Marketing Sustainably: What's Going on Beyond and Beneath the Green? A blog posting questions, opportunities, concerns and observations on sustainability in marketing.
Chet Dalzell has 25 years of public relations management and expertise in service to leading brands in consumer, donor, patient and business-to-business markets, and in the field of direct marketing. He serves on the Direct Marketing Association Committee on the Environment and Social Responsibility, where he is currently chairman of the Committee's Marketing & Communications Public Outreach Strategy Working Group (2005-present).
Chet co-developed the first professional certificate program in environmentally responsible marketing within the United States. He also served on the United States Postal Service Greening the Mail Task Force (2007-2010), and led its Life Cycle of Mail Subcommittee.
Email Chet below, or reach him at Twitter or LinkedIn.
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The Green Marketing Award is not about marketing environmental products, services or causes. Rather, it's about how efficiency and sustainability—and profitability—are incorporated in a successful marketing campaign. This year's winner was Vestas Wind Systems (Arhaus, Denmark). The business-to-business campaign, targeting large-company executives at 23 Fortune 1000 firms, was remarkable in how it used market research, social media (InMail via LinkedIn), direct mail (custom Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine wraps) and digital media (EnergyTransparency.com) to provide a truly personalized campaign to convince companies to consider wind energy as a power source for their operations.
Vestas tapped two research firms, Bloomberg and TNS Gallup, to complete two studies. One was a Corporate Renewable Energy Index that reported on corporations' energy consumption, and the second was a Global Consumer Wind Study, that examined consumer demand for renewable energy. The surveys documented that consumers want products made with wind energy, and that corporations are eager to source more renewable energy.
Working with its agency partner, Vertic Inc. (New York, NY), the campaign targeted 419,000 employees and 300 top executives inside the 23 companies. Audiences were segmented by geography, seniority, work role and industry. Opinion leaders also were targeted. Using InMail, LinkedIn company-specific banner ads and the magazine wraps, traffic was generated to 600 individual URLs associated with EnergyTransparency.com where an executive could inspect energy consumption trends in their company and industry sector, along with customer brand preference information relevant to the company.
Overall, the campaign cost less than $1 million, and generated more than 10,000 site visits with average visit lasting more than 7 minutes on average—with 80 percent of opinion leaders visiting the site, and 30 percent of top executives targeted. InMails achieved at 13.37 percent open rate and 5.78 percent conversion rate. Business sales resulting from the campaign were not disclosed.
The judges welcomed seeing 1:1 communication, effective personalized used of social media, magazine wraps, banner ads, and successful delivery of brand interaction among C-suite executives—always a tough challenge. On the sustainability front, judges welcomed use of existing communications channels—magazines already subscribed to, social media networks where professional profiles already are present—to provide messaging, using little in the way of new production materials to convey relevant information. Overall, the campaign focused on energy use, so what better way to reach executives efficiently.
Global, integrated print & digital, b-to-b ... congratulations to Vestas Wind Systems and Vertic!
Resources:
This Year's DMA International ECHO Green Marketing Award Winner (see page 14):
http://dma.seqora.com/prod/Desktop/page.aspx?id=25&mode=SP&name=EchoAwards2012
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