About two months ago, Joel Makower made the claim that "green marketing is over." Makower believes green marketing as we know it has failed us -- the great consumer revolution simply hasn't materialized, and sustainable products continue to limp along as niche players.

All this, despite growing evidence that these products are hitting the mark as far as price and quality are concerned. It's perception that's killing them.

Nowhere is this more true than in socially responsible investing (SRI). Look at index after index, and you see SRI funds that consistently outperform their non-responsible counterparts. It's easy to understand why, if you consider companies incorporating sustainable and socially responsible practices are generally also innovative and forward-thinking in other areas -- which tends to lead to better returns.

Cliff Feigenbaum, publisher of Green Money, believes that SRI is gaining wider market acceptance, but still remains niche. As he told me, it's migrated from values-based personal investors to become part of much larger institutional portfolios, but only a minute part of these portfolios. It would appear institutional investors include SRI funds to tick off a box for trustees and shareholders.

So what can we as marketers do to change the perception of SRI funds to simply good, moneymaking funds? For answers, I turned to a number of great new studies.

Getting It Right Is The Exception

At last month's Sustainable Brands conference, I had the opportunity to sit down with James Cerruti of Brandlogic. His company just released a new study tracking the actual versus perceived sustainability performance of 100 leading global companies. The study is the first to pull its perception scores from a narrow group of key stakeholders: investors, students, and supply chain partners.

Although some companies did put out a sustainability message consistent with their actions, the majority were either unacknowledged in their actions, laggards in both actions and words, or getting unfair credit for their less-than-stellar performance.

The study is a glaring indictment of the inconsistencies in sustainable corporate messaging being put out to key stakeholders like investors. We as marketers still have a way to go.

Start Marketing To The Majority

Another illuminating study was released at Sustainable Brands by OgilvyEarth. As Freya Williams, one of the study's authors told me, green marketers are still busy preaching to the choir, or trying to convert the defiant unbelievers -- while bypassing the huge (66 percent) majority of consumers who would be willing to give green a chance.

Next page: Five flaws in SRI marketing strategies