It Grows On Trees

Filtered Water, Funny Aftertaste

The next best thing about Brita's "Drink Responsibly" campaign, developed by DDB San Francisco, is the clarity of the strategy and subtlety of the creative. "Forty-five minutes in the traffic. Forever in a landfill." So obvious, so chill, it's a  "why didn't I think of that?" moment.

A few haters have slammed the spots on account of the guilt the campaign supposedly dishes out. Whatever.

Best thing about the campaign is what you might call a progressive back-lash against it, courtesy the two-way power of social media (including a Facebook group). Earlier this year, Enviro geeks pushed back against Brita in some pretty high-vis forums to say, "Okay, if you're all about saving the planet, what about the disposable filter cartridges that stay forever in a landfill?"

Looks like Brita came to the table and will now start taking back used filters for recycling. Which brings up the question: were they there in the first place?

The answers is, well, um, not really. DDB SF's site suggests the campaign had a pretty cynical, though perhaps defensible, genesis:

Through PR efforts, we found bottled water's Achilles heel: sustainability. Our idea was to send people a simple, yet powerful message... to jolt them out of their bottled water routine.

You can't blame a company for fighting its competitors, in this case bottled water. What's interesting is that sustainability was a means to compete, not an end.

Credit social media and the conversation between Brita and environmentalists for changing that dynamic Credit DDB SF for a great campaign. This makes a great case study on how green marketing can reward your intelligence a tell a story without clobbering you over the head, as well as how companies must interact with consumers and how they can win when they do.

Be sure to check out Brita's own campaign blog.

Tap Project Taps a Deep Emotional Well (Not Deep Pockets)

From an environmental/socially responsible marketing standpoint the Tap Project is a no brainer: when you eat out, you dole out the price of bottled water (or at least a buck) in exchange for a glass of normally free tap water. The restaurant then donates the dough to a UNICEF program that delivers clean drinking water to communities around the world where safe water is scarce. The program kicked off in NYC last year and garnered the support of some 300 restaurants.

From a design/brand standpoint, Tap delights with logos/identities unique to each of the 13 cities with participating restaurants this year. Some of the most respected names in advertising are contributing to the campaign (WK, Crispin). Here's a great spot from the Boston chapter that says all you need to know — about Tap, but also about producing great work that both defies green clichés and big budgets.

What I love about this spot is that it cost — or should have cost — next to nothing to make. With minimal visuals and maximal audio, it's positively Hitchcockian. Best of all, it stays true to the premise of the tap project: let's spend the money to get clean drinking water to those who need it, not to pay for a high-ticket film/video shoot.

Via Ernie Schenck, whose agency Hill Holliday produced the spot. Kudos, kids.

It's Getting Hot In Here. A Little Steamy, Too.

They say an idea is on its way to becoming a cliché when it become the, um, butt of jokes in pop culture.

If that's true, then this ad from German shop "glow" may foretell the doom of eco-marketing.

Has Steve Hall seen this yet?

Via ads of the world.

Pants For Plants: Levis Eco-Jeans

As a category, "organic" has been around for what, 20, 30 years? It represents a pretty tidy niche across a wide spectrum of the market: products grown and/or produced according to strict, easy-to-document standards and practices.

Now the Organic Mothership is crashing into the riot of green product whose authenticity is not so easy to certify. Case in point: Levi's Eco Jeans. This visually arresting campaign, by BBH Singapore, manages to adopt that old-school organic cred while pulling off two opposing agendas: pandering to greenmania but not hammering us over the head. Too hard.

But, as one commenter at copyranter noted,

Leaving aside the fact that "organic" can mean all kinds of things that are far from environmentally friendly, they're still presumably made in Chinese factories, no doubt belching out solid coal plumes filled with lead and arsenic and kryptonite.

But this post is as much about the coming backlash to green, which, of course, is starting with the insiders of the ad world. Hilarious post and string of links to check out at copyranter:

My first impression of these ads—other than that they were beautifully designed—was that they offered a vision of our not-to-distant future: all of us humans dead and gone with weeds growing through our trendy, not-yet-disintegrated eco-clothing.

via ads of the world.

My Mom Gets The Last Word on Green Works

To me, the Clorox logo on the Green Works package says "bleach." And with that comes the all the secondary baggage: "industrial," "old school," "me-too," "toxic" and "pandering."

To my mom, the Clorox logo on the Green Works Package says "effective."

No lie, ladies and gentlemen, it was the first thing she said when I asked. And this is coming from a lady who has forgotten more about keeping house than I have yet to discover.

So what the hell do I know?

Okay  maybe, just maybe, Clorox/Green Works is on to something. Could it be they are right to focus on the market segment that is less concerned about environmentalism and more concerned about "effective?" Yes, according to Joel Makower. And Honestly, I'm all right with that.

Treehugger has a fairly balance assessment of the significance of the product line's entry into the market, one that somewhat justifies the placement of the Clorox logo. This observation from industry innovator Seventh Generation is most salient:

Seventh Generation CEO Jeffrey Hollender summed it up pretty well: "New competitors will only help this category grow faster than it's been growing. The question is, do you want a big piece of a small pie or a small piece of a big pie? We absolutely want the pie to be as big as possible, even if we have a smaller slice. ... To address problems environmentally, we need to get other businesses involved."

That said, I still stand behind my observation: the Clorox logo can't carry the Green Works identity forever. I just don't believe the bold badge logo will be able to compensate long-term for a middlin' Green Works mark. I wish the company had been more aggressive with the latter; if Clorox is so strong a mark that its appearance on the package solidifies my mom's trust, then they could have/should have leveraged its equity in a brand and package that would win over the rest of us.

I Have Only This To Say About Clorox's Green Works

What exactly are they hoping to accomplish by slapping the Clorox logo so loudly on the front of the package?

Seriously, if you look closely you can actually see a marketing VP come downstairs and bully the in-house creatives. That's them, quivering in fear behind the jackbooted corporate logo.

You can read the warm and fuzzy story behind Green Works here, including how it earned a stamp of legitimacy from the Sierra Club. But for as eco-friendly as Green Works products seem to be, sorry, that Clorox logo is always going to shout "old-school super-noxious bleach."

Maybe the dissonance is part of PR maven Ketchum's ploy for buzz. If so, congratulations. It's working. I just wonder how long it will compensate for the otherwise safe, generic Green Works logo and package design.

Shouldn't Clorox have taken a cue from Method soap? There's design that puts Clorox to shame. Now that would have been a powerful break from standard marketing conventions (a significant portion of which Clorox is responsible for): serve up this new product with a radical new package and identity.

Hey, I'm glad these guys put such effort and investment into these products. But since this blog is about brand choices that attempt communicate green in a tough market, I gotta call 'em out for their design choices. Not good.

It may not be fair, but I feel reflexively suspicious: if the Clorox recongizes the power of a strong logo, why didn't it put effort into developing a strong one for Green Works? Of course they want to leverage their brand equity. I get that. But this combination radiates the feel of a McDonald's Vegan Meal.

Delta Faucet Refreshes With Tech Pitch

It's the bane of anyone who's advocated for, developed creative/messaging for or pitched anything green: the kill-joy who invariably sucks the energy out of the room with this smarmy line:

"Okay, but what's in it for me?"

Alas, for the buzz killers, Ditto Heads, and unconverted, "Duh, saving the planet" just don't cut it. Although that angle is good enough for some, for most others it still comes down to dollars, cents and an immediate payoff or tangible benefit.

As long as my lights turn on, the reasoning go, why would I pay more for renewable energy?

I recently bought a low-flow Delta showerhead that uses only 1.6 gallons per minute, a 36% savings over standard 2.5 gpm showerheads. Although the packaging for its "H20Kinetics" showerhead didn't back away from the green benefit of lower water consumption, it didn't make a big deal of it either. Instead, the product packaging spotlighted 1) the quality of the showering experience, which it claimed delivered the "feeling of a standard showerhead at a lower flow," and 2) the  "H2OKinetics" branded technology, which it positioned as advanced design that gives you the best of both worlds.

Here's a graphic from Delta's website demonstrating the way its technology improves your shower.

And that brings up this point, which applies to both ambivalent consumers and phobic greenies who cry foul at marketing claims of allegedly questionable credibility: the real juice making green sell isn't just greenness. It's relevance.

By the way, the showerhead I brought really is awesome. It's impressive technology and yes, feels mighty fine.