A while ago someone asked me whether my business card was printed on recycled paper. Yes, it is, I replied. Why, then, the response went, is there nowhere on my card a corresponding symbol to be seen? And, What if, when deciding whether to keep the card or do business with my company, a prospect tosses out mine because that sign of my environmental consciousness is missing?

My ultimate response boiled down to this: If a prospect makes her decision to do business with me based on the presence or absence of the recycled-content symbol on my business card, we’re probably not a good fit. My reputation and work, not symbols on my business card, should speak for me.

When prompted to define sustainable marketing, I often use the contrast between eyeballs and hearts-and-minds marketing.

Eyeballs marketing: “My eyes!”

Eyeballs marketing aims to reach as many people with as many touches as possible on the company’s terms. Eyeballs marketing knows it takes a number of times to just get its message registered and remembered, not to mention acted upon. Its drive for quantity serves to lower the cost per impression or thousand views. Eyeballs marketing is anumbers game.

Even though from the social sustainability standpoint its shortcomings outweigh its advantages, cause marketing has its place in fostering the social sustainability of business. You will do well by doing good.

Using cause marketing for enhancing your company’s People bottom line will require a few adjustments, however. These adjustments will 1) shift the definition of cause marketing, 2) alleviate its shortcomings, and 3) enhance the meaning of cause marketing.

With the holiday shopping season nearing its holy climax, what better time to evaluate from the business perspective the viability of cause marketing for social sustainability. Does cause marketing work? How to get the most from it?

Define: Cause marketing

Cause or cause-related marketing is a company’s “marketing effort creating a public association with a social or charitable cause or organization to promote the company’s product/service and raise money for the cause or organization”.

Cause marketing may take several forms for the participating company, with the nonprofit partner earning money in a variety of direct or indirect ways:

A theme has emerged from my conversations with Portland, Oregon real estate professionals: fearing overspending, home buyers these days are unwilling to pay a premium for green features, and instead decide with their pocketbook based on price and value. In other words, green* is a luxury these days, for homes and I suspect for many other product categories as well. What financial and psychological factors caused green to become luxury? How to fix the situation?

The green of green

That the sales of luxury items should decline in a recession is logical – as disposable income declines, luxury items slide out of reach for many. Tough economic times turn price into a primary decision factor, ushering an era of the frugal consumer.

Your sustainable brand’s “green” product competes within a product category, like household cleaners, interior paint, or iced tea. Each brand in your category differentiates its product differently as it passes through its life cycle; you are likely to emphasize your product’s low environmental impact or health benefits.

Competition between individual products is just one part of the story. According to Clayton Christensen, cumulative changes in individual product features determine the nature or basis of competition within categories, which shifts in cycles of evolution. The shift from one cycle to another occurs when the product’s features surpass the customers’ demand or absorption rate. That the basis of competition progresses from functionality to reliability to convenience to price poses a significant challenge to “green” products: sustainability is markedly absent from the model. Let’s look at the product evolution model to identify opportunities for “green”.

The initial basis of competition within a category is functionality. A major challenge “green” products used to face was the results they delivered. It turned out consumers cared less about the environmental attributes of a cleaning product than about its ability to perform the intended function – clean.

If you watch NBC’s The Office, you may have wondered, when, amidst all the shenanigans, do the good people at Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch get any work done. In fact, because you rarely ever see them actually do any work, you’ve probably also wondered what they do. No matter: What they do is not interesting. You watch the show for what happens outside of what they do – it tells you who they are, it tells their story. What makes them interesting is, in great part, what they love. (Just fill in the blanks.)

The same goes for your sustainable marketing. Nobody cares about what you do – everybody else is doing it. They want to know what happens outside of what you do. Because what you do for work is what you get paid for, the things you do because you love doing them make you more interesting – they express who you are, they tell your story.

The development or manufacturing of your product? Boring – every company has a production process. What services you provide and how? Boring – every company provides a service. What you helped your customer achieve? Less boring, but still not it – every company helps achieve something. Add a dimension to your narrative: tell them what you do outside your company’s processes or sales.

(You’ve surely heard the advice to sell the benefit not the feature, to sell the sizzle not the steak, to sell the hole not the drill bit. In the conflict-resolution narrative your customer had a problem, which your product helped resolve. That’s not what I’m talking about. After all, how many companies deliver the same benefit as yours?)

The why and where are the trickier parts of buying local, though the conundrum doesn’t end there.

WHO should buy local?

You, of course. You and your wallet have control over the success of local. Because of all the advantages of buying local, your purchases benefit you and your community. You buy local because you care about the local economy and the place you live in.

On the flipside, I’m reminded of the song chorus, “If everybody looked the same, we’d be tired of looking at each other.” Would we get tired of local if everybody were buying it, the same way mass production makes everything look blandly alike? With economic diversity, which entails better product choice, as a major argument for buying local, this may not happen. Yet by doing just one thing, buying local in this case, you may be undermining the diversity principle of sustainability.

Similarly, just as hybrid owners drive more, you may think buying local takes care of your commitment to sustainability. Though your commitment to buying local may be admirable, buying local is but one piece of a big, complex picture. It also is a matter of prioritizing your sustainable pursuits and how buying local ranks on your list.

WHEN to buy local?

All the time, as the proponents of buying local would have it. If it’s not available locally at the time you need it, like with seasonal produce, you shouldn’t buy it.

In their last Business News update, Rivermark Community Credit Union encourages me to consider how my purchases support local businesses and to buy local. Of course, buying local features prominently in sustainable marketing, so my credit union calling to buy local got me thinking. Why is buying local good? Just what is local? Are there any rules to buying local? I decided to take a closer look.

(As with everything, buying local can be argued both ways, and while I lean strongly in favor of buying local, I can’t overlook its shortcomings. Hence 5W+1H over two posts.)

WHY buy local?

There are essentially three arguments for buying local. First, buying local means more money stays and circulates in your community, supporting jobs and tax revenue. According to one Oregon economist, a “dollar spent at a locally owned store is usually spent 6 to 15 times before it leaves the community. From $1, you create $5 to $14 in value within that community. Spend $1 at a national chain store, and 80% leaves town immediately.” I’ve seen variations of these statements circulating in my community.

Of course, when national chains locate their stores in your community, they employ local people and do business with local suppliers or vendors. Which they do on a much bigger scale than your neighborhood store. So while your dollar may not be circulated as much when you buy chain, some spillover from chain activity definitely exists. Nevertheless, local does seem to hold the advantage here.

authentic, adj. = of undisputed origin, genuine; reliable or trustworthy

You hear the advice everywhere these days: Be authentic! Practice authentic marketing!

To be authentic is to be grounded in reality, to be real, to be yourself. If you’re authentic, you really are who you say you are and who others perceive you to be. If you market your business authentically, you represent yourself truthfully, genuinely. This is particularly important in sustainable marketing.

That calls for authenticity circulate through marketing conversations tells me there’s a need; a gap exists between who you are and how you market yourself or your business. Why is that? Why does anyone have to be reminded to “be yourself”? Why is authenticity in marketing so hard to accomplish? What can you do be authentic and practice authentic marketing?

The authenticity gap explained

Perhaps in your quest to meet your customers’ needs, you pose as someone you think they want you to be rather than who you are. If to be inauthentic means to not be who you are, something must be propelling you to behave that way. The most powerful explanation I can think of for the authenticity gap is role.

Role is a combination of behaviors and actions expected of an individual in a certain social situation. In everyday life, you perform a string of roles. You have little to no control over ascribed roles, like man/woman, child, member of a nation or culture. You do have a choice in assuming achieved roles, like parent, partner, member of a profession.