The Cost of Doing Business
Why more and more big brands are using carbon offsets to bolster PR, profits and the planet
“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.
