Green Branding

Green branding can transform your business and open up an amazing new market of conscious consumers who are keen to buy authentic green products and services. So what is a Green Brand and what is Green Branding? Are they defined by the product, the business or the consumer? Are popular “green brands” like the Toyota Prius or Clorox Green Works truly green?  What are the criteria for the rankings? It’s interesting that Wal-Mart has a high green brand ranking and that BP, in the days of Beyond Petroleum, was getting a lot of plaudits from the environmental community. BP would struggle to convince most ethical consumers that their green branding is relevant or credible, after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Green Branding Online

We at Bright Green Leadership are committed to helping our clients build effective green brands, and especially online. Social Media, blogs and videos offer an incredible platform for building a green brand. A lot can be learned from the launch of the Ford Fiesta in Europe through the social media campaign “Fiesta Movement”   In green business  Method Cleaning products provide a great case study of how to integrate online and offline green branding, and their People against Dirty campaign is very cool and also very effective in communicating their message.

Successful online Green Branding will use social media to engage its market, and conduct open and honest dialog with its community.  Conscious consumers demand this level of authenticity and transparency, and their perception of a brand is based on much more than how sustainable their product is or its carbon life cycle – important as they are. Indeed, conscious and ethical consumers are far more thorough and selective in their buying habits, and they need to be targeted very carefully. They are highly educated, knowledgeable and also skeptical. Anything that smacks of greenwash will rapidly backfire

Green Branding must have Substance

Green Branding is about style too, and it needs to be cool and relevant to its target markets. Ultimately, however, it  is about substance. It’s about the way a business communicates its message and its also about a perceived level of social responsibility. This is much more than clever marketing tactics and requires a genuine commitment to the triple bottom line. Businesses must be seen to taking their social and environmental responsibilities seriously, and making a positive contribution to the community and our planet. So when you want to build a green brand you need to consider a far greater range of factors than you would for most products, and make sure you are prepared for and committed to a genuine process and campaign.

The Balance of Green Branding

At Bright Green Leadership we specialize in helping clients find the right balance between powerful messaging and promotion on the one hand, and legitimate and substantial sustainable practices on the other. When this balance is achieved Green Branding can help to transform your business, and open up a huge new market of loyal customers who could one day become brand evangelists.