Are ad agencies the next battleground for eco-activists?

In the last couple of weeks both Ogilvy and RKCR/Y&R have been victim of green activists. Ogilvy because of Dove and it’s links with palm oil and RKCR/Y&R because it works for Land Rover and BAe Systems.

Just when Dove was winning hearts and minds with their campaign for real beauty, out comes an ugly skeleton from the cupboard. Dove are the biggest users of palm oil and that’s causing the Indonisian lowland forests to be laid waste.

Palm oil has been classed as a bad product by greens for a while. Used to make those cheap crisps and numerous products, it’s a surprise Unilever didn’t see this coming.

Greenpeace activists dressed up as orang-utans to protest outside their head office in London and outside O&M’s offices. It got a lot of PR, though the current joke going around is that people at Unilever thought it was a Tango promotion, while those in Cabot Square thought they were just another young creative team trying to get a job, so they hired them.

The Y&R group have a bit of a split personality. Whilst working for Land Rover, Ford and BAe Systems, they also work for Al Gore’s campaign and M&S. (We’ll ignore the Virgin trains greenwash work.) To a green activist, one doesn’t balance out the other. Thankfully these protests have been harmless.

Other agencies must be upping security, after all, most have a car, bank and airline account – all potential targets. Well, at least there’s one advantage of running an ethical marketing specialist agency, no one’s going to be breaking into my offices in fancy dress (though one of my creative’s does have a strange dress sense).

Many top brands have decided it’s smarter to work with NGOs than face them in the press. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and many other NGO’s are all advising large corps on their CSR, but it’s a delicate relationship. From their angle it’s better to encourage big corps to change their bad ways and adopt more ethical behavour.

Many years ago my daughter and many of her teen friends were involved in an anti-Nestle campaign. When told by the headmaster they couldn’t set up a Fairtrade stall because the school had signed a deal with the company who operated the Nestle snack machines, a riot broke out. The kids glued up the machines and set up a stall anyway.

Added to this, a viral pdf titled ‘Nasties’, set in the Nestle type, did the rounds. It featured many of the now legendary anti-Nestle stories (some not very accurate I should add). But it also mentioned a number of organisations doing good work. One of them was Traidcraft, who was my client. They were cool about it. Another, a well know charity, wasn’t. I got a panic call from its chairman desperate to find the source and stop the campaign. Now this is not a charity you’d expect to be in bed with Nestle, so I was surprised. Though even more surprised by his reply. “It’s better to deal with the devil than fight him.” His words not mine.

Getting advice before you blunder into the market seems common sense these days, especially when shareholders are getting very twitchy about those companies who get too much negative press. Marketing departments are coming under increasing pressure to not damage the company reputation with short term greenwash campaigns.

In recognition of those the blunder, I am going to launch the ‘Ethical Big Foot in the Mouth Award’. The first goes to Burger King who were planning to put foie gras in its £85 burger. This was destined to attract criticism, especially as it’s been banned in a number of states in the US. They obviously aren’t learning from McDonald’s smarter approach to deflecting negative press.

So a bit of advice to all those brands out there who are planning to do some ethical washing, and don’t want to get nominated for my ‘Ethical Big Foot in the Mouth Award’ - seek a bit of advice from your CSR department or a friendly NGO (I would recommend their agency but it’s unlikely they would know). Because what is worse than finding yourself splashed all over the Guardian and ethical press is finding people dressed in animal costumers standing around your water cooler in the morning.

And finally an award for saying the wrong thing goes to Gordon Brown for his comment about the large profits the oil companies have just posted. Correct answer – “I hope they will be spending it on sustainable energy projects”. Wrong answer Mr Brown, “I hope they will be using it to get more oil out of the North Sea.”

The Earth Day Blog

Today (Tuesday, April 22nd) is ‘Earth Day’. Traditionally a day to encourage people to think about the planet. Alas it is fast becoming ‘Greenwash Day’ with many brands spending millions trying to convince us that they do deliver the triple bottom line (balancing planet, people & profits) rather than just profits.

You're all head of 'greenwash', now there's a more honest term doing the rounds, 'greentosh'. It more aptly describes those brands that try and make a small fact sound like a big eco deal. Or worse still, just lie. Believe it or not, there are chemical companies claiming to make environmentally friendly pesticides – yeah right. Military weapon companies who are putting less lead in missiles and bombs to reduce pollution.

According to a recent piece of research into consumer attitude towards green ads, 39% hadn't taken any notice of them at all. Of those that had, 20% say they never believe the claims, while 66% only sometimes. That leaves 14% who do, which is less than 17%, a figure that word of mouth experts claim is the level of believability of advertising in general. In conclusion, you are better off not doing green ads at all. Wow, just think of the discounts all those energy companies could offer their customers if they hadn't spent millions on ads with windmills in.

Of course, it was little surprise that EDF's recent research revealed that people found polar bears, ice caps and other clichés…well, clichéd.

Other interesting research shows that 80% of ethically inclined consumers used the web to research green and ethical products. Fairtrade is the most popular, though 36% researched recycling information (probably so they could send back the mountains of free magazines the councils keep sending us on how to be green).

GE in the States has created a new eco term for your eco dictionary - 'ecomagination'. A nice little title for all its eco based products. The ads are nice and at least they have evidence to prove they are delivering technology towards a better future.

Al Gore's latest venture is the 'We Can Solve It Campaign' (a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection). One of the ads has come in for criticism for it's historical inaccuracy (never stopped Hollywood). In one ad the voice over says, "We didn't wait for someone else to storm the beaches of Normandy" and show's Americans landing on a beach. Opps, slight error, in fact the US waited 5 years. Worse still, all the other points – space race, human rights – are wrong too. Seems US schools don't teach future copywriters history very well.

One of the growing areas of interest to consumers are eco friendly cleaning products. After years of chemical companies telling us that we live in dangerous germ ridden homes, the consumer has finally woken up to realise they are actually living in chemically saturated homes. How is replacing germs (mostly harmless ones) with nasty chemicals making your home cleaner and safer? It isn't.

A few rubbish facts to impress people in the office on Earth Day - who actually works all this stuff out?

Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually. The average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television. Every person in the UK throws away their own body weight in rubbish every 7 weeks and every 2 hours the UK produces enough waste to fill the Albert Hall (which makes a change from some of the rubbish bands that fill it).

Householders chuck out 6.7m tonnes of unwanted food every year – that's 25% of the stuff we buy. (It's estimated that twenty tonnes of energy is used up for every one tonne of food that is produced.) Of that unwanted pile of food, 40% is fresh fruit and veg - nearly 4.5m apples, and more than 5m potatoes, 1.5m bananas and 3 million tomatoes. The trouble is, it's worse than the problem of plastic bags because it produces methane – twenty times worse than CO2.

On the subject of food, Whole Foods has launched the Whole Earth Generation, a video podcast series designed to raise environmental awareness among today's youth. To kick off the new initiative, WF have launched a contest to find six kids aged 8 to 17 to serve as hosts of the green-themed series, which will run through April.

Another US supermarket chain, Hannaford, have devised the Guiding Stars program to help consumers get through all the product claims - "nutritious shopping made simple." Each food is evaluated regardless of brand, price, or manufacturer with the same criteria, and all foods are rated. Sounds good? Not for some well know brands who are less than happy with getting zero scores. Products at the bottom of the list includes sausages, breakfast cereals and cottage cheese.

Now you can have eco-sex. Yep, even the bedroom is going green. I picked up stories about Fairtrade condoms and condoms from the Amazonian Rainforest. Except the Fairtrade condoms, called the French Letter Condom Company, aren't actually Fairtrade but Fair Deal – there's a difference. Meanwhile, in Brazil the government has one of the biggest programmes in the world to distribute free 'Natex' condoms – 100 million a year - in the fight against HIV. My favourite are COOL condoms (great viral on the web) who give all their profits to fight AIDS.

Howies (the ethical clothing company set up by two ex Saatchi people and bought by Timberland) has a novel approach to the usual shoot on a hot palm beach. They sent their new fashion lines in the post to friends in hot places and got them to model them and send back the photos. More eco than sending a dozen glam models out by plane but a lot less fun.

Schools in 13 US States have organized a no photocopier day with a bit of imagination. "The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008" campaign asks kids to imagine what kind of disease causes a photocopier monster to chew up trees and paper. Kids are encouraged to decorate the school copier with the symptoms. (If every school in America took up the campaign they'd save over 38,000 trees and 9 million pounds of CO2.)

And finally, back to greentosh, I came across a pathetic attempt to look eco, a product on the web claiming to be CFC free. Dooh, CFCs were banned 20 years ago.

Coke ventures into fantastic plastic fashion to be more environmental

This is certainly a creative way to deal with landfill, turn all your plastic bottles into clothing. This is exactly what Coke are doing, complete with slogans on like MAKE YOUR PLASTIC FANTASTIC and REHASH YOUR TRASH
Coke hopes that the new range of t-shirts could see up to 7000 million bottles ending up in the bottom drawer rather than landfill. They are also extending into other areas like bags, caps, purses and notebooks. Well it’s an innovate solution to the problem. I wonder what happens to the stuff once you get bored with it?

This week I visited a show at Olympia (I was actually doing a talk there on ethical marketing and websites). The show featured lots of companies selling promotional merchandise, not an area I do a lot of business in but I was amazed at just how green it’d all gone. Most were selling everything from pens made from old CDs to water calculators. There were some highly innovative ideas, proving that going green seems to get the old creative cells working.

According to the Mintel Global New Products Database 328 new environmentally-friendly products were launched last year. Personally I think that is way below the reality. Everyday I discover lots of new ideas. At the risk of sounding like a directory, here’s a couple of things that caught my eye recently.

The Eco Button. This novel device sits by your computer. One tap and it sends the PC into low energy sleep mode – saving electricity while you are away from the desk. Check it out.

Trashe Bolsas is a project based in Manila and recycles ads into bags. Finally a good use of ads many may say. I do need to point out these ads are printed on giant tarpaulins (not paper) which are cut up and sewn into carrier bags. The designs are novel with small parts of ad images on and that great dotted effect. The project helps support local people and profits are also helping to clean up a local waterfall. Check them out.

Another amazing item is a handbag a small charity Bottletop are importing. The bag is made from ring pulls and looks amazing. They are also doing a belt and other accessories. The charity has tied up with lots of top musicians, including Fat Boy Slim, and bring together fashion and music.

Another show, but one that is aimed at the public, is the LondonAware08 at the Barbican (May10th-11th). This will be packed with ethical living ideas from wind up radios to furniture made from recycled materials and a million other ideas. It’s the first of its kind and is packed with a who’s who of ethical producers and a range of top speakers, including Trevor Baylis. More details.

Don’t forget next Tuesday (April 22nd) is EARTH DAY (or maybe it’d be better renamed green wash day given the number of brands who have hijacked it with green spin). Check out my special blog on the day.

Talk Talk needs to do the Walk Walk

Those of you who have been sold broadband by the Talk Talk salesman, like me, may be pulling your hair out because it doesn’t deliver. All IT companies face issues with service and problems are to be expected but it’s how you deal with them that defines the brand. “It’s not how hard you fall but how high you bounce.” When it comes to CRM Talk Talk gets zero zero points. They really need to do start to do the walk walk if they don’t want to be known as Talk Talk Badbrand.

CRM is nothing new. Keep the customer happy, respond to their problems and they will love you and sing your praises. Best of all, they’ll tell other people to join.

When a Virgin customer had a bag fall on him due to a locker opening (faulty catch) even though he wasn’t hurt Richard Branson rang him up personally and offered him a pair of free return tickets anywhere in the world. The positive word soon got around. As Branson once said, commenting on BA’s terrible reputation for customer service at the time, “I’d rather spend millions on good customer service than millions on telling people how great I am when I’m not.”

John Lewis and M&S will replace any faulty item without questions. Many top brands know that customer service is everything because reputation is more influential than ads. We now live in a world where the web and social networking means your reputation is defined by what people say not what you say. A multimillion pound ad campaign soon evapourates if the word gets around that the company cannot be trusted, it over claims, abuses and fails the customers. In today’s ethically minded world customer expect trust and respect. So what is going on at Talk Talk?

Is it honest to promise a customer that by switching to Talk Talk broadband that they will get the same service, when you won’t? “You won’t even notice the switch over”, commented the salesman. We did, the internet only works during the day and after midnight, rarely in the evening and is slower. Talk Talk are obviously having serious problems. This is evident from the large number of complaints and a short poll of friends all who seem to be less than positive about Talk Talk’s broadband service.

If anyone has tried to talk talk to them you can expect to wait wait a long time - they have call centres in India and South Africa – unlike NatWest who have responded to customers and now only use UK ones. I can guarantee you’ll be hating the ‘Something in the Air’ tune and renaming it ‘There’s a lot of hot air’, as one customer called it on one site. 

After weeks of complaints (almost daily) about no internet in the evenings you finally get passed to Second Level Support. You start to wonder how many levels do they need? After weeks of further complaints and excuses – including the fact it could be because your Mac is on the top floor of the house? – they promise to get a real engineer (rather than someone in an Indian call centre) to contact you. But the phone never ring rings. The problem’s never solved. Every evening you have to wait wait until midnight to get on the web. However, one helpline does suggest that if you unable to get online you should visit their website. Yeah really!

A visit to one of many sites where you’ll find complaints should worry the investors and directors of Talk Talk. Social networking is powerful (over 300,000 alone could be reading this blog). There’s even an online petition against them. Here’s just a few extracts.

“I decided to leave BT because there customer service was terrible and I was promised that Talk Talk would be better, a lot better.  But you are worse, if fact I think the worse company I have ever the misfortune to deal with!”

“After five months of phone calls and e-mails, I have still not had a sensible and productive conversation with anyone at Talk Talk.”

“I can't even begin to explain the problems I have had with Talk Talk, just thinking about it makes me angry in summary it's taken 3 months to go through their home movers process, I've been lied to about time scales, wasted over 15 hours on the phone to the”

“It has been a complete nightmare that has practically reduced me to tears.”

“My Internet connection has been down so much for extended periods and the telephone too has been either dead or extremely crackly, so much so you can barely have a conversation.”

“I had a sick child at home and was totally incensed when they even cut my telephone line for two whole days without any warning.”

My own experience is an emotional one too. One evening my son called from Thailand where he’s travelling on a sabbatical. He was in an unfamiliar place and wanted help to find accommodation. But we couldn’t get on the web. My son was left abandoned. How do you feel about a brand after that?

So what happens when you try to contact them direct? Impossible, seems you can’t talk talk to Talk Talk. No one wants to deal with the customer or their complaints.

This is a brand that has a serious problem and a failing reputation. One that is ignoring the power of the people. If I was them I’d can all advertising and spend the budget on a new customer satisfaction programme. There’s still time to make amends, if not they’ll be the next British Rail – always trying to get there but never arriving.

(I would welcome any comment from Talk Talk direct to the marketing community.)

Shell, BP and Esso combine to launch new environmental ‘A Fuel’ with record £5bn budget

The big three oil companies are pooling marketing budget to launch the much talked about 'A Fuel' which will be available from 2009.The alternative fuel to petroleum is based on common sea water and produces almost zero pollutants while delivering 40% more energy.

The 3 year ad campaign will be the largest ever ad spend in history. But what has also surprised many is that the oil group has appointed an unknown Swedish agency EGG to create all the work. Media is currently under pitch.

‘A Fuels’ (alternative fuels) were originally developed during the Second World War by British chemists who needed an alternative due to limited oil supplies. Many were too poor performers to be productive but one that used salt water and a niobium nickel catalyst has undergone millions of pounds of research to perfect. The breakthrough has been the discovery of a new catalytic enhancer called ‘Pril’. When added to ‘A Fuel’ it creates a dramatic exothermic reaction that produces 40% more power than the equivalent quantity of petroleum.

Oil companies have refrained from releasing ‘A Fuels’ but due to world political pressure (it’s believed Bush has been instrumental in persuading the big three to bend) and a secret agreement in Paris last summer, they have finally agreed to launch this much acclaimed technology.

‘A Fuels’ will require a new generation of engine but they produce minimum pollutants. All the major car companies have been developing ‘A Fuel’ engines and Honda plan to launch their first later this year, with Skoda following in January. However, despite its amazing environmental benefits, Earth Watch have voiced concern over Chlorites that are produced due to the chemical reaction between the water and the Sodium Chloride. “We don’t know what the consequence of increased Chlorites are yet,” said David Greenbaugh, environmental director of the charity.

A spokesman for the oil companies said, “We are all aware that there is a finite amount of oil left. Using it to fuel cars to go shopping or to do the school run is insane when it is far better used for producing plastic products like buckets for the Third World and toys. We believe the time is right to launch ‘A Fuels’.”

The first stage of the campaign will launch on April 1st with a 6 week educational campaign on TV supported by posters and press. The TV ads feature a series of talking goldfish who mock humans for always doing the same old thing. The campaign line is “time for A change, time for A Fuels”. The TV commercial has been directed by Peter Jackson and was shot in New Zealand. The fish are voiced over by Tom Hanks and Dan Castellaneta (who also voices Homer Simpson). The commercial features a new version of Pink Floyds ‘Wish you were here’, recorded by ENO and Bono. The track will be made available to all O2 customers for free in a unique deal, but can be purchased from the ‘A Fuel’ website.

The surprising choice of the Swedish ethical specialist marketing agency EGG, has sent shockwaves through all the major groups. ”We picked EGG because of their creativity and skills at co-creation. They also have a nice sauna,” commented Kevin Woodhouse of the ‘A Fuel’s’ marketing team.

Sven Ögren, creative director of EGG just said, “this is fab, my mother was really happy for us and is baking us a cake.” (Please note this was translated from Swedish and we aren’t sure it’s accurate.)

So who would have thought, to save the planet all you have to do is add ‘pril’ to ‘A Fuel’ and you get a great reaction.