In short, James lives with his horrible aunts after becoming an orphan. One day a mysterious man gives him some supernatural crocodile tongues which cause the giant peach to grow. His aunts are run over by the giant peach during his escape. On his journey, James has numerous adventures with his new insect friends on the peach and he saves their lives many times before landing in New York. Here, he is no longer sad and lonely, but respected and admired for his adventures with the peach which everyone wants to hear about.

You see, our customers want to be heroes too. They want to be successful, admired and respected. They too want to overcome obstacles and challenges they’ve faced and be known for rising above them. By telling a good story of how your product or service helped them do this can be very effective in getting the attention of potential customers. It can be as easy as getting hold of a couple of testimonials. Or, if you happen to be selling giant peaches I guess it won’t be that difficult either

Let’s roll back a couple of years. I’d always been into technology from a young age and when the minidisc player came out I had to get one. It was a step above the cassette players. Hours of music, better sound and improved battery life. All my friends were amazed, interested and desperately wanted one. Most of my friends got one for their birthdays. Why? It was a remarkable product in its time, it utilised new technology to enhance people’s life experience.

Now, if we take a look at some recent innovative green products they really are pushing the boundaries, making them even more interesting and attention grabbing. For example, we’ve got billboards made into mats, clothing being made from abandoned tents and even a football that generates electricity. And let’s not forget the “wow” factor of Audi’s R8 e-tron electric car.

In the future we’ve got even more remarkable products coming our way, if you thought batteries made from viruses sounded unimaginable, take a look at this on TED. And so there you have it, green products in many ways embrace the design led marketing philosophy, but we all know there’s more to it than a product being just extraordinary. So don’t worry, our marketing cat is not out of the bag! Till next time

Why is this important to eco-products? We want our consumer to be emotionally attached to our products, not just to get them sold but so they keep them for longer. We live in a throwaway society, people are unaware of the issues surrounding energy use and production, lifecycle assessments have shown that 80% of total energy use of a product comes from manufacturing. Our goal should be to foster emotional connections with people and their products, hopefully leading to retention, this is much tougher than selling a Toyota Prius to someone who wants an eco-friendly status. It requires more than just marketing, it needs creative design which allows upgrade and repair of products easily, something which we don’t often see in the marketplace. For example, it’s too easy to upgrade to a new phone when your contract expires than retain the current one.

However, it is unlikely for businesses to adopt the strategy of advising consumers to retain their products, after all this would be uncompetitive and would result in a loss of revenue if people didn’t buy anymore. The opposing argument would be if manufacturers made upgrading products easier than money would be saved in producing a new product from scratch and it would also promote brand loyalty.

Is there an easy solution? I don’t think so. Consumers need clear direction, for people to form an e-ttachment to products and retain them for longer isn’t just the job of the marketer. It requires ingenuity of design, education, ease of repair and upgrade, and financial incentives for consumers.

What I’m thinking is, why can’t we use best before dates on other products? For example, if electrical products had their lifespan clearly indicated it would let customers make an accurate assessment of the cost per year and more importantly it would reduce waste from people throwing away stuff after using it for a short time. There are the obvious technicalities of creating an eco-labelling scheme which assesses the life cycle of a product but I believe this comes back to something I’ve talked about before, providing people with the information to make a choice.

I agree, eco-labelling alone won’t be enough to change consumer behaviour but it’s a necessity to make clear and understandable information available for consumers. The truth is, a sustainable product which competes on price and performance will always find itself into the hands of a consumer. People may be willing to pay a premium for sustainable products such as organic and fair-trade foods but the goal should be to branch out from niche markets and make sustainable products accessible to the wider public. It’s good to see how some brands are using their well known names and bringing eco-credentials to their products to create more awareness (and profit of course), but there’s still a long way to go for many household products and clothing ranges.

A customer who is aware of the eco-credentials of a product and alters their buying choice accordingly, has the potential to influence businesses as that person creates a demand for that product range. If enough customers have that want, a demand large enough for suppliers to respond to is generated, this can also promote further investment in sustainable products.

For example, the increase in demand for fair-trade and organic products in the last few years is a response to changing consumer preferences. The success of fair-trade and organic products is partly related to good labelling, an area which eco-products can really improve on. A good example of how an industry could be changed by consumer choice is cars. If a car manufacturer had a car with minimum fuel efficiency of 90 mpg and more consumers had a preference for this model, then competition would not only push other car manufacturers to develop such cars, but also the original car manufacturer to make 90mpg standard across all its range. The power of choice editing can apply to all industries and its effects in sustainable development will be partly attributable to effective eco-labelling.

Buying something is a choice we make, it’s a behaviour influenced by many things such as:

Psychological issues: eg values and beliefs. For example, a biocentric worldview.

Contextual factors: eg cost and availability of resources. For example, some people may not be able to afford locally grown food.

Personal capabilities: eg knowledge and skills. For example, knowledge of the effects of climate change.

Habits: ie our unconscious behaviours. For example, leaving lights switched on.

This brief overview on what needs to be addressed in trying to promote environmental behaviour shows us how complex it can be. A single approach will only be successful to a limit and a holistic approach is needed if future projects are to be effective.

The example demonstrates how now is the time to be more honest, transparent and credible than ever before. It isn’t enough for a company to have a single green product while 99 others have no consideration to the environment. Consumers are more demanding; a company needs to be not only green but provide products that challenge non environmental products on cost, design and product life.

Being green continues to be a trend and with companies seeking to market this aspect of a product; values such as transparency, honesty and being credible are important things a marketer should consider in order to ensure a product has the correct green claim. There will be a time when being green will become standard for many products, in the same way that we are no longer sold a refrigerator because it is CFC free. All modern refrigerators now are! Until then we can only market ourselves as green if we actually are, in the hope we don’t pollute the image of being green to our consumers.

Climate change is different to other challenges that the world faces. For example, a hurricane is an immediate perceivable threat to people in the area because of the damage it can cause. Climate change on the other hand is more difficult to perceive. The cause and effect have a greater delay; if someone was to use their car everyday it would be difficult to say that they were directly responsible for a rise in sea levels or temperature in 2015.

Climate change is closely related to science and not everyone knows what’s exactly happening. This makes it difficult not only to realise how our actions affect the environment, but also the specific outcomes of our actions. A warmer climate to a layperson may be interpreted as a better summer for holidays without recognising the numerous implications from a rise in global temperature.

Trying to alter how people perceive climate change is not an easy task but changing the way we communicate is important. Campaigns should be portraying things that people understand by using simple English and calls to action with benefits. For example, “switch of your lights to save our planet and reduce your bills,” sounds much better than “reduce the carbon footprint in your household”. Environmental behaviours are dependent on understanding and communication. Accepting that many people still don’t fully understand issues surrounding climate change is the first step to a successful marketing campaign.

Some manufacturers are now beginning to tell us the grams of carbon emitted when producing a product. This has been noticeable especially on food. This post looks to see if we can make this information easier to understand and whether there’s scope for wider inclusion of carbon counting.

A bag of crisp requires around 80 grams of carbon to produce, but what does this really mean to a person? Packaging doesn’t indicate whether this is good or bad and whether any green manufacturing processes have gone into making the product. How useful is this information when there are no guidelines for how much carbon someone’s activities should produce in one day. The real issue here is the difficulty of creating daily carbon consumption guidelines and including all our different activities into one model.

Another point to consider here is our lack of information when we make any ecological choice. Globalisation is the one of the biggest blocks; it has separated many people in the western world from making/growing things and then using them. Therefore, our ability to make rational ecological choices is limited by the amount of information we have regarding the stuff we use.

A red, amber and green carbon system on our food packaging and other goods would make day to day use of carbon footprints more understandable to everyone. Anyone out there want to help us make it happen?

Can we say a product or service has a “marketing baseload”? The baseload in this instance would be the resources required constantly to market and sell a product. The costs would be the amount being spent everyday on services such as SEO, pay per click and email marketing campaigns. On the non-digital front costs would include the daily rate for adverts or the cost of a marketing consultant.

The aim for both baseloads is to be low. Energy analysis and efficiency measures can reduce the electrical baseload. The marketing baseload requires a different approach. Essentially, it is dependent on product development and innovation. A great product doesn’t need big marketing and advertising budgets, the product does the “talking”. More specifically, the consumer markets the excellent product. In the age of social media, this should be the aim of the development team. The result? A low marketing baseload!