Before I get into this post, I have to say I am a loyal United Airlines traveler, and I’ll be parking my butt in one seat or another for more than 16,000 miles in June alone. Don’t feel too bad for me though. Part of that travel is a trip to Hawaii.

With that caveat … I have a bone to pick with my airline of choice. I was traveling to Milwaukee last month (Earth Month), and as I always do, I picked up the in-flight publication and turned to the note from CEO Jeff Smisek. I was pleased to read the airline is working hard to reduce its environmental footprint. In fact, the letter from Smisek reads that United is “honoring Earth Month by announcing our new goal to save 85 million gallons of fuel in 2013.” The note goes on to list the ways in which United will tackle this very large goal. As are all of the monthly letters, it was well written and provided a sense of pride for me, since I choose this airline every chance I get (and I travel roughly 50,000 miles a year).

BUT, two things stopped me in my pride-filled tracks. The annual airline customer service results were released in April. Yes, Earth Month. It was, to put it nicely, not very favorable for my favorite airline. Here’s a snippet (and AQR stands for Airline Quality Rating):

“Data this year for United reflects the combined data for United and Continental. On-time arrival performance declined from 80.2% in 2011 to 77.4% in 2012. Their mishandled baggage rate increased from 3.66 per 1,000 passengers in 2011 to 3.87 in 2012. Performance regarding an involuntary denied boarding rate of 1.01 per 10,000 passengers in 2011 worsened to 1.83 in 2012. A higher customer complaint rate of 4.24 in 2012 compared to 2.21 per 100,000 passengers in 2011 combined with declines in all other performance areas to move United’s 2012 AQR score to -2.18 from -1.45 in 2011. United is the lowest rated airline of the 14 included in the AQR for 2012.”

Tough language and numbers that simply don’t lie – increases in the bad stuff and decreases in the good. Not the right direction to be flying in, so to speak.

Here’s the second thing: that Milwaukee flight I mentioned. Delays on every leg added an extra 10 hours to an already short trip. Like anybody who travels regularly and experiences delays regularly, I was peeved.

So, the moral of my story is simple: Pay attention to what counts to your customers. You can be the Patagonia of the airline industry, but if you can’t fix your customer issues, you’ll go the way of the dodo bird. Sustainability efforts are worth communicating. That’s what we do at Shelton Group, so we’re rather big believers in it. We know from our research that Americans look at a company with favor when it has a good sustainability story, and we know that it sells product. So kudos to United Airlines for all it’s doing on the sustainability front, but next April forgo the Earth Month letter, Mr. Smisek, and instead tell us what you’re doing to address your customer service issues. As we often preach here at Shelton, transparency is key – not just in sustainability and emissions reporting, but in all facets of the business. Customers won’t care that there’s biobased fuel powering their flight if their luggage doesn’t arrive at their final destination.

If you’d like to discuss this post, or anything sustainability related, just give me a shout. 

Later that afternoon my mind started nagging at me … had I made the best choice? I’d read some stuff about TOMS in the past, I seemed to recall, that wasn’t so flattering. So I did what we all do – I Googled it. My quick search didn’t reveal anything nefarious … but I ran across a Fast Company article that derided TOMS for not solving any problems at all and, instead, creating new ones. The article posited that when do-gooder organizations come into an impoverished setting and give stuff away, it makes it impossible for local entrepreneurs to sell their goods, thereby keeping the local economy dependent on handouts. The article implored TOMS to change its business model to deal with the macro problems of economics and disease (specifically hookworm). The article also declared that “there is a finite and unpredictable market for the feel-good value proposition – consumers are fickle when it comes to committing to brands based on nonfunctional attributes.”

Our data supports that last assertion. According to our forthcoming Eco Pulse^TM study, roughly one-third of Americans claim that “a company’s nonprofit partnerships and donations impact my purchase decisions.” However, only 3% of the population can actually call to mind a brand they’ve bought for that reason … and Newman’s Own has been the most-often recalled brand two years in a row now. And when we ask, “What are the three most important things companies should be doing to positively impact your purchase decisions,” manufacturing in the U.S.A is at the top of the list, something TOMS doesn’t actually do. In fact, the TOMS model, which I’d put in our “donate to health and human services” bucket, is only preferred by 5% of the population, and when it comes to CSR activities, most Americans prefer an organization’s charitable activities to be local.

All that said, I’m a believer in throwing a rock in the pond as a way to change the world. Adam Lowry of Method put it pretty simply last week at Fortune Brainstorm Green: When Method “greens-up” its product lines, so do the category leaders. According to Adam, when Method launched a 3X concentrated laundry detergent, Unilever launched one within a year, and P&G launched one within two years. Same with the 10X concentrate. So Method – one of the little guys in the laundry category – is changing the entire category through its green innovations, forcing its competition to follow suit. 

TOMS will absolutely not solve all the problems in the countries it serves, but by throwing a rock in the pond like Method, they will likely be a catalyst to create those changes. And by broadening their design/style choices (which is certainly the main driver behind Method’s sales success), TOMS will appeal to more people who don’t give a rip about sustainability or their buy-one, give-one business model. Consumers, like Chloe, will buy their products because they’re pretty. To the industry – and other industries – though, it will appear that the buy-one, give-one model is the cause of TOMS success, and competitors and other entrepreneurs will focus on ways to beat TOMS at their own game. Eventually, the broader health issues and economic issues TOMS isn’t addressing will get tackled by those entrepreneurs looking for a new value proposition upon which to grow a business – all because TOMS threw a rock in the pond. And that’s exactly how we change the world.

If you keep up with the ad or auto worlds, you’ve likely already seen or at least read about this dead-on-arrival attempt at levity. A realistic scene is depicted where a defeated-looking gentleman pipes exhaust fumes into the cabin of his SUV. In what was meant to be an amusing twist, the depressed man’s attempt fails because the ix35 doesn’t actually create toxic fumes, and he glumly walks back into his dreary home.

Commentators were quick to open up their bag of horrified adjectives, and their reactions were nearly as unoriginal as the spot itself. Yes, I said as unoriginal as the spot itself. Suicide-themed spec ads featuring Citroen and Audi were produced in ’03 and ’10 with nearly identical plots. Don’t you remember the outrage they generated? No? Neither do I.

So, what gives? Why was this one the object of such self-righteous furor while its predecessors received only moderate scorn? There are undoubtedly multiple factors at play here, but to me there was one very specific element: Holly Brockwell.

Brockwell, a blogger and part of the U.K. ad community, penned a post that opened with this:

“Dear Hyundai and your advertising agency, Innocean,

This is my dad.”

What followed was a faded photo, a heartbreaking story and a scan of a water-stained, handwritten farewell from a father whose life ended in a similar scenario to the one depicted in the ad. Brockwell goes on to share the pain she felt while watching the spot and the fact that her perception of Hyundai is permanently altered. Her closing statement was, “My dad never drove a Hyundai. Thanks to you, neither will I.”

Well, I won’t go that far, but I will say that as the tragedy of her story sunk in, years of disciplined messaging from Hyundai’s U.S. campaign faded into the background. Innocean’s little viral spot successfully jumped the Atlantic, creating discord with Jeff Bridges’ comforting tones.

Ultimately, an ad about hydrogen cars became an ad about suicide. Innocean hijacked its own message, and what should have been an optimistic statement turned into a painful conversation about one of society’s harshest realities.

Hyundai has since apologized and pulled the ad, and I doubt there will be any serious long-term consequences. But there are certainly a number of things we can take from this:

When presented with an opportunity for optimism, run with it. Have fun, be light and be positive. Successful green marketing is about hope, not despair. Quality advertising does require taking risks, but this was not a risk. It was a missed opportunity.

Your brand is global. The idea of insular campaigns separated by borders and oceans is antiquated. If your media is worth talking about, they will be talking about it everywhere. Granted, the left hand can’t always know what the right hand is doing, but they should be wired to the same brain.

Don’t forget the world is full of Hollys. People with real experiences and real voices will engage your messaging. Anticipate those encounters and connect by creating positive conversations that convey human truths and illustrate a sense of empathy.

“Be a verb.”

Thankfully, he paused and then said, “If you don’t know what I mean, Google it.” His point was that sustainability should be about action and that action should be synonymous with brands. Though he didn’t say it quite like this, what I took him to mean was if your sustainability efforts aren’t obvious in your company’s actions, and your company’s not known for them, they’re not very effective.

This is really important. I found myself searching for the shining examples of mainstream companies who’ve embraced sustainability to the point that it’s synonymous with their brand and they’re widely known for it, but I didn’t find them. There were many enormous companies doing good things from a sustainability perspective and creating excellent innovations rooted in sustainability thinking, but not anybody who’s crossed the threshold into baking sustainability into their brand’s DNA. Conversely, there were the smaller challenger companies – like Method and Patagonia – for whom sustainability has always been fundamental to their essence, and who are continuing to challenge the status quo. But not much in the middle.

Here’s my take: I think mainstream companies are really, really struggling with the fundamental problem of how to claim sustainability as a pillar of their brands while also driving to sell more stuff – stuff that consumes diminishing resources and winds up in landfills. I don’t have an easy answer for any of them. Though I think the answer lies in will.i.am’s point. And I think Coca-Cola may be closer than anyone to cracking the nut. Here’s why:

Obviously, Coke (and others) have been under fire for our nation’s obesity problems – a very expensive health issue. Guess what else is a very expensive health issue? Unclean water. Roughly half of hospital beds globally are filled with patients suffering from water-borne illnesses. If Coke can clean up water, they can solve a very expensive health issue, deliver a basic human right to millions who don’t have it AND ensure the main ingredient for their products is readily available. They’re actually doing this. They’ve invested in a company called DEKA, which is creating these amazing units that quite literally can take sewer water and turn it into potable water using very little energy and no chemicals. It is amazing in the very definition of the word. The inventor of the product turned to governments and health care companies to get the support he needed to build the units and got turned down by everyone. Coke saw the value proposition, and now something very tangible, game-changing and real is happening.

How’s that for being a verb?

Marketing and Implementation: Strategies to Supercharge Your Programs

When Corporate Communications runs EE marketing, the EE team often winds up without the marketing help they need. Corporate Communications departments at utilities are set up for a very specific, important purpose: to promote the company’s reputation and build the corporate brand (and, in so doing, deal with criticism and crises, manage the media, and communicate with policy makers and investors). It’s a totally different construct with a totally different end game than marketing EE programs. EE marketing is about selling a product and hitting very specific, aggressive goals. It’s a totally different style of marketing and requires a different mindset. Take a look at how most companies outside of the utility space set up their marketing and communications teams. There’s typically a Corporate Communications team to promote the corporate brand … and then each individual brand or line of business within the company has its own brand managers and marketing team whose job responsibilities and accountabilities are aligned with the sales goals of that brand. Utilities should follow suit. Based on some conversations I had at the AESP conference, though, many EE program managers are still not allowed to have their own marketing person or team, leaving them dependent on Corporate Communications to handle the job, which is secondary for the Corp Comm guys.

Even though EE is a driver for customer satisfaction, it still won’t make every customer happy. An attendee at the conference mentioned receiving a post on the company Facebook page the other day from a concerned customer. The customer was upset that the utility was spending so much money to run TV ads about EE. Only one problem: The utility isn’t running any TV spots and hasn’t for more than three years. The point is this: Customers will find reasons to complain about their utility. It’s just too easy to blame utilities instead of taking responsibility for personal consumption. And utilities are a particularly favored punching bag right now: Our latest Energy Pulse study shows that for the first time in eight years, utilities are at the top of the blame list for high energy costs. That’s the top of a list that includes oil companies, the government and unrest in the Middle East. My conversation with this marketer ended with her saying she’d be happy to satisfy the 80 percent and let the other 20 come along in their own time. A good way of looking at it, I think.

A one-size-fits-all message to all of your EE customers will fail. I sat in a session during which one of the presenters discussed a small-business marketing tool his company has. This iPad-based tool works to audit all small businesses, which I can believe. What was troublesome is that the marketing efforts to promote those small business audits were broad and general, talking to every small business owner as if they’re the same, regardless of their category. I was very pleased to hear the last presenter of that session bring it all back around and talk about the absolute need for segmenting your audience and, with that critical information in hand, developing the right message for the EE team that drives the results needed for success. This, of course, is the premise behind our Do 5 Things platform.

There’s more to report, so give a shout if you’d like to chat. Energy efficiency is challenging to market these days (most Americans are disenfranchised because they haven’t seen results from their efforts), so it’s really helpful to learn from each other.

I first became aware of bamboo’s potential as a renewable resource a few years ago. A good friend of mine was participating in a project called The Alabamboo Make and Ride, in which a team of young participants built bicycles using bamboo for the frames. Then, over the course of two months, the team rode their creations from Alabama to San Francisco. The goal of the project was to promote the movement to bring sustainable bamboo production to Alabama. According to the project’s website, the United States is the world’s largest importer of bamboo, and there is little to no domestic bamboo production.

The truly fascinating thing about bamboo is that it appears to be a prime candidate for widespread sustainable production. The plant grows rapidly without too much tending, and some species sprout as much as 4 feet in a single day. It has a high strength-to-weight ratio, which is valued by builders for construction applications. Possibly the most exciting thing about bamboo is that it has a very efficient carbon sequestration rate, meaning that it traps carbon from the atmosphere at a higher rate than many other plants. 

Using bamboo as a source material for various products isn’t a new idea. It can be (and has already been, to some degree) used to create many different products, including paper, fishing rods, bicycles and skateboards, textiles, furniture and wood flooring.

What is new is the idea of developing a domestic network of commercial bamboo farms. The economic impact of domestically producing bamboo could be a financial bright point, especially as the U.S. continues to try to rebound economically. Bamboo thrives in hot, humid climates, much like you’d find in Alabama, as well as most of the southeastern part of the U.S., making large portions of the country prime real estate.

While there are a number of groups devoted to the promotion of bamboo production throughout the U.S., they could certainly use some help getting the message out. Every day, people come into contact with products that COULD be produced using bamboo. The negative feedback a lot of consumers have toward bamboo-sourced products is that they tend to look like they were made from bamboo. Though aesthetically pleasing to some, to others, bamboo looks out of place when set against the décor of their home.

The beauty of bamboo is that it can be used as a source material without telegraphing the bamboo look. The many uses of bamboo fiber are limitless. Best of all, companies can tout a sustainable message related to the source material, even if it doesn’t LOOK like bamboo. And that’s key. The magic trick here from a marketing perspective will be to promote the benefits a consumer will likely care about as they purchase a home-related product – its beauty, style and performance. Then position the fact that it’s green as the cherry on top. It gives folks a reason to feel good about the thing they wanted to buy anyway.

Your audience is invested in something. They’ve invested their time in things they love, their money in things they understand and their emotions in things they truly believe in.

Your company or brand is also invested emotionally in something – that “something” being defined by things like company heritage, belief systems or even products.

So every business out there is trying to play matchmaker, connecting the value systems of the company or brand with those of the consumer. As marketers, we’ve poked and prodded consumers’ personal investments for decades in search of a match. Our focus has always been on the end audience, how to reach them and fashion messaging they’ll buy into.

This works well when companies stay true to themselves. But messaging always fails when companies abandon their own value systems to match one owned by a desirable audience. Sure, your message needs to shift to remain fresh, but it should always come from the same emotional source within your company. Companies that want to target as large an audience as possible are challenged by this concept. They fixate on the sea of people who don’t quite line up with their values, rather than seeing the potential in the audience they should be talking to. The best way to reach a large audience is to properly use the smaller, more focused audience that makes up your base.

Think of a small rock being thrown into a still pond. At impact, this small rock causes ripples that flow out, creating larger and larger circles. Your communication works the same way. A targeted message to your core audience of like-minded, invested believers will cause a ripple of aspiration that allows your audience to grow – and continue growing – in a healthier way.

So find the group of people who are invested in the same things you are as a company/brand and talk to them. Refine your message to a personal level. Let them into your inner circle and make them feel like collaborators instead of customers. Turn them into brand champions and create your own army of passionate defenders. This is a great way to maximize small marketing budgets and begin an emotional ripple that will tweak the aspirations of broader audiences.

The answer is, “No.”

For the last three years, we’ve seen a decline in interest and intention to purchase in every single energy-efficient product category we test. Self-reporting of completed EE improvements is down as well (the graph above is one of three from Utility Pulse demonstrating what we’re seeing). In our digging for actual sales figures of energy-efficient products, we see a similar story, though not as drastic. Bottom line: Every data point we have says the energy efficiency business is down.

Yesterday in the interview I was asked, “What do we do about it?” The answer is two-fold, and it’s a big part of what I’ll be talking about in our webinar:

1. You have to help them see they have a problem. Eighty percent of Americans don’t think they use more energy today than they did five years ago, and roughly half think their homes are already energy efficient. Forgive the analogy, but you can’t get an alcoholic to an AA meeting if he doesn’t think he has a problem. We’re simply not going to get Americans to buy energy-efficient products and change their behaviors if they can’t see that there’s a problem.

2. We have to show them a new, empowered reality. You might ask, “How can they not see they have a problem?” Well, there is a reality that in some parts of the country, the winter was mild and low natural gas prices are actually driving rates down … so there may not be an actual bill increase problem right now. But also, most consumers feel totally helpless and hopeless when it comes to their utility bills. Over and over and over, we’ve heard Americans say, “It doesn’t matter what I do, the utility’s just going to keep jacking up their rates and charging me whatever they want. So why bother?” Programs like Opower help create a new reality by changing the game. Instead of comparing a consumer’s usage to their past performance or some misremembered number they have in their minds, they compare them to an outside force and create competition, which can catapult some people out of that helpless, victim place. Our program, Do 5 Things, works similarly, offering a prescriptive list of measures served up with very specific benefits and social nudges based on the consumer segment we’re talking to.

Bottom line: We have to stop marketing the drill and start marketing the hole. When we wake people up to a problem, offer them ways they can actually solve it and wrap all of that in benefits they actually care about, we’ll see the industry get back on track.

You know the old saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”? We think that this saying applies to energy efficiency. We have long tracked a large socioeconomic divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots” when it comes to energy-efficient product purchasing. While very low income folks can often receive support through special grants, lower-middle income families often fall through the cracks. We usually identify the target audience for energy-efficient home improvements (by identifying the group who has made more purchases) as homeowners with household incomes of $50,000 or more.

But our data shows that the target audience most likely to live in inefficient homes and have the greatest need for improvements falls in the $25,000–$49,999 household income range. Ironically, our recent Utility Pulse results also indicate that even when these lower income households make energy-efficient purchases and improvements, they are significantly less likely than higher income households to take advantage of available rebate and incentive programs. It’s crazy-making that the folks who need the help the most are the least likely to get it.

Other findings point to the need to go beyond the initial “catch” to develop a “fishing academy” – to provide follow-up education on how to change the way we consume energy in our homes. Fifty percent of Americans still don’t unplug their chargers and un-used appliances. And 40% still don’t use energy-saving thermostat settings. What’s even more troubling is that 50% of Americans were honest enough to admit that if they bought a more efficient washer, AC, etc., they would likely use it more than their old inefficient model – which would result in no real decrease in consumption. 

The energy efficiency industry needs to think about how to better train our fishing fleet, and we need to be more creative about where we fish. Utility Pulse offers ideas on how to do this – with some out-of-the-box tactics to better connect with lower-middle income households to raise awareness for energy efficiency programs and increase consumption reduction behaviors.   

We recently wrapped up analysis of our 2013 Utility Pulse study, in which we uncovered a wealth of information about the sometimes rocky relationship Americans have with their electric and natural gas utilities. While I’d like to spare the feelings of our utility industry readers, it’s hard to sugar-coat the statistics: Many Americans just don’t like their utilities. Overall, 43% are less than satisfied with their electric or natural gas utility. And while there’s certainly truth in the advice my mother gave me when I was in the sixth grade, “You just can’t make everyone like you, and you shouldn’t try,” there are definitely opportunities for winning over more people.

One of those opportunities is in making your customers aware that you have rebates, cash incentives and loan programs for energy-efficient products or home improvements. Even people who haven’t taken advantage of these offers, but know they exist, give their utilities higher satisfaction scores than those who are unaware of the programs. Just knowing that they’re available – that you’re offering something that could help them better manage their monthly bills – has a positive impact on perceptions.

Another opportunity is in telling your environmental responsibility story. We often get push-back from our utility clients when we advise them to tout their environmental initiatives. They worry that this opens the door for activists and NGOs to draw attention to their shortcomings. However, we see a strong correlation between the perception that a utility is environmentally responsible and customer satisfaction scores. In particular, initiatives related to the use of renewable energy have a  positive impact. Even though the vast majority of customers don’t participate in green power programs, most say it’s important that utilities offer them and generate at least some energy through renewable means.

These are just two of the many ways we’ve found for utilities to make more friends. If you’re not “feeling the love,” Utility Pulse 2013 would be a good read!