Last week, I announced that Blue Tent is Going Green. This begs the question, “why?” Why does Blue Tent care about going green? After all the company is profitable at its current business. This isn’t a revenue issue. Our clients are NOT asking us to become a more sustainable marketing company. So what is driving this action?

I think two reasons are inspiring our initiative. The first is the desire to take action on an issue that is being highlighted everywhere we turn. People want to do good. They want to change “some” of their routines that they see as detrimental to the environment. We all feel that we can do better at protecting our home (earth). Even the most jaded, self-centered, doubting-Thomas suspects that something is up when weather patterns across the globe are acting out of character.

So that’s the first reason- empathy with our planet.

The second reason is that we value green. We value the idea of being green while making green. Yup…it’s true. Companies are in the business of making money. Blue Tent is no different. That said, we are bullish that there is a real opportunity for us to help our clients to articulate their green efforts. However, its going to take us spending money to learn about green marketing to eventually make some green.

So what are we committed to learning? First off, where we are being wasteful and energy inefficient. We are doing a green audit so we can understand all the issues of reducing waste and energy consumption. The process which began a month ago sometimes seems like we are focusing on trivial items. After all, shouldn’t we address all the major issues such as electricity, building insulation, travel, paper consumption, etc.? We’ve discovered that this is true, but there’s more to it… unfortunately. The devil is always in the details.

It’s the small things repeated numerous times each day that sometimes become the largest issues. Are computers going in to sleep mode every five minutes or are they draining more power by remaining on for 30-minutes? How about the paper plates in the kitchen/break area? Are they made from post-consumer material? Shouldn’t we replace the styrofoam coffee cups used during client meetings? If we do that, what is the cost of using hot water to wash ceramic mugs? What do we do with all the plastic to-go lunch containers?

These seem like small items to be concerned with when you’re running a business. However, this is where the issue of unnecessary waste lives (and the production side of that dilemma- what energy was required to produce that disposable convenience).

Now back to earning green… our goal is to make Blue Tent green and be transparent about it (hence this blog). Once that is achieved, we can be the “green” partner for companies who require this of their vendors. We hope this will create new business opportunities for Blue Tent.

The next part of our green initiative requires more learning and money. We need to become fluent in the language of green marketing.

I’ll leave that topic for another post titled The Language of Green Marketing.

Cheers/

Charley Erdman

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”

-Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Blue Tent Marketing is at the beginning of a new phase of growth. The phase will examine our activities with the goal of becoming a green company. Digital marketing is inherently more energy efficient than other industries merely by the nature of the product it delivers- pixel based communication solutions. But we are ready to go further…

Green… sustainable… energy efficient… socially conscious… environmental… organic…

These terms and more are being bandied about with increasing frequency. They represent the language of a maturing phenomena that is no longer a trend, but a sustained shift being revealed in the world’s top consumer cultures.

The cynic in all of us is skeptical of the marketing of the green movement. Let me repeat that last bit- the marketing of the green movement. This post is not about the social movement towards sustainable living. That is applauded. That is the call to action for our time.

When a company markets, they persuade. As consumers we either decide that their persuasive messages are authentic or not. Can we trust the green claims found in the marketing of our trusted products? How do we know if they are environmentally sensitive? The ability to verify their claims are, after all, nearly impossible.

We have to trust. We have to trust that the message is true.

A great sum of money is being spent every minute to help companies generate persuasive language. The consultants select words to trigger the proper mental images or feelings. If they are successful, we buy. If we are not convinced, we don’t buy.

Very simple… very difficult.

All of this leads to the purpose of this post… green marketing. Right now, we are engaged in becoming green- not figuratively, but literally. We are examining how we do business, how we operate and we’re being honest about the little things. After all, its the cumulative effect of the little things that result in either an integrated or disconnected company.

It is our hope and goal to make Blue Tent green. As the effort achieves results, then we can go out to the world and be honest about our immediate and evolving achievements towards limiting our environmental impact. Hopefully, we can even persuade our clients to become greener. That would be a great marketing story!

In the process, we’ll be learning the language of green first hand. Then once we are comfortable with the language, we can help our clients be true to their words. Only then will we be able to integrate green in to our green marketing.

Over the next weeks and months I will be creating a number of posts to document our journey. We will be honest about our successes and of our dilemmas. Join us by checking back in soon.

cheers/

Charley Erdman