Recently, I was introduced to a great approach that does an outstanding job of depicting the progression that organizations can make when implementing a sustainability strategy.

Many organizations are comfortably nestled in the bottom two levels: either wrestling with current or potential liabilities or environmental regulation challenges, or seeking to cut waste (and thus cost) out of their manufacturing or service delivery processes.

Few organizations reach the restorative level, where they are actually working to restore the degraded environment and fragmented, often unhealthy communities.

One of the most fascinating types of organizations to work with is one that is trying to leverage “Green Marketing.” To be truly effective at green marketing, an organization must understand both consumer/customer behavior and have woven sustainable principles transparently into both the brand and how it is marketed.  Frequently, many put forward their level 1 & 2 accomplishments and believe that these factors alone will differentiate them.  Those organizations quickly learn that they are in fact playing catch up, and that these efforts have become “cost of entry” to competing in their category / industry.

Consider what your organization is doing in terms of energy use, waste generation, sustainable sourcing, and employee health & safety.  Where would you fall on the path?

In 2012, we at the Sustainable Agency will be watching the following trends:

1) Device proliferation: Companies and organizations will be trying to effectively reach their target audience on multiple devices, notes Cheryl Larson, integrated marketing expert.  “Audiences will continue to fragment as consumers divide their time between computers, smartphones and tablets and, to a lesser degree, traditional media,” said Larson. “Marketers will need to become more savvy content marketers in order to engage with their audience on their preferred devices.”

2) Search in your pocket: A full 44 percent of Americans own a smartphone, according to Nielsen.  A smartphone gives a potential customer the opportunity to search for your organization’s (or your competitor’s) hours of operation, services, and events from their car, the hockey rink, or when they are standing outside your door.  Organizations that can meet people’s information needs and provide a smooth, easy-to-use mobile interface will be most successful.

3) Shared Experiences: Farmers’ markets, which have shown double digit growth in recent years, tap into this desire to connect with your neighbors in a pleasant, local atmosphere. Smart marketers will fulfill this desire for human connection by creating new opportunities for shared experiences.  “I see a distinct link between the breakneck pace of smartphone use and the growing desire even die-hard techies have for more human contact,” says shopper marketing strategist Anne Howe.  Howe elaborates at her shopperannie blog.

4) Gamification: We’ve written about gamification before. People want to be engaged! By thinking about people’s motivation for buying your product or using your service, then building in an element of play or competition, you can build loyalty and encourage positive word-of-mouth.

Here’s to more trend watching in 2012!

Take it from my experience, when you search for electronics waste recycling, the information and images that you see are horrifying.  I fear a doom-and-gloom message deters the “average” recycler, making people feel they can’t do enough and what is the point.  So, I set out to find a more positive e-waste recycling message that other communities and companies could realistically look to for their messaging – without spending a fortune!

A good example of a city’s campaign for electronics waste is Toronto’s Chuck and Vince videos, part of the city’s “We Want It!” curbside recycling communication program.  “We Want It!” features a series of videos with two men in orange jumpsuits looking for your old electronics.  They dance in gorilla masks, jump out of recycling bins, and play recycled electric guitars.  The message of the commercials is if you have electronic waste – “WE WANT IT!”  It’s one of those low-budget, but entertaining commercials where viewers are going to either like them or hate them… BUT people will know that they WANT IT!

When thinking about how you’d like to communicate about electronics recycling in your community, I’d again caution against doom-and-gloom scare tactics.  If you come up with a creative and unique campaign that goes against the typical dark message, you will stand out. And, I’d venture, make more of an impact.

Electronics waste, or e-waste, typically includes both hazardous and valuable materials, so it presents both an opportunity and a challenge for companies and communities.  Examples of electronic waste items include: televisions, personal computers and accessories, printers, scanners, fax machines, cell phones & MP3 players.

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating/curating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.  — Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute

Now, if you are a non-profit or a municipality, you might call it “stakeholder” or “citizen” action, but the goal is the same.  By effectively creating unique content that positions you or your organization as a leader in your field, you gain exposure that is well beyond what traditional marketing techniques would achieve.  Here are a couple of ways to start using content marketing:

Find Your Content Nuggets

Your content may be delivered in many different forms, perhaps as a humorous story or as a testimonial from an influential partner.  For example, let’s say your organization helped an important charity in town to receive more recycled materials. The recorded testimonial from the head of the charity might be used in a blog post on their organization’s website and as a video on Youtube, both promoted with links from your and their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

Create a Content Calendar

Creating a content calendar is just one of the strategies I discuss in an article published in the October edition of Recycling Today magazine.  Any organization can benefit from the creation of a content calendar (for downloadable content tools, check out www.demandmetric.com).  Or it could be as simple as a printed calendar that someone fills in.  Your content calendar can include the nuggets that you have selected: news, messages, events or stories.  You also will want to specify the channels through which they will be shared, such as website, blog, newsletter, or Facebook.  Good content will work in multiple channels, including printed pieces, such as brochures, and advertising, such as print or radio ads.

Stumped? A marketing or communications professional can help you to create and implement a content calendar.

 By Jenny Gogan, The Sustainable Agency

In the olden days (um, about five minutes ago in PR years), every project started with the press release. The boring headline, the boring first introductory paragraph, the made up quote, the conclusion and the About the Company ending. Then you sent the boring release to 300 of your closest reporters, crossing your fingers someone would find what you wrote interesting. You also spent good money to have the press release “go live” across a wire.

Things have changed drastically. As I’ve said before, press releases are still important. BUT the system has changed. You no longer have to write the same boring release (unless you need a little sleep). Please do not send out the mass release to the poor reporters’ email addresses and definitely do not spend $400 to send your release across a wire.

You may be one of those many recycling organizations that are facing plateaued recycling numbers. Many people are recycling, however, there is a lack of knowledge on what people can recycle, and how it can affect their community. Recyclers – you can INCREASE tonnage or set outs through the effective use of public relations.  I’ll share specific PR strategies for recyclers in my next blog post.

I have been working in public relations for eleven years and my mother still doesn’t understand what it is that I do (she also still uses AOL for her email, but that’s a whole different story).  Public relations is a mystery for many people.  And rightly so…  If you were to ask five PR practitioners what it is they do, you’d likely get five different answers.

The Public Relations Society of America (www.prsa.org) says this: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”  That doesn’t give the best description, though.  They go on to explain, “The earliest definitions emphasized press agentry and publicity, while more modern definitions incorporate the concepts of “engagement” and “relationship building.”  I think that gives people a better real-world understanding of public relations.

Most people recognize their organization should communicate with their audience.  When it comes to PR, many may think, “well I wrote a press release, I’m all set.”  Or they may think the opposite, that PR is so difficult that you need a very expensive PR agency.  I believe that PR sits somewhere in the middle.  Please understand that in this day and Internet age – a standard press release won’t do much but clog your website (on the plus side though, yay search engine optimization!). a

I will spend a few blog posts focusing on what YOU can do to start communicating today.  The tips and tactics will focus on recycling organizations and the objective will be increasing recycling use, but these tools can be used elsewhere.  The first post will highlight the use of traditional media (press publications and radio / TV).  The second post will highlight social media and events.  All will have a similar message though…  As in everything business related, it comes down to the relationships.  Your audience is looking for an interesting story.  If you truly think your story is blah (and I have in the past), they will too.

For many people, recycling has become habit.  And habits can be difficult to break — once a newspaper bundler, always a newspaper bundler…

So, in order to help recycling communicators and educators, the Sustainable Agency blog is sharing ideas for ways to Reconsider Recycling.  Our first suggestion is to add game elements to your communication or the concept of gamification. Gamification is defined by gamification expert Dr. Michael Wu as the use of game attributes to drive game-like player behavior in a non-game context.

Or, simply, using elements of games to drive certain behavior, such as a competition or collaboration, around a non-traditional topic (e.g. recycling).

One example of this is to create a simple competition.  In Huntington Woods, Mich.,  a crew of volunteers visits weekly curbside set-outs and then awards a distinctively colored recycling bin or cart to the “Recycler of the Month.” This simple game has generated publicity, goodwill, and contributed to higher rates of recycling the suburban community.  It also creates a “badge” for aspiring recyclers.

How might your organization weave game-like behavior into its communications?  How could you encourage:

• Engagement
• Interaction
• Competition
• Collaboration
• Awareness
• Learning

Dear Marketers –

I will not be mean.  I will not tell you that we’ve been lacking in creativity.  That we’ve been singularly focused.  That we haven’t listened to our customers.

What I will tell you is we need to bring fun back into green marketing.  What is funny about saving the earth, you say?  I don’t know.  What is funny about after shave and personal stock trading?  Perhaps a silly self-centered man on a horse or a baby with a handheld phone.

So, I say for the health of marketing  – the first company to make green funny… WINS!