It’s simple. It’s fun. It tackles a big issue affecting the soft drinks industry, recycling, but without the beads and sandals. And it has a nice Supertramp soundtrack too. But behind the scenes the industry is not smiling as it’s facing a big problem.
In the last few weeks bottled water, and the soft drinks industry, have been coming under fire from environmental supporters. The use of petroleum to make millions of bottles, the problem with landfill, flotsam in the oceans, recycling (less then 25% get recycled) and the carbon footprint of transport has made it an easy target.
Worldwide, there are now over 1000 brands of bottled water (on average, bottled water makes more profit than soft drinks). Add to that all the soft drinks brands and that’s a lot of bottles.
The recent Panorama programme on bottle water was hard hitting. The soft drinks industry have hit back by creating the BWIO, Bottled Water Information Office, to act as spokesman and put forward the counter arguments.
Another problem that has gravity behind it is Ken Livingstone and Thames Water’s recently launched London on Tap campaign. The aim is to encourage Londoners to reject bottled water and ask for tap in restaurants. He and others are also putting pressure on government and local authorities to cut purchasing of bottled and water cooler water.
The highlighting of the cost to public authorities, especially in a time when budgets are being cut, must be sending shivers down many suppliers back.
Lewisham came in for media criticism last week for hypocrisy as it was preaching tap water ethics whilst spending a fortune on bottled water for staff. Someone stands to lose a big contract.
It’s an amazing confidence in your values that Whole Foods have an open forum on their website that invites customers to be honest and even critical about what they sell. One customer said: “Use tap water whenever possible. The cost of bottled water production, purification and transportation amounts to approximately one quarter gallon of oil-related hydrocarbon/carbon emissions per gallon of bottled water produced.”
Meanwhile, there are a growing number of ethical brands like Charity Water, Life, Ethos (founded by Peter Thum and sold to Starbucks in 2005) and Thirsty Planet, to name but a few. These are using bio degradable packaging, or Tetrapaks, and donating part of their profits to water projects in Africa.
It’s a tough time for bottled water (and soft drinks) and given the trend in the US, one that could see declining sales unless they change focus. Coke and PepsiCo in the States are well aware of the ethical issues and have shifted their focus towards celebrity endorsement on TV ads and charity support on the ground. PepsiCo have scored a hat trick by supporting Matt Damon’s H2O Africa project, while Coke is working with WWF.
There is strong evidence that when it comes to people vs the planet, people win. Coke and PepsiCo’s reframing could be very smart thinking and may actually defeat the environmentalists argument enough to win back public support.
There are over a billion people who do not have access to clean water in the world and many have to walk miles for any water at all. Over 2 million die a year – many children – from drinking bad water.
March 22nd is World Water Day and an opportunity for brands to show their charity side. In London the ‘H2O – walk for water, walk for life’ campaign is about to be launched. Londoners are being encouraged to walk from tube stations beginning with H and walking to stations starting with O, ie Hampstead 2 Old Street, Holborn to Oxford Circus. Ironically the idea hasn’t come from a water brand or even a charity but an ad agency.
For an amusing look at bottled water and the placebo effect of marketing, check out ‘The Truth About Bottled Water’ by TV magicians Penn & Teller. In one test 75% of people preferred New York tap water. P&T even set up a fake water waiter (like a wine waiter) at a top restaurant and tricked people into picking fake waters - all of course tap water. Unsurprisingly, the customers raved about their choice of water and claimed a definite difference. Well until they discovered they had been fooled.
They reveal that Alaskan Falls water actually comes from Ohio, not Alaska. While Everest Water comes from… well not Mount Everest but… Texas and is actually tap water (as is 25% of bottled water in the US). The most amazing stunt was getting people to drink a bottle of Amazon water that has a spider in it. See it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc
(If you want to see just how gullible people are, includes a snail facial, see Placebo Effect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzjoKhBklYg&NR=1)
Meanwhile, the Coke ad, ‘Every Bottle Counts’, from Publicis International Oy, Helsinki is a fun way to tackle recycling.
See it on YouTube or: http://www.adforum.com/Top5/index.asp?AD=6708272&tda=VD1tKOafiu&promo=A81
Facts on bottle water
http://www.bottledwaterblues.com/Bottled_Water_Facts.cfm
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They are just a few of the major brands that feature at the two ends of the Ethical Reputation Index. Karen Fraser (who founded the ERI – one of the longest running tracking studies of consumer’s opinion of brands and their ethics) gave marketing directors a lot think about at the London Business Forum this week. From an insight into the ‘conflicted consumer’ to advice on how not to trash your brand reputation.
As if there isn’t enough choice about, now we have to make ethical decisions too. Do I buy a cheap t-shirt from Primark or the more expensive ethical one? Can I even find somewhere to buy one? What if I have to drive 10 miles to get there?
But there’s another conflict consumers face and Fraser has christened it the ‘conflicted consumer’. 25% of consumers may appear loyal but in fact they aren’t happy buying from certain brands. Given a more ethical option they would switch. Unfortunately many consumers don’t feel they have an option. It highlights the need for complacent brands to wake up and start to take ethics seriously and to monitor exactly what consumers think about then. (Not just rely on marketing spin and green wash.)
One area in the supermarket that has been challenged is instant coffee. Dominated by Nestle, FFI (the largest producer of Fairtrade coffee) has launched Fair Instant. The product is priced at the same level as Nescafe (not the standard 30% more). They also donate 20p to Save the Children for every jar sold. Not surprisingly they are one of the fastest growing brands in sector.
Fraser sighted an interesting test in the US where two identical towels were sold side by side. One was labelled ‘FAIR & SQUARE’ and sold as an ethical towel. Both were the same price. The Fair & Square sold best, even when the price was raised. 26% of people are prepared to pay more for ethical goods.
More than ever, consumers are discussing brand reputation with each other, bad news spreads fast. No matter how glossy the green wash ads are, the truth cuts through. Consumers are smart and not easily misled. The internet has seen to that.
Top of the list are Boots (trusted as part of our establishment), Body Shop and the Co-op (both built around an ethical ethos and values) and M&S (delivering the promise).
Bottom are McDonalds and Burger King. But surprisingly, just above the bottom is BSkyB. This may puzzle a few people because Sky have invested heavily in environmentalism – from set top boxes that turn off to school projects. Alas, the other side of Sky is an aggressive dominance of the market, grabbing TV content – especially sport - and selling it back to us. It may be good business for them but the public resents it. People come before planet.
One of the new growing ethical issues (and there and over 50 ethical values I use working with brands) is data. Consumers are becoming more concerned about what data is held and its security – our confidence is not helped by incompetent authorities losing discs weekly. Equally concerning is how data is invading our privacy – it has been said that Tesco’s knows more about you than Mi5.
Although everyone is talking ethics, and especially green, the customer wants it easy. Gone are the days of sacrifice, convenience green is what’s desired. But ethics still comes with a higher price tag, which is OK for the ‘eco elite’ but for the average consumer presents a dilemma and begs the question, “is it ethical to charge more for ethical products?”
One driving message to brands was honesty. Don’t lie. Don’t over claim. It’s not the talk but the walk that defines what customers think of you. M&S now top the ERI, not just because Rose has promised to make M&S a good citizen but because customers can see it in action – they are delivering against their promise. Unlike some brands that are more talk.
You only have to look at oil companies (my favourite target). BP has tried to redefine itself as Beyond Petroleum. It has a nice flower as its logo. Although it fairs better than Shell, it’s still an oil company and after millions of dollars spent of advertising, it’s name is still the colour of oil.
But simple actions, like Ariel’s wash at 30 degrees campaign, has raised customer perception of the brand. It’s a simple action that also demonstrates Aerial’s washing power.
Consumers want to know that brands are taking responsibility and caring for people and the environment, especially people. The days when you could make a brand look good through advertising are long gone – the public sees right through it. In fact the word brand is an outdated term. Reputation is the key word. It’s more important as a term as it’s what the City uses. And if you screw up your reputation you could be damaging not just your market share but your share value.
The London Business Forum have a forthcoming event featuring Green & Black that I recommend. Details on their site – www.londonbusinessforum.com.
For more about the Ethical Reputation Index visit www.ethicalreputationindex.com.
Panorama’s programme last night on bottle water did little for the rather over priced Fiji water brand. It’s a reflection of our green times that this programme was made. 10 years ago no one cared about bottled water but now it’s becoming as socially unacceptable as smoking.
As I’ve previously mentioned in my Blog on Tappening, in some restaurants in New York bottled water is up there, or maybe down there, with smoking. The US has a strong movement against bottled water and numerous bans. With few supporters, and little defence, it is only a matter of time before the UK follows.
The Panorama programmed highlighted just how mad bottled water has got with some brands selling for £21 a bottle. Claridges has over 30 different waters. Yet in a tasting some people rated Thames tap water as best. This is not the first time, Which also had a similar result many years ago.
The myth that bottled water is good for you is largely a myth based on the illusion of purity. In fact many waters are bad. One Swedish brand has high levels of salts – resulting in raised blood pressure. Many contain dubious trace elements and worse, bacteria. Few brands would actually meet EC tap water regulations. Visit mineralwaters.org if you want to be shocked.
The programme’s presenter, Tom Heap, managed to make a strong ethical point that bottled water really doesn’t have any reason to exist. Even ethical brands like Belu and Thirsty Planet, who support water aid projects, have to face the fact that few bottles (about a quarter) get recycled and most end up in landfill. Even if you are producing biodegradable bottles there’s the carbon footprint of transport to consider too.
Heap pointed out that the carbon footprint of Thames tap water was 0.3g, compared to 185g for one well know water brands.
We often forget that plastic comes from petroleum and if you used all the energy trapped in all the bottles we use in a year you could run 17,000 cars on it.
The other problem is that most bottled water drinkers just dump their bottles. Our beaches are littered with them. What Heap didn’t touch on was something so dramatic it’s worth of a programme itself – the 100 million tons of flotsam that is in our oceans. These are vast soup of garbage, mainly plastic, that moves around our seas.
9 out of 10 Fulmars (it’s a sea bird) have been found to have plastic in their guts., with the average bird ingested 44 plastic items. In the case of one dead bird there were over 1,600 plastic items in its stomach. This plastic floating garbage patch – twice the size of the US - is also killing turtles, fish, whales and wiping other many other forms of marine life.
The final blow is that over a billion people round the world don't have access to safe drinking water. While the rich in the West indulge themselves to the figure of £2 billion annually, poor people in the third world are dying from lack of clean water. Fiji was one place highlighted because while the Fiji water plant is exporting water, one third of Fijians don’t have clean water.
When bottled water first started to market itself few though it’d become the trend it has. But then few water brands imagined that one day our concern with the environment what be a death blow. The tend now is towards filtered tap water.
For the bottled water industry the writing’s on the wall. Tap water is cool and bottled water is getting the cold shoulder.
To end of a bizarre note… in the States bottled water doesn’t have to meet water regulations, that’s because it’s a food. Puzzled? According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), bottled water is a food product, not drinking water. Only in America!
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Has the Olympics, once politically neutral, become the new battleground of ethics? Can those brands sponsoring it do anything to avoid serious damage to their brand reputations as pressure groups in the States are threatening them with mass public boycotts.
The Olympics has always been seen as a non political event. A coming together of nations in friendly sport and peace. Nice dream, but far from today’s reality.
It is only recently that it has become commercial, selling every aspect of itself to corporate sponsor, many who care little for sport or have little relevance to it. But for many brands, the pay off for what is a massive sponsorship fee is positive publicity and public good will.
China for one was hoping that the Olympics would revitalise it’s brand image but if anything it stands to lose out as story after story comes out, from the cover up of dead workers to it’s human rights violations, the Dalai Lama and Darfur. For China and the game’s sponsors it’s turning into a PR disaster and International PR specialist Hill & Knowlton have their work cut out, ironically their slogan is ‘What does success look like?’ We and China are waiting to see.
The last Olympics wasn’t a great experience for brands – many received a lot of criticism because they used their muscle to insist that the sports men and women could not drink a rival soft drink, that all payments had to go via one credit card company. Many thought this was a step too far, and there was a backlash against the sponsor with accusations of bullying. At the time my daughter banned all products in our house by a well know drinks brand and cut up one of my credit cards! She was not alone, many of her school friends were taking similar actions. “You can have you advertising but you can’t have the souls of the sports men and women,” was one comment at the time from an angry coach. With a lot of press and public criticism you may wonder if sponsoring the Olympics did more harm than good for some of the brands in 2004.
This time the 2008 Beijing Olympics is dogged by one key issue, China and their relationship with Darfur. Charities, NGOs, religious groups and pressure groups, especially in the US, are using the Olympics for political reasons, though they call it a cause.
Hollywood stars have been leading an international campaign for a while, linking China to violence in the Darfur region of Sudan. They highlight that money and weapons from Beijing have helped fuel a conflict which has claimed over 200,000 lives and forced millions to leave their homes. China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil and has blocked punitive moves by the UN security council. (Though it should be noted than many other countries, including those in the West, don’t have clean hands either.)
Although the protesters have been grabbing headlines, it’s only when Spielberg quit in protest as artistic director of the games did it go ballistic. (Less well known is that Spielberg has actually donated about $1m to aid groups working in Darfur.) Many believe that he was forced to resign by Hollywood after a lot of criticism of hypocrisy, especially from Mia Farrow. How long before Quincy Jones and Ang Lee quit too?
Sponsors, many who may have wished they hadn’t now, include McDonalds, Kodak, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Omega, Samsung, Visa, VW, Johnson & Johnson, GE, Adidas, Panasonic, and many others. Each are spending millions and putting their brand reputations on the line, and the way things are looking there could be more losers than winners.
Not surprisingly, with many American brands sponsoring the Olympics, these pressure groups have applied pressure to them, leaving an awkward situation. While some have commented, McDonalds and J&J have responded with an intelligent response, others have tried to avoid the issue through silence. Big mistake. Silence in the eyes and ears of the press and public is guilt at worse, indifference at best. In this political game you are either “with us or against us”, to quote Bush after 9/11.
One organisation, Dream for Darfur, has managed to meet up with 19 sponsors so far but has so far been unimpressed by their responses. More dramatically, Human Rights Watch has called on corporate sponsors to pull out, while Amnesty International UK, are being less aggressive and asking people to question China about it’s history of human rights violations.
Groups have warned brands that if their do nothing they face public demonstrations at their offices, and mass boycotts, including their TV ads through a campaign called ‘Turn Off For Darfur’.
Many of us may wonder if spending so much money on these events is really good marketing anyway? Are you really influenced by it? With little relevance, does the name of a large world bank projected in 20 foot high letters make you want to switch? I doubt it. But for many brands it’s all about corporate ego. And corporate ego likes to spend big time.
Although most people sympathise with the problems of Darfur many in the media are also critical of how the Olympics have been hijacked. It not only spoils the games but will also means that those thinking about sponsoring the 2012 and 2016 Olympics may be asking if they should save their money or even better, give it direct to charity as they would probably win them more supporters.
I have come across a novel anti-pollution campaign. Lew?LaraTBWA in Brazil have taken an unusual approach to marketing World Car Free Day
Sao Paulo is one of the most polluted cities in the world, the 4th biggest with a population over 10 million. Its traffic problems are legendary.
To make people think about the consequence of pollution, a team from TBWA decided to use a form of graffiti to make a social comment and encourage people to use public transport and cars less.
The stunt was executed in one of Sao Paulo’s busiest road tunnels and the dirtiest. What they did was simple. They wrote messages; ‘walk’, ‘ride a bike’, ‘take the bus’, ‘take the subway’ by cleaning off the dirt. Shocked road users got the message.
It got national coverage and everyone talking.
The Car Free Network (www.worldcarfree.net ) is now active across the world. They produce a publication, Carbusters, and have introduced a novel term into the dictionary, ‘autoholic.’
The Sao Paulo campaign reminds me a bit of the National Asthma Campaign ‘glue’ poster Saatchi’s did about 5 years ago. They painted a poster in glue (except for the headline) and left it up at Vauxhall for 2 weeks – the dirtiest place in London. So much pollution stuck to it it revealed the headline THIS POSTER HAS BEEN UP FOR JUST TWO WEEKS, IMAGINE WHAT YOU LUNGS MUST LOOK LIKE?
Of course Sao Paulo is also famous for removing all outdoor advertising – billboards, taxi ads, bus ads, ads on trains and the rest. Right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called ‘Clean City’ laws to ban the "visual pollution" caused by the city's 8,000 billboard sites, many of them erected illegally. The outcome was very popular. London beware!
No one has ever made a commercial written by deaf people and featuring deaf people. “Performance with purpose” is the term being used to describe PepsiCo’s new ground breaking ad 'Bob's house' (launched during the Super Bowl).
There’s little doubt it’s an historic ad.
‘Bob’s house’ is the first deaf ad in the US to feature sign language. It features a number of deaf actors, all employees of PepsiCo, and was written by deaf people too.
It’s a classic ad gag – based on a deaf joke. Two guys are in their car but can’t remember where there mate lives. It’s late. So they sound the horn on their car. One by one the lights in the houses go on. All but one.
“That must be Bob’s house” says one.
It’s well done and all in sign language with captions for the hearing enabled.
“It’s a deaf world and we’ve included the hearing world” is the way PepsiCo describes it. The campaign is part of PepsiCo’s diversity campaign EnAble.
It proves that the new breed of CSR ads do not have to be boring.
Brands are starting to wake up to the fact that social responsibility is a more powerful selling tool than made up values.
A recent survey has revealed that consumers are more likely to buy a brand that cares about the community than one that doesn’t.
The lesson – and the US is always ahead of the game – is that it’s time to throw out 80’s thinking and accept there are now a new set of rules in marketing.
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British Gas’s ‘Zero Carbon’ green tariff is just the latest in a series of green wash complaints that have been upheld by the ASA. These highly publicised condemnations are damaging both the brands and the ad industry’s reputation.
The industry is playing a very dangerous game at the moment and the BACC and publications needs to get tougher on false claims, green spin and clients being ‘economic with the green truth’.
E.ON (Powergen) spent millions on lovely ads showing us images of their new wind farms, and they are actually investing heavily in them. But as it was revealed in the press, they are also planning to build the first coal-fired power station in the UK since 1974. Guess which one the public will remember E.ON for?
EDF (having recycled the award winning St Luke’s Ecover ad idea) told us that they plan to reduce carbon emissions by 2020 – forgetting to mention that they would be using more nuclear to do it (nuclear has a zero carbon rating). I wonder how the ad would have looked if they had mentioned their interest in building up to four nuclear plants in the UK and the fact they are going to build a 1,300 megawatt gas-fired power station at West Burton, Nottinghamshire and another at Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire.
Other energy companies are just as bad. Shell tried to tell us they were growing flowers with surplus CO2 but forgot to mention how little was being used. There’s not enough room to list what all the other oil companies have been up to.
It seems when it comes to making green claims too many brands are taking a cynical approach. Rather than get their ducks in a row they just look at it from an unethical angle – “how can we con the public”. It brings to mind the revelations of boardroom conversations in the American tobacco companies.
Ironically they are chasing what is currently a small market – only 1% of homes (around 350,000) have signed up to green energy. But then if the public has no trust in the claims, why would they? The long term effect is they may actually discourage consumer from switching over to green energy.
For those account directors looking at their next brief I suggest you look at the CAP guidelines which state “Claims such as ‘environmentally friendly’ should not be used without qualification unless marketers can provide convincing evidence that their product will cause no environmental damage when taking into account the full life cycle of the product …” (See http://www.asa.org.uk/cap/advice_online/advice_online_database/Show+Entry.htm?advice_online_id=472 for guidelines from CAP.)
It’s not all bad, GreenEnergyUK (the greenest company of all), Ecotricity and Good Energy are at least doing the walk not just the talk. In fact GreenEnergyUK has gone one ethical step further than any other and committed half the company ownership to it’s users, when you buy energy from them you also get shares in the company.
It was Churchill who said that it is better to tell the truth, no matter how painful, than to lie. As false green claims are endlessly being revealed as spin and lies, how do agencies and brands actually think they are going to get away with it when there are so many people and NGOs out there who know the truth?
In criminal law if you help someone do a crime it’s called ‘aiding and abetting’. The same is true if you help clients lie, you are just as guilty - no matter how hard you try to spin. One of the key factors in any relationship – especially between the consumer and a brand – is trust. If you lie you blow it.
I keep asking the question, why are ad agencies not taking responsibility and telling clients that they cannot lie? That it isn’t in the interest of the brand to deceive the consumer or shareholders who will be less than pleased when they discover the marketing department has trashed the reputation of the company and reduced share value.
It also demonstrates that most agencies do not understand or have any real insight into the green consumer.
I have written about ‘brand terrorism’ before – the ability of anyone with a laptop to trash a multi million dollar campaign by using the internet to reveal the truth and speak to millions. Ribenna suffered badly from it when some school kids found their vitamin C claims weren’t what they claimed. You only have to visit mother and baby networking sites like www.motherandbaby.com.au to see how word passes around, even after the event. Years later, Nestle ‘s baby milk and third world debt PR disasters are still doing the rounds. The damage of lying last’s decades.
The ad industry needs to raise the game on morality and ethics if it wants to raise it’s own brand image. It needs to stand up against clients who want to cheat the public. In article on the web we were listed at the same low level as estate agents and tabloid journalists. Wouldn’t it be better if we were up there with the most trusted?
CHRIS ARNOLD
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