Green Communications Should Equal Hope Not Hype

We’re continuously bombarded by the new eco-consciousness which defines everything we experience, from cars to vacation destinations to the media coverage de jour. Not a week goes by where there isn’t a cover story of some sort extolling the promises and challenges of the new green revolution. Whether it is HBO’s documentary “Too Hot Not to Handle” with the dire sub title “Global Warming is the Most Urgent Threat Facing Humanity Today,”  or Good Magazine addressing the threat of corporate green-washing, it’s obvious that green is the new black.

This became even more obvious when I recently attended the Oceana 2007 Partners Award gala. (Oceana is the largest international environmental advocacy group dedicated to protecting and restoring the world's oceans and sea life). Dozens of paparazzi were madly shooting photographs of the celebrities, who ranged from Oceana co-founder and board member Ted Danson, and other entertainment celebs including Brooke Shields, Jeff Goldblum,to high visibility politicos California Attorney General Jerry Brown and of course Nobel Peace Prize recipient Vice President Al Gore.

I was there with Access account supervisor Heather Silverberg on behalf of our client Piaggio/Vespa. We’re helping Piaggio educate consumers on how motorized scooters, like Vespa, can quickly reduce oil consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and traffic congestion

As I watched the parade of guests arrive in their gas guzzling limos (I traveled there in a bio-diesel Mercedes that ran on corn oil and gets 70 mpg), it was easy to become a little cynical about what green hype and its associated communications machine had created.

However, when Oceana CEO Andrew Sharpless addressed the crowd, he reminded us in stark terms of the crisis we face – that 90% of the “big fish” are already extinct from over-fishing; that fishing operations discard 16 billion pounds of unwanted fish every year; and since the industrial revolution, our oceans have absorbed 150 billion tons of carbon dioxide, threatening the existence of coral reefs everywhere – it was clear that even if this green cry for help seems to be taking over the media, the scale of this crisis warrants the millions of pages of paper used to tell this story in the media.

It’s also evident that successful communications is critical to our hopes that we may turn this problem around before the polar ice cap melts (which Gore predicts will occur in only six years). Whether it’s Hollywood blockbusters that win Oscars, a new generation of green blogs, or mainstream media embracing the latest in eco-journalism, it’s clear that the power of communications is perhaps Mother Nature’s greatest hope.      

But there is a yin and yang to all of this. On one hand, mass communications has successfully elevated these issues in our collective consciousness, and transformed that into a call to action. But we’re almost causing our own form of pollution — content pollution. If we’re not selective about the messages we create and help disseminate, we will go into intellectual and emotion sensory overload, and audiences will tune out and shut down.

PRWeek’s Oct. 1 issue addressed the greening of PR, as did CNN, and touched on the challenges that await as companies and their communicators try to appear greener than thou. We want to avoid Hype 2.0, and a repeat of the dot com era when messages were more about style than substance. Our industry must be selective about the claims our clients make, who the green leaders are, and what stories we are looking to tell. Because in order to make a change, we need to make sure we know the difference between what is marketing and what is real.

Authenticity is key, as journalists are already recoiling from corporate green-washing. Reporters, and their readers, want to know what companies are doing that’s a genuine long-term commitment, not just wrapping themselves in green. The media and public are already jaded with corporate insincerity; we don’t need to throw another log on that fire. If we are to retain our value as counselors, we need to make sure our clients look beyond quick media hits, and help them make bold commitments that will win hearts and minds for the long term.