Marketing Matters

By David Rawle
Contributing Writer

     In his popular book, “Stirring it Up: How to Make Money and Save the World,” Gary Hirshberg makes a compelling case for the wisdom of not only going green but also of promoting green. And he shows that green policies produce very green bottom lines.

I am reminded of one of Sallie Krawcheck’s great points at a recent Martin Luther King Jr. Business and Professional Leader Breakfast. She said that companies with management teams that are diverse in gender and ethnicity inevitably perform better financially. 

Bottom line: Doing right can lead to doing well.

As for Hirshberg, a quarter of a century ago he teamed up with a friend named Samuel Kaymen in New Hampshire. They made an organic yogurt called Stonyfield. They started with next to nothing. And last year, sales topped $300 million.  That’s a lot of yogurt.

Stonyfield has spent very little on advertising. Practically nothing, in fact. And Hirshberg’s very proud of that fact. He tells the story of doing samplings all over the place, getting people to try the product and then counting on word-of-mouth to build demand. 

But with all of Hirshberg’s pooh-poohing of marketing, Stonyfield has, in fact, abided by a cardinal rule of marketing: be the brand.

Stonyfield is the brand. Don’t take my word for it. Check out their Web site, www.Stonyfield.com.  It’s as green as green can be. The product is organic, the cows are nurtured (you can even have a “chat” with a cow), good works are discussed, green tips are dispensed — you really have a sense of a very specific brand.

Among its boasts is Stonyfield’s assertion that it was the first American manufacturer to produce a zero-carbon footprint.

As justifiably boastful as Hirshberg is, he identifies several other companies that have gone green, promoted green and — as a result — increased their bottom line. And that’s worth exploring. After all, the conventional wisdom in corporate America may be that going green is more expensive and should be avoided except to the extent absolutely demanded by the consuming public. 

Not so, says Hirshberg. And he’s got lots of good examples to back him up.  Sure there are “granola” kinds of companies like Patagonia and Clif Bar, but there are also some hard-nosed big guys like Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart commitment to green is really incredible, in great part because of the scale of that company. For example, doubling the efficiency of the company’s trucking fleet will save Wal-Mart more than $300 million per year. And imagine the impact of Wal-Mart stores heated by biofuel boilers that burn used cooking oil from the in-store cafes and motor oil salvaged from their auto-service centers. For a company haunted by a negative public image, Wal-Mart may turn things around with its environmental commitment. And, with that commitment, Wal-Mart isn’t just saving money.  They’re helping save the planet. 

Even Rupert Murdoch, hardly known as a tree hugger, has pledged that his empire, The News Corp., will become carbon neutral in three years. 

A product is a product. But a brand is a promise. Stonyfield, Patagonia, Wal-Mart, Murdoch and many other major corporations, including IBM, DuPont, Kellogg’s, Heinz, etc., are endowing their products with the promise of environmental responsibility. 

In so doing, they give customers something more to associate with these products. They differentiate themselves, decommoditize themselves, and wisely (and profitably!) seize an opportunity that is available to each and every one of us. What’s your plan?

David Rawle is chairman of Rawle Murdy Associates Inc., a Charleston-based marketing, advertising and public relations firm. E-mail him at drawle@rawlemurdy.com.

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