INNOVATION GREEN BRANDS: Colour of money

Green sells, says John Grant, consultant and author of the Brand Innovation Manifesto

Innovation works best when it pushes at an open door. Green is the big theme of the moment. Green is also a great fit with drinks brands. So it is puzzling why more new drinks brands are not being developed around green product, company and lifestyle ideas.

The consumer-attitude case for green marketing and brand ideas is becoming overwhelming. Besides the fashionable niche success stories such as Toyota hybrid cars, the mainstream mass market is increasingly green-aware – and concerned. Over 50% of baby food is organic. It was popular demand which stopped the march of GM foods towards our supermarkets. According to a recent Mori poll 82% of consumers “want companies to make more effort to show what social, environmental and fair trade activities they are engaged in”. And green concerns tend to be highest among the younger generations, the key audience for many alcoholic drinks brands.

Why is green such a hot agenda? Many would argue that it’s because it is quite urgent that we sort it out for the good of our own species, not to mention numerous others. If you buy this view, then you believe that people urgently need to change their behaviour, switch to decent products, do less damage. I must say that I’m convinced. But I must also point out that you don’t have to be.  Green is a hot trend and consumers will rally behind great green brands – so there’s a business case too.

Look around you. Everything adjacent to drinks brands is moving in this direction; the trendy organic slow-food pub; the conscientious M&S “look behind the label” campaign; the low-energy consumption fridge; the TV programme within which you book your ad break.

Green is also a great fit with alcoholic drinks. People want their drinks to be natural, traditionally made, authentic and free from nasty additives – exactly what they expect from green products. Yes there are certainly some organic and fair trade wines, but those are product claims. Where are the strong green brands? I can’t even name one. I’d recommend checking out other markets to get a feel for the potential.

Green Green Tea is a great example. The reason for the name is that it is double green; firstly it is organic, and secondly it is carbon neutral. It should actually be called Green Green Green Tea, because it is also a green leaf tea. This brand has already won awards for being the best organic product of the year. What I like about it is firstly the clever innovation – the first ever carbon neutral beverage – and secondly its wonderful brand personality. The tea is marketed by a company called Today Was Fun and the advertising and publicity lives up to the name. A similar brand proposition and personality would work well for cider, for a start.

There are also opportunities to build green incentives into promotions. RED is one of the great brand success stories of this year; in that case the cause is donating a few pennies for every purchase to relieving AIDS in Africa. While it isn’t green in the traditional sense (being a different colour for a start) it certainly demonstrates that, given the right idea, some of the world’s most commercially minded brands are prepared to invest heavily in cause-related marketing today; brands like Apple, Amex, Motorola and Gap. The same is true of green incentives; for instance Tesco’s green points. Many drinks companies do good works as a matter of course. Diageo is a major donor to WaterAid, and Carlsberg is one of the world’s most charitable companies. The difference with RED is that it is helping customers to do some good too, every time they buy; and hence there is a brand feelgood factor too. RED makes its partners look good.

Another high-potential approach is to make a story out of your company “going green”. There have been some criticisms of BP, one of the first to take this line. It is  after all one of the world’s biggest oil companies. As a journalist in Fortune put it, claiming to be “Beyond Petroleum” was a bit like his own magazine claiming to be “Beyond Words”. You do need to be careful about putting yourself in a potentially hypocritical position (let’s return to this issue when we look at alcoholic drinks innovation and health benefits). But on the other hand, so long as you aren’t BP, you don’t need to start off looking like Greenpeace. In many ways it is more surprising if you are a bit of a sinner. BSkyB has one of the leading green programmes in this country, The Bigger Picture. In the media space BSkyB does have its critics. But its apparently sincere commitment to getting its green act together does question whether it can simply be categorised as a “bad guy”. And that is a very strategic consideration for a brand and company whose chief difficulty in the UK is that it isn’t the BBC.

In the last 18 months green concerns have accelerated into the mainstream public consciousness. There are lots of ways to go green with your brands and marketing. There are lots of inspiring examples to draw upon (check out http://www.greenawards.co.uk). There is even the potential – after all the questioning of the social responsibility of alcoholic drinks companies – to be the good guys for once.

© db January 2007

John Grant can be reached at www.brandtarot.com/blog