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Recent Posts by David Wigder
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Marketing green can be a challenge for even the most seasoned professional. There are many reasons for this of course: consumer beliefs are still evolving; demand is not well established; and even where it is, purchase behavior tends to be inconsistent (e.g., the same consumer buys the hybrid and the SUV). For green marketers to be successful, they must effectively and efficiently target their audience when and where consumers are most receptive to green messaging. For marketers, this is no easy task. While green content sites or periodicals may seem like a natural fit, advertisers must remember that consumers come in all shades of green. As such, focused periodicals may only reach “deep greens” which today represent only a fraction of the total population
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While creating and sharing user-generated content is an effective way to facilitate consumer engagement and viral marketing, it is not the only approach that marketers can take. Professionally produced original content is another proven way. Increasingly, agencies or production studios create and seed content on behalf of their clients for consumers to view and share online. One such shop is Free Range Studios which has produced several original videos that have generated significant buzz and viral impact in the green space. Calling its approach “socially conscious viral entertainment”, Free Range tries to “distill a complicated message into a fun or moving short story” while engaging its viewers by allowing them “to write the end of that story by taking action or
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Tapping social media to engage consumers as well as facilitate viral marketing has the potential to generate significant results for marketers. Not only can this drive greater brand impact but it can significantly increase reach to a receptive audience at little, if any, incremental cost. Today, more and more marketers are trying to launch campaigns that have the twin goals of increasing consumer engagement and viral marketing impact. For many marketers, it often appears that achieving these goals is more a matter of art. Yet, platforms such as Brickfish are emerging that are rapidly turning such an approach into a science. Brickfish is an online marketing platform that rewards participants for engaging with brands. The idea is quite simple:
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Recently, the Canadian Standards Association updated its guide for making environmental claims. While not legally binding, such standards provide guidelines for industry and advertisers when it comes to making environmental claims. The intent is to protect consumers from false advertising claims regarding the environment. In many ways, this document foreshadows likely changes from a similar review of US guidelines underway by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Arguably, the current FTC guidelines are long overdue for a refresh given the dramatic evolution in the green space that has occurred since they were last reviewed a decade ago. As such, it is widely expected that the FTC will expand its jurisdiction to include terms that have only recently been added to the vernacular
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A recent survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit identified both the top influencers of – and benefits derived from - corporate environmental risk management (CERM) programs. Two things are curious about these survey results. First, customers and investors rank relatively low in influence (fourth and seventh, respectively) despite the fact that “better corporate reputation” among these groups ranks as the primary benefit for launching CERM in the first place.
Second, “regulators” and “government” exert significant influence – second only to “executive management” – on companies to initiate CERM programs; in terms of benefits, however, “improved relations with regulators” ranks only eighth.
Risk Manager Responses from Recent Survey by
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Predicting a Green Future
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This past week, the Industry Standard (IS), an icon of the late nineties Internet boom, relaunched its online property. It did so, however, not as a publisher of industry content but rather as a consumer-driven platform to predict the future.
How does a platform such as this enable seemingly ordinary consumers to predict the future? Quite simply, IS taps the "wisdom of crowds" or consensus view to determine the probability that an event will happen in the future. Such an approach assumes that that "aggregation of information in groups...result[s] in decisions that...are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group." Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this approach has been demonstrated to be quite effective at making accurate predictions.
How does it work? In the case of IS, a "market" is simulated whereby members place a bet on the probability that a future event will or will not occur. They do so using "virtual currency" called "Standard Dollars". The probability of that event coming true is estimated based on "community consensus" calculated as the weighted average value of the bets placed for or against the prediction coming true.
Interestingly, IS is only the latest online publisher to tap into this type of platform as a way to engage consumers. Moreover, many of the existing platforms have a focus on predicting environmental trends including FT Predict, intrade, IdeaWorth, newsfutures, Popular Science Prediction Exchange, and ZiiTrend.
Intrade's Market Predicting EU Carbon Targets
Popular Science's Market Predicting Green Events
While many other sites exist to predict the future, it seems that only IS has tapped industry heavyweights as regular participants. Their presence not only lends credibility to the site (and the predictions generated there), but arguably, also increases the accuracy of those predictions as well. Quite simply, influentials possess domain knowledge that can shape the opinions of other site participants and the wagers that they make regarding the future.
As marketers experiment with new ways to attract and engage consumers, simulated markets should be in the mix. Moreover, participation by domain experts may only enhance this consumer experience by providing credibility and enhancing the accuracy of the predictions. But, you don't have to take my word on this, however. Just ask a crowd.
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