In my last post, I wrote about sustainability and how it is being weaved into the moral fiber of business today. I also touched on the fact that companies may be addressing sustainability now if, for no other reason than to say they have a stance on the environment.

People close enough to the environmental movement within business know that’s not a very strong reason on its own. So for those who want to know more about the benefits of addressing sustainability, I thought I would ask someone who has been pioneering this area to explain it for us. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Inc., and author of the new book, “Confessions of a Radical Industrialist” shared his thoughts with me recently and now you too can learn from Ray why a business should invest in sustainability—NOW.

Our conversation touches on everything from the path to sustainability for Interface, Inc., to what inspired Ray’s taking of the company down a sustainability path. Finally, Ray talks about the benefits of sustainability, the fact any business can and should do it and the importance of communicating sustainability efforts to internal and external audiences.

It enjoyed the opportunity to talk with one of the world’s most influential environmental business leaders and get his perspective on sustainability. Turns out he has the same outlook as HY-brid. I hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Ray as much I did having it. Whether it’s your first steps, or if you have already begun down the path, I hope this Podcast inspires you to look more in-depth at what you are doing to address your sustainability efforts. As always, HY-brid would like to help you communicate those efforts. So give us call or send us an email, it’s why we’re here.

For more information on Ray, I encourage you to go to www.rayanderson.com.

Subscribe to our Podcast via RSS or download the interview (m4a file for iTunes users) or download the interview (mp3 file for non-iTunes users)or listen below.

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It’s not always about how you market your business. It’s just as important to look at why you should be marketing it. And the issue of marketing your sustainability platform is a great example. Every organization is facing new energy challenges as the world shifts toward a more eco-conscious means of doing business, and the questions about your stance on the environment are being heard from all stakeholder levels. The increased political and societal pressure to curb carbon emissions and produce a meaningful message is inevitable. At this point, it would be detrimental for a company not to have a message created for how it plans to address the environment.

But how is the stance a business takes on the environment marketable? Should it be marketable? That depends on how it is approached. Never has there been more pressure for companies of all sizes to address sustainability. But doing so can’t happen without first understanding the “green” aspects of the business. A shotgun approach could lead to unnecessary expenditures and ultimately a “greenwashing” tag.

In previous posts and in those to follow, we have and will address how a business must look at what it has done to reduce its environmental impact. There are a number of ways organizations can collect that data- an energy audit is just one example. Once that information has been gathered, HY-brid works to help understand what makes sense from a communications standpoint for each of the stakeholders. The EcoMap (as we call it) process builds a message map for businesses to tie their environmental message into the overall corporate mission.

Once this map has been assembled, the sustainability message can be written. It is also at this point a company can determine exactly how much it wants to market what it has done. From the mapping process, a company can also learn how far it has to go to get to a sustainability message it wants to disseminate.

For more information on the EcoMap process, the questions to ask before you take your message to market or, if you simply want to learn more about HY-brid, send us a message, we would like to hear from you

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Cap and trade, energy efficiency, LEED buildings and renewable energy for business. All terms your audiences or customers are hearing and becoming very familiar with. With all the buzz around “green,” how you address your position on the environment is increasingly important. Your sustainability platform must project your environmental message across all audiences, internal and external. One segment taking increasing notice of green is the stakeholder- a somewhat loose term that envelops those from among others, the dealer/retailer audience to the supply chain, to those who own stock in a company.

A key reason for putting your sustainability platform in front of stakeholders is to keep them informed of how the company is addressing the rising number of environmental issues facing businesses of all types. With such a wide audience range, what makes sense from a sustainability perspective to one must also be pertinent to each of the others. That’s not to say that what you are saying to each gets communicated the same. What I do mean is that your platform remains the same but the terms and messages need to be communicated in a way that the audience sees the “what’s in it for me” has been met.

For instance, you may have three green certifications that make your product or service more sellable. To the dealer/retailer the certifications make sense in helping how they package that product and where in their store it is positioned. It also gives them an opportunity to promote their business as eco-friendly. That’s what’s in it for them.

To a stockholder, the fact you have three green certifications means something very different. An immediate question might be– are those labels going to help the price of the stock rise? The answer is maybe, but at the end of the day, what matters to this audience is a more global approach to your sustainability platform. The fact you have one may be enough to make them want to invest in you. If stock prices rise, that investor does better. That’s what’s in it for them.

Clearly there are many within your stakeholder audiences that are looking to work with and purchase stock in organizations with a solid environmental platform. This is another subset of your audience set and it too needs a message that makes sense. We will address this in a follow up post.

All of these examples are addressed in what HY-brid calls an EcoMap^sm. If you’ve been following me you know I have blogged about it before. It’s our way of helping clients understand how to put their environmental platform together—what audiences they have, what messages make sense to each of those audiences and how the platform ladders up to the overall corporate mission.

Have stakeholders asking what you are doing to address the environment? Have an environmental message and just don’t know how to put all the pieces together? The EcoMap is one way HY-brid can help. Questions on what your next steps are in navigating this issue? Let us know, it’s why we’re here.

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After my last blog titled One Green Message, Many Green Voices, I received a great comment from Keith P. His comment is:

Good starting points to take under consideration for establishing the green message within the proper conversations. The only thing I might challenge is how you reply within the social settings of facebook, twitter, tumblr, linkedin, myspace and brighkite when you are not the company spokesperson. Do you empower your employees to talk openly about how they view your green initiatives? Do you allow your employees to express their opinions and how they are helping the company be green? And do you engage people that discuss your company’s attempts at being green?

If the company has answered yes to this then you are a social business going green, if not your a company with a veil of secrecy of your green efforts and that is where you need help encouraging the conversation, because most likely you have bigger cultural issues.

Now if yes how can the EcoMap process help give the employees the framework of communication without sounding like they are talking points? How does the EcoMap process address when your Vendors and Consumers talk about your company? (Personal opinion on the last one–if you are embracing your Vendors and Consumers in a social context the conversation is more constructive, collborative, and innovative, which helps everyone in process make a difference.)

Looking forward to answers to these questions and follow-up blog posts on the process.

Thanks for the feedback Keith. HY-brid works with our clients to establish their environmental (green) platform and it’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach. To that end, it is much more than the green conversation(s) we address in our EcoMap process. We take into consideration such things as type of business, audience set(s), and messages that are not only pertinent to, but resonate with those audiences. This holistic approach to defining green for clients ladders up to the overall business goals and objectives and thus acts as an extension of the corporate mission.

In your comment you reference many of the social outlets being used today. We certainly address these in our communications planning, but it is again very different by client. One important thing to keep in mind is that not all businesses are marching to the same beat on social. We’ve found social marketing and social media are very new to a number of businesses, no matter their size and standing within their industry, and in fact we have visited with some very large corporations whose marketing teams are blocked from social sites. While we certainly encourage our clients to be as transparent as possible on their environmental stance, if they do not have the social tools in their arsenal (yet) we can only counsel them to use the tools they do have to promote their efforts.

But in our overall approach to social for those clients who have access to it, we look at it as a means of brand building. It is an extension of what can be done through traditional ads and PR but puts the brand building experience in the hands of the customer. That’s where being truly transparent plays a key role in how a business uses social in its integrated communications planning. The EcoMap process determines the audiences and messages for each, and from the Map, the tactics that make the most sense for those messages to be disseminated are determined. Social is a key ingredient in that tactical mix.

To answer your question about how we help manage messages when the people in the social space are not the spokespersons, we do give message points with hopes those socially communicating stay to them, but we also counsel our clients to develop social guidelines for employees to adhere to.

Thanks again for the great comment Keith.

Do you have questions about your environmental platform? Have comments on our process or HY-brid’s vision of green messaging and marketing? Let us know– it’s why we’re here.

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Recently I was meeting with a large corporation here in Milwaukee. In the course of discussing how HY-brid could help them take their environmental message to their numerous audiences, it became clear they have a bigger issue than just ensuring the message gets out.

Much like we have seen with other HY-brid clients, this organization has a large number of people in the field who at any time, could be thrust into the role of corporate environmental spokesperson. A scary thing to consider, especially in light of the fact this company has an international presence. As we talked, we fleshed out just how much of a problem not having a universal green message could be. We also discussed how, even if there were a universal message, it would be properly disseminated.

So how does an organization control its environmental message? How too does it ensure that message is laddering up to the overall corporate objectives and messaging? Not always easy, but it can be done. One environmental messaging platform is achievable, no matter the voice from which it comes.

Think about it this way- an internal communications/marketing team is like a sponge gathering up all information pertinent to a company’s environmental stance. As simple examples these might include process and product tidbits, sustainability reporting, community involvement projects, etc. Once gathered, it’s the role of that internal communications team (and their agency of course) to filter it and make it easy to understand based on the audience(s) to which it’s directed. At HY-brid we call this an EcoMap^sm. It’s a process we guide clients through and it results in that singular message, no matter who is in front of the camera- so to speak.

The EcoMap is just a start. Internal teams and the agencies they work with need to put the tactical elements that fall out of the mapping process into action. This can take weeks, months, and in the case of large businesses like the one I met with, it can sometimes take years. These elements are not simply speaking points but more so act as the mouthpiece of the organization and its environmental stance. Things like CSRs, web sites, and social marketing as examples help guide the company in the right green direction while those speaking (all of them) on its behalf put the green message to the masses.

Do you have your messages written and are your spokespersons all talking about it the same? These are questions you should be asking yourself and ones that we would like to help you answer and eventually communicate to your audiences. Questions on what your next steps are in navigating this issue? Let us know, it’s why we’re here.

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Yes, with a capital Y. A recent report from Johnson Controls in which more than 1,400 CEO’s, GM’s and VP’s were surveyed suggests a trend in energy efficiency that only a downturn in the economy could drive. The 2009 Energy Efficiency Indicator Report reveals a clear line between interest in green and action being taken.

The reason for the distinction? Capital, or lack thereof. Of those surveyed in 2009, 46 percent indicated they expected to make efficiency improvements financed with capital expenditures. Admittedly, this is a nice number—until you compare it to last year’s 56 percent who said they would make the improvements. In addition, the number one barrier (42 percent of respondents) to energy efficiency measures being implemented is limited capital availability. The 10 percent drop, coupled with the fact the report even had to introduce the barrier statistic (it wasn’t in 2008’s) shows just how much the economic situation has worked against the push toward environmental responsibility and stewardship.

There is no doubt that business leaders need to do what they can to keep people employed. The fact that green initiatives are taking a back seat is totally understandable, but they should not be cast aside for good. Corporate America seems to agree–according to the study, 45 percent of those surveyed still see building efficiency projects as their top carbon reduction strategy. So we know the want for getting these measures in place is there. The hope of course is that the economy turns around and the number of projects implemented increases with it.

So what side of this issue are you on? It’s a question you should be asking yourself and one that we would like to help you answer and eventually communicate to your audiences. Questions on what your next steps are in navigating this issue? Let us know, it’s why we’re here.

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According to the site ecolabelling.org there are more than 300 labels a company can apply in order to certify its products or services “green”. Wow. As you read more from me, you’ll get an understanding of my desire to have a more universal labeling approach, so, as you may have guessed, this issue is a big issue for me.

Collectively, we have millions of products and/or services we ask our end customers to buy. We assure them the highest quality standards have been adhered to; we even strive for our industry’s seal(s) of approval.

But wait a minute, just when everything seemed in its rightful place, along comes green. What are we to do with the seemingly endless amount of green labels being created every day? What do they even mean, and how do you figure out which is the best one for you? For your customer? Seems there could be as many questions as there are labels.

Any way, while others debate who should determine the aforementioned “umbrella green” label, you should keep yourself ahead of things. Put your best green, carbon-reducing-foot forward and communicate your stance on the environment- assuming you have one, and you should have one by now. That way, it won’t matter the definition of green or the end result of the label issue, you will have your product/service offering up to snuff. And oh, by the way, you will also be keeping your bottom line in check. Not a bad result of greening up your business.

We have links to our thoughts on the best of the current labels in our “sites we love” section. Questions on what you should do to prepare your green message, or how to strive for your industry’s label? Let us know, it’s one of the reasons we’re here.

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