How direct mail helped keep a vintage New Orleans jazz record label afloat in the wake of Hurricane Katrina

By: Lekan Oguntoyinbo

Seventy-nine year-old George H. Buck has weathered more than his share of storms, so when Hurricane Katrina roared through the Gulf Coast three years ago, pulverizing more than half the city of New Orleans, Buck says he wasn’t too fazed. His New Orleans-based jazz label, Jazzology, had survived other upheavals in its 58-year history, and Buck figured he’d ride this storm out, same as always.

But this wasn’t just any storm. And when the rains and flooding finally stopped, Buck soon realized the damage was far worse than he’d bargained for. The print shop he used - to print CD covers, catalogs and the label’s iconic custom magazine, Jazzbeat - had been deluged and forced to shut down. The warehouse where he kept thousands of old wax LPs and back issues of Jazzbeat was destroyed, most of its inventory forever lost.

Still, Buck refused to despair, his spirits buoyed by the one constant that kept Jazzology tethered to its glorious recent past: his direct mail customers.

“We didn’t get flooded in our offices, and we still had our customers around the nation and around the world,” says Buck, whose headquarters are based in the French Quarter, which was spared the brunt of the hurricane.

And so, even as the waters receded, the telephone calls, letters and e-mails began to trickle in. Soon, Buck was fielding calls from around the globe from jazz buffs desperately hoping that their favorite label hadn’t gone under. With the calls, Buck says, also came orders for more music. And slowly, steadily, Jazzology began its long trek back to business as usual.

“We’d be out of business without direct mail because we don’t have record shops,” says Buck.

Instead of using countless distributors, Jazzology - the umbrella company for nine smaller boutique labels - takes orders directly and has relied on catalogs and its branded publication to help maintain contact with consumers. Buck concedes that more of the label’s fans are turning to the Internet for their orders, but says that direct mail remains the company’s most important marketing tool.

Its primary communications link is Jazzbeat, a quarterly magazine mailed free to 9,000 members of the Jazzology record club, which also serves as the source for its mailing list. For $5, members can join the club and receive a lifetime membership as well as a complimentary subscription to Jazzbeat, which is available only by mail. In return, the club asks that subscribers buy at least one record per year. The magazine, which is filled with reviews and articles about traditional jazz, is also the primary vehicle for showcasing Jazzology’s newest products, particularly since the storm had made finding a printer for the label’s colorful catalog more difficult.

In fact, Buck says, Jazzbeat is so popular that music orders often spike by nearly 100 percent whenever the magazine is released. “The magazine has done very well for us,” says Buck, who moved Jazzology Records to New Orleans from Atlanta in 1987. “A huge amount of our sales is from direct mail. Most of our sales are made through direct mail or individual mail orders from people. Most of our individual sales come from people on our mailing list.”

Jazzology, with its subordinate boutique labels, is more than just a traditional jazz record label. It is also a shrine for the genre and an archive for its varied manifestations. It boasts a piano jazz label, a big band label, labels devoted to New Orleans-and Chicago-style jazz, and even a label that handles blues records. In addition, Buck has created a foundation that’s devoted to traditional jazz, and he hopes that the foundation will also help stave off larger labels that may try to buy out Jazzology and change its mission after he has passed away.

Buck acknowledges that, despite its global reputation and solid sales numbers, Jazzology remains largely a labor of love, not one of immense profit. No surprise then, that Buck is more comfortable honing the label to meet listeners’ tastes rather than to follow commercial trends.

This has allowed him to fine-tune his longtime relationship with the fiercely loyal aficionados who are Jazzology subscribers, a relationship he has developed through years of steady direct mail outreach. As a result, the label’s fan base stretches from New York to London to Tokyo, he says.

An Atlanta marketing firm drew rave reviews from fashionistas for its personalized direct mailer

By: Lekan Oguntoyinbo

Two years ago, Grizzard Performance Group set out to take the New York-centric U.S. fashion industry by storm from Atlanta.

Of course, when they made the decision to go after business within the wholesale and retail apparel industry, executives at the southern-based marketing firm knew it would be a challenge. For starters, they were going against competitors who had a track record of working with some of the fashion world’s most venerable giants. And then there was the small matter of geography: Atlanta is not exactly at the epicenter of the retail apparel industry, and location carries much currency in that business.

“There’s a kind of parochialism attributable to different parts of the country,” says Douglas Broward, creative director of the Grizzard Performance Group and the campaign’s quarterback. “Being from the South, we had to work aggressively. Markets in places like New York are trend-setting as opposed to trend-reflecting. It was definitely uphill.”

Uphill but not unattainable, he figured. Grizzard had just come off a lengthy relationship with one of its biggest clients, so there was a lot riding on this. Broward and three colleagues set about developing a campaign that would magnetize a significant segment of their target audience. Four months of painstaking work led to the birth of Volume ONE, a campaign that consisted of a two-step mailing to approximately 50 potential clients.

The first step included sending out a low-cost poster that alerted the prospects that a second, more substantive mailing was on its way. Grizzard also developed a URL that was specific to the campaign and contained a registration form and a flash show. But it was the second mailing a lavish red, quarter-inch-thick, 16-by 22-inch book with a floral design embossed in the thin metal foil stamped on the book’s cover that got people talking and calling. The books, which each cost between $500 and $600 to develop, also came complete with a customized music CD and a specific URL, thisisvolume.com.

In the middle of the book was a 22-by 64-inch centerfold of a work table strewn with photos. The books, which were wholly designed and partially created in-house, arrived in highly personalized, hand-painted boxes. The CD had a musical accompaniment to each passage in the book. Each of the songs referenced the passage in song lyrics or title.

New CD technology ratchets up the stakes on personalization

By: Paula Andruss

As technology advances, a variety of new media channels have emerged that allow marketing to become more personalized. From the Internet to mobile content and interactive television, marketers are able to engage customers and track their behavior like never before.

A new direct marketing product from Sony DADC the “eBridge” program is taking personalization to an even higher level, with a custom-tailored, individualized compact disk that’s being mailed to customers in various international markets. Each disk in the eBridge effort has a unique embedded source code that allows the marketer to load the digital message with personal information including the recipient’s name and address, as well as previous purchases and other information the company has collected. The disk links users directly to the marketer’s Web site, allowing the company to track performance metrics including engagement, click-through and conversion rates, all in real time.

Marketers love the concept because it allows them to engage customers earlier in the consumer courtship process and lets customers communicate with them on what they hope is a deeper level. Still, some admit that such acute personalization also has the potential to create a backlash from consumers who see it less as a marketing strategy and more as an invasion of privacy. However, marketers counter by pointing out that many of these concerns can be offset with simple safeguards.

Growing confidence in eBridge technology is leading to high praise from many of the major marketers who have used it in campaigns. (Sony just launched the program as a direct marketing product in the United States, but some European companies have used eBridge successfully for months.) From one-click conversion to easy-to-track metrics, the strategic benefits of the program, marketers say, outweigh any potential confidentiality concerns.

“One of the reasons we’re getting such high response rates is because it’s not your usual piece of mail,” says Peter Gustafsson, CEO of Sweden-based Expericard AB, which helped create the mailer that carries the disk.

Pairing eBridge technology with a fully automated production line that can identify the individual disk and match it to the corresponding address makes this a “killer application,” says Gustafsson.

Overall industry estimates suggest that personalized marketing pitches create about a 30-percent boost in response, an effect that hasn’t gone unnoticed at a time when marketers are more put-upon than ever to show quantifiable results.

“As the cost of everything rises, marketers are being pressured to get smarter about the groups they target,” says John Macdonald, director of business development for Sony DADC. The eBridge program, he says, allows direct marketers to hone that targeting and better pitch consumers.

For example, Macdonald says, “A car company can reach into its database and say, We know that John Doe bought this red car three years ago, so now we’ll show him the new version of that car, or maybe the next level up, in red, too.’ That kind of personal touch is a distinct difference.”

Unilever uses direct mail to help consumers redefine “Real Beauty”

By: Paula Andruss

The buzz surrounding the Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty has been deafening since its inception. Using real women to promote its personal care products has made the Unilever Inc. brand resonate with women around the globe, earning accolades and awards in addition to double-digit sales growth.

Part of a comprehensive marketing effort that includes advertising, billboards, a dedicated Web site, viral films, special events and the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, the 4-year-old campaign is also supported by the “Dove Dimensions” direct mailer. A mini-magazine that’s sent by mail three times a year to approximately 1.8 million households, it’s designed to connect directly with consumers and reinforce the brand’s “real beauty” philosophy through general and product-related articles and promotions.

Though the Campaign for Real Beauty may garner more publicity from its new-media elements, Dove officials and industry insiders agree that the mailer and its editorial format play a crucial role in building brand equity and loyalty among the Dove brand’s target consumers.

Kathy O’Brien, marketing director for Dove, says the Dove Dimensions mailers started as a way to help the brand establish direct communication with its most valuable consumers.

“They allow us to provide real women with brand, product and category information in a more personalized format,” she says. “Dove has found that direct marketing is an effective way to reach loyal consumers. While coupons, FSIs, advertising and public relations efforts reach the general population, Dove Dimensions is a more personal connection to the brand for consumers who have expressed additional interest in Dove products or programming.”

Recipients of the mailer are taken from Unilever’s database of consumers based on previous interactions with the brand, such as entering a Dove contest, participating in a promotion or requesting sample products.

Such direct mail allows Dove to target consumers who have been affected by the campaign and its real-woman imagery, and create an ongoing dialogue with them about the brand as a whole, says David Diamond, partner at Toronto-based marketing consultancy Twenty-Ten Inc.

“Today there’s a trend to create a mega-brand,” Diamond says. “This mailer allows Dove to target the ladies for whom this campaign has made an emotional connection and try to get them to spend their skin-and body-care budget on Dove products, and also have a bias going forward so that when there’s a new Dove product, they’ll try it because they already have this relationship with the company.”

A children’s charity uses the tactile power of direct marketing to move donors

By: Lou Bortone

Imagine arriving at your desk one day and finding a plain white envelope sitting in your inbox. The nondescript piece of mail is devoid of any identifying labels other than some simple text instructing you to fold the envelope in half. You’re curious, so you fold the envelope and feel a little snap. Naturally, you open the envelope, only to discover that you’ve just broken a pencil in two. A note inside reads: “That’s how easy it is to break a child’s arm.”

The note in the envelope with the now-shattered pencil goes on to tell the heartbreaking story of Jeremy, a little boy who had his arm broken by his father not once, but on six different occasions. Jeremy was just 5 years old when his abusive father first broke the boy’s bone using no more force than what it took to snap that pencil.

If you’re surprised and shocked by this powerful message, that’s exactly the response that the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) was hoping for. As a nonprofit child abuse-prevention organization in the U.K. competing against dozens of other British charities for attention and donations, the NSPCC needed a unique and compelling way to emerge from the clutter and reverse the organization’s falling response rates.

The NSPCC mail piece, created by WWAV Rapp Collins in London, was designed to engage the senses and take advantage of the tactile power of direct marketing. “The campaign targeted people at work, where people are unfamiliar with receiving fundraising appeals,” explains Barney Cockerell, creative director at WWAV Rapp Collins, “so the communication had to cut through. We had to stop people in their tracks and make them act.

“Only once recipients opened the envelope and read the contents would they know that they had just experienced how shockingly easy it is to break a child’s arm,” recounts Cockerell. “We knew that we had to provide an experience that directly connected them with the cause, so we took full advantage of the three dimensions and five senses that we have to play with in direct mail communications.”

The day after receiving their “pencil packs,” more than 300 office workers in Britain who had received the initial message got a follow up e-mail from the NSPCC. The e-mail reminder encouraged automatic payroll deductions and promised matching funds from the employer.

Despite the shocking nature of the pencil pack device, there were no complaints or reports of recipients being offended. “There’s a fine line between shocking people and offending them,” according to WWAV Rapp Collins Group Communications Director Robert Mayes. “Having worked on NSPCC and many other charities for the best part of 27 years, we have a finely tuned sense of where that line is and how to get close to the edge without crossing it.” Mayes also says that the unmarked envelopes didn’t alarm anyone, even in this more vigilant age of terrorism concerns.

In fact, after the emotionally charged pencil pack campaign, employee payroll giving jumped from 2 percent to 10 percent, with an average monthly gift of 10 pounds sterling, or about 20 U.S. dollars. Even better for the NSPCC, the employers involved doubled that figure.

The campaign garnered a DMA ECHO Gold Award in 2007, but more important, the NSPCC’s pencil pack generated an impressive response rate of 6.8 percent. “This campaign takes the idea of emotional engagement to a new level,” Cockerell says of the success. The DMA calls the piece “brave, original and unique.”

“Every time someone breaks the pencil and reads the headline, they have an immediate and visceral emotional reaction,” reports Cockerell. “Which is exactly what makes people give to charity.”

American Leprosy Missions’ powerful mailer raises awareness

Like many, Mary Hutchinson has never met a person with leprosy, has never had to deal directly with the disease, which has left millions in developing countries permanently disfigured. But instead of allowing the obscurity of the disease to be a hindrance, the marketing executive used it to help American Leprosy Missions educate direct mail recipients about how difficult living with leprosy remains for many of its victims.

Hutchinson, the president and creative director for CreativeOne Direct in Westford, Mass., crafted a compelling direct mail campaign that sent letters and a tight-fitting sock to potential donors. The letters asked them to cover a fist with the sock and try to complete a list of tasks pictured in the mailer.

Nearly 7 percent responded with an average donation of $302, according to ALM.

Deliver spoke with Hutchinson about the campaign and its results.

Deliver: How did you come up with this direct mail campaign?

Hutchinson: One of the most dramatic effects that people with leprosy often suffer is what happens to their hands. The victim will slowly find his or her hand becomes stiffer and stiffer until it is almost frozen in a claw. We wanted to illustrate what it would be like to not have use of a hand. What could you not do? How do you dial a phone, make coffee, button a shirt, do simple things in life? Our challenge to the donors in the copy from the outer billboard was to feel like a person with this disease. For a moment, experience what it’s like not to use your hand. Not everyone who has leprosy has this happen to their hands, but a large number do. The whole teaser was, “Can you open an envelope without using your right hand?” So we called it the “can you open” package. We wanted people to experience it for themselves. To be able to understand what it would be like to have this disability, for even 30 seconds.

Deliver: Why did the group choose direct mail?

Hutchinson: We were tasked to do the renewal program for existing donors. The people we mailed to had responded well to direct mail in the past, and it was the only logical choice.

Deliver: Was there another aim of the program besides compelling donations and raising awareness about the disease?

Hutchinson: We knew that a lot of the impact would be to help build donor understanding. The goal was to make sure that the package got opened, and it would be remembered. Even if they didn’t respond then, the hope was that they’d eventually respond.
Deliver: A lot is made of the marketing power of electronic media. Why did you decide to use direct mail for the ALM campaign?

Hutchinson: What is and was important to us is that we communicate to these people the way they wanted to be communicated with. We see people making the mistake of moving from direct mail to electronic communication to save money, and it is shortsighted. A charity that wants to raise the most money and keep its donors happy will test and learn what each donor wants - and give them that type of communication.

Deliver: So abandoning direct mail altogether is a mistake?

Hutchinson: It would be a mistake. Some have embraced e-mail - and even e-giving - but many prove in their patterns that they prefer the mail. A successful charity will have the data to know and give donors what they want.

And we have gone with clients who have (eschewed mail), and it’s like throwing the baby out with the bath water. And then they wonder where all their great supporters went. At this point, direct mail is a very important part of everybody’s program.

Deliver: So how do you determine which strategy works best, especially when your company focuses on nonprofits and religious organizations that depend on fundraising for survival?

Hutchinson: Our specialty is in database marketing, which helps us craft strategies for the various segments within a client’s file. We mail those who want to be mailed, we e-mail people who want to be e-mailed. We plan our touch points around the time of year the individual donor likes to give. Without a good database, you can’t do that. You can only guess. And when you start guessing in a boardroom and everyone is looking at costs, wrong decisions are easy to make.

What better way to capture the attention of your customers than to incorporate your message into something they’re already opening: their monthly bill

By: Vicki Powers

One of the biggest challenges of marketing is getting recipients to open a direct mail piece. So what better way to capture people’s attention than by inserting a marketing message into a piece that many people are too afraid not to open?

Hence, marketers’ increased attention to the monthly bill.

Indeed, the monthly invoice is getting a full-on marketing makeover. Increasingly, marketers are realizing that all that white space on these must-read documents offers cross- selling and up-selling opportunities without threatening to increase delivery costs.

Research compiled by marketing experts and business consultants reveals that 95 percent of customers open their monthly statements at least once, and the average consumer spends up to three minutes reading his or her bill. No wonder many observers predict that “transpromotional” mail the newly coined term for pieces that include relevant marketing messages on transactional documents is expected to increase by a compound annual rate of 91 percent by 2010.

“If there is relevant, exciting and interesting information on those statements, then those companies gain eye- ball time and consideration to change customers’ behavior,” says E. Scott Wagner, manager of worldwide marketing for continuous - feed products at Xerox. The rate of return on personalized communication is usually three to five times that of generic direct mail campaigns, says Wagner.

Taking Action

One group using the new marketing approach is the Ford Motor Company automotive finance unit, Ford Motor Credit. In 2006, the division replaced its traditional monthly leasing invoice and inserts with a transpromo initiative using full- color, customizable invoices designed around the car brand that a customer drives. The goal: increasing sales of its Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda and Volvo vehicles.

Ford Credit uses its monthly invoices to communicate with customers on everything from vehicle service schedules to special financing offers and new vehicle promotions. Guided by info gleaned from customers, Ford Credit tailors statements with marketing messages and promotional offers targeted to its customers’ buying preferences and patterns.

The declining cost of color printing and the increasing quality and speed of printouts influenced the division’s switch from preprinted, company-branded paper. The division prints about 175,000 statements daily or about 42 million invoices each year. Ford Credit saves significantly on postage costs by reducing the number of inserts inside invoices and consolidating mailings. Although Ford executives don’t reveal specifics, they say the transpromo initiative is meeting the company’s expectations in terms of returns.

Your marketing budget is an investment, not an expense

Forgive us, marketing friends, but we’d like a few moments with your CFO. It’s OK, we’ll wait while you go find him or her.

Stuck in a budget meeting? Hmmm, well, maybe you could take a message:

We just want to say that something about staring at numbers all day must affect your vision, because we’re hearing from our marketing brethren about shortsighted attempts to reduce company expenses by cutting the marketing budget.

Far be it from us to explain to those in corner offices that marketing spend is slightly different from the costs associated with the office coffee service, but let’s just say your crew seems hellbent on making a dent in these “outrageous” costs for promoting your company’s products and services.

We can only assume that clinging to this belief will mean you’ll eventually lay off all those “money-grubbing” employees, shut down those “dollar-sucking” retail outlets and then put all those savings into a nice bank CD where it can earn a staggering 5.4 percent ad infinitum.

Or maybe, just maybe, you don’t want to do that. Maybe running a company can generate a return slightly higher than that stellar 5.4 percent and you see the value in keeping the doors open, the offices staffed.

Splendid. Then why, oh why, do you refuse to see that what you spend on marketing is not an expense of doing business, but an investment in your business. Done properly, your marketing has an effective ROI yes, that’s return on investment that generates additional (as in more than usual) revenue.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with altering your marketing mix to get the most efficient use of your dollars that makes perfect sense. And, dear reader, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that when it comes to generating ROI, direct mail is one of the best investments you can make.

Recent numbers show that every dollar spent on direct mail generates $16 in revenue three times higher than the return for general advertising.

Think about that cutting your marketing budget may save you $1, but it’s costing you $16, on average, in revenue. So be sure to lower your revenue targets for the coming year.

Or better yet, suck it up and regard this the way you would any business investment something you need to do for the good of your company. Oh, and while you’re at it, give the members of your marketing team a bonus. They deserve it.

Sure, a lot of marketing campaigns can touch consumers. Every day we see TV spots and radio ads and Web sites that tug at the heartstrings, boggle the mind, steal the breath and otherwise grab hold of you. But direct mail is the one medium that your customer can touch back.

The power of mail lies not just in its ability to target precisely or to get inside the consumer’s home. Direct mail also gives the consumer something tangible to grasp, be that a letter, a CD or some three-dimensional incentive.

Sure, mail can give you the dazzling visual and the snappy copy just the same as any Web site, billboard or commercial. And mail can also engage the other senses. Mail lets you try on those clothes, fiddle with that new gadget and smell and sip the gourmet coffee.

Let’s see a Web site do that!

This issue of Deliver® magazine explores some of the tactile power of direct mail.

Our feature story, “Through Hell and High Water,” recounts how jazz label Jazzology leaned on its direct mail catalog and its exhaustive mail-order collection of classics to survive the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Disk Drive,” which explores the benefits of the latest CD information technology, gives us a glimpse of how direct marketing campaigns could be conducted in the not-too-distant future. By packing a CD mailer with personalized customer info, marketers are able to bypass introductions and immediately begin engaging their targets’ interest.

Perhaps no story better illustrates the power of direct mail than “Breaking Point,” a case study examining a powerful anti-child abuse campaign by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Hoping to boost donations to the organization, the NSPCC’s heartbreaking mailer used a pencil to underscore how easily children can be hurt by violent adults.

Likewise, our “Last Word” this month features American Leprosy Missions, a group that used simple items like a sweat sock and a series of photos to dramatize the plight of leprosy victims.

There is also “Value in Volume,” a great piece on how Atlanta-based Grizzard Performance Group turned heads with an expensive, colorful mailer designed to create inroads into the elite New York fashion industry.

Done right, direct mail campaigns don’t always need bells and whistles. Because, as many stories in this issue show, sometimes it’s more important to touch and be touched than it is for marketers to be seen or heard.

Jeff Baker turned his company upside down to become sustainable and socially responsible. So why did he keep it a secret for so long?

By: Elaine Appleton Grant

Jeffrey Baker’s company does not look like a green business. To get to his Image 4 offices, you inch delicately past ditches dug for a mile down Candia Road, swerving away from jackhammers and excavation rigs doing interminable construction in this developing section of Manchester, N.H. From the outside, the company’s one-story brick building screams 1970s industrial not 21st century sustainability. Inside, a chaos of trade show exhibits greets you.

This is “sustainability central?” Perhaps.

Image 4 manufactures trade show exhibits and what Baker calls “branded environments” the banners, signs, displays, even the furniture that companies use to announce themselves to the world. Increasingly, Baker and his 15 employees have taken some innovative steps to make Image 4’s practices more eco-friendly, including using non-toxic inks on 100-percent recycled fabric, reclaimed metal, egg-based varnish, non-volatile paints and other green materials. Only recently, though, has Image 4 mentioned its environmentally progressive operations, spotlighting them on its Web site and in a series of eco-friendly direct mail postcards to customers.

Previously, though, Baker quietly went about transforming this traditional manufacturing company into an environmentally conscious thought leader; since his efforts started, the company has grown far beyond the 46-year-old Baker’s boldest imaginings. By 2009, Baker expects Image 4 to double its revenues while expanding its profit margins. That growth, Baker believes, is coming as a direct result of the 20-year-old company’s commitment to sustainability, a commitment Image 4 has worked hard to honor even while laboring in what may possibly be the most toxic and wasteful sector of the marketing industry.

He is, in some ways, a paradox. In an age when it seems that only two kinds of companies get serious press for being green mammoth businesses whose initiatives, however controversial, can make a big impact, and tiny, sexy startups that sell green products and are eco-friendly at birth Image 4 is among the vast number of businesses with 500 workers or fewer that are making serious green inroads. He has overcome the same daunting obstacles that discourage many of his peers from reducing their environmental footprint, including lack of time, a dearth of information and little money, as well as entrenched behavior on the part of employees, customers and suppliers.

Here’s how he did it.

Humble Beginnings

Baker started at the company as an employee. Then, in 1989, with a partner he scraped together enough cash to buy out the owner. At that point, the company was essentially a photo lab, and it was no different from the rest of the industry using caustic chemicals to process photographic materials, postprocessing heavy metals and using extraordinary amounts of power and water.

All that photo-processing equipment also generated thousands of BTUs of heat. Baker seized on the idea of heating the company’s building with that wasted warmth. It wasn’t “to be green,” Baker says. “It was because I was cheap.” He finally figured out how to do it, and since then, the company has spent almost nothing warming an 8,500-square-foot building in snowy New Hampshire. For Baker, successfully engineering a “heatless building” was the beginning of questioning the assumption that waste, inefficiency and pollution were simply the cost of doing business.

In the trade show business, you can’t buy green products off the shelf. Vinyl technically, polyvinyl chloride, or PVC is ubiquitous because it’s cheap, strong, flexible and lightweight. But “when burned, the PVC releases dioxin fumes, which are a known carcinogen,” says Andrea Atkinson, general manager of NEXUS Green Building Resource Center, a Boston-based educational facility for green builders.

You’d think 100-percent recycled paper is eco-friendlier than 20-percent recycled paper, right? Well, that’s not the only idea green marketers get wrong…

By: Lara Jensen

Misconceptions about eco-friendly direct marketing abound. For instance, many a green tyro has assumed that paper with higher levels of recycled content will automatically have less of an environmental impact. But according to Brian McClay, principal at TerraChoice Market Services Inc., when factors such as energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account and not just overburdened landfills often a mix of recycled content and virgin pulp from sustainably harvested forests turns out to be better overall for the environment. We’ve scrutinized this and some other commonly held ideas about green marketing to help you separate fact from fiction:

What you may think: “The more recycled content, the better.”

What you need to know: Again, not necessarily true. To help you determine which issues are of most interest to your company, try visiting the Environmental Paper Assessment Tool® (epat.org), which is organized by a consortium of well-known large companies under the rubric the Paper Working Group. The EPAT enables paper buyers to weigh the relative costs of water, air and climate quality, as well as the health of natural systems and community well-being, then matches buyers with the paper that best addresses their needs. EPAT 2.0 is due to be released to the public this month.

What you may think: “As long as it’s paper, it’s recyclable.”

What you need to know: Varnishes and metallic inks may make your communication stand out in the mail, but once they’re applied to paper, processing that paper becomes difficult for recycling plants. As a result, anything with chemical additions could end up sitting in a landfill for years, whereas soy inks and other natural substances are easily recyclable by most municipalities’ recycling programs.

What you may think: “Green direct mail is boring.”

What you need to know: Au contraire. Creating environmentally friendly direct mail doesn’t have to mean sending out a simple gray card. “Push designers to create an intriguing piece that doesn’t need all those extras on the printing side,” says Seri McClendon, co-founder of Clean Agency, a marketing services firm that specializes in sustainable campaigns. For example, a postcard printed on paper that’s embedded with wildflower seeds that can be planted in the ground creates an impact because of its dual use. An interesting call to action can also capture customers’ attention, such as by offering the ability to purchase carbon-emission offsets with any order.

What you may think: “There’s no environmental cost to going digital.”

What you need to know: Marketers hoping to reduce their environmental footprint by migrating communication efforts online often don’t take into account the environmental costs to maintaining a Web site, a data center and other related equipment, according to Lisa Wellman, CEO of SustainCommWorld, which produces an annual trade show on green-media issues. The average 24kg desktop computer with monitor requires at least 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture, making it much more materials intensive than an automobile or refrigerator. “Marketers need to be able to weigh the environmental cost of each channel and balance them,” Wellman says.

What you may think: “Cleaning up my own backyard is enough.”

What you need to know: More and more, companies are being held accountable by consumers, even if it’s not the company itself but rather one of its vendors that’s running afoul. So cleaning up your own act isn’t enough. “Supply chain analysis is important” to avoid getting in trouble on the environmental front, says McClendon. If a supplier doesn’t improve its environmental record, your solution might be as simple as taking your business elsewhere.

True, more marketers are looking for the green working hard to make their product or their message more environmentally sensitive. In recent years, “green marketing” has exploded in popularity among companies big and small. More and more, direct marketers are upping the recycled content of their paper, cleansing their databases faster than ever before and encouraging more consumers to toss unwanted fliers, envelopes and catalogs into recycling bins. “It’s very clear that all of our members and board members see how important this issue is,” says Pat Kachura, senior vice president of social responsibility for the Direct Marketing Association. Last year, Deliver® began addressing the environmental impact of direct marketing in our first “green” issue. Now, as we return to the subject in our second eco-themed issue, we are finding still more examples of marketers making full-on commitments to green marketing. And they are having an effect. How? Well, consider the impact of a few of the recent achievements cited below:

3 percent savings on paper quantity, the result of reductions in mailer sizes, spared nonprofit group Consumers Union more than $250,000 over three years.

375 million paper pages were saved in 2007 when MetLife began mailing directories and periodicals on CDs instead of paper.

930 million pieces of unwanted mail were eliminated last year by the 1,500 marketers using the DMA’s Mail Preference Service.

His company famous for its organic yogurt, Stonyfield Farm president Gary Hirshberg now has a new book on how to go green and still get rich. We sat with the self-styled “CE-Yo” as he churned out still more interesting thoughts on green marketing

By: Natalie Engler

Gary Hirshberg wears his passion for green business practices on his sleeve. And there are certainly days when you might see some yogurt there, too.

Hirshberg is president and self-titled “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm, the iconic manufacturer of organic yogurt. He’s also an outspoken advocate for unconventional marketing, his ideas first taking root back in the days when he personally handed out yogurt samples from a folding table at supermarkets.

Since then, Hirshberg has put Stonyfield Farm in the spotlight with various high-profile promotional efforts, from inflating drivers’ tires to delivering frozen manure to a radio personality who’d claimed he’d rather eat camel dung than Hirshberg’s yogurt. (Turns out he preferred the yogurt.) But he doesn’t rely merely on publicity stunts and word-of-mouth marketing. Hirshberg has also wisely used traditional advertising channels like direct mail, always mindful to calibrate his campaigns for maximum impact.

Now, he’s an author too. Hirshberg who has overseen Stonyfield’s evolution from a tiny organic-farming school to a global yogurt producer with $320 million in sales details his journey to success in his new book, Stirring it Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (Hyperion, 2008).

Hirshberg recently spoke with Deliver® about combining counterculture and yogurt culture, the role of green marketing and why, when it comes to connecting with consumers through marketing efforts, “You can’t fake this stuff.”

Deliver: Sustainability and environmental protection are literally written into Stonyfield’s mission statement. But what can direct marketers do if they work for a company that was not founded on such green values?

Hirshberg: Marketers should think of ways to save their company some money. If you can reduce costs and feed those dollars back into the product or put them toward something consumers believe in, you have the potential to not just drive customer loyalty but reduce turnover and build employee pride. The No. 1 thing people say they are looking for is meaningful work. But I’d caution that this isn’t a quick fix. You don’t just engage in social responsibility and get an immediate spike in sales. This is something you build over time.

You should also be aware that if the cause is only in the marketing, and doesn’t reflect a genuine commitment, you are highly vulnerable.

Just look at the big auto manufacturers. (In my opinion,) a few of them have been the darlings of environmentalists because of hybrid cars. But it turns out that those companies have also been lobbying against raising fuel-economy standards. So the environmental community has now made these companies public enemy No. 1 because they’re breaching an emotional contract they had created. On the one hand they’re producing and marketing these hybrid cars, but their corporate commitment is clearly mixed, if not contradictory.

You see this happen a lot. I call it the talk/do ratio. You have to keep them in balance.

Deliver: In your book, you say that you drive your marketing people crazy. How so?

Hirshberg: The main thing I ask my marketing folks to be sure they ask before they present me with something is “What would the big yogurt manufacturers not do?” If they show me something that could be done by the others, then it’s not good enough for us.

Deliver: So do you use traditional media?

Hirshberg: We continue to use mail when it fits into our overall plan. We’re also mindful of the environmental costs of any mailings we do.

Deliver: In your book, you describe conventional advertising as the “fertilizer of conventional business.” What did you mean by that?

Hirshberg: Well, no one can claim that advertising doesn’t work. The advertising we’ve been able to do has worked, but it isn’t sustainable. You get the sales lift during your ad buy, but then you drop back. If you rely solely on advertising, you rely on reaching people in less effective emotional ways. But if a customer meets someone from Stonyfield at a soccer match, train station, park or community event, they have another connection with us. Hopefully, they’ve interacted with a nice person and had an engaging experience that made them feel good.

A growing number of companies are adopting procurement policies that help protect the world’s forests by tracking paper production from stump to shelf

By: Anne Stuart

When many businesses discuss their efforts to “go green,” they’re talking about recycling and reuse in other words, initiatives designed for the end of their products’ lives.

But some leading retailers and catalogers are now focusing on the beginning of those life cycles as well. They’re establishing rigorous environmental guidelines for procuring materials such as paper and cardboard and making sure that consumers, investors, competitors and most of all suppliers know that they’re serious about sticking to those rules.

Take Patagonia Inc., the outdoor clothing and gear retailer headquartered in California. Angela Weidmann, Patagonia’s catalog print-production manager, says the company’s been printing catalogs on recycled paper since 1991 and, in 2002, launched an aggressive internal effort to cut waste and partner with environmentally responsible paper suppliers.

But the company hasn’t always marketed its green practices. Patagonia began talking more about its efforts in 2007, when in response to pressure from environmental groups it posted its comprehensive “Paper Use and Procurement Policy” on its Web site. “Ultimately, we felt that it was important to get the information out there to the public and to our vendors,” Weidmann says. “It makes us more accountable and, hopefully, an example to others.”

The policy details Patagonia’s practices, such as switching from 50-pound to 45-pound catalog paper, which requires fewer trees to produce. Thinner paper involves a slight “quality tradeoff,” Weidmann acknowledges, but adds: “When we did press tests, even some of our more discerning colleagues had a hard time telling the difference” between the two stocks.

The benefits? To date, Patagonia has saved more than 730 tons of paper (which the company says is equivalent to nearly 13,000 40-foot-tall trees). And the company has saved money. “Paper and postage are our two biggest expenses.
You buy paper by the pound; to a certain extent, you buy postage by the pound as well,” Weidmann explains. Reducing the catalog’s weight has cut annual costs by about 10 percent in both areas.

Patagonia also looks for paper that’s made with as much post-consumer recycled (PCR) content as possible typically about 40 percent and that’s been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a global forest-management organization, as using virgin fiber only from well-managed forests. And the company strives to buy from suppliers based within 200 miles of its printer to cut travel for the delivery trucks.

Many companies are also getting their suppliers involved, including Staples, the office supply retailer and cataloger. In 2002, the company took a hard look at its paper procurement policies. “We realized that we’re in a global economy with a global supply chain, and we need to think more broadly about issues such as where our suppliers are located and where their suppliers are located,” says Mark Buckley, the company’s vice president of environmental affairs.

Staples’ policy sets escalating goals for both the 2,000-store chain itself and its suppliers. For instance, the average amount of PCR content across all Staples’ paper products sold by weight is 30 percent, and the company is shooting for 50 percent. And it expects to have the majority of its suppliers FSC-certified by 2010.

Most recently, Staples enforced its policy by cutting ties with an Indonesian company that supplied about 5 percent of Staples’ total paper supply. The reason: Environmental groups had accused the company of illegal logging practices. Also, the company wasn’t green enough.

Buckley says Staples didn’t make the decision lightly; he and other executives tried for more than two years to bring the company into compliance with Staples’ standards. But by February 2008, “We felt that they weren’t making significant enough progress for us to stay with them as a supplier,” Buckley says. “We encourage suppliers to move in the right direction or we have to look elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, Staples is extending its current slogan “That Was Easy” to the environment. Its new consumer-oriented “EcoEasy” brand promotes Staples products and services that, in Buckley’s words, “make it easy for you to make a difference.” Offerings range from recycled-content products to low-cost recycling of old computers and monitors even those purchased elsewhere.

Officials at Staples who have promoted eco-friendly initiatives online and through branding efforts such as placing its logo on recycled paperboard clothes hangers consider the efforts part of a company-wide commitment to reduce waste, conserve energy and promote recycling and reuse. “It’s not just about paper,” Buckley says. “It’s about everything we do. Those issues are increasingly important to our customers, and [green practices] add value to our brand.”

And as at Patagonia, most of those efforts cut costs, too. “Everything we’re doing around climate change is saving money and we’re reducing our carbon footprint,” Buckley says. “It’s a win-winwin. What’s not to like?”

The DMA on Paper Procurement: As part of its “Green 15″ initiative, the Direct Marketing Association encourages its members to develop environmentally sound paper-procurement practices. For guidelines and a sample policy, visit: the-dma.org/Green15Toolkit/

Producing eco-friendly products and services means more than simply using recycled materials you need to look at the entire life cycle

By: Linda Formichelli

Recycling your scrap paper used to be all you needed to call your business “green.” But in today’s environment, green comes in many shades, with the richest and most all-inclusive being “cradle-to-cradle” design.

While the term “cradle-to-grave” covers the life cycle of a product from production to landfill, “cradle-to-cradle” describes products that exist in closed, environmentally friendly loops: They start out healthful for the environment that’s the first “cradle” and can be recycled, composted or reclaimed for a new life, hence, the second “cradle.”

The product- and process-design firm McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) offers cradle-to-cradle certification for products ranging from furniture to envelopes.

Showing off your recycling bin in the front office won’t be nearly enough to gain this certification, which is offered at Platinum, Gold and Silver levels. Instead, a company must use environmentally safe and healthy materials, design its product for reutilization (such as recycling or composting) and keep water pure and used efficiently. The company also must make efficient use of renewable energy and promote social responsibility.

“The social responsibility’ element addresses business activities and employee treatment, and can include community connections as well,” says Steve Bolton, a senior consultant and manager of business development for MBDC. Bolton says they’re most interested in activities beyond simple employee health and safety, moving into quality-of-life issues on the positive side that is, they don’t just meet minimum regulations, but also improve worker happiness.

“We’ll go through the company’s supply chain to understand every ingredient in its finished product down to a detailed level,” says Bolton. “It’s a very intense process, but it helps us understand what we’re dealing with and what can be done to improve it.”

Companies that have received cradle-to-cradle certification for their products include eco-friendly flooring company Shaw Industries and the United States Postal Service,® which recently received Silver certification from MBDC for its Priority Mail® and Express Mail® corrugated boxes, paperboard envelopes, Tyvek envelopes, mailing labels and mailing tape. In granting the certification,
MBDC not only scrutinized the internal processes of the USPS,® but also contacted and examined their more than 200 suppliers.

So why the interest in cradle-to-cradle design? Well, it’s not just good for the environment, practitioners claim, but also for business. “The certification was important because our clients are looking for third-party authentication,” says Jeff West, director of environmental affairs for the commercial division of Shaw, which received certification for its Eco Solutions Q nylon fiber and its EcoWorx tile and broadloom backing system. The certification took six months, shorter than usual because Shaw had already obtained the MBDC Design Protocol, an earlier certification.

Cradle-to-cradle certification, and any green initiative that a company takes, can also be used as an important part of the business’s marketing strategy. For example, Shaw notes its certification on the sample books it shows to customers, in product specs and in customer presentations. It’s too early to tell how the certification is affecting Shaw’s bottom line (Shaw received it in June 2007), as the details were only recently included in its marketing pieces; however, “early results seem to indicate that it’s generating questions and positive comments from our clients,” says West.

To green up your products and boost your marketing talk to your suppliers about how they can help make your products more environmentally friendly. “You need to leverage people to make change,” says Bolton. Learning about the eco-friendliness of your processes and products will help you make smart, green decisions. Says Bolton, “You’re ahead of 99 percent of the manufacturing population if you’ve fully characterized your ingredients and can work to improve them over time.”

Teaming up with a worthy not-for-profit or even launching one of your own can add value to your prospects and cachet your brand

By: Linda Formichelli

Every March, April and May, all 22 million Money Mailer coupon envelopes will carry free advertising for Children’s Miracle Network, a non-profit organization that raises money for children’s hospitals. Money Mailer, a leading national direct marketing company, also donates inserts in their shared mailings to promote the nonprofit’s fundraising events. In the past two years, Money Mailer has given Children’s Miracle Network $1.4 million in ad value and almost $800,000 in donations.

Co-marketing your business with a charity, called “cause marketing,” helps not only the cause, but also your business’s brand image. According to the Cone Millennial Cause Study, 87 percent of Americans ages 13 to 25 would switch brands if one brand were associated with a good cause, assuming that the brands were otherwise comparable. It’s difficult to quantify how much of a profit boost comes from cause marketing, but really, it’s more about brand enhancement than tallying up dollars and cents. “Our local and national advertisers and franchisees are saying it’s making a difference in their business to provide this sponsorship,” says Beth Swade Thomas, director of marketing communications for Money Mailer.

Want to help out a cause while upping your brand recognition? “Think about your values and culture, your business objectives and your stakeholders’ needs,” says Julia Hobbs Kivistik, executive vice president at Cone, a strategy and communications agency that specializes in cause branding and corporate responsibility. “By exploring where these areas intersect, you can answer the question, What do we stand for?’”

For example, the apparel company Arrow dubs itself an “authentic American brand,” so it made sense for the company to create the “We Are Ellis Island” campaign, which is raising money to restore dilapidated buildings on the south side of Ellis Island. Arrow launched a Web site at which visitors can post their family stories and donate money to the cause; the company is also donating 1 percent of its 2008 wholesale sales to the project. The site now has thousands of registered users, and according to Mike Kelly, executive vice president of Phillips-Van Heusen, which owns the Arrow brand, “The result for us is an elevated brand awareness that’s been unbelievable. We brought a lot of awareness to a brand that was dark.”

Even if your business and your cause are perfectly aligned, it takes more than a clever cause marketing campaign to woo consumers to both. “The public is getting more sophisticated,” says Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, an information resource on how to align environmental responsibility with business success. “A cause-marketing campaign can seem out of context if the company itself doesn’t have basic environmental and social policies and programs in place,” he says. “A good cause-marketing campaign isn’t enough to render a company as good.’”

A business also has to practice its rhetoric. In other words, a business has to walk the talk. For example, if you’re supporting a nonprofit that plants trees to offset carbon emissions, says Makower, you also need to reduce your own energy use or increase your use of renewable energy.

Cynics might maintain that cause marketers are thinking more about their brand than about the cause, but in reality, both get a boost. “If a company is in business to do business and, in addition, they help provide funding for and awareness of a cause, that’s great,” says Hobbs Kivistik. “It’s a win for the cause, the company, the community and the consumer.”

For publisher Dawn Codd, making direct mail magazines more eco-friendly is the right thing to do for the planet and for her business

By: Anne Stuart

Dawn Codd firmly believes that her three direct mail lifestyle magazines all stuffed with special offers, restaurant reviews and events listings bring plenty of value to the 97,000 readers in the upscale communities that the magazines target.

But the Washington, D.C.-based publisher also knows that, in an era of ever-increasing ecological awareness, some recipients may view direct mail publications as a waste of precious natural resources. For that reason and because she and her partners personally support environmental causes Codd wanted to reduce both that perception and the size of her company’s “footprint” on the earth. “Our beliefs are why we did what we did,” she says.

What they did was adopt an aggressively conservation-oriented approach to producing the trio of publications: City Living Source (citylivingsource.com), for households in D.C.; City Living Source-Baltimore (citylivingbaltimore.com), for similarly well-heeled readers in that city; and Howard County Living (howardliving.com), for residents of an affluent suburban area in central Maryland. (Each publication goes to about 32,000 readers six times a year.)

Beginning with their January 2008 issues, all three magazines have become significantly more eco-friendly. That’s a change that involves more than simply adding green content although there’s more of that these days, too. Codd has focused on producing the magazines as cleanly and greenly as possible. “Everything about our business is about recycling and sustainability,” she says.

Specifically, the publications are printed only on Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper, meaning that it’s from timber grown and harvested according to the international forest-management association’s strict environmental standards. In addition, Codd recently switched to a new printer that uses soy-based ink, an alcohol-free press operation and a filmless, all-digital printing process that eliminates the need for silver and chemicals. “That’s all more healthful for readers and for the environment,” says Codd, who has promoted the printer’s techniques in print and online.

But what she hasn’t publicly emphasized is what those changes are costing her young business: an additional $1,000 per issue for each magazine. That’s an expense that she’s not passing on to advertisers until next year: “[Going green] was so important because of our personal beliefs that we were going to do it no matter what,” she says. “Our advertising rates will go up as our circulation goes up. And our circulation is growing pretty fast.”

That’s the case even though the publications specifically instruct readers how to get off the mailing list. Codd says that her company typically receives about one opt-out request per issue; in contrast, she says, “We’ve got people e-mailing every day asking to be put on the list.” She attributes that demand to each 24-page publication’s mix of local incentives, event listings and content that now includes advertiser advice on topics such as improving window insulation, buying organic fabrics and bicycling to work.

Codd’s publications also offer “virtual” incentives online, allowing readers to sign up to receive coupons and other offers via their cell phones. The incentives are specially formatted to fit on a mobile phone’s display screen; to redeem one, a consumer just shows the screen to a participating merchant. The process obviously eliminates the need to print, carry, redeem and recycle paper coupons.

Has anybody noticed one publisher’s efforts to tell the world that “green is good”? Codd says yes. “People have actually sent thank-you notes by e-mail, saying it’s great that we made the change,” she says. And any time a recipient of a direct mail piece personally thanks the marketer who sent it, that’s a pretty strong indicator that the message is getting across.

What’s the argument in favor of adopting new, industry-imposed direct mail guidelines? Your business may not survive otherwise. Convinced yet?

Where adaptation is concerned, marketers aren’t necessarily behind the times, but neither have all of us always been in the forefront when it comes to embracing new ideas and innovative methods.

But as consumers clamor for more responsible marketing calling for reductions in the amount of direct mail received and more emphasis on the environment smart marketers know that adaptation isn’t optional. Changes must be made.

Recently, initiatives have been put forward that promote responsible guidelines for marketers and offer a glimpse of the shifts that more will be compelled to make in coming years. One major step forward is the Commitment to Consumer
Choice (CCC), a set of direct mail standards that has been established by the Direct Marketing Association.

There has been some debate in the industry about whether this idea is best for marketers; indeed, some marketers have even been resistant to it. But we think that fighting this sensible effort is both pointless and potentially dangerous.

First, it’s obvious that consumers and many leading direct marketers support these guidelines. To help give the measures teeth, the DMA has announced that all of its members must comply with the CCC or lose membership.

We’re not saying all the self-policing guidelines are perfect. But any marketer who thinks that flaws in the initiatives or the debate over how good self-policing guidelines are for business mean they can do nothing is making a big mistake.

First, fighting the CCC guidelines makes it appear that marketers don’t care about consumers’ demands, a risky proposition indeed in an era of increased customer power to blow off marketing messages. Second, marketers improve the efficiency of mailings when they reduce the number of catalogs going to uninterested consumers. They can then take any incremental return on investment and pour it back into building circulation.

Reducing unwanted direct mail can be good for business and for companies’ relationships with consumers. And while some question how much these guidelines will help the environment, there’s no doubt they will have some positive impact. Thus, we not only think direct mailers should tolerate the Commitment to Consumer Choice, we urge them to embrace it wholeheartedly.

No other form of energy is as renewable as ideas, no other resource as readymade for recycling.

And it’s in that spirit that this issue of Deliver® returns to a theme that has earned us a great deal of notice since we first broached it last year: green marketing.

But in revisiting this fast-growing trend in direct, we’re finding a whole host of new approaches, unique perspectives and fresh successes.

As the popularity of green marketing continues to spread its growth will likely accelerate in the wake of the most recent Earth Day companies big and small are seeking the best ways to promote sound environmental policies. And they are doing so while simultaneously promoting their products and distinguishing their brands. Meanwhile, Deliver is trying to bring as much of it to you as possible.

In the story “The Green Pages”, for example, we report on direct mail magazine publisher Dawn Codd, who has taken several bold steps to make her three D.C.-area publications as eco-friendly as possible.

We also spotlight Image 4 (”Anatomy of An Eco-Makeover”), a New Hampshire trade show exhibits manufacturer that has worked tirelessly to clean up its practices while competing in an industry often heavily dependent on environmentally hazardous materials.

But if you think that green marketing is easy for companies that use only organic materials, then be sure to read “Changing the Culture,” our interview with yogurt mogul and author Gary Hirshberg. As he explains, going green can be fraught with complications, but can also offer some very satisfying (and lucrative) rewards if marketers are willing to think creatively.

And we give some great examples of this. Take, for instance, “The Cost of Doing Business,” a look at how companies like Volkswagen are seizing on the potential of carbon offsets, which allows them to underwrite pro-environmental measures as a way of reducing their ecological footprint.

We hope you enjoy this green issue even more than our first. While you do, we’ll busy ourselves with continuing to find even more great stories about how direct marketing is helping pave the way for a cleaner tomorrow.

Oh, and one more thing about last year’s green issue: It was named the winner of our recent “Best of Deliver 2007″ poll on delivermagazine.com.

Thanks for all your support. We’ll keep working hard to maintain it.

Why more and more big brands are using carbon offsets to bolster PR, profits and the planet

By: Samar Farah

“The VW Forest” sounds like the name of a sporty German all-terrain vehicle, or perhaps an advanced level in a video game designed for Jetta zealots. In fact, it’s a straight forward moniker for acres of trees in Louisiana’s Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, paid for by carmaker Volkswagen of America and its customers. So far, more than 900 acres designated as the VW forest have already been replanted in an effort to offset the carbon dioxide produced by VW vehicles.

These figures represent some of the new thinking driving the latest trend in environmental marketing carbon offsets. An initiative that allows companies to underwrite environmentally friendly measures as a way of counterbalancing (or “offsetting”) the ecological harm of their business practices, offsets have become a valuable instrument for many brands seeking to spotlight their “green” bona fides.

The trend cuts across industries, too, with offset programs embraced by everyone from airlines to credit card companies.

Of course, there’s still some debate around select issues within carbon-offset programs. For instance, disagreement remains over certain measurement standards (a comparable disagreement is the debate over whether to switch to the metric system). Meanwhile, the government continues to monitor the programs closely to ensure compliance, although it has found no evidence of fraud. Despite this, though, experts agree that consumers and brands should use common sense when deciding to join an offset program and choosing which groups to work with.

For its own program, the Carbon Neutral project, Volkswagen of America went with an approach that’s equal parts volunteer work and gift to consumers. Between September 2007 and January 2008, for every VW that consumers purchased or leased, the automaker pledged to plant enough trees to offset carbon emissions equivalent to one year of driving.

To market the effort, Volkswagen set up a mini-site within its VW.com site where customers are informed about VW’s efforts and allowed to make donations to the offset program. The site remains up to foster ongoing dialogue with consumers, even though the program has officially ended. Meanwhile, only a couple of clicks away is a portion of the site where customers can sign up to have VW product brochures mailed to their homes, thus using the environmental effort as a springboard for a multimedia dialogue about both ecology and VW cars.

Laura Soave, marketing manager at Volkswagen of America, has this warning about “green” campaigns: “It’s definitely something you can’t just jump into.”

Still, environmentalists and business experts agree that these offset programs, if done properly, can have a positive impact on the atmosphere, and on business. “It’s a wonderful entrepreneurial response to a real set of concerns in the public,” says William Moomaw, director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University.

What makes a project well executed? Marketers interested in pursuing such projects need to think about what kind of program makes sense for them, as well as how they’ll choose to communicate with and involve their consumers.

A Range of Possibilities

The most common carbon-offset projects generally fall into three categories: renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation.

Renewable energy projects typically involve a company purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs) from a utility. These credits, which are a separate commodity from the electricity itself, represent a revenue stream for generators of clean energy, such as wind turbine or solar energy plants. They also give a company the right to say that a percentage of their electricity consumption is based on renewable energy. By contrast, energy efficiency projects look at ways that companies can reduce their emission through more efficient technologies, and reforestation initiatives involve planting trees.

Planting trees is arguably the most tangible action a brand can take to offset carbon emissions. Most consumers intuitively understand that trees are good for the environment. It conjures a specific image a leafy, green image unlike energy efficiency programs or REC projects, which take some explanation and abstract logic for stakeholders to grasp.

Still for some providers and practitioner companies, these last two projects are more attractive. David Ragland is the general manager of the Marriott Residence Inn in Washington, D.C., which is now operating on 50-percent renewable energy. Marriott announced its renewable energy program last September and now offsets half of its emissions by purchasing RECs. (Guests are also invited to donate $5 toward additional RECs.)

Clean Currents, Ragland’s offset provider of choice, focuses primarily on buying RECs for its partners through private markets. “There’s certainly a role for reforestation,” says Lee Keshishian, vice president of business operations at Clean Currents. “Customers ask us about it, but so far we’ve shied away from it.

It’s harder to measure.” While reforestation proponents argue that there are indeed clear measurement tools in place, Clean Currents’ position nonetheless reflects the varying opinions that exist even among those who support offsets.

Carbonfund.org takes a slightly different approach it offers all three categories of projects and even gives partners the option of building a portfolio of projects in different categories. Michael Stewart, the nonprofit’s partnerships manager, argues that each type of project accomplishes something slightly different. Reforestation, he points out, is the only kind of offset project that can impact the current high level of CO2 emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere. Says Stewart, “The other two offset methods are critical, but they can only focus on reducing the amount of CO2 that we produce in the future.”

Stewart, whose company is VW’s offset program partner, adds: “While individuals may have a project preference, Carbonfund loves all of its kids’ equally. By employing all three methods together as a cohesive team, we hope to address the whole process of fighting climate change. Along with direct reductions, offsets are simply a great tool to use toward that end. That’s our motto: Reduce what you can, offset what you can’t.”

VW’s Soave says the company chose to go the reforestation path because they found there were added benefits to rebuilding a forest, like creating jobs for planters and supporting endangered wildlife, in this case the Louisiana black bear. The idea of rallying a community of VW owners around a project with a tangible and visible impact on U.S. land was also appealing, as opposed to a parcel of land in, say, Guatemala. “We tried to keep a closer-to-home approach,” says Soave. The Alluvial Valley in Louisiana was attractive for another reason: Its climate and growing conditions support a rate of carbon absorption that is significantly higher than in other parts of the United States.

A Tale of Carbon Offsets

Once VW’s tree-planting project was under way, the company’s biggest challenge was to portray to consumers that the automaker was undertaking the project strictly for its environmental benefit. Ultimately, VW decided that an advertising campaign touting the project would only taint it in the eyes of consumers, so Volkswagen of America refrained from advertising or marketing the VW Forest.

“It would have been easy for us to go out with a huge campaign, and we did discuss that at length,” Soave says. Instead, the carmaker announced its project strictly through dealerships: Car salesmen at VW dealerships promoted the program verbally. Bloggers soon caught wind and helped get the VW Forest some press in major publications. A micro-site on the company’s Web site, jointly designed by its ad agency and Carbonfund.org, explains the project and invites other car owners to participate.

Although VW and Marriott pursued completely different offset projects, they both had to think through how they would explain their projects to customers an increasingly skeptical group when it comes to environmental claims.

While Ragland says he needed to train hotel staff to explain the concept of RECs to inquisitive customers, he also left some of the explaining in the hands of Clean Currents. For example, the offset company provided Marriott with a list of quantifiable benefits from the hotels’ REC purchase, including the fact that the 1.3 million kilowatts in RECs that the hotel has saved through its program is the equivalent of 178 cars off the road, a fact that Ragland has published on the hotel’s Web site.

VW also has had to balance transparency about its program with a desire not to inundate customers with technical details. The Web site for the VW Forest sticks mostly to generalities. VW and Carbonfund.org plan to update the site with recent photos of trees being planted in the valley. But, for example, the Web site excludes facts about how the new forest will support 17 different species of trees with specific consideration for how the ecosystem will be affected.

Indeed, most customers don’t expect brands to be environmental experts, but are looking for an honest and open conversation about the issues. “When we have conversations about offsets with customers, we don’t pretend we know it all,” says Ragland. Shortly after introducing the company’s carbon-offset program, Ragland was confronted by a Marriott guest who called out the hotel for using Styrofoam cups and plates. Guests have also requested more efficient LED lights in elevators. Ragland got rid of the Styrofoam, but didn’t add the expensive LED lighting.

Says the hotel general manager: “We’re not afraid to explain that we are a business, and we do need to maintain margins.”

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