In a world awakened to climate change and corporate social responsibility, no business today can conduct business-as-usual. “Green” has become a competitive mandate. This presentation makes the case that America’s #1 consumer is ready to buy green -- now. Convince her and your business benefits from her buying power and influence over family, friends, colleagues and board rooms. The marketer who connects with her unique characteristics, needs and buying behavior will have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Earthsense brings eye-popping new market research that supports the premise. Red Kite brings insights into the economic impact of the female consumer market. Together they offer tips on how to motivate women’s green buying decisions. And they identify the risks to your brand and bottom line of not reaching her.

The biggest challenge facing aspiring green brands isn’t developing product ideas. The biggest challenge is getting the word out. Ecopreneurs must get the word out to prospective partners, investors and employees, to upstream suppliers, to downstream distributors and retailers, and to the green media including business news, consumer publications, bloggers and trend spotters. This normally requires a major investment in target marketing, list development, message crafting and media placement. Many start-up businesses simply don’t have the budget to compete on the level of a Proctor & Gamble or a General Motors. They don’t have the resources to cut through traditional, clutter-clogged media channels. Luckily for green business, there is another way to reach Main Street America. That way is something Richard Seireeni calls the Gort Cloud: the invisible force powering today’s most visible green brands.

The Gort Cloud is an aspect of Web 2.0, viral marketing, crowdsourcing and social media. It is an amazing business resource for honest green companies. It can deliver partners and a market at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and with greater credibility. Woe the greenwasher, because the Gort Cloud also has the power of collective peer review and will come down harshly on exaggerators. It explains how 23 successful green companies built their brands and how they used an invisible marketing force to reach the green community.

There are 45 million members of the green choir — the deep green consumer who's always leaned green and always will. But there are 180 million Mainstream Consumers...and they're starting to exhibit green attitudes and purchase behaviors. Shelton Group is one of the few ad  agencies in the country entirely focused on the greening of mainstream consumers, and this session, presented by Suzanne Shelton, will reveal insights from the firm's proprietary national consumer studies: Eco Pulse, Green Living Pulse and Energy Pulse. Specifically, Suzanne will shed light on how mainstream consumers define green, what green decisions/purchases they're most likely to make and why, how the drivers and decision making process differs by product category, what messaging works and what price points win out.

Discover how cotton made the leap from environmentally-friendly textile commodity, to a food, fuel and fiber source for future generations. Cotton Incorporated President and CEO J. Berrye Worsham addresses the challenges and opportunities of promoting “the fabric of our lives.” Presented as a case study in strategic development, the talk will chronicle the events and discoveries that enabled the company to redirect its trade marketing strategy.

Sustainability demands a new level of collaboration among established companies, scientists, government, investors, and entrepreneurs. The green future is all about technologies like the “smart grid” that replace resources with intelligence. The common thread is connection. How do you form the right relationships and partnerships to get your company recognized as a leader and bring the best new ideas into the marketplace? It's not just a green question, but the common purpose of sustainability is a great way to start collaboration.

So how do you make your communications effective AND sustainable?

In this workshop, explore Mohawk Fine Paper’s commitment to sustainability, how they are developing partnerships with their stakeholders to educate and inform about responsible communications. Workshop leader, Carol Ott, Corporate Business Development Manager, Mohawk Fine Papers, and Tom Pollock, EPAT Program Manager, Metafore, will discuss real goals, challenges, and tools for marketing to a green audience.

John Rooks and Alisa Conroy of The SOAP Group are back again this year to demonstrate how to activate your brand, win fans instead of customers and bring sustainability and marketing together into one hot, tight, little ball of goodness.

If you have ever wondered how branding and promotion can become an active participant in sustainability, instead of just a mouthpiece, don't miss this presentation by The SOAP Group. SOAP (Sustainable Organization Advocacy Partners) is a creative communications firm specialized in architecting brands and promotions that activate sustainability and social justice.

 

Why do some companies waste millions of dollars on failed social media strategies, while others cash in big with relatively little capital outlay? The answer lies not within social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) but in the hidden psychology of those who use them. In this groundbreaking presentation, Igniting Inspiration author and green marketing expert John Marshall Roberts will give you an unprecedented look at the inner world of today’s social media innovators and thought leaders. Drawing from cutting edge developmental psychology research, John will outline the distinct values, passions, and secret life aspirations that unite this demographically diverse group. From the global spread of Twitter to the planetary proliferation of Tom’s shoes, this pioneering presentation will use real world examples to illustrate the scientific method behind the marketing magic of today’s hottest social media trends.

 

The environmental marketing community is faced with an increasingly complex set of questions about the impact of the economy on consumer behavior. Has an economy in the red tempered consumers’ green enthusiasm? Can green product innovation be sustained in light of the recession? Does this downturn represent a bump in the road or an insurmountable obstacle for eco-friendly brands? Which consumers are pulling back from green, whose commitment is holding firm, and which consumers will lead us to a greener place beyond the downturn? In this informative keynote presentation, Holly Heline Jarrell shares the latest insights and inspirational thinking on this important set of questions drawing from GfK Roper’s Green Gauge, the nation’s longest running survey on consumers.

We will explore how green issues have weathered this recession differently from prior recessions in the US. We will also look at the impact of this first worldwide recession on green values and behavior at both a global and national level. Using the freshest data available today, GfK Roper’s research-based insights and inspirations can help marketers envision post-recession green opportunities – and barriers.

Holly will also introduce you to the GfK Roper Green Gauge® consumer segmentation, which provides an environmental marketing roadmap to changing green audiences in the US. From Genuine Greens to Mean Greens, these types are based on consumers’ attitudes, values, knowledge as well as perceived barriers to a greener lifestyle. In good times, marketers have relied on the Green Gauge types to inform green innovation and communications; today they can help navigate beyond the downturn to a brighter and greener future.

 

Companies today are facing a market that has changed in some fundamental ways. The demands for environmentally-friendly products and corporate social responsibility have not only gone mainstream, but taken root in people’s values systems. And consumers are on high alert for false promises. Yet companies are also facing an economy struggling to shake off a recession, heightened cost-consciousness from consumers, and fierce pressures from global competition. How do companies balance all these demands – to be good to the community, green with the environment and still run a financially-successful business?

This workshop focuses on understanding consumer expectations of companies - as well as other stakeholders - when it comes to environmental and CSR issues. Just how idealistic or realistic are people are about what organizations can and should deliver? There is some heartening news for companies about consumers in the US and around the world. Learn how to meet your customers in the middle.

Annie Weber and Tim Kenyon will decipher these issues – drawing on case studies of research conducted by GfK clients, as well as insights from GfK Roper Consulting’s Green Gauge®, the longest-running study of consumer attitudes and behaviors towards the environment. These resources can help put consumer’s green expectations of companies into perspective, showing how this topic is evolving over time – and where we expect it to go, as we emerge from the recession.

 

Find out how TerraPass and Enterprise Rent-A-Car worked together to establish the country’s most popular carbon offset program. In the year following its launch in 2008, over 175,000 customers opted to add a small charge to their rentals with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car.  The money funds TerraPass offset projects including farm power and landfill gas capture across the United States.

Pete Davies of TerrPass and Lee Broughton of Enterprise will share answers to those questions you’re dying to ask about carbon offsets, and find out how a well-designed program can compliment your own brand’s sustainability strategy.

 

What would you do if you knew where everything was?
Suppose that, as suddenly as Spiderman, you get this superpower – you can know where everything is.  Not just categories of things, but individual things.  This particular screwdriver.  This particular snow tire.  Maybe you would make fewer things, store fewer things, ship fewer things.  Maybe you would use that power to make the world a whole lot greener, almost overnight. 

Imagine a search engine for things.
It’s Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a combination of tiny, inexpensive, electronic tags and readers.  And it is a transformative technology for greens and green marketers.  Because, in hundreds of ways, it makes sustainable products and practices more convenient than they have ever been before.  Without violating individual privacy, it empowers you to reach out to the eco-sensitive customer like never before.    

Mickey Brazeal, author of RFID: Improving The Customer Experience, explains how RFID empowers green business and green marketing, and what you can do to make the most of it.

 

Bill Morrissey, VP of Environmental Sustainability for The Clorox Company, shares recent Clorox learnings on their journey to sustainability, and illustrates how some of Clorox's best results were achieved when the company moved beyond conventional sustainability wisdom. Bill will share examples of when Clorox stretched beyond the typical Consumer Packaged Goods approach of reducing manufacturing and packaging footprints and what Clorox learned from taking these calculated risks.

 

Ted Ning, Director of LOHAS has a surprise exercise for you that will test your skills as an out of the box thinker; a much needed ability for the green market. Get the creative juices flowing for yourself and others in this interactive and engaging exercise.

 

Sheila McLean, Senior Vice President and Director of the North American ECO Network for MS&L Worldwide, and Mark Petruzzi, Vice President of Certification for Green Seal, a non-profit that has been certifying green products and services for 20 years, will talk about how to get your green message out in the midst of a media meltdown - while also considering charges of greenwashing, packaging concerns and competing claims. Sheila will share guiding principles for success and the results of a new survey on Social Media and its growing role in communications, and Mark will discuss the importance of providing credible and science-based information to consumers in an increasingly educated and competitive marketplace.

 

How do you use a sustainability mission to completely transform a company? By engaging your customers, AND every employee.

Lyell Clarke, CEO of Clarke, a global environmental products and services company, will explain why it was critical to build both employee and customer “buy-in” on his decision to make his business more sustainable and create an industry-wide revolution in the process. Bob Domenz, President of Avenue Marketing and Communications, will showcase the strategic planning process and integrated program his firm developed to engage Clarke executives, employees and customers -- including a completely new way for Clarke to portray itself to the world through workshops, videos, blogging, twitter, desk drops, employee and customer events, a re-branding and more. Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse will highlight the hands-on workshop she facilitated to help employees develop personal sustainability goals to help align employee behaviors and actions with the company’s new vision.

 

Discover why one of California’s oldest wineries underwent a dramatic change to become one of the nation’s “Greenest Wineries”. Owner Tim Thornhill will explore the motivation behind Parducci Wine Cellars’ journey to go green, how they have learned to successfully communicate their message and the benefits they’ve seen from this transition. Tim believes that it’s time for business to lead the transformation to sustainable practices and become a force for change without sacrificing quality or profitability.

 

Mike Robinson will discuss some new sustainability initiatives GM has set going forward and highlight the many positive environmental practices that have been in place for decades that many consumers may not be aware of.  The new GM is a smaller company with a stronger balance sheet, a world-class product lineup of fuel efficient cars and trucks and industry-leading technology that makes it much greener, from plants to products.  GM already has fuel saving technologies in vehicles it sells today but is placing emphasis on electric vehicles like plug-in hybrids and extended range vehicles.  For instance, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, an electric vehicle with extended range is coming to the market late next year.  Now more than ever, customers are demanding fuel efficiency, CO2 reduction, recyclability and alternative to fossil fuels.