Green(er) Cup

If, with three sentences on a slip of paper, I could help you turn your company just a little “greener,” would you be interested?

You can do it if you make insulated travel tumblers available to your employees and customers as one of your corporate ad specialties. The one in the photo above is a stainless steel model…but after all these years, there are literally hundreds of styles, all built on the same general principles: a hand-sized container with [a] double-wall vacuum insulation and [b] a firm-fitting, non-spill top or lid with [c] a slide opening.

Here are my three sentences (and see four spiffier options below):

Use this insulated mug next time you visit your favorite coffee shop or convenience store, instead of taking your beverage out in a disposal cup. And keep using it again and again: You could save your local landfill – and the environment – a lot of waste. Thanks from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

Think of this as the ad-specialty version of repurposing content if you like. Truth is, our environment could use a little help on the to-go cup front. Writing in the November 2007 issue of Fresh Cup, Lois Maffeo makes a couple of telling points.

First, the standard paper-and-plastic go cup is a key part of the retail coffee biz. You know it – everybody knows it. You only have to look around at how many people are carrying Starbucks go cups into meetings…and just about everywhere else.

Second, the “average American office worker’s annual consumption of 500 beverages in disposal cups” means that trash baskets, garbage trucks and landfills are overwhelmed with the things. These are objects made of paper or plastic (or both) that are put to use for an estimated 20-30 minutes. Maffeo says that the conventional go cup is one of America’s quickest paths to the waste stream: buy it, use it, throw it away. In half an hour tops.

One answer that’s being stirred (not shaken) by the cup industry…uh, the paper product manufacturers…is creating go cups with renewable resources, or post-consumer recycled content. And this is a good one, even if it means that retailers who offer compostable cups will pay two or three cents more per cup than for a paper cup. We’ll end up paying for that, but it’s worth it for the benefit.

The better, greener answer is the insulated travel cup or tumbler – the one that you’re likely already making available to customers and prospects. (And no, I am not being paid by the Advertising Specialty Institute for this post…no promotional fees for me, thank you. Although I am open to discuss…)

No one but you and I will know if you start putting a bit of paper inside each of your company’s promotional tumblers; and add a little extra environmental messaging to your corporate brand platform.

I asked some of my colleagues if they could make my own sentences sharper or wittier. They did. With thanks to each, here are their suggestions.

1. “I cut the word count by 37% but don’t think it’s any more provocative,” Graham Rust of Rust2 in Prague said. His option:

Use this insulated mug every time you visit your favorite coffee shop or convenience store (instead of taking yet another disposable cup) and you’ll cut local landfill, and help our environment. Thanks, from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

2. A different take from long-time Houston copywriter Bill Holicek goes like this:

Call me Max the Mug! Use me again and again at your coffee shop and carryout. You save our trees and landfills. And show eco-friendly clout.

3. From “New Jersey Jack” Goldenberg on the East Coast:

Adding waste to the environment? Stop! Littering Earth with disposable coffee cups? Stop! Start using this insulated mug ever time you drink a cup of Joe! From the Green Thinkers at XYZ Company.

4. The principal of Simply Communicate, Jamie Roark, sent this one:

Enjoy this insulated mug instead of a disposable cup each time you visit your favorite coffee spot. Know that every time you sip, the environment sighs. Thanks from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

However you say it, you can help save the planet – one cup of coffee at a time.

I owe the idea of this post to Bobbie Ireland and Fran LaGrone at Wood Group (who sent me the photo); and Maggie Seeliger at KBR. All of them, at various times, have given me one or more insulated travel tumblers with their corporate logos on them. I use these tumblers a lot…just the way I describe in this post. And thanks to everyone for participating.

Truth Expected

The day before the integrity article appeared in Advertising Age (see below), Jim Blackburn wrote an opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle “Outlook” section. You can read the entire article here – or read this take-out:

I want truth from the corporations in my community. I know that corporations must make a profit. I acknowledge that aspect of a corporation, and so should the company. By definition, a corporation is an entity that is created to generate profit (unless the entity is a nonprofit corporation). I hope that other goals and objectives enter into corporate thinking, but all of us should recognize that profit is a primary concern – and please do not disrespect me by pretending otherwise.

Similarly, when there is a crisis or a problem, I expect the truth. Don’t tell us that there is no problem when one exists. The priority in an accident is the safety and health of the community.

Blackburn is not only an environmental lawyer. He’s a professor of the subject in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University. This is clearly stated in the article’s descriptive paragraph about him.

I point this out because this blog is supposed to be about marketing and advertising and so is this post. Blackburn specifically asks, “What should we ask of corporations in our lives?” His answers are as much about marketing as they are about environmentalism.

Blackburn’s expectations, in order, include competency, truth (see above), relationship, respect and trust, conscience, social contract, a view to the future, and partnership. It seems to him that these concepts are “good starting points” for change. They’re just as valid for advertising as they are for production or operations.

(So yes, we’re talking about the Stakeholder Rule© again). Am I belaboring this unmercifully? I’m waiting for more advertisers to catch on to the idea that social interactions can influence how brands are perceived in the marketplace, and how the companies behind those brands perform.

This is an issue for every worker, every consumer…every stakeholder, in fact. Join the vanguard of our particular “proletariat” – the class of people who want to hold the owners of capital and the means of production responsible and responsive. Besides, if you always tell the truth, you won’t have to remember what stories you make up.

“Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Truth “Official”

Praise be to God, it’s now fully endorsed: “Integrity in marketing is not optional.” I know this is the new hosanna because Lynn Upshaw says so in a July 30 article in Advertising Age, addressed to Chief Marketing Officers.

Upshaw is a marketing consultant and a faculty member at the UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. His book proclaims “truth” is the answer in a skeptical world and I’m glad he’s has written it.

What amuses me is that by publishing his article, Ad Age endorses the concept. By implication, truth is the next big thing.

If companies (and governments) would adopt this odd idea of telling the truth, it would make a nice change from screwing every stakeholder in sight – I do believe I’ve mentioned this a time or two.

Think of Upshaw’s article (if you can access it) as necessary reading, if only to help reinforce the idea that ethical behavior is good for business: “Last year, more than 75% of Opinion Research respondents said they preferred to buy from a company that operates ethically, even if they have to pay more.”

I’d like to thank the editors of Ad Age for agreeing to portray this truth thingy where many readers might be able to read it.

Bettter yet, buy Upshaw’s book and review the companies (such as Herman Miller and Johnson & Johnson) he accuses of telling the truth to stakeholders. They’re practicing what he preaches.

Thanks to Susan Kirkland for bringing this article to my attention.

Nonlinear Tipping

You can call it the “Law of Unintended Consequences” if you like. I prefer to think of certain situations as nonlinear tipping points. This phrase comes from Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson – he’s referring in this particular novel to the idea that a major global climate shift can happen in as little as three years:

It was such a radical notion that it had forced climatologists to acknowledge that there must be nonlinear tipping points in the global climate, leading to general acceptance of what was really a new concept…abrupt climate change.

Now apply this concept to marketing. Two examples come immediately to mind.

Who would have expected (or anticipated) that Enron would collapse so suddenly – and take an entire multi-billion-dollar natural gas marketing industry with it? With hindsight, Enron-watchers could, in fact, reconstruct the snarky deals which would bring the company down…so this part reflects 20/20 hindsight. But to topple a complete industry? I think this makes it nonlinear.

Who would have expected that Wal-Mart’s hiring of advertising chief Julie Roehm from Chrysler in February 2006 would lead to such a massive, indeed radical change in the major retailer’s relationships with its stakeholders? In fact, Roehm says in this article, “I was hired by Wal-Mart as a change agent a little less than a year ago.” So the objective was clear (in her view) from the outset; it’s this progress of events that led Wal-Mart to a non-linear tipping point.

So (according to this argument), abrupt changes in the marketscape can happen quickly – as with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force “guerilla marketing” campaign’s unusual effects on Boston…ultimately silly in this case.

But I wonder if there are other nonlinear tipping events in progress right now: ones that we’ll recognize only in hindsight. Or when something blows up in a marketer’s face.

Photo © Destonian, Dreamstime.com

Culture Club

Companies that try to change their business model, their brand’s approach to markets and their operations run into a similar and vexing problem – one I call the “culture club.”

Change will never occur if you can’t convince the stakeholders in your company’s culture that change is good. There may be every good reason – financial, operational, and even marketing – to change the direction of your company’s brand. But your managers and workers, some of whom may have been with the firm for many years, are the company’s culture. Without their consent, the culture won’t change: it’s like your employees hold a club over your head.

One intent behind my earlier post about Pitney Bowes was to begin a dialogue about changing the path – and the brand meaning – of a company as it moves forward. As many older firms do, Pitney Bowes wants to transform the way its customers, prospects and investors view the firm. I wonder, though, if phrases like “The mailstream is all around you—a global force synonymous with commerce” have been absorbed and agreed upon by the corporation’s 33,000+ employees.

If your employees don’t agreed with what you’re doing, they will occlude the fulfillment of your efforts to transform the company. Not only will they block the changes, they’ll become reactionary voices and undermine your work.

Joel Staff just stepped down as CEO of Reliant Energy. He’s become an expert in corporate turnarounds. (I knew him when he first became CEO of Baker Hughes; 10 years later, he led a management buyout of National Oilwell and turned that into a $16 billion company. He took over Reliant in August 2003. He in on record saying:

…at Reliant and National Oilwell there was a lot of the sense that the problem, the enemy, was within the company, so people didn’t demonstrate respect for each other…I think I gained a deeper understanding of how powerful people are when they get committed and own the vision.

How many companies do you know where “the people” are committed to the corporate vision and direction? Mustang Engineering has been a positive example in previous posts. My sense is that Caterpillar is another, although I could change my mind based on a current lawsuit.

Negative side? I suppose you could look at Enron before the crash – at least among its senior executives. They clubbed the brand (and an entire market sector) into a bloody mess. The victims of its top-down version of the culture club were its employees, its stockholders and even a whole industry.

I propose a rule: A company’s position ought to take hold – and take place – in the minds of all its stakeholders. I emphasize the word “all” because the internal stakeholders, the employees, are frequently ignored when it comes to fostering change – at least that’s my observation. I’ll call this the Stakeholder Rule (absent a better name).

When I present the Stakeholder Rule to clients I usually ask, “Is your company’s culture bottom-up or top-down?” It’s not a complex question. When I explain that I’m attempting to discover who owns the company’s culture, it is usually answered rather honestly. So I’ve been fortunate in my clients.

An honest answer is usually the starting point for one of two recommendations. No. 1, make certain that the transformations you want to affect are communicated to and involve the interactive participation of all your internal stakeholders. Or No. 2, conduct intensive internal research to discover the real answer. Once No. 2 is executed, it’s safe to proceed with No. 1.

Adopt the Stakeholder Rule and you can avoid the worst outbreaks of culture clubbing. Willing adoption of changes by your employees will give your transformative ideas a better chance to survive and thrive.

If you’re uncomfortable with the term “culture club,” maybe you’ve heard the expression, “tiger by the tail?” It’s one of several versions of a story about a young soldier who leaves his laager in the evening. His mates and officers hear a great thrashing about in the jungle outside the camp. Then comes the soldier’s voice, calling out for his officer: “Sir! Sir! I’ve caught a tiger by the tail!”

His captain shouts back, “Well done, Private Jones! Bring him into the camp.”

“I can’t, Sir. He won’t let me.” Different metaphor. Same idea.

Photo © Paha from Dreamstime.com. “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Pitney Bowes

In the year of the US postage stamp’s 160th anniversary, seems like a good time to talk about changing the course of a company.

America’s first official stamps were offered for sale on 1 July 1847, in 5¢ and 10¢ values. Seventy-plus years later, on 16 November 1920, the Pitney Bowes Model M postage meter became the first commercially used metering device in the world.

Walter Bowes merged his Universal Stamping Machine Company with Arthur Pitney’s American Postage Company the year before. The result was the Pitney Bowes Postage Meter Company. In 1920, there was the telephone, the telegraph (Internet One) and the US mail.

There was no such thing as the mailstream – a phrase Pitney Bowes is now counting on to position itself for the 21st Century.

The visual at the top of this post is from a new Pitney Bowes marketing campaign. In one ad, this communication satellite’s solar panel has a Pitney Bowes postage meter impression. It’s supposed to represent the company’s advanced address-level data technology, which lets businesses analyze data better, to target their market more effectively. (“Innovation” is a hot word for Wall Street analysts.)

In another corporate ad, a newborn baby’s wrist-bracelet bears the Pitney Bowes postage meter impression. Copy tells readers that Pitney Bowes solutions help health-care providers accurately deliver government-mandated patient communications. (More regulation means more paperwork and the healthcare market is booming…another sector stock analysts watch closely.)

Both versions direct readers to the company’s Mailstream landing page. The campaign was developed by OgilvyOne Worldwide in New York. It is supposed to include print, out-of-home and online media; the new ads, intro’d last November, aren’t up on the agency’s site yet.

A company press release makes it all sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi: “The mailstream is all around you—a global force synonymous with commerce.”

Still, Young Skywalker, the neologistic mailstream is a pretty good way of getting the market to re-define the company’s business. Wall Street seems to value the idea, since the company’s stock has gone up about 20% in the past year.

One thing I noticed is that the mailstream concept is not quickly apparent on Pitney Bowes’s main site. At 87 years old, Pitney Bowes is “Engineering the flow of communication” as its trademarked website slogan says – but it also has a huge investment in all the technologies and the sales efforts that have gone before the mailstream concept was created. Once you finally get down to it, mailstream refers to the “software, hardware and services that help companies manage their flow of mail, documents and packages to improve communication.”

Pitney Bowes’s vice president and CMO, Arun Sinha, was quoted in a company news release this way: “Pitney Bowes introduced a new business category, mailstream, at the beginning of the year (2006), and it is now a $250 billion category. Our goal was to build awareness for the mailstream as a category.”

The company's “Innovations in the Mailstream” concept is one attempt to shift its $5.5-billion self out of the old business-machines-and-office-equipment profile into something grander…while taking its customers and its employees along with it.

I think the company’s going to have to push real hard and real long to make this mailstream thing happen: the burden of changing your company’s culture. It takes more than marketing communications to move the load.

I hope it works, though. With the price of a first-class US stamp going up to 41¢ next week, I say we need all the mailstreaming we can get.