This morning I attended the launch of the Marketing Society's Green Alliance which is now calling itself the Marketing Society's Mayday Alliance. Happy to clarify this.
Naming 'green' in a language understood by consumers was very much on the agenda for the meeting held at the Engine Group's offices where I seem to spend half my time there these days.
The tone of the meeting was set when Chris Satterthwaite, one of the co-hosts along with Jo Kenrick, asked the audience whether they knew the percentage of the UK population that had a chemistry degree. The answer is 0.6% which he said proves that communicating around carbon is understood by the few not the many. Not sure about this extrapolation but it’s an interesting theory nonetheless.
Goodness knows what Christian Cull, the director of customer communications at BSkyB, who was one of the attendees, thought of this though given that his company has spent a great deal of time and money becoming ‘the world’s first carbon-neutral media company’.
After that the 70-strong audience was split into groups with a brief to come up with three consumer-friendly industry-wide terms/concepts that companies which are taking action against climate change can use.
The resulting ideas were really inventive and I was impressed by the enthusiasm shown by the bunch despite the 8.00am start.
One group suggested messaging around the five ‘R's’, reuse, recycle, reduce, respect and reward. Another wanted to see a return to ‘80s words like ‘pollution’ and ‘waste’ as these are still understood. Meanwhile Engine Group bigwig Matt Edwards’ group came up with a concept called ‘buckets of choice’. Not sure about that one, to be honest.
But by far the most popular suggestion was a traffic-light system – yes the same standard that the food industry has slammed for being over-simplistic. I’d like to be proved wrong, but something tells me that this particular idea could fall by the wayside once it goes to the wider membership which is the plan.
I mean, what company is going to be happy displaying a ‘red’ mark?
