Our grandparents would have scoffed at the idea that water would become a mega-industry. Why would anyone who survived the depression pay for something they can get for free?
But as questions about the safety of tap water emerged, and the benefits of hydration took root, a new industry was born. Bottled water isn’t a category killer…we still consume lots of soda. It is a category creator.

But what happens when a category comes crashing down and becomes the enemy? And the case is mounting. Tapped, the bottled water version of Food, Inc. highlights the dangers of BPA. Today’s NYT chronicles the crusade of a woman in Concorde Mass to ban bottled water in her town. My colleague Mike Sacks recently blogged about the natural spring equivalent of overfishing, and Nestle’s Northwest fight.

However, this fight isn’t so simple. We are also inundated with information about pharmaceutical remnants in the water supply, and the dangers of tap water, and admonished that 8 glasses a day is the absolute minimum for good health.

What’s a responsible person to do?

The wisdom of the ages came from my ten year old son, Jack. He recently completed a science fair project on recycling and solemnly told me:

• Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every year.
• A plastic bottle sits in a land fill for 450 years if we don’t recycle it.

Yup, a ten year old hit the issue right on the head. Clearly, the water companies need to solve the BPA problem. But the second half of the equation is about recycling….to preserve this business, “Big Water” needs to get active in recycling, and incentivize consumers to do it. If they don’t, legislators and regulators like those in Concord, Mass may do it for them.

cwinters General Corporate, Sustainability

Tilde Harris at GreenBiz.com points us to the 10 Green NGOs Businesses Should Know About. Most of the list should be familiar to anyone working on corporate responsibility and sustainability/environmental issues, but a couple were new to me.

Her broad argument is right on – businesses must engage with the appropriate NGOs to make real progress. If you aren’t, you aren’t serious. It’s that simple.

It makes sense from a business standpoint – these groups have a lot of expertise – and from a reputational/risk mitigation standpoint – association adds credibility and stems rock-throwing from the sidelines.

As Harris puts it: “Many now view NGO-business partnerships as the rule, rather than the exception.”

msacks CSR, Sustainability

In the world of business media, there are rankings and ratings and lists galore. Carreen just wrote about one.

Marc Gunther at GreennBiz.com now tells us that Underwriters Laboratories, an non-profit organization that helps set standards and provides certifications, in partnership with Greener World Media (publisher of GreenBiz), is taking on the difficult task of creating and launching a sustainability rating system.

I’m excited to see what the ratings and standards look like. Because Gunther is absolutely spot on: “This is a big deal because it could help bring credibility and clarity to the very crowded and confused business of sustainability ratings, rankings and eco-labels.”

For many sustainability or green ratings and rankings, the methodologies are always a little shaky. They seem easily gamed through voluntary reporting, they allow for omission of key elements of sustainability, and the results never seem to really stack up. It never seems “right” when an oil company tops a list of “green” companies. As such, it undermines the business value of sustainability when it seems you can get the credit without doing the hard, long work. A widely accepted, credible and comprehensive point system will begin to force out the posturing and the true leaders on sustainability will rise to the top.

msacks CSR, Sustainability CSR, rankings, Sustainability

“Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”

Mark Twain

Antagonizing the press is often times not a good idea. You pick on them, they pick on you back, no matter how “right” you think you are. This doesn’t mean reputation managers should never get tough, it just means to expect a strong reaction rather than capitulation.

This, I suspect, Lucas Van Praag already knows, but doesn’t seem to be much bothered by. Goldman Sachs’s top communications guy is receiving what can only be described as a revenge-fueled beating in the (mostly New York) press, which has found their dealings with the sharp-tongued Van Praag to be less than pleasant. See the Dealbook’s roundup of the criticisms.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Van Praag is vigorously defending the company he gets paid to defend and trying to correct the record where he feels it’s been inaccurately reported, whether that’s true or not. It’s not realistic for the media to expect him (or anyone) to simply hang their head in shame, though it would be in some ways gratifying to see, and accept what the media reports. That’s not his job.

But in doing his job, he sounds like a complete…well, insert expletive here. And it sort of seems he’s having fun with it.

There is a way to do it and way to do it. He should recognize by now, as he should have at the outset, that such a truculent approach isn’t going to accomplish any real objective. He seems smart enough to know that after the bonuses, “God’s work”, the boiling public resentment, the Congressional inquiries, and so on, that bookending this with hostile explanations and journalism lectures isn’t doing much for the GS image he purports to protect. He’s seen evidence that what he’s doing isn’t really working.

With all the external forces congealing into a thick sludge that is difficult to penetrate with the GS message, whatever it is, Van Praag is doing the PR equivalent of lighting cigars with $100 bills while his neighbor’s house is on fire.

Seems to me a change in tone, and strategy, is needed.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility, General Corporate, Sustainability

What can you do with an old brand?

Even new media companies face that dilemma in Twenty Ten – AOL and MySpace, for example. Struggling to stay relevant, both companies are searching for a leg up in the brand wars.

AOL and MySpace both have a similar challenge – recovering from being the eclipsed top dog in their sectors. It’s too easy for many critics to say their time has passed, but with some smart acquisitions, sharpened brand management and a serious socially-responsible corporate outreach program, they could each recapture market share and relevancy.

Generally this involves buying or merging with an up-and-coming company first, and then setting out to freshen the brand with a high-visibility communications/PR project, preferably of the CSR persuasion. Both of those companies could take acquisition lessons from Xerox, which just merged on February 5th with the IT giant ACS. ACS is a terrific growth story, a global company with a 21st-Century business model and reputation for being well-managed and fast-moving. With one fell swoop Xerox made itself newly relevant and cutting-edge, and I’m sure their branding and CSR programs will follow.

Xerox is a known and trusted brand that defines the duplication and printing business – but their name and their image needed a new infusion of immediacy and impact, and ACS gave that to them. AOL and MySpace could do the same with one smart acquisition — and they’re probably looking as we speak.

David Langness can be reached at dlangness@mww.com.

dlangness CSR, General Corporate, Sustainability, Uncategorized AOL, CSR, MySpace, reputation

Yesterday marked the opening of one of the most historic conferences in modern history – COP-15, the Copenhagen Climate Change Convention.  One hundred and ninety-two nations are in attendance – the largest total of nations ever attending any meeting in the world.  And it looks increasingly likely – what with President Obama’s schedule change to allow him to attend during the final negotiations, and top leadership from China and India promising to be there – that a global agreement on limiting carbon will emerge.

Norway’s Environment Minister had a particularly trenchant quote this morning:  The negotiations at COP-15, he said, “are the most difficult talks ever embarked upon by humanity.”   Whoa.

If the talks fail and no agreement emerges, the problem won’t go away, however – it will just make the delay in dealing with worldwide CO2 emissions and the actions needed to reduce them more painful in the long term.  The inevitable conclusion?  Climate change is real – the science is pretty unanimous at this point — and global efforts to mitigate the problem will eventually be implemented.

So this juncture in the world’s history, like most big watershed moments, will undoubtedly have a particularly powerful impact on the reputations of organizations all over the planet.

That’s why we are urging our clients, green and light green and any other color, to put their reputational stake in the ground around climate.  It is the one overarching litmus test of environmental responsibility, because it encompasses every green topic and subject.  Climate change is the first truly global environmental crisis humanity has had to deal with collectively, which means that companies and NGOs who are first to the conversation will reap the reputational rewards in the minds of their publics.  And since young people the world over increasingly self-identify as environmentally-minded, CSR and green programs have become mandatory for future-minded organizations,

Just a few examples:  The centerpiece of COP-15, in the middle of the lake in front of the Tycho Brahe Observatory in the center of Copenhagen, is a remarkable debut art installation called Carbon Cubes.  Designed to show us all, for the first time, what the volume of a metric ton of invisible carbon looks like, the Cube is 27 feet on each side, about the size of a three-story house.  The Cube represents what each person in the Western world emits: a ton of carbon every 2-3 weeks.  Google and YouTube, along with Millennium Arts and a host of other organizations including the United Nations and MWW, have supported the building of the Cube, with the goal of touring it around the world to illustrate the magnitude of the problem – and to represent, in real-time video projected on the Cube – some of the solutions.  This massive symbol of all of our human contributions to climate change makes such a tremendous impact because it’s a stark representation of the task in front of all of us.

Another remarkable exhibit is blooming in Copenhagen, too — Ghost Forest is a huge, haunting installation by artist Angela Palmer that raises public awareness of the connections between deforestation and climate change.  Originally exhibited in Trafalgar Square in London and underwritten by Deutsche Bank, the installation features ten massive rainforest tree stumps taken from a regulated, commercially logged tropical rainforest in Ghana.  These huge stumps, arranged in a circle and looking like the felled giants they truly are, have a potent presence.  Once alive and creating oxygen for the entire world to breathe, they now lie mutely and even accusingly on their sides, the true expression of the term deadwood.

When you see the Carbon Cube or the Ghost Forest at COP-15 or in another venue eventually, you will not forget them – they are both remarkably potent symbols of climate change and what our world is doing, or not doing, about it.  And of course you and everyone else who sees them will indelibly remember the forward-looking, smart sponsors of these exhibits, too.

David Langness can be reached at dlangness@mww.com.

dlangness CSR, Sustainability CSR, Sustainability

It’s a common refrain now for reputation managers to say that good corporate responsibility programs need to be authentic, not an egregiously overt marketing play, and make Good Business Sense. This is the stuff – when smartly communicated – of strong and enduring reputations.

Further than that, good CR demands a holistic view of the community – local, national, or global – in which a company operates.

So it’s nice when a company proves that notion. A story in Fortune about Best Buy, written by respected corporate citizenship and sustainability reporter Marc Gunther, explores how the retailer is turning itself into a leader in corporate responsibility. Not just because it’s a feel-good activity, but because it makes strategic sense.

Two salient passages from the story simply explain Best Buy’s push into sustainability and CR:

• “Employees wanted to know what Best Buy was doing to become more environmentally sustainable. Some customers — not most, but enough to matter — said they preferred to do business with retailers that cared about their community.”

• “Best Buy, as a result, has decided that being a good corporate citizen makes business sense.”

The article goes on to detail all that Best Buy is doing – making investments in responsible companies, organizing employee networks for growth and opportunity, offering electronic take-backs in stores and auditing foreign factories for carbon emission and fair labor practices. They are considering all audiences, internal and external.

What seems, as written, to be such strong commitment makes me think a little about the evolution of corporate responsibility. With CR, the business imperative seems to be evolving not so much incrementally but in big waves.

Allow an abridged and unscientific history:

For a while, “strategic philanthropy” was the totality of social commitment. Companies should simply write checks to charities and that is enough. Plus, giving out those oversized novelty checks made for good photo opps (and still do).

But in the early part of this decade, there was an overwhelming push to “be green.” Any claim about being green, no matter how specious, was endorsed by an excited media happy to cover a new business trend, only creating more companies that wanted to bask in glowing media attention.

Then, the inevitable backlash. The media began demanding proof that the claims were more than hollow marketing brochures (some of which were likely not even printed on recycled paper) designed to dupe the consumer. “Greenwashing” was the battle cry and companies were exposed left and right for distorting the truth.

But that greenwashing hunt seems to be dying down. Companies – some, not all – got smarter about what they should and should not claim, and are realizing there is pressure to be more than “green” though environmental responsibility is still a critical part of the mix.

Companies that want to be better citizens – now existing in an era of extreme suspicion in the wake of stunning scandals and staggering greed – are focusing on fair labor practices, commitment to employees, increased support in local communities, and more transparency with consumers and other stakeholders.

There are those that say it isn’t up to corporations to solve societal problems; that by focusing on simply making money and creating jobs they are fulfilling their responsibility. And to an extent I agree. But that mindset doesn’t build a sterling reputation or earn the trust of the public.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR, Employee Engagement, Sustainability Corporate Reputation, CSR, Sustainability

In today’s marketplace, tangible commitments to protecting the environment are rapidly becoming the ‘greens fees’ for doing business. Whether it be introducing environmentally-friendly products and processes, reducing carbon footprints or assuming cradle-to-grave responsibility for the items you sell, environmental considerations have permeated every aspect of business. So too, they increasingly color how audiences evaluate your organization.

Environmental responsibility is a building block of corporate reputation and a key component of much-heralded “Most Admired” and “Best Places to Work” surveys. It impacts everything from consumer brand preference, purchase decisions and employee retention, to partnership opportunities, analyst perceptions and investor confidence. Strong environmental initiatives can be leveraged to establish leadership positioning among peers. They can also build goodwill among constituencies which help mitigate the impact of the inevitable crises.

Publicizing your organization’s strong environmental record and progress towards improvement goals is absolutely critical, as is the ability to market differentiated products and services that address customers’ environmental priorities or that enables consumers to enjoy a “green” lifestyle. The challenge: executing reputation-boosting environmental communications initiatives without crossing into “greenwashing” territory.

The line between credibly reporting environmental achievements and running afoul of environmental watchdogs varies widely from product-to-product and industry-to-industry. There are no secret formulas, no silver bullets. There are, however, several principals that can be applied to help you steer clear of trouble:

Leadership Required: Accepting an organization’s claim that the environment is a high priority is significantly easier when senior executive ownership is clearly evident…and the closer to the C-suite the better. Vesting responsibility for environmental initiatives in your marketing team sends is a clear tip-off that organizational commitment goes only as far as the annual marcom budget will take it. In many cases, senior-level ownership also provides a spokesperson capable of telling the organizations environmental story to media and through thought leadership efforts.

Authenticity Matters: While ‘doing the right thing’ is noble, most audiences understand what being a ‘for-profit’ organization entails. Confidently link environmental responsibility and value creation. Align your environmental initiatives with your core business and communicate how those efforts boost performance, whether by driving sales, minimizing expenses or strengthening relationships.

Embrace the Process, Communicate Your Progress: Being “Green” or environmentally responsible is a continuous improvement process, not a journey to a fixed destination. Identify your path and the key milestones along the way and regularly report on your progress. Transparency in reporting is critical as your audience is savvy and certainly capable of seeing though hollow claims masquerading as fact-based progress reports.

Less is More: It is not necessary to change the world all at once…nor is it possible. Identify the environmental issues your organization is facing and on which real progress can be made. Tackle those and report progress on a regular basis. As momentum is achieved, begin adding additional issues to be addressed. Engagement at all levels of your organization and confidence in the process will be aided by early wins.

Engage Your Ambassadors: If your environmental story falls on deaf ears internally it will be an uphill battle to sell it to the outside world. Promote active employee engagement in environmental initiatives and create pride in the organization’s progress. Engage partners and customers where possible. You will be rewarded with a cadre of supportive storytellers more than happy to spread the message of the organization’s good works.

msacks Sustainability Corporate Reputation, Green, Greenwashing

In late-2007 I participated on a panel at E&Y’s annual clean tech conference.  As it closed we made predictions on the future of “green” as a marketing concept and business driver.  My prediction was that “green” will fade from vogue and be replaced by the broader platform of “sustainability.”

Yes, environmental responsibility is vital, but so too is social and economic responsibility.  A reduced carbon footprint doesn’t absolve corporations that avail themselves of child labor or deceive investors.  And, from a marketing perspective, “green” is limiting whereas “sustainability” delivers scale by binding together good works across the corporation.  As the regulatory environment evolves and standards are established, “green” will lose its effectiveness in the marketplace.

Clearly, I didn’t spark a revolution with my pearls of wisdom.  There wasn’t a mad rush to de-green advertising and marketing campaigns…at least not that I noticed.  Was nobody listening?  Could I have been wrong?  Perhaps if “sustainability” looked better on T-shirts…

This morning I was pleased to see an Environmental Leader editorial by John Rooks, president of THE SOAP Group, called More on the Color of Sustainability.  Rooks and Adam Werbach, Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, have a running debate on the value of colors to social movements – think the Green Party or the Orange Revolution – and where we go from “green.”  Rooks wrote:

When Adam writes that we need to move beyond Green, he is right. But moving it to Blue is only a temporary fix – a branding and design project, an opportunity to differentiate it for a while; an academic exercise for branding geeks like me.

The beneficial business movement does need to shake free of Green – yes.  Shaking into a new color is one possible strategy. But dropping the concept of color altogether and making sustainability ubiquitous – therefore invisible – might be even cooler.

Movements are hegemonic forces of swelling ground and visceral rally cries and the color assumes the cause (not the other way). And they can all be derailed through propaganda.  So, Ok, I give, I give.  Make it Blue.  I really don’t care what color it is.  But as long as it is painted veneer, it can be counterfeited.  Get ready for a new trend of bluewashing.

Seems to me that companies thinking now about what they’ll do after the “green” revolution…and then taking an active role in shaping the vocabulary of the next revolution – sustainability…will be the winners in the long run.

msacks Sustainability Corporate Brand, Green, Sustainability