WATCHING THE COLBERT REPORT WEDNESDAY EVENING, I got a chuckle—like a maddening ride-it-out charley horse (it hurts-it’s funny-it hurts-it’s funny)—witnessing Stephen Colbert’s “ThreatDown” faux putdown of environmentalists “attacking” manufacturers of triple-ply and extra-soft toilet tissue. It was both ludicrous and enlightening, with both Greenpeace and Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Bathroom Tissue (see image to left) on the receiving end of Colbert’s mock ire (Richard Dawkins, promoting his new book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, was the evening’s guest, so you can imagine how he fared!).

Okay, I thought, here’s wiseacre Colbert poking fun at the banality of eco-friendly TP, which is at one end of the eco scale, let’s call it “eco geek,” where people are making informed everyday (small) decisions and changes that don’t hog the look how green I am! spotlight; actually you wouldn’t even be aware these decisions and changes were being made unless perusing their shopping lists or standing behind them in the checkout line. What an antipodal contrast to the more A-list-marketed world of next-gen hybrids, platinum LEED certification and designer bamboo blouses—what I’d like to call “eco chic,” definitely the other end of the eco scale. Both good for the world? Yes. Both needing a mainstream beyond-the-converted push? Again, yes, but with the often below-the-radar eco-geek products and services much more so.

JUST IMAGINE ALL THOSE WORTHY GREEN PRODUCTS AND SERVICES that simply slip beneath the great and glossy bandstand of consumer marketing noise/hype/hullabaloo tooting NEW & IMPROVED! CHEAPER! FASTER! LESS FUSS ‘N’ MUSS! GUARANTEED TO STEAMROLL & THOROUGHLY PULP THE COMPETITION! ad infinitum. A lot of green products—let’s say recycled TP or an organic hand soap concentrate—don’t get that big push, as more often than not, they cannot afford it, they’re a small operation more interested in achieving the triple bottom line than having to answer to a board, stockholders or numbers-obsessed management. So what happens? Well, for the eco-geek crowd, they’re plugged in, they’ve probably got a well-thumbed copy of Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy on the shelf, they’re already making informed buying decisions, they’re visiting the right stores, shopping at farmers’ markets, reading the right publications and blogs, staying attuned to environmental policies, trade and business practices, getting involved with community and, well, the list goes on and on, which is a very good thing, indeed. Yep, we’re talking about “the choir,” which in this case doesn’t need to be preached to. They get it!

But for those (other) masses, who make up the vast majority, it’s a different picture entirely. And I wonder: Did a percentage of the “Colbert Nation” chuckle as I did during that “ThreatDown” segment, but then perhaps actually go ahead and check out what Greenpeace has to say about recycled tissue (the org even provides a handy tissue guide PDF and free iPhone app), and while they were at it take a gander at the Seventh Generation website and ponder the company’s “Did you know?” factoid about potential savings of 1.3 billion gallons of water if every U.S. family purchased recycled TP? I’d like to think yes, and a small percentage shifts into the eco-geek realm, if only for toilet tissue. Perhaps they’ll check out more products from Seventh Generation and consider some recommendations from Greenpeace—a small victory but a victory nevertheless!

I like how John Grant puts it in his superb Green Marketing Manifesto (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2007):

It’s about making breakthrough green stuff seem normal (and not the other way around). For the majority of people (outside the dark green fringes), living, shopping, working, traveling and enjoying life in a sustainable way appear difficult and arduous [my emphasis]. Our job as creative marketing people is to make it intuitive, second nature, just common sense. We need more ideas like “organic,” whereas too much is still at the “chemical-free horticulture” stage.

So you’ve got this titanic omnivorous consumer collective—let’s call it an octohog—that would greatly benefit from watching The Lazy Environmentalist (if they had the Sundance Channel, which of course would probably mean that they were already part of “the choir” and probably not in need of converting or of shedding their green product/service skepticism—do you see where this reasoning can quickly go?!) that are quite content with their lifestyle choices, which, in their minds, balance convenience, ease, price, performance and availability. Why go that extra step, or steps, to do something to help save the planet, which, let’s face it, is a) past helping, b) not really in trouble—what a load of hooey, c) the government’s responsibility, d) something my family and I will get around to eventually/maybe?

Therein lies the rub, for sure. Some of these folks may well aspire to the greener posture of the eco-chic crowd of, say, that 3G Prius is sure cool, that SIGG bottle has a sweet design (the company’s had major oops! issues with its bottles, though) or even that free-with-membership Sierra Club pack will score points on the trail!—all good because such actions, cumulatively, affect positive change. Can they be “gateway adoptions” to further environmentally responsible changes? I want to think so, if they raise awareness in even a minute part of this vast collective: every bit helps. It’s like tuning in to Ken Burns’ National Parks: America’s Best Idea doc currently running on PBS—big viewership + public television prestige = it’s got to help—nature and national parks are cool! We’ve got to keep ‘em going and keep ‘em green (or ochre or indigo or whatever their natural color is).

But from a marketing standpoint, and getting back to Grant’s idea of making green stuff seem normal, it’s critical to be wary of both the perception of greenwashing and of product inferiority—people are skeptical. Market researchers Ipsos Reid reported that “Consumers appear to be wary of companies who label their products as being ‘green’ or environmentally friendly,” and found that seven in ten Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that “when companies call a product ‘green’ (meaning better for the environment), it is usually just a marketing tactic.” (Thanks to Joel Makower‘s Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business [New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009] for pointing out this report.) And if skepticism is the beginning of Faith, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, there’s a whole lot of converting ready to take place!

Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston’s Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2009) makes this point time and again:

THE THIRD BUTTON
Marketing the green aspects of a product can be a tough proposition. Most successful green marketing starts with the traditional selling points—price, quality, or performance—and only then mentions environmental attributes [my emphasis]. Almost always, green should not be the first button to push.

Okay, it’s not quite a “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” proposition, but it’s pretty darn close—more than making green stuff seem normal, it’s making green stuff actually better, building the case that we’re talking about a superior product versus all others, and oh yeah, (near sotto voce)  it’s green, too, which helps everybody and ideally even a few generations down the road, or as the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy puts it, “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” We should push “better” not “greener” as the driver of overall perception, be it eco-geek small scale or eco-chic limelight, like the momentous ideas with momentum of “less is more” and “smaller is better,” turning shamefully away from what’s been previously irresistible to, as Dinesh D’Souza describes it, “the first mass affluent class in world history.”

So thanks, smart-silly-perceptive-goofy Mr. Colbert. Greenpeace (they’ve already linked to your segment on their blog), Seventh Generation and a whole, whole bunch of us are quite pleased with your redemptive “ire.” May the word spread far and wide—and a faithful anti-mass-affluent flock soon assemble.

—Allen