Pinterest Emerging as Promising Platform for Green Marketers

Over the past 12 months, Pinterest has witnessed explosive growth. The site has topped 23 million unique visitors and average site visit time is nearly 100 minutes per month, making it one of the largest and most engaging social networks around. AdAge raves that “…Pinterest has gone from relative obscurity to exalted status alongside Facebook and Twitter…”

What is so compelling about Pinterest is its simplicity, empowering users to capture, curate and share content of interest at the click of a button. Moreover, its format allows users to easily browse and discover new content pinned by other users.

Brands, including green brands, are increasingly discovering the potential of Pinterest and finding ways to adapt this consumer-centric platform for their benefit.

Promote discovery. Consumers like to browse Pinterest and, while doing so, are discovering brands. Brands are maximizing their chance of being discovered by finding ways to distribute their content on Pinterest.

One way to accomplish this is for brands to directly curate their own Pinterest content. Additionally, brands can make truly compelling content available online. This could include visually powerful images on relevant and timely themes that the growing number of Pinterest users may find and pin onto their personal boards. Consumers can discover content on their own or be encouraged through contests like the one that Method deployed to incentivize Moms to pin images of Method products.

Strengthen brand identity. Companies are also finding ways to leverage Pinterest to help define their brands. They do so by using the Pinterest platform to distribute content that brings to life their brands — or core values.

Whole Foods, for example, says they are committed to “selling the highest quality natural and organic products available”. For Whole Foods, such a commitment originates in the garden where the food is grown and pays off through the appeal of the dish that is ultimately served and the healthier lifestyle to which the food contributes. Pinterest boards sponsored by Whole Foods bring each of these dimensions to life.

Highlight social responsibility. Pinterest can also enable brands to highlight its commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a very visible and compelling way. In addition to its other Pinterest initiatives, Whole Foods maintains a Pinterest board dedicated to the Whole Planet Foundation and its many initiatives sponsored around the world. Images map where contributions are made and illustrate the good works that are done in a format that seems, in many ways, less constrained or forced than the Corporate Social Responsibility tab on their corporate site.

Drive sales. Eco-friendly brands are also beginning to experiment with social networks to drive sales, and Pinterest is emerging as a key option. When looking at click-through rates to retail sites from the top three social networks — Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter — Facebook continues to drive the vast majority of traffic but Pinterest exceeds Twitter in terms of traffic generation. In fact, Pinterest is now responsible for more than 11 percent of user shopping sessions originating from the top social networks — Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Moreover, sales conversion rates for users originating from Pinterest are trending higher than from Twitter. At $169, the average order size of Pinterest users is substantially greater than for users that originate from either Facebook ($95) or Twitter ($71).

Brands like eBay are taking note, promoting eco-friendly products across a myriad of Pinterest boards, including health and beauty, fashion and electronics, and providing each product image with a direct link to a transaction page within the eBay Green site.

For green marketers, Pinterest provides a promising platform to engage consumers and for consumers to discover brands that they might not ordinarily interact with. Pinterest’s unique format provides the opportunity for companies to show their brands to consumers in a visually powerful way. Such interactions can provide dimension to a brand and can potentially drive sales. Green brands will be missing a key emerging opportunity online if they fail to consider their own Pinterest strategy.

Driving Engagement and Viral Impact in the Green Space: Part II – Original Content

While creating and sharing user-generated content is an effective way to facilitate consumer engagement and viral marketing, it is not the only approach that marketers can take.  Professionally produced original content is another proven way.  Increasingly, agencies or production studios create and seed content on behalf of their clients for consumers to view and share online.

 

One such shop is Free Range Studios which has produced several original videos that have generated significant buzz and viral impact in the green space.  Calling its approach “socially conscious viral entertainment”, Free Range tries to “distill a complicated message into a fun or moving short story” while engaging its viewers by allowing them “to write the end of that story by taking action or donating.”  Stories are distributed not only through paid advertisement but via video sharing sites such as You Tube and, more specifically, RiverWired, emPivot and LivePaths in the green space.  They are also distributed offline at concerts and events.

 

Recent Free Range videos with eco-themes including Grocery Store Wars, a Star Wars spoof about a “small band of organic vegetable puppets” including Cuke Skywalker, Ham Solo, Chewbroccoli and Obi Wan Cannoli that do battle against Darth Tader and the Dark Side of the Farm.  

 

Most recently, Free Range released The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video that explains the environmental impact regarding the “stuff” we consume.  The video has been a huge hit, recording more than 3 million viewers on The Story of Stuff microsite alone. Moreover, the video has received acclaim by winning the SXSW Interactive Award for its contribution as an educational resource.

 

Marketers should recognize that there are certain trade-offs made in producing their own original content themselves versus encouraging users to generate it for them.  For example, with original content, upfront costs are likely to be significant higher.  Yet, for getting a complex message across to consumers, original content may be a marketer’s best option to hit a home run.

Driving Engagement and Viral Marketing Impact in Green: Part I – User-Generated Content

Tapping social media to engage consumers as well as facilitate viral marketing has the potential to generate significant results for marketers.  Not only can this drive greater brand impact but it can significantly increase reach to a receptive audience at little, if any, incremental cost. 

 

Today, more and more marketers are trying to launch campaigns that have the twin goals of increasing consumer engagement and viral marketing impact.  For many marketers, it often appears that achieving these goals is more a matter of art.  Yet, platforms such as Brickfish are emerging that are rapidly turning such an approach into a science. 

 

Brickfish is an online marketing platform that rewards participants for engaging with brands.  The idea is quite simple: participants come to the Brickfish site and choose which campaign they would like to participate in.  They have an opportunity not only to create content but to review and vote on existing content as well as to share with others through email and IM and across multitudes of social media sites.  Behaviors are rewarded directly or through a chance to win prizes for “most popular” or “most viral” entries. 

Several eco-friendly brands have launched campaigns using the Brickfish platform including Origins, North Face and Honest Foods. 

 

 

 

What is interesting is the transparency by which Brickfish reports campaign results.  While most agencies are beholden to their clients for their results that they generate, it is rare that such results are shared openly outside of corporate marketing circles.   In the case of Brickfish, visitors can track total activities conducted on the site including user-generated content entries, reviews, votes and views.  Moreover, visitors can rank content by user preference as well as viral reach. 

 

Impressively, Brickfish provides users with a visualization of each viral campaign enabling marketers to understand how content is shared between users from one application to another.

 

 

Green marketers should consider such a platform.  Not only is this a efficient way to engage consumers (clients pay on a cost-per-engagement basis), but the results provided by Brickfish are impressive, as the company claims that their “viral marketing approach…has proven to be 5 to 10 times more effective than traditional online marketing methods such as display ads or search optimization.”

 

Moreover, campaigns for green products should naturally align with this type of marketing as it empowers users to engage with and share brands that also represent a cause.   As such, consumers’ association with a product is actually an expression of themselves in terms of what they believe and how they live their lives (or at least how they like to be perceived).  As a result, green products are ripe for viral marketing campaigns.

 

Marketers seeking an edge should seek out new ways to reach and engage consumers.  Brickfish provides a compelling approach for green marketers and the results to back it up.

Predicting a Green Future

This past week, the Industry Standard (IS), an icon of the late nineties Internet boom, relaunched its online property.  It did so, however, not as a publisher of industry content but rather as a consumer-driven platform to predict the future.

How does a platform such as this enable seemingly ordinary consumers to predict the future?  Quite simply, IS taps the “wisdom of crowds” or consensus view to determine the probability that an event will happen in the future.  Such an approach assumes that that “aggregation of information in groups…result[s] in decisions that…are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.”  Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this approach has been demonstrated to be quite effective at making accurate predictions.

How does it work?  In the case of IS, a “market” is simulated whereby members place a bet on the probability that a future event will or will not occur.  They do so using “virtual currency” called “Standard Dollars”.  The probability of that event coming true is estimated based on “community consensus” calculated as the weighted average value of the bets placed for or against the prediction coming true.

Interestingly, IS is only the latest online publisher to tap into this type of platform as a way to engage consumers.  Moreover, many of the existing platforms have a focus on predicting environmental trends including FT Predict, intrade, IdeaWorth, newsfutures, Popular Science Prediction Exchange, and ZiiTrend.   

                  Intrade’s Market Predicting EU Carbon Targets

            Popular Science’s Market Predicting Green Events

While many other sites exist to predict the future, it seems that only IS has tapped industry heavyweights as regular participants.  Their presence not only lends credibility to the site (and the predictions generated there), but arguably, also increases the accuracy of those predictions as well.  Quite simply, influentials possess domain knowledge that can shape the opinions of other site participants and the wagers that they make regarding the future.

As marketers experiment with new ways to attract and engage consumers, simulated markets should be in the mix.  Moreover, participation by domain experts may only enhance this consumer experience by providing credibility and enhancing the accuracy of the predictions.  But, you don’t have to take my word on this, however.  Just ask a crowd.

Green Content Syndication: Part III – Activating Diggers

Today, dozens of social news sites exist where users bookmark content for the site’s community to view and rate.  Specific content related to the environment is available on both general news sites such as Digg, Newsvine, Propeller (AOL) or Reddit and green vertical sites such as C2NN, Hugg, Five Limes and plant change (Aus).  Squareoak Media provides a fairly comprehensive list of social news sites categorized by vertical.

When syndicating green content, marketers should seek to activate influentials on each social news site by encouraging them to submit relevant articles that support and reinforce the marketers’ efforts.  Articles submitted by such influentials are more likely to become popular (see Marketing Green’s “Green Content Syndication: Part II – Top Environmental Diggers”) than if submitted ordinarily, resulting in improved reach and traffic to the host site.  

But, how do you activate influentials on sites such as Digg?  While all social news sites operate somewhat differently, learnings from Digg are relevant to most every other site.  Marketing Green believes that there are three key ways to influence article submission by Diggers.   

Make it relevant.  Each Digger has his/her own style and topic preferences.  Get to know each of them by reviewing their profile, past articles that they submitted (and especially those that subsequently became popular) and in what categories. Focus on activating those Diggers that most closely align with your content topics. 

Make it easy.  Diggers sift through dozens of blogs, sites and newsfeeds daily.  As such, make sure your articles  stand out: position them with a new spin, provide a catchy title or attach relevant visuals (ie, images, video) to accompany the content.  Moreover, when possible, refer articles written by a third-party source as it provides added credibility. 

Develop trust. Marketers should focus on developing a rapport with a select few Diggers and carefully seed articles to each – or give them a heads up in advance of their publication. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to connect with two diggers on Marketing Green’s List of Top Environmental Diggers: 32-year old Jonathon Colman (#7 burkinaboy) of Washington DC and 18-year old Erik Bashatly (#10 sepultura) of Montreal, Canada.  It is important to note that Diggers are not paid (while “Scouts” and “Anchors” on Propeller are).  For them, the environment is an interest or a passion; submitting content is their way to help build awareness for issues of interest or concern.  Notably, Jonathon’s activities as a Digger aligns with his day job as the Associate Director of Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy.  

Separately, I asked them questions about their style as Diggers, their influence and how green marketers should best approach them with new articles for submission.  Here is what they had to say:

MG: When it comes to the environment, are there specific topics that you like to digg?

burkinaboy: I tend to submit stories about conservation, people and their interactions with nature, endangered species, and environmental science/data, but I tend to digg (vote for) quite a lot of “green living” and general sustainability-focused stories.  I always find reading these articles to be very intriguing and helpful in terms of reducing my own, personal impact on the environment and climate.

sepultura: I’m a strong believer in green technology, so I try to find as many stories as possible, which take on the positive effects that technology has on the environment.  For example, advances in automotive technologies are a strong plus for me when I’m looking for stories to submit.  The majority of the green tech articles I submit are from a blog called EcoGeek.org, which is focused on spreading the word on all the beneficial improvements of technology.

MG: What makes an article become popular on Digg?

sepultura: If a story gets enough diggs, it’ll become popular in time.  But, don’t we all wish it were really that simple?  Digg’s front page stories get there based on an a complex algorithm, which was very well explained by my friend and fellow digger Muhammad Saleem. While there is no fixed rule on how and when articles can or will become popular, the more experience you gain on the site, the more you’ll understand it.  I’d say that about 85 % of Digg’s top users have noticed the many patterns in the algorithm and have adjusted their submissions accordingly.

burkinaboy: I think that it’s a fun (yet sometimes awkward) balance of trust in the user submitting the article, “juiciness” of the title and description text, freshness level of interest in the news itself, reputation of the hosting site for the content, and (of course) luck.  That said, it’s well known that a good photo or multimedia feature can sometimes sell a story, as can other singular aspects, such as using the phrase “Top 10…” in the title.

MG: How much influence do individual diggers have in making an article popular?

burkinaboy: Quite a bit, assuming that the individual user is well-known, has a good reputation, and operates at an elite level.  For example, articles that are posted by or commented on by users like msaleem, zaibatsu, and mrbabyman tend to attract a lot of attention from the community.  That said, a relatively unknown user can use shouts, a catchy title, or even — gasp! — find outrageous, incredible news that hasn’t been posted elsewhere.  Beyond following best practices with story submissions, I personally use a combination of shouts, Twitter, Pownce, IM and my Facebook profile to attract diggs for the stories that I post.

sepultura: On the whole, it is relatively difficult to get a submission on Digg’s front page without having a strong presence on the site.  (This has become less difficult today due to Digg’s recent addition of the “shouting” system). Over the past few months, I’ve noticed that casual users can (for the most part) only get a story on the front page if the submission meets one or more of the following criteria: it links to a very popular site (Ars Technica, Cracked, Torrent Freak), it is breaking news, or  it’s something so amazing that no one has ever seen before (which is the hardest to come across). 

Digg’s so-called top users have an easier time getting their stories popular simply because they have built a following and have gained experience and have learned what other diggers want.  If you contribute enough, you start to know exactly what to do to be successful.  So I’d say that when it comes to top diggers, an individual digger has a lot of influence.  However, any other user does not have that much individual power on Digg.

MG: Do marketers send you or tip you off to articles for consideration? If so, how often do you dig them when they do?

sepultura: I get about 2 to 3 articles sent to me for consideration each day from people who get my email address off my Digg profile. If I like an article I’ll usually digg it (I’d say that I’ll accept about 60% of the articles sent me to me. However, it should be noted that I’ll usually getting these request from the same people most of the time, which I continuously like to support.

burkinaboy: I love receiving articles from other users and evaluate them for diggs as I would any other story… I look for fairness in coverage, journalistic integrity, newsworthiness, whether the source is primary or first hand in nature, etc.  I tend to only get a handful of requests each week from folks whom I don’t know.  That said, the bulk of my personal submissions to Digg are from a huge page of aggregated RSS feeds that I review frequently.

MG: Do you like when marketers send you articles?   If so, how would you prefer that they approach you?

burkinaboy: Being spammed by fellow diggers will not gain my votes unless the stories are of truly exceptional quality, which they most often are not.  I prefer shouts as my main method of inbound requests and review my incoming shouts regularly, parsing out the stories for votes.

sepultura: I generally don’t mind people sending me links to their own blogs, but I do mind the occasional “demand” (as opposed to the welcomed “request”).  Some people believe that saying “check out my story and Digg it on Monday morning so that it can get the most traffic possible” is a legitimate way of asking me to help them out. 

I also never accept money for submitting articles to Digg.  It wouldn’t be worth risking my reputation. 

I love helping people out, especially bloggers who are just getting started.  I will, however, deny a submission if I don’t approve of it.  It’s also quite obvious when someone is in it for the money instead of for their content.  As for tips from random people, they’re always welcome of course!

MG: Why do you spend so much time on Digg? 

burkinaboy: I do this because it’s a great way to market and promote stories about the environment, conservation, science, green living and sustainability to a large number of people who have an interest in and are affected by these issues, but who might not otherwise see the particular stories that I post. 

We all know that making a story popular on Digg tends to cause a large wave of traffic to the hosting site, but what gets talked about a bit less is the spike of blog and media sites picking up popular posts on Digg that drives a smaller (but longer) secondary wave of traffic, interest, and search engine visibility to those same stories.  Therefore, making a story popular on Digg doesn’t just mean that a marketer is promoting content to a closed audience, but to nearly everyone consuming media online.

sepultura: Many people believe that we either do it to gain some kind of profit or because we have nothing better to do with our lives.  Either way it’s a negative misconception.  We do it simply because we enjoy contributing to something that we love to use.  It’s that simple.

Green Content Syndication: Part II – Top Environmental Diggers

One of the most effective ways to syndicate content is by activating power users on sites such as Digg.  Quite simply, “Diggers” uncover and bookmark interesting content – news articles, images and videos – for others to view.  

Top Diggers are known for frequently submitting content that is deemed compelling by the Digg community.  If others users like the content, they may “digg” it as a way to recommend it to others.

Why should marketers care about whether an article submitted on Digg becomes popular or not?  Well, “popular” articles create their own viral effect.  Not only are more people likely to be interested in articles that come highly recommended, but more people are exposed to them as well.  On Digg, popular articles tend to get preferred placement on the front pages of the site and each topic section.  (Note: while popularity is the primary factor that affects placement on Digg, Neil Patel of the Pronet Advertising blog suggests that other factors impact placement including “number of submissions in a category, diggs, and time” between submissions). 

For a marketer, this can translate into increased reach and traffic to a site where the content is hosted at little to no incremental cost.  Though it is difficult to quantify the incremental impact of traffic referred from Digg, antidotal evidence suggests that Digg popularity leads to increased traffic.

For example, The Daily Green recently published its “10 Most Popular Stories of 2007”.  Notably, five in ten articles had been bookmarked on Digg.  Moreover, three in five articles submitted were wildly popular on Digg – with more than 1,100 users digging each of two articles (“Major Breakthrough for Super Efficient LED Lighting” and “Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Rapid Rate“) and nearly 700 users digging a third (“Glass Wall of Death Surround California Suburb”).  Inevitably, these bookmarks referred significant traffic to The Daily Green and contributed to the popularity of the articles on the site.

Today, “Top Diggers” are ranked based on the total number of popular stories that they have submitted.  Marketing Green believes that for green marketers, however, the current method for ranking diggers is incomplete. 

First, the current ranking gives undue weight to tenure.  Quite simply, the longer one has been digging, the higher the likelihood that they will have submitted a greater number of articles that became popular.  While successful tenure is an essential criteria, it may portray an incomplete picture, however, as it does not necessarily mean that the digger is very active today.  As such, any ranking of green diggers should also take into consideration recent activity.   

Second, the current ranking is based on articles submitted across all categories rather than those specifically focused on the environment.  Diggers are typically specialists that focus their efforts on a specific area of interest, however.  As such, not every Top Digger is interested in promoting articles related to the environment. 

Others have tried to create a more specific ranking focused on green diggers.  The Daily Green, for example, recently published a list of top environmental diggers.  While the list is solid, it is based on a “subjective process” that relies heavily on personal opinions rather than measurable facts.   

In contrast, Marketing Green believes that a ranking should be based on more quantitative criteria that enable it to be repeatable over time while minimizing bias. 

Moreover, any ranking should balance a digger’s success over time (successful tenure) with his/her recent activity specific to the environmental category (recency in category).  Marketing Green’s List of Top Environmental Diggers attempts to do just that (within the limits of publicly available data).   

Marketing Green gives equal weighting to two criteria: successful tenure and recency in category.  Successful tenure is determined based on the cumulative number of popular articles submitted by a digger over his/her tenure on Digg.  This is similar to how Top Diggers are currently ranked today. 

Recency in category is a proxy for how successful a digger has been recently in submitting popular articles specifically on the environment.  It is estimated based on two factors: the number of articles submitted in the “environment” category within the past 30 days and the historic percentage of submitted articles that have became popular. 

Marketing Green’s List of Top Environmental Diggers

Based on analysis of diggers in early January, 2007; ¹Overall popular articles; same as current Top Digger ranking; ²Popular articles on the environment within the past 30 days

Marketing Green’s Top Environmental Diggers: MrBabyMan, supernova17, msaleem, suxmonkey, zaibatsu, tomboy501, burkinaboy, Aidenag, skored, sepultra; Notable mentions: 1KrazyKorean, capn_caveman, charbarred, cosmikdebris, DigiDave, FameMoney, johndi, maheshee11, petsheep, pizzler, vroom101

Notably, Marketing Green’s ranking reveals somewhat of a different mix of diggers than are included in the previous rank of “Top Diggers.”  It should not come as a surprise, however, to see that the four Top Diggers are also ranked on Marketing Green’s list of Top Environmental Diggers.  Interestingly, these Top Diggers rank highly on Marketing Green’s list based not only on their successful tenure (the current criteria for ranking) but also on their recent activity within the environmental category.

The remaining six diggers on Marketing Green’s list are ranked in large part due to their recent activity in category.  Up and coming diggers such as suxmonkey and burkinaboy are great examples as they rank #57 and 110, respectively, based on successful tenure while ranking #1 and 3, respectively, based on recent activity. 

Why should green marketers target top environmental diggers rather than digg the articles themselves?  For starters, content submitted by top diggers has a higher probability of becoming popular than others.  This is likely due to a variety of factors including: faster submission time (top diggers spend time trawling for new articles), superior ability to uncover interesting content, a broad network of friends that may digg articles submitted, and established influence within the Digg community that may peak the interest of others.   

Moreover, InvespBlog suggests that diggers also know how to ‘sell’ their Digg submissions through compelling titles (eg, more than 75% of the top 100 most popular articles on Digg had titles different than the original), by attaching relatively lengthy descriptions (eg, the median description for a top 100 article was 48 words) and by choosing articles of limited length (eg, the median number of words in the top 100 article was 444). 

How much better are top diggers than the average?  As it turns out, they are significantly better.  In fact, the 10 “Top Diggers” have an average % popularity of nearly 37%.  This is in contrast to the average of the 100 Top Diggers (26%), let alone the 1,000 Top Diggers (18%).  Impressively, Marketing Green’s List of Top Environmental Diggers have the highest average % popularity at 38%, narrowly surpassing the overall 10 Top Diggers.

     

As such, marketers seeking to syndicate content should consider activating power users on sites like Digg to help them do so.  All diggers are not alike, however.  Green marketers should take into consideration not only the overall success of a digger but their recent activity within the environmental category.   

Stay tuned for the third and final part in this series for tips on how to active them. 

Green Content Syndication: Part I – “Deconstructing” Websites

Traditionally, publishers have viewed websites as content destinations, challenging marketers to drive traffic to specific websites in order to engage consumers with relevant content.   

Today, the model has changed.  Increasingly, publishers are uncoupling online content from its host site; marketers are learning to syndicate this content online or encouraging others to do so virally.  Jupiter Research has defined this trend as “website deconstruction”. 

Moreover, emerging and established content platforms, including news aggregators, video sharing and social bookmarking sites, enable content to exist on its own in the online world and allow users to have greater control over its distribution.  

Today, a two-step process has emerged for marketers to facilitate content distribution:

Active distribution: Publishers need to first distribute content to multiple users via RSS feeds to readers, widgets, personalized home pages, news aggregators and even mobile devices. A broad list of readers and aggregators can be found here. 

                          Downloadable and Customizable Widget 

 

Publishers can also syndicate content to users by seeding bloggers or by distributing assets to third-party websites through platforms such as Blogburst, Voxant and Magnify.  Each one has a different distribution mechanism.  Blogburst facilitates distribution of blog content through 200 established news channels such as Reuters and FoxNews, for example. 

    Marketing Green Blog Posting on FoxBusiness.com via BlogBurst

 

Voxant, in contrast,  syndicates news from mainstream sources to third-party websites; Magnify distributes video.  Magnify provides a widget that can be easily customized (based on content preferences) and downloaded onto third-party sites.  Publishers can make their content available for distribution simply by creating a channel on Magnify to do so.  Currently, Magnify offers 119 channels of content relating to “Nature and Environment”.

Passive or viral distribution: In addition to actively pushing content out to a variety of sources, marketers need to ensure they position their content to be further distributed by consumers.  Today, users increasingly share and recommend content to their peers.  By doing so, individuals not only share content with other users, but they empower these users to make recommendations to friends and contacts in their networks.  For marketers, such a network effect can have an exponential impact in driving reach; it also costs marketers virtually nothing to achieve.   

 

Examples of users facilitating passive content distribution include sending viral emails, posting video content on YouTube and veoh, bookmarking an article on Digg and del.cio.us or linking to personal pages within MySpace. 

 

While all general interest sites host content related to the environment, there are many websites that focus exclusively on the green space.  Examples include video sharing sites ecolive.tv, emPivot, Green.tv, GreenEnergyTV, RiverWired and URTH.tv; bookmarking sites ecoblogs, Hugg and hunuh; and a multitude of social networking sites including Care2 and Zaadz.  (See also Marketing Green’s “Green Marketing on Social Networks” and “Sharing Green Videos Online” postings).

In a conversation with Marketing Green earlier this week, Shmuel Benhamou, a founder of the recently launched ecolive.tv, makes the case for green vertical sites: “Videos are one of the most efficient and interesting ways to spread the ‘green’ message throughout the world.  Yet, today, it is very hard to find good green videos on YouTube and others user generated content sites.  Ecolive.tv wants to promote green videos to a targeted audience.”

Notably, syndication blurs the lines between publisher and user, as everyone has the chance to distribute content.  Moreover, it also blurs the distinction between content, either professionally or user-generated, and advertising.  Increasingly, content serves as advertising and advertising is enjoyed as content. 

One great example of advertising distributed as content in the green space is a commercial for a European wind energy company, Epuron, syndicated on YouTube.

Marketers: Think differently about your digital strategy.  Uncouple content from specific websites and distribute directly to users or through intermediary sites.  Encourage consumers to share content with their peers and across social networks.  If done right, syndication can act as a digital channel accelerator by driving reach and generating impact far beyond the cost required to facilitate it.  It is a must for most marketers today.  You scarcely can afford not to.

Corporations Foster Dialogue On the Environment

While many corporations leverage the Internet to distribute information about environmental initiatives, a few companies are going much further by facilitating two-way dialogue with stakeholders.   

Some companies may view such dialogue – via email, web forums, chat rooms and video – as risky, as it may open them up to public scrutiny.  Moreover, this sentiment may be especially true today for those brands that compete in carbon-intensive industries. 

Nonetheless, companies that are bold enough to enter into a dialogue tend to find that the rewards outweigh the risks.  Dialogue creates a direct channel to stakeholders that can be used to gather feedback, build credibility, and engender more loyalty by showing a more human side of the company. 

In other cases, companies are using dialogue to activate stakeholders – including customers, suppliers, employees, partners and shareholders – as change agents by soliciting new ideas. 

There are several examples of dialogue in the environmental space.  Here are just a few: 

British Telecom: It seems that on most corporate sites today, users are hard pressed to find a specific contact to forward their concerns to, let along an email address that does not deliver to a general mailbox. 

BT is different in this regard as it offers a detailed listing of contact names and email addresses to send questions specifically regarding corporate social responsibility, corporate environment programs and environmental supply chain management.

Shell: Shell periodically conducts webcasts with senior-level executives on topics such as its annual Sustainability Report.  Interviews address questions solicited from stakeholders via email.   

Dell: When Michael Dell declared that he wanted to build the “greenest PC on earth,” his company launched IdeaStorm as a platform to solicit “direct feedback from, [its] customers, suppliers and stakeholders” on how to do just that.  Moreover, IdeaStorm engages its stakeholders as change agents by encouraging them to promote their ideas and discuss them online with Dell and other users.

General Motors: Chevrolet just announced a bold move in the green space by inviting the public to enter into a direct dialogue regarding GM flagship division and actions that it is taking to reduce its environmental impact. Through a New York Times advertisement, Beth Lowery, GM Vice President for Environment, Energy and Safety Policy asked the public to “talk” with Chevy about mutual concerns for the environment and what Chevy is doing to address them.   

Lowery asks the public to submit questions through a New York Times microsite that will be published in the Friday Op/Ed section.

While many marketers perceive direct dialogue as too risky, many companies have fully engaged with stakeholders on many sensitive topics including the environment.  For many, a direct channel to the customer provides a way to generate feedback as well as to solicit new ideas.  Others focus on creating a more human way to connect with stakeholders. 

Regardless, dialogue is consistent with key attributes of leading green brands including accountability, transparency and credibility. More companies need to overcome their fear of potential negative feedback and join the dialogue on green issues. If done correctly, dialogue will more likely mitigate than engender consumer backlash in the future.  

(Full disclosure: GM is a Digitas client)

Green Marketing on Social Networks

Participation in social networks continues to grow seemingly without bounds as more people seek to connect, share and collaborate with likeminded individuals online.  Today, hundreds of millions of online users have already signed up, with an increasing number belonging to more than one network. 

For green marketers, social networks provide a compelling channel to communicate with consumers that have an affinity for green or are at least open-minded enough to listen.  Today, those users can be found across a wide variety of social networks, including both general interest and vertically focused networks that connect those interested in social responsibility or, more specifically, in the environment. 

Marketing Green has identified six different types of social networks that appeal to those with a green affinity.  Each network type provides the opportunity for users to connect, share and/or collaborate with others online.  And because many view green as a social cause, participation in such networks can generate both personal as well as societal benefits.   The six types of social networks include the following:   

Interaction sites connect online user to facilitate offline interactions.  For example, online users can connect with other likeminded individuals for dating or socializing on sites such as Care2, Earthwise Singles, dharmaMatch, Green Drinks, Green Passions, Green Party Passions, Planet Earth Singles and VeggieDate.  Alternatively, online users can find out about green events, political rallies or local meet ups on social action sites such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour Action, Care2, Do Something, Meetup, Step It Up, TakingITGlobal, and WorldCoolers.  

Other sites allow members to arrange carpools on sites like GishiGo, GoLoco, pooln and WorldCarShare (Yahoo Groups), as well as rent, loan or reuse products (rather than purchase new or dispose of as waste) on sites like freecycle, gigoit, loanables and rentoid. 

                   Marketing Green’s Six Types of Green Social Networks

Commitment sites enable users to share a personal pledge to make their lives more eco-friendly.  On certain Commitment sites, users can even collaborate with others to support their pledge or to encourage others to make similar pledges.  Examples include sites such as Actics, Low Fly Zone, Make Me Sustainable, PledgeBank, The Carbon Diet, Who On Earth Cares (Aus), Yahoo Green and the “I Am Green” page on Facebook.   

Utility sites enable consumers to connect and share online with others that have a green affinity and/or want to live a greener lifestyle.  Examples include general interest networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Tribe and Yahoo Groups (focused on green), as well as vertically focused networks such as beTurtle, Care2, Common Circle, Dianovo, ecoMetro, Eco-munnity, Good Tree, Green Bin, Holistic Local, Lime, Neutral Existence, rethos, TheNag (UK), Zaadz and Zelixy among others.   

Sites like Baagz are emerging that should, in theory, enable users to connect with a far greater number of online users across the Internet, rather than simply those within a particular social network.  Considered an early Web 3.0 application, Baagz leverages semantic web principles to allow software agents to connect people with common interests by reading embedded tags in web content (rather than natural language descriptions). 

Shopping sites allow consumers to connect and share green purchases and product reviews.  Examples include FiveLimes and Sustainlane.  Additionally, traditional social shopping sites such as Kaboodle, StyleHive, ThisNext and Wists include a wide range of eco-friendly (eg, organic) products.  

Today, online users have the opportunities to integrate their favorite purchases into their personal profile page on sites like Facebook using a Yahoo web application called “My favorite Things”.  This application enables users to share favorite products, create a wish list and send virtual gifts to friends online.  Importantly, integration of social shopping into Facebook enriches personal profiles and allows users to connect based on shopping preferences.  

Alternatively, consumers have the option to connect with other likeminded consumers based on their brand and/or product affinity.  One example is Toyota’s community site for hybrid owners, Hybrid Synergy Drive.  Another example is Method’s community of advocates. 

Engagement sites enable users to share ideas and collaborate on new ones.  These social networks tend to attract members from specific vertical sectors.  Examples include local community sites such as ecoTreadsetters (Yokohama Tire), Gusse and Transition Towns (UK); innovation sites such as Green Building Forum (UK), Sustainability Forum and wattwatt; and business forums such as OpenEco (Sun) and OPEN Forum (American Express) among others.

Activism sites enable collaboration to promote change through social and political activism.  Example sites include: 2People, Care2, Change, Do Something, GreenVoice, idealist, just cause, Razoo, TakingITGlobal, tree-nation, Wiser Earth and Youth Noise among others.    

For marketers, such social networks provide a rich opportunity for messaging to consumers with a green affinity.  Today, there are three primary ways in which marketers can communicate with consumers through this channel: 

Search.  Marketers can bid on contextually relevant search keywords within social networks and provide relevant and engaging content on linked landing pages. 

Awareness and Engagement.  Marketers can actively engage consumers by placing corporate profiles within social networks, by facilitating the creation of user generated content and by encouraging viral marketing.     

The placement of profiles on social networks is a great way to build awareness within and across peer groups online.  Users connect to a brand or a cause as an expression of their online identities.  Those that do can be effective advocates for a brand (or cause) and brands should actively engage them as such.  Moreover, this simple link in a personal profile can provide a powerful way to build awareness within the user’s extended network as it provides a de facto endorsement of the brand or cause by a trusted source. 

Additionally, it is important to note that the creation of user-generated content itself can facilitate viral marketing efforts though sharing of content between consumers or via content sharing sites such emPivot, RiverWired and YouTube.  Moreover, users may bookmark favorite green content or websites on hunah, Hugg, del.icio.us, Digg and StumbleUpon, encouraging others to also view the content or visit the site as well.

Targeting.  Marketers can target consumers within a social network through direct ad placement where possible and appropriate.  

Importantly, Facebook has made an announcement that has major implications for how marketers can communicate to members going forward.  Essentially, Facebook said that it will allow marketers to target members with ads based on its user’s personal profiles, social connections and even the recent activities of each user’s extended network. 

This announcement marks a significant departure in the way social networks have been organized to date.  Until now, marketers have had limited opportunity to serve ads directly to users within the social network.  With this change, marketers will now have the opportunity to target consumers directly based on attitudinal, behavioral and demographic attributes included directly in or inferred from personal profiles and connections online.    

So, marketers should take note.   Social networks are proliferating and consumer participation seems to be growing without bounds.  For marketers, social networks provide an increasing number of opportunities to communicate with online users that either have a green affinity or perhaps are connected to someone that does.  To have the greatest impact, however, marketers should ensure that they align their messaging with the mission of each type of social network.  Done right, marketers can have a powerful impact on their brands and the bottom line.

Greener SimCity Virtual World as Channel to Influence Real World Behaviors

Electronic Arts (EA)’s SimCity, the popular simulation game that challenges users to build and run a metropolis, is set to release its latest version in mid-November – SimCity Societies – and is generating a lot of buzz in the process.  

One way that sets Societies apart from previous versions is its new functionality that requires users to take economic and environmental factors into consideration when making energy production decisions.  (Other simulation games that require users to make trade-offs between energy and environmental concerns include Energyville, recently launched by Chevron and The Economist Group; ElectroCity, sponsored by Genesis Energy in New Zealand; and My Abode, sponsored by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.)

While this novel functionality is generating significant buzz in the market, the real learnings for green marketers may be how EA and energy giant BP are leveraging the game itself as a marketing channel to influence its audience.  In doing so, EA and BP will have impact across the purchase funnel:

Awareness: As a key sponsor of Societies, BP will place its logo on renewable energy sources throughout the game.  BP is likely betting that branding renewable energy in this virtual world will have a positive impact on brand awareness, favorability and purchase intent in the real world.

Cleverly, while BP plans to place its logo on (not so eco-friendly) gasoline stations within the game, it is purposefully not associating its brand with dirtier energy sources that are used to generate electricity like coal (though this positioning may be somewhat inconsistent with its real-world energy mix).

Consideration: The game itself provides a high impact channel to educate consumers about real-life trade offs that are increasingly required today.  

In this simulation game users make decisions regarding how to meet the growing energy needs as well as how to deal with their consequences over time.  For example, users that choose to fuel industrial growth with low cost, but high polluting energy sources may find themselves facing droughts, heat waves and other weather-related consequences of global warming.  

Ultimately, companies like BP will benefit from such presence if consideration for renewable energy in the virtual world translates into the real-life consideration as a result. 

Purchase: Perhaps the most powerful use of this gaming channel has yet to be explored, that is, driving transactions.  While enabling functionality is not planned for this version, the potential exists to facilitate purchases longer term. 

In a gaming environment there are several ways in which real-world transactions could take place.  One way could be to allow users to sign up for or indicate interest in renewable energy directly through the gaming environment or an associated micro site. 

Moreover, it may even be possible to exchange Simoleans, or SimCity virtual currency, to purchase renewable energy in the real world over time.  This would be similar to the way virtual Linden dollars can be exchanged for real dollars in the popular virtual world of Second Life.

So, marketers should take note. Gaming is an emerging channel that may be used to reach new audiences and influence behaviors across the purchase funnel.  The virtual world of SimCity Societies requires users to make economic and environmental trade-offs similar to those that we increasingly confront today.    For marketers like BP, such an immersive environment offers the chance not only to influence awareness and consideration in a virtual world, but to shape behaviors that impact the bottom line in the real one.