Greening a brand takes a commitment.

A lot of companies like to talk about how they care about the environment. And a lot companies are hollow in their commitment and their ads demonstrate as much. I get annoyed when I see chevron ads reminding me to quit wasting electricity. Why? So I’ll feel better about wasting gas?



Or even better, telling me I should bike to work 3 days out of the year. That’s a whopping 1.1% of total work days in a year. Really, that is Chevron's commitment? This doesn't even mention the fact that Chevron is reflecting the call to action on us and not making any commitment on its own. I understand that Chevron is in the business of selling oil so my suggestion is finding some other way to go green. Assuming, you know, that they do care.



The cynic in me can’t help but think that marketing executives are sitting around saying things like, “My daughter keeps talking about some green movement. How do we get this money? Let’s call the agency and get a new logo with a leaf on it.” I’m sure if works in general but there has to be a better way to integrate green initiative into a company’s strategy and then brag about it in your marketing.

I’m not rewriting the book here and companies do this. I was reminded of how it can be done well with a recent Sun Chip ad. The Frito Lay subsidiary enlisted Robert Maya to direct a great ad that simply demonstrates the company’s new compost-able packaging. Great, an ad that gives me something tangible this company is doing to be greener.



Huh? What’s that at the end? http://www.greeneffect.com ? Wow they are working with the National Geographic. From a snack food company’s perspective can you think of a better co-branding partner than NatGeo? Laawdy this campaign is winning from an integrated communications standpoint.

For the record, this isn’t new for Sun Chips. They’ve been this kind of thing for a minute. Here’s another example of an ad from 2008 that I think is great.