Hacker Group's Spyro Kourtis on "Greening" DM Industry

The will to go green has never been stronger among direct mailers, vendors or their clients. Stifling such willingness, however, is confusion and uncertainty about how to begin the transition to more environment-friendly practices.

Answering that call is the newly formed Green Marketing Coalition (GMC), the brainchild of  Spyro Kourtis, president of the full-service direct marketing agency Hacker Group. After a rude awakening that the Hacker Group was far from green, he began a massive green overhaul of Hacker Group - including even moving the company from Bellevue, Wash. to Seattle to reduce the commuting impact its employees were making on the environment - last year and effectively eliminated its carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, Kourtis realized that there were no specific, industry-wide green marketing standards or guidelines, so he formed the GMC to give practical tools to companies - large and small alike - that want to infuse green marketing into their existing campaigns or initiatives. At present, the coalition includes such members as Microsoft, Washington Mutual, Kawasaki, Nahan Printing Inc., Data-Mail and Cascade Land Conservancy, and the guidelines can be found at http://www.greenmarketingcoalition.com. Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Kourtis about the GMC and its green impact.

Boldt: What was the genesis of the GMC?
Kourtis: About two years ago, we received a formal RFP from a Global 10 financial organization that was about direct mail, print production, management and testing controls. Buried near the back of this document was a question about our green initiatives, and we, in a very wrong way, answered the question - that predominantly we worked with vendors, and, depending on what vendors were doing, we pretty much had our green initiative tied into what the vendor policy was. They didn't like the answer. We were dismissed before the final round, and it [had been] a good opportunity for us.

At that point, I realized that we had a lot of internal green initiatives but just had never focused on what we could do on the outside with our clients.

Boldt: Why do you think you hadn't yet focused on that ability?
Kourtis:  Because we felt that it was hard to be green in direct mail because we do consume a lot of natural resources. Then I found one quote, that it had been 10 years since British Petroleum came out with that tagline, "Beyond Petroleum." My feeling at that time was, "Wow, if a petroleum company can focus on the future of how to reduce their carbon footprint, then certainly a direct marketing organization really needs to."

Boldt: Was the other reason because the green vision in direct mail had yet to be defined?
Kourtis: Yes, we started looking at what are the rules? What are the standards? What we came up with very quickly was that there were no real standards. There's the Forest Stewardship Council, but I can't solely rely on organizations that are certified by them - there's just not enough of them out there. But when we can, we do use them.

But since I can't put all this work in FSC-certified organizations based on the needs of my clients, we tried to establish some guidelines that would work for direct mail organizations. We invited a bunch of clients and vendors and other agencies and asked if they wanted to join, to help flesh out some of these standards.

Boldt: What does the GMC represent?
Kourtis: It’s really a line in the sand. It's saying, "Look, this is the standard that we're willing to adhere to, and, as time goes by and as things change in the supply chain, we'll make changes to our guidelines." The DMA guidelines are not that specific, and ours are.

We realized that a company of 150 people can certainly make an impact, but we also have access to all this buying power that our clients provide us. If we can help focus our clients in the right area, the impact is much greater. We're an organization that does about $100 million in direct marketing annually, so that is where the leverage is.

Boldt: Will it be one-size-fits-all?
Kourtis: No. Some organizations that live on thin margins may not be able to afford certain green measures. It's about creating some standards. For example, we handle match-print color proofs in-house, so my print vendors don't have to overnight me stuff. Meanwhile, some are comfortable with PDF proofing; others are not. That's a technology that can still be constraining. That will be a next topic.

Boldt: Certain guidelines, like clean lists, are no-brainers, right?
Kourtis: They are, but you'd be surprised. Mail is very tactical and reactive. If you have short fall in achieving a certain sales goal, you get a mailing out. And because it has to hit sooner rather than later when you have either quarterly or monthly quotas, you'll find that steps are skipped. The intent is there; people want to be responsible, but sometimes it does not happen.

Boldt: Where do you encounter some resistance from mailers?
Kourtis: Surprisingly, we don’t. If anywhere, it's from the vendors, but it's not resistance. If a client is willing to pay more to be green, they're happy to oblige, but can they both put up with waiting longer with 30 percent postconsumer recycled paper that slows the process down? It's how they communicate in creating better synergy between agencies, vendors and clients. It's understanding what their challenges are, and there's a timing issue, as well.

This article is adapted from the "Straight Talk" interview that was published in the September 2008 issue of Inside Direct Mail, a sister publication to Target Marketing magazine. To learn more about Inside Direct Mail, visit www.insidedirect mail.com.