Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

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.