, Boulder citizens simply haven’t done much at all.  In short, the message of the article is:  “If all those treehuggers in Boulder can’t be convinced to make some behavior changes for the good of the planet, how in the world are we going to convince average Americans to do it?  All is lost!”

OK.  If you’ve followed Shelton’s blog and process at all you know we’re adamant believers in laser targeting an audience, understanding what motivates them and then creating campaigns and messages that play to those motivators and drivers.  In short, an emotional appeal works; a rational one often doesn’t.

So, following Our Way of Doing Things, I set out on the Internet to see if I could determine who the City of Boulder targeted for their program advertising, what their campaign message was and what emotional lever they attempted to press.  Based on what I found, here’s where I think their program fell short and what we can all learn from it:

1. It appears the city of Boulder assumed all residents were their target, that they’re all green-leaning and pleas of saving the planet would be a great motivator.  The WSJ was good enough to run several interactive graphs with their story.  A couple of things jumped out at me:  yes,  Boulder citizens are generally green-leaning, better educated, higher income folks.  According to our segmentation, therefore, the majority of the population is True Believers.  Interestingly, though, 32% of Boulderites voted for Bush and 28% voted for McCain.  That means there’s a niche population of Cautious Conservatives there as well.  Those guys respond to a control/ROI message.  And, according to the WSJ’s information, adding insulation to a Boulder home is a $2,200 investment that gets paid back in 2.5 years.  That’s a compelling offer to the Cautious Conservative set.  So is a $1,500 investment in caulking and air sealing that gets paid back in 3.2 years.  These specific measures could be direct marketed exclusively to the Cautious Conservative crowd with an underlying emotional promise of “feel smart/in control” and do quite well.

2. It appears the city made assumptions about the True Believer’s level of understanding about what causes global warming. We’ve tracked this for three years and seen zero change:  97% of the population does not know that the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions is electricity production.  Thus, when you say, “reduce your home energy use and save the planet!” almost all of us have no idea what you actually mean.  The City of Boulder’s ClimateSmart web site makes this same assumption as well.  Given that the majority of residents are True Believers a heartfelt story around what’s causing climate change would go a long way.  The story then needs to be made personal — by tying back to the limits  emissions may one day put on our grandkids and could put on Boulder residents today in the form of poor air quality.  In other words, the direct link needs to be made — in an uplifting rather than depressing fashion — that every time you plug in your plasma TV you may be making the air you breathe worse for you today and definitely for your kids tomorrow.  I didn’t see any “better health” messaging in Boulder’s communications, and that’s a powerful driver for the True Believer set.

In short, all is not lost.  The City of Boulder just needs to do a better job of segmenting its citizens and custom marketing the right emotional promise to the right segment.  The same goes for all of you, by the way.

Posted in Energy Efficiency | 11 Comments »

The State of Green Business? More powerful than a Chicago Blizzard.

February 10, 2010 – 6:04 pm

I concur with Karen’s blog post that the Report Card offered by Joel Makower and the greenbiz.com folks is dismal.  But judging from the attendance at the State of Green Business conference in Chicago, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.  Truly, the weather was awful.  The snow started around 8:00 Monday night, and by Tuesday morning there was about a foot of it on the ground.  Yet by 9:00, when the conference started, the room was pretty full.  By 10:00, it was a definite full house.

Knowing that the vast majority of consumers rank their convenience and comfort well above their concern for the environment, the crowd’s willingness to brave definite inconvenience and certain discomfort spoke volumes about the importance of the topic and the commitment some folks in the business community have to the green market.  Further, I met many small businesses and start-ups.  That tells me the economy has not squelched green entrepreneurial thinking — and maybe the economy’s even stoked it.

There were a few good presentations from large companies implementing innovative, thoughtful,  green efforts (ebay in particular), but I was sad to see that a few top executives at large companies talked about unplugging things and buying carbon credits as if those were big ideas or even represented a real commitment to being green (only 14% of the population thinks that qualifies a company as green).

My hope for next year’s conference is that Joel invites more of the start-ups and young businesses in the room — the folks inventing really cool new green products and technologies — and gives them a forum to share their thinking.  Panel discussions pairing up Fortune 500 companies dipping their toes into the green market with small start-ups going to market with big ideas and little money would be fascinating and educational for everyone.  At the end of the day, we all have a lot to learn from each other.

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The Green Report Card: Mostly C’s

February 10, 2010 – 5:44 pm

Director of Insight Karen Barnes takes a look at the 2010 State of Green Business Report and finds few reasons to get excited.

Among the many blogs, e-newsletters and web sites that I track on a regular basis, GreenBiz.com ranks as one of my favorites. One of the reports that I look forward to reading is their annual State of Green Business Report.

This week, our president Suzanne Shelton spoke at the State of Green Business forum in Chicago – and I got my first look at this year’s report. It’s not a rosy picture, people.

If I took home a report card that had 3 F’s, 11 C’s and 6 A’s, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be getting any allowance for quite some time. But I’m an optimist so I choose to look at the areas that are getting good marks.

Turns out that Green IT, green office space, paper use and recycling, water intensity, clean energy patents and energy efficiency all scored good marks this year. But they’re also the same categories that generally scored well last year.

So I pulled out my copy of last year’s report – just to see what’s changed. Turns out not much.
Last year, the report was remarkably similar to this year’s – 3 F’s, 12 C’s and 5 A’s. The only two areas that showed a change were cleantech investments and green office space – investments slipped in 2010 and green office space took an uptick.

Is this a surprise? Maybe to an optimist who sees positive movements in other areas, like the number of people who are actively looking for green products, even in this recession. Here’s the thing to remember: change is incremental – sometimes even glacial – but it is, in the end, change.

As marketers, the fact that there’s not more good news to report simply means there’s more work to do. There are more insights to uncover, more messages to communicate, more media channels to leverage.

How much change do you see in your organizations since last year? What’s made the most impact?

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted in Green | 1 Comment »

Super Bowl Ads – The good, the bad and the green.

February 8, 2010 – 4:31 pm

Creative Director, Larry Washington, weighs in on last night’s entertainment.

Another year, another round of super bowl commercial hits and misses. I was excited to see that a few more creative concepts broke through this year. Of course there were still an overwhelming amount of bad ideas propped up by expensive production (hello, Bud Light) but the balance between substance and style seemed pretty good. I was a little surprised at the small amount of any online pushes from the spots aside from the obligatory website on the end frame. There were a few that drove us to their site to “see what happens next” but not many social community building efforts.

The one spot that did jump out to me was Audi’s “Green Police” It was really the only commercial that had an environmental focus (which I found interesting as well).

Audi is basically telling us that this car makes green feel good even though being green takes away pleasure in our lives and is generally awful overall. But isn’t the target for this car a little more green-leaning? (Our research would say yes.)  This idea, then, says to a potential customer, “You have green leanings and being green sucks. Our car makes it suck less.” They seem to have gotten carried away with a cool creative idea that was super entertaining but insults the target audience. If you’re positioning a product as green, why degrade the general idea of green? That’s like walking up to someone and saying “Hi. I think your clothes are hideous, your lifestyle disgusts me and you’re pretty much a moron. Wanna go out?”

This spot has gotten mixed reviews online. I’d love to hear your comments on it.

Posted in Green, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »