Month: March 2012

What would the world look like without branding? What if everything in the store came in plain white packaging?

Brand Spirit can answer that. For 100 days, branding professional and Tumblr blogger Andrew Miller is exploring a world without branding. Each day, he paints a new item white, “reducing the object to its purest form.” He is restricting the project to everyday items he finds, is gifted, has laying around the house, or can buy for less than $10. Call it pop art for branding nerds.
Miller’s project reveals a great deal about how we perceive different items. Looking through the photos, I noticed that I identified some items as a product void of branding, and some items by the brand. For example, I immediately identified the Scotch tape and Heinz ketchup packet as tape and ketchup packet. Or the Conair hair dryer as “that purple folding hair dryer I once had.” They are pretty universal shapes, and show just how important branding can be.
On the contrary, I immediately identified Tabasco and Sharpie as Tabasco and Sharpie. My brain practically superimposed their labeling. Both of these items have pretty iconic shapes associated with the product, making shape and form part of brand recognition.
It’s a familiar phenomenon—similar to a generic trademark. Zipper, aspirin, cellophane, and escalator all became so identified with the product that the trademarked name became synonymous with the product.
What do you see when you look at each item?

I hate it when I’m wrong. Who doesn’t? But in this case, I’m happy to admit I was wrong about “gamification,” a concept I was introduced to at the Sustainable Brands ’11 conference in Monterey last June. My reaction was disbelief that gamification—using games to encourage users in certain behaviors—could really influence something as significant as sustainability. Now, I’m thinking gamification may really have a positive, even transformational role to play in promoting and achieving sustainability. What made me reverse my thinking? An initiative being championed and led by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (aka The Gubenator).
I just got clued into a venture Mr. Schwarzenegger is heading with DONG Energy, a Denmark-based leader in renewable technologies, particularly wind energy, and some leaders from the United Nations. It’s a virtual/alternative universe game, along the lines of “Second Life.” Players, or perhaps the more accurate term is avatars, will be able to enter “SUSTAINIA,”an alternative universe where they will be able to apply and implement existing sustainability technologies and best practices to create a virtual reality of what our real world could look like if there was more widespread adoption and implementation of these technologies and practices.
What a great education tool for individual and corporate citizens of all ages and vocations! Due to launch sometime between June and October of this year, it might just be the first online game this IT Luddite actually engages in. I’m really excited. And, it’s got me wondering…is there an opportunity for a business-engaging NGO like GreenBlue to develop a parallel game targeted at Chief Sustainability Officers and other sustainability executives, leaders, and champions, through which they could create an virtual reality version of their companies, and create and demonstrate scenarios by which business and industry can actually redefine growth for a more sustainable future?
 

Fifty years ago today, John F. Kennedy gave a special message to Congress about protecting consumer interests: “The march of technology—affecting, for example, the foods we eat, the medicines we take, and the many appliances we use in our homes—has increased the difficulties of the consumer along with his opportunities.” He listed four basic principles, which he called the “Consumer Bill of Rights,” to safeguard against the risks of an increasing number and complexity of new products—the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard.
The speech was well ahead of its time. Delivered eight years before the US EPA was founded, it anticipated growing concerns about public health and producer responsibility. Yet, in a 5,000-word talk, JFK didn’t mention the environment at all. Three months later, The New Yorker began publishing a series of articles about the chemical industry’s harmful effects on the environment. Written by a relatively unknown government biologist, the essays were published that September in book form, as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The modern environmental movement was born.
Half a century later, Kennedy’s warning about the complexity of consumer products is more relevant than ever. On the anniversary of the speech, it’s appropriate to revisit the Consumer of Bill of Rights in light of five decades of environmental challenges and opportunities:
“The right to safety—to be protected against the marketing of goods which are hazardous to health or life.” Kennedy marveled that since World War II, the number of goods in a typical grocery store had quadrupled, from 1,500 to over 6,000. Today some 30,000 new products enter the market every year, and their exact contents and environmental and human health effects are generally unknown. While consumer interest in “green” products reportedly doubled from 2008 to 2010, a third of consumers say that the “low availability” of such products is why they don’t buy more of them. The demand for green products is growing, but manufacturers may not be keeping pace, in part because of limited access to better materials and information.
“The right to be informed—to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or grossly misleading information…and to be given the facts he needs to make an informed choice.” According to the environmental marketing firm Terrachoice, over 95 percent of products claiming to be “green” are committing at least one of what it calls the “Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” Increased transparency about a product’s contents and production is essential. Last year, Perkins+Will and Construction Specialties introduced a labeling system for building materials and products that aids the disclosure of environmental and human health data—a good model for other industries, as well.
“The right to choose—to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of products and services at competitive prices.” A 2011 study by Grail Research shows that price is by far the biggest deterrent to purchasing “green” products, with 74 percent of “non-green” consumers calling them “too expensive.” The same study also reveals a perceived lack of diversity in the market options: an abundance of products are marketed as recyclable, for example, while “non-toxic” products are scarce. These perceptions present a tremendous opportunity for producers to capture more market share by offering a greater variety of safer, healthier, more affordable products.
“The right to be heard—to be assured that consumer interests will receive full and sympathetic consideration in the formulation of Government policy….” Kennedy pointed out that while consumers represent the largest group in the economy, they are “the only important group…whose views are often not heard.” In the past, government has had to take the lead in protecting consumers—through, for example, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Today, however, the market demand may be changing how business responds to consumer needs. The World Economic Forum’s 2012 report lists the primary strategy for scaling up sustainability as “transform[ing] demand through interactions with the consumer.” Social media, for example, gives business real-time feedback: as of this week, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is followed by nearly 57,000 people on Facebook, and more than 1,500 companies have pledged to meet its goals to eliminate harmful chemicals from personal care products. By listening to its customers, business can stimulate both economic demand and sustainable change.