The Ugly Side of Greenwashing (A Marketing Blunder)

The purpose of this blog is to educate the readers of Bizadmark’s blog about corporate greenwashing marketing blunder, its harmful effects on your product sales and your business reputation, and why you should never consider making it a part of your business strategy.

Corporations And Our Environment

We all are aware that our environment is in a deteriorating stage. It’s not what it used to be. The rivers are polluted, the ozone layer is depleted, the clear air has vanished and the greenery is replaced by cemented buildings. These are just a few, the condition in which our mother earth is worse than that.

It’s no secret that corporations are responsible for this a lot. Single-use plastic is one of the products that has contributed immensely to destroying our environment. According to many scientific studies, by 2050 the oceans are going to have more plastics than fish. The energy sector is another sector that is a culprit here.

But this article is not about who is damaging our planet for their corporate benefits. This article is about understanding this false, misleading and inefficient marketing strategy followed by many businesses and making sure others don’t follow the same blindly.

 

Understanding the New Generation of Consumers

Digital Advertising For Organic Products

The new generation of consumers is very different from the earlier ones.

  • They strongly voice their opinions and they love those brands whose opinions match theirs.
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  • The people of the new generation are more health-conscious and environmentally friendly. Not only this, they also believe in inclusion and peaceful living.
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  • They like to buy their favorite products but only from those who are concerned about mother earth just like they are and share some common values with them. They don’t mind paying extra but they won’t compromise with their values.

Businesses couldn’t have targeted this generation with their old marketing strategies. They needed a change to make themselves more appealing to them. For this purpose, many businesses started engaging in a marketing tactic that was misleading and false. They intentionally started misdirecting their audience down a path they didn’t want to go on if they had the right information.

As a part of this tactic, they started making claims on how their product is sustainable and green, how the product doesn’t harm the planet, and how when the customers decide to buy from them, they are actually contributing to saving the earth.

Another point to remember is that we are now living in a digital age where the one thing that we have in abundance is data. It’s not so easy to lie anymore and hide behind a website. Sooner or later, somebody will put two and two together, and find out the hidden truth.

Let me say that again, “Your customers will know whether you’re actually doing anything for the environment or not.” Even as a corporation of thousands of employees, you can’t compete with the smartness of millions of customers out there.

 

What is Corporate Greenwashing?

corporate greenwashing

Corporate greenwashing is when you make your consumers believe that you’re doing more for the environment than you actually are.

You claim that your product is ‘green’ when it’s not actually environmentally friendly. Then, you engage in various PR and marketing activities to spread the word about your so-called sustainable product to misguide your audience in buying more.

 

Greenwashing Went Wrong

We all have heard of Volkswagen. Many people loved their cars a lot until they were caught in a greenwashing marketing blunder.

They have admitted that they have cheated on their emission tests by using a ‘defeat’ device, a software that alters the performance of a vehicle when it’s undergoing a test.

The result showed a low emission level that the corporate wanted to run their marketing campaign on how they are doing their part in saving the earth. In reality, their cars were emitting forty times the allowed limit of nitrogen oxide, an air pollutant.

Can you imagine how bad that is? Many customers who actually wanted to do something good for the planet were misled into buying something they didn’t want.

Volkswagen is not the only one. Many big brands have joined this list including Coke, Tyson, BP or shall I call them Beyond Petroleum as their ad campaign claimed.

One thing common in their strategies was that they all have made false and scientifically not proven claims to increase their sales.

 

Why Are Businesses Greenwashing Their Product?

Digital Advertising For Organic Products (8)

There are two reasons for this:

Lack of Information

Not all businesses are lying or exaggerating their “save the earth” efforts. Some businesses actually don’t have much awareness of what kinds of products are actually considered ‘green’ or sustainable. But lack of awareness can’t be taken so lightly when it is playing with the sentiments of well-intentioned customers and the future of our planet.

Also, this case is not very common.

 

Engaging in Bad Marketing Practices

This is more applicable to most businesses. To make their product more likable and increase their sales, many businesses engage in bad marketing practices.

They know what they’re doing, and they still do it because they were blinded by their short-term gains rather than their long-term growth. To fulfill their myopic goal, they invest in PR and marketing to spread their false claims to their audience.

Though using the word ‘marketing’ here doesn’t sound right because marketing is never done to manipulate someone into buying something they don’t want.

 

Why Shouldn’t You Be Greenwashing?

greenwashing

Greenwashing marketing blunder has never proved useful for any business and here is why:

 

Your customers are smarter than you think

Many businesses make the same mistake of treating their customers as naive and gullible. They feel they can say anything and their customers will never catch their lies as they don’t know about the industry as much as you do.

I teach my clients to treat their customers way smarter than they are and I’ll ask you to do the same as well.

When you do that, you won’t ever engage in this kind of inefficient and unethical marketing.

On the other hand, you will be thinking of more strategic ways to woo your customer. This will give birth to a plethora of good ideas that will have the power of changing your business for good.

Not to mention, this kind of wooing gives you a lifelong, loyal marriage partner rather than an open, temporary, one-night fling. And I don’t think I have to explain more about why you need loyal customers.

 

Reputation Needs To Be Guarded

It’s advised to many powerful kings in the old times to never play with their reputation as it’s the easiest thing to lose but the toughest one to gain.

In this age of social media, our reputation is more fragile than it ever was. You can lose it in a second with one wrong statement.

Not to scare you, but nothing dies on the internet. It’s a graveyard where ghosts party all the time. You will think that people will forget what stupid thing you said twenty years ago, but they won’t. With just a type in Google search, ghosts of the past will come dancing alive as if nothing has ever changed.

You build trust and relationships on the basis of your reputation. But if reputation is tarnished, a business will be spending many years and a hefty marketing budget to make the audience believe in it again and this is not going to be an easy task.

Do you still think it’s worth taking the risk?

 

It Doesn’t Help Anyone

 

Greenwashing is misleading, and not at all helpful to anyone. You lose your marketing budget, your time and efforts to do something that will end up only hurting your brand image and destroying your customers faith in you.

 
greenwashing marketing blunder

And it doesn’t even help your customers because they were expecting something else but you sold them a sheep in a wolf’s skin.

It’s just a matter of time when they are going to notice that. Once they do, they won’t ever buy from you. Plus they are going to tell many more to do the same. Imagine the chain of dissatisfied people it’s going to create.

 

You’re Definitely Not Helping The Earth

The worst of all is that you’re contributing to something that is hurting the environment. If you couldn’t do anything from your side to help the environment, at least let the others do their part.

If I don’t want to use plastics, don’t sell me your bottles by calling them biodegradable if they are not. Because if I come to know they aren’t, I will make sure to use every digital channel to warn people about you. Every millennial and Gen Z will agree with me here.

Even worse, the environmental problems remain the same, and businesses that are actually doing something to solve the problem get invisible in this crowd of fake products.

It’s like you don’t want to help the poor people and you also don’t want others who are willing to help. There is no need to misdirect the well-intentioned audience to a path they don’t want to take. My word of advice – Don’t do that. It’s too much guilt to carry.

I’m sure you have now learned why I’m against greenwashing. Your customers deserve truth and they will like it if you will be honest with them. They would appreciate it more if you’ll say that you’re working hard on making your product green but haven’t yet figured out a solution, then saying that your product is sustainable when it’s not.

If your reputation is damaged because of a past greenwashing marketing blunder, get in touch with us and we’ll figure out how we can help you out.

If you have read the book “17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail”, you would have learned that marketing is not selfish. It doesn’t mean lying, cheating, or manipulating your consumers so you can make profits. Marketing is based on making a deal of equal value between two parties.

If you know this much about marketing, you will figure out instantly that a marketing blunder like greenwashing can’t do you any good.

 

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