John Grant On Greenland

Henry Lambert of PSFK’s IF! reports from Last night London’s planners gathering where John Grant released details of his latest book, The Green Marketing Manifesto. IF! reports:

A key point of John’s presentation was Green is a principle, not a proposition. By this he means that you can’t just say you’re green, or just have one green product and then claim you’re green off the back of it, because consumers won’t believe you and you’ll look like you’re just greenwashing.

John also made the point that your business and the green marketing itself should live up to the standards which you set. So Yahoo yesterday set up a green portal, which is great and has some fantastic contributors but the manifestation of this on the streets of New York is Ford Escape Hybrid SUVs which are only get 2mpgs better than the non hybrid versions and don’t look particularly practical for city taxi use.

Another issue with green marketing is that the goal posts are constantly shifting. A year or 6 months ago Carbon offsetting was king, however, it’s now considered a bit irresponsible as it fails to change behaviour and provides a way of removing a guilty conscious without actually making the world greener. Biodiesel is another example - hailed as a potential saviour for the internal combustion engine, it actually has huge environmental impacts on the places where the oil seed rape is grown. The “I’m not a plastic bag” debacle - what was actually a good idea failed because it hadn’t focussed on the detail e.g. it wasn’t organic and it wasn’t ethically produced.

More on IF!: John Grant - Greenland

Note: John will be speaking at PSFK’s Conference London