Fortune associate editor Julie Schlosser reports from Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference:
PASADENA, Calif — Consumers are feeling the pressure to go green. And it’s hard to ignore. Drinking bottled water is a definite no no. Flying across the country? Buy offsets. The consumer is being bombarded with green marketing and advertising and the result might not be what you expected. All this green guilt and messaging just might be making consumers more skeptical about the growing assortment of green products.
When polled, most consumers overwhelmingly say they want to buy green, according to Joel Makower, head of Greener World Media and author of The Green Consumer. But they aren’t actually doing it. According to the research, Makower says, “If it is green, consumers assume it isn’t good.” And that means, in many cases, green products are entering the marketplace with a deficit.
That was part of the discussion at Monday afternoon’s panel, “The Green Consumer: Myth or reality?” Andrew Shapiro, founder and CEO of GreenOrder, a strategic consulting firm that works with big brands such as GE (GE), GM (GM), Starwood (HOT) and Office Depot (ODP), moderated the panel that included Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirschberg, Elizabeth Lowery of GM, and Makower.
Hirschberg, the CE-Yo (yes, you read that correctly) of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest organic yogurt company, has a fun story to tell. He took organic yogurt into the mainstream long before organics were cool, and he has built a $300 million-per-year business along the way. He has also managed to incorporate green principles throughout the product’s life cycle. “But we don’t even use the word green when we describe what we do,” he pointed out.
Still, he argues, there is obviously a green consumer. “But we think they are more focused on quality.” And the quality does something that millions of dollars in advertising can’t. It creates loyalty, says Hirschberg. “And if loyalty comes from an emotional place, authenticity is the key to creating it.”
What consumers are showing us is that if your company has a high “talk-to-do ratio” when it comes to going or being green, you’ll lose the consumer’s trust immediately. By adopting a sense of humility and focusing on communicating honestly with your consumers, Hirschberg argues, companies can build loyalty.
So how does a company build such a relationship with their customer? By offering them a premium product and one that isn’t just greener, but tastes better, lasts longer, or is more aesthetically pleasing. And as the economy continues to slow, the best way to get a consumer to go green is to give them the goods for less.
Green Wombat 
What a joke… Consumers are not falling for the hoax of the century.
The way consumers want to go green, is to keep more of the greenback in their pockets. Not to be sold a snake oil formula for “saving the planet”.
Consumers want to go “green” but the products are not available. We are not falling for this fake “green” stuff. To see where consumer habits are going, you only need to surf the blogs of early-20s college students and young adults, as well as the blogs of young moms, both of whom have vibrant blog communities and are looking to the future.
What I see is that these folks are sharing and promoting actual changes in behavior and lifestyle– eating, shopping, work, and home. For example, no plastics at all in the home, biking and taking the bus, vegetarian food, and buying from farmers’ markets. These are no longer radical hippies but your soon-to-be mainstream young adults.
The thing is, few of the products talked about on these vibrant blog communities would qualify as a household brand, or even any brand most people have heard of before. And in a sense “green” marketing just runs counter to the values behind being green such as buying less, less consumerism, less or no packaging, reuse, bring-your-own, grow-your-own. “Green” marketing’s purpose might be perceived by the consumer as to make more money.
And an example to illustrate– green consumers are not going to buy “biodegradable” tea bags that actually won an industry packaging award and are marketed as “biodegradable”, when the tea bag is actually plastic and takes a year to compost (which is not feasible), while the regular old tea bags we have had all along are truly biodegradable paper and compost in a few weeks. This kind of marketing makes a consumer like me question the company’s integrity as a whole.
The biggest part of being a green consumer is not consuming.
There are three fundamental problems underlying green producs, only one of which, quality, is remotely addressed by this article. There is an assumption that green products arent as good, particularly when it comes to cleaning products. This assumption is usually made on emotion, not fact, and should be remedied with an effective marketing strategy. Secondly, green products can be prohibitively expensive. Hopefully cost can be controlled with the introduction of new products and competition. Lastly, and in my opinion, the most important, many green products are not green at all. Think ethanol and recycling (by this I mean the chemical processes and energy going into recylcing of papers, plastics and metals. I am NOT saying reducing consumption and resusing existing product is a problem).
Hirschberg is dead on the money. People buy quality, not just “green” hype. My three year old son has been drinking the Yo-Yo Baby yogurt products for the past two years. He won’t even touch other, less expensive alternatives, even when I try to sneak one in his cup.
The economy is crashing around our ears.. that is why people are not “flocking” to go green..
back 10 yr’s ago when Tylenol had the glass in the bottle scare they took everything off the shelf and then put in tamper seals.. that earned them MY abosulte loyalty..
when i buy today i think green and buy green but the economy is crashing and so i buy less of “everything”..
we will go green.. because we have to.. get on the bus or walk.. those are your only choices..
We’re actually working on new packaging that is recycled content and produced using wind power. I’m proud to be doing our part in producing a truly eco-friendly product. Check out http://www.poopbags.com for more on our 100% biodegradable dog waste bags. http://www.poopbags.com
I believe another reason more people are not going green is due to the cost. Green products always cost more. Even if it uses recycled products.
The problem with green consumerism is that its still consumerism. Truly “going green” has to first be about reducing, then reusing, then recycling. Then you can feel good about buying something labeled ‘green’ or ‘organic.’
Its also about being a smart consumer. Buying green cleaning products from a company that produces toxic chemicals is not green. A green home that is 4,000 square feet is inherently not green.
As consumers we need to use less and demand better, more sustainable products. It’s all up to us, the companies will do as our dollar tells them.
Thanks for the reporting on the conference. It’s one I wish I could have attended!
Brands are dying. The consumer is becoming more educated about the process, and less likely to buy the manufactured hype.
Trend is to buy what you “need,” not what you “want.” And buying products that are less likely to poison you and your family is becoming a “need.”
Produce that you can pick from your yard, rather than having to fill up the tank to go to the grocery store, is becoming a “need.” Products that consume less electricity are becoming a “need.”
Green is a choice not a marketing ploy.
Green is only a marketing message to companies like Fortune, who cannot yet fathom a gree word that ends in N not D. They must try and twist into something that fits their worldview. How sad.
I think Madison Avenue is missing the point – “Green” is about NOT consuming, getting by with less and more efficient products, and re-using rather than buying new.
Who can afford to go green? If the costs would come down, then people would go green.
I try to be green but I don’t buy many “green” products. I do keep cloth bags behind my car seat so I always have them even for a spur-of-the-moment shopping stop.
But the comment that authenticity is key is spot on. I grow my own vegetables when weather permits, work from home so I drive very little; use natural light as much as possible; reuse packaging from products I buy packaged; recycle whatever my community recycles (AZ has no bottle deposit law so glass recyclers are scarce here); walk a lot to places in my small town; try to choose water-efficient plants for my non-vegetable garden; dress up or down to minimize running heat or evap cooler; buy secondhand whenever feasible.
It’s not like I deserve a medal or anything but part of the authenticity of what I do is that it is immediate. I know I’m not putting grocery bags in landfills or chugging away gas by the gallon in crawling traffic. The veggies take more time and effort, but the flavor is worth it and I put up what I don’t eat fresh (in reusable containers). Plus the cost of veggies has gone crazy in the last year, the savings are a benefit as well.
Selling “green” seems to be more about soothing the consciences of wasteful people than it is about really changing habits.
Maybe that would be different if marketing were focused on “replace green”…when your old thingy wears out, replace it with a greener thingy. But that would also require some common comparative standards to back up green claims.
I don’t go green and won’t until the cost is the same as non Green products. Most of them are hype to get you to pay more than you should.
I use plastic bags and will continue to; I’m not paying extra for bags when there is absolutely no evidence that plastic bags are harmful.
90% of the green movement is a joke and a farce.
If the US government wanted people to go green they would give money to green companies/products making them cheaper. In turn, they could tax items that are not green friendly.
But the US government is fairly anti-green, especially compared to the rest of the world. Until this changes or more money is invested in green items making them affordable, people will not buy green.
Funny, what we consider “green” today was the norm 60 years ago. Vegetable gardens, Grass fed beef, walking, buying used instead of new. Going green isn’t about buying more stuff, it’s about using common sense and educating yourself. Going green should not cost more money. It should actually save you money in the long run. There’s nothing green about buying a CFL bulb and still not turning the light off when you leave the room.
Buy less. Do your research. The earth is counting on us. The global warming denialists are drying up, as are the greenwash hypesters. The future will belong to those who espouse true conservative–i.e. permaculture–values. The neocon-men will be gone in a few years and we’ll have to live with their mistakes.
Several posters have mentioned it already; the green consumer does not consume. Good luck trying to increase profits on a trend that downplays consumerism.
These comments are funny…as half the readers get into their gas guzzling V8s on the way home.
What a farce. The US and the world still doesn’t take any of this seriously enough…it’ll take a disaster of huge proportions for people to really change.
Window dressing never solved anything, especially this problem.
I don’t know about other people buy green or not. Here’s my behavioral change:
I moved to walking distance to office. So all commute in our household is optional.
I’m waiting for the american carmakers to catch up in hybrids and diesels or electric before I buy a new car.
I buy organic food for baby and use green detergent etc sometimes.
I don’t mind if the gas prices stay high, preferably taxed more (like the Europeans), and the gas tax revenue goes to green energy. The real green energy (solar, tidal, geothermal, wind), not the corn ethanol fiasco that’s really a subsidy to farmers at the expense of poor people everywhere.
If gas stays high above $4, and the alternative energy gets enough funding, maybe in 10-15 years we may see US to be self-sufficient in electricity and cars run from the grid. I’ve been hoping for this since 2001, but I misunderstood Bush’s call for “sacrifice”. Turns out He meant boys died in Iraq and we keep shopping big houses with big energy bills and gas gusslers. My bad.
The only sacrifice Anna of Seattle ever made was switching from one hipster click to another. It’s so exhausting to be hip. But Anna honey, it doesn’t show.
Meanwhile there are others, such as myself, making real sacrifices. Like buying a hybrid vehicle. Like working in a 3rd world country like Switzerland (and you thought the illegal immigration problem was bad in the US) for many years; all the while watching my employers squander 10 of billions in loans to the US real estate market knowing the people like Anna, too busy squandering her money on the latest fasions, could never pay such outrageous sums back for what amounts to a crackerbox house.
Many people have made the statement that being green means not consuming. That’s rather myopic and it’s the reason those people are called “tree huggers.” The reality is that America is not going to solve its problems by everyone all of a sudden deciding to lower their standard of living and grow vegetables in their back yard. Not everyone can live close to work.
What will solve our problems is investing in wind & solar power and hybrid & hydrogen technology.
What’s really funny is that on the same page on CNN, there is an article questioning whether consumers are buying green, and another article talking about how Hybrids are flying out of dealerships.
Hm. It seems like we have some divisiveness going on here. Some people seem to be of the mind that the only way anyone can go green is if you have enough money to make “real sacrifices”. Others seem to be offering a negative perception of people who are growing their own food.
I think that this kind of stuff is the thing that kills the green movement (as well as so many other movements). Can we not be supportive of small efforts as well as large, or efforts of those who grow their own food, or can accomplish anything? Anything to help at all is a step in the right direction! It’s a move forward…and the problem with name-calling about how much a person can commit to doing is a sure way to take steps back.
I’m not trying to advocate that we all be content to only use green lightbulbs or stop drinking bottled water or anything. But why should we discuss the green movement in terms of what they have not done when everyone does not (and cannot) have the same resources with which to accomplish them?
Green does not necessarily equal humane, and for those of us who truly want green, we also want humane. One reason we don’t believe in “green” is that it’s a big money enterprise now, but is it also humane? Stoneyfield, most of the company, due to its fabulous financial growth, keeps its cows in a dirt pasture much like any other big, cow farm — no grass, not so humane. Green = research = savvy = buy local.
I think on of the problems of “going green” is the word has become so mass used it has lost its meaning. Ask a hundred people what “going green” is and you will get a hundred different responses. No one really knows what he or she should be doing.
Everyone needs to stop looking at the millions of green advertisements they see and be sensible. We can’t give up all of our bad habits in a day. Pick one small change a week and start from there, and don’t buy everything that says green on it, it kind of defeats the purpose.