Try this some time. Go to the paint department of your favorite home renovation store and try to count the shades of green. Bring a lunch; you’ll be there all afternoon. From “tropical seaweed” to “forest muse” (respectively from the current palettes of TerraChoice clients Benjamin Moore and Denalt), you’ll be offered hundreds or thousands of shades, hues and combinations. Hundreds of different interpretations of green exist, from a deeply devoted green to one that’s barely distinguishable from brown. Green isn’t just one color. In purchasing, as in paint, green means many, many different things. Choose the right shade and you connect. Get it wrong, and you leave it for the next guy. This is segmentation in our business – in environmental marketing. If you’ve attended one of our seminars, you’ve heard me talk about the ‘myth of the brown consumer’. It’s a simple idea: We now know that “environment” is a far-reaching issue. We know that it touches everything from wilderness preservation to human health, kids, communities, worker health and safety, and labor relations. These issues span a range of values from the deepest green to the most ardent (anti-green) brown. Environment touches every value, and, therefore, every value and every customer is – to some extent – ‘green’. It’s a question of values and language. The only limits on your ability to sell your environmental value proposition to everyone are the legitimacy of your science and your ability to speak your customers’ languages: To speak to them in terms of the values they already hold dear – whether or not ’environment’ per se enters the conversation. Your first move in tackling this challenge is to understand your customers. Segment them according to their most influential values. What moves and motivates them this year, or this quarter? Is it labor relations or share price? Is it corporate social responsibility (CSR), or public relations in the name of CSR? Is it environment, or worker health and safety? Study it, and start with what they care about. Your second move is an honest and rigorous study of your environmental value proposition, and its connection with the values of your customers. For EcoLogoM-certified products, this step is already half-done: the EcoLogoM criteria spell out the scientific terms of your environmental leadership. EcoLogoM-certified paints, for example, deliver certified advantages in terms of a reduction in toxic emissions to the environment and improved indoor air quality.
All that remains is for you to connect the dots between those science claims and the values of each audience. Map each science-based claim against the values of each audience. How does each translate? Your audience may not be interested in air quality (such as reduced VOCs) but are they interested in occupational health? They may not be interested in forest preservation, but still may be extremely attracted to high recycled content. When we help clients develop this map, we encourage them to do it graphically. Draw a list of the science-based advantages on the left margin of a page. On the other margin, and in order of priority, list the clients’ held values. Connect the items with lines and descriptive notes. Each line is a bridge – a translation – between your science and their priorities. This exercise will build a foundation, a thesaurus between you and your customers. The next step is to use that thesaurus more specifically to build your marketing communications. Our EcoMarkets 2007 research gives great insight into those communications. That will be the subject of the next issue of EcoMarketer! | 
