As I am writing this blog post, Seventh Generation just unveiled three new natural cleaning products— Natural Fabric Softener Sheets, Auto Dish Pacs and Rinse Aid Seventh Generation Unveils Three New Natural Cleaning Products to Detoxify, Green Spring Cleaning.

In a market of economic uncertainty, they are introducing three new products that are not really a necessity for consumers. Let’s face it, we can live without dryer sheets. Sure, you’d walk around shocking everyone and looking like the bride of Frankenstein, but you don’t have to have them. Yet, here is their great way of telling you WHY you need them:

Did you know?

The European Parliament recently officially endorsed extending the EU's eco-label plan to new products, including processed food. They are one of the few to create these type of standards.

The EU assembly backed the Commission's July 2008 proposal to revise the voluntary eco-label plan with an overwhelming majority . The revised legislation aims to widen the number of products covered by the plan and reduce costs by cutting administrative red tape.

Under its eco-label plan, the Commission sets individual criteria for each product group before awarding the Community flower label.

Currently, over 3,000 products including detergents, paper and shoes have received the recognition.
Food products will not only be assessed according to their production processes, but also a lifecycle approach, including the environmental impact of transport, the agreement states. Moreover, the Commission will consider only awarding the eco-label to organic products, to make it easier for consumers to navigate the label jungle.

The Parliament refused to budge on excluding products that contain substances that are toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic or otherwise hazardous to the environment.

It’s really about time we’ve seen this type of labeling happen. Hopefully, this continues to plant seeds for other countries to follow suit, especially the U.S. I agree that the more regulations we have, actually the easier it will be to market green products to consumers. You’ll spend less time proving your product is green and be able to spend more time educating and selling the consumer on why your green solution makes the most sense. I applaud the EU for creating these new standards for their eco-label.

Here is a list of other eco-labels that exist:

In my last blog post, we talked about Shell being put on trial for in New York accused of playing a role in the killing of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. If you missed our discussion, see my two prior posts below this one.

In the past month, since we’ve rolled out some new green marketing assessment tools, I’ve been asked what makes companies and corporations successful in marketing green products, services or green initiatives.

The reason my company originally developed green marketing assessment tools was to help organizations, corporations and companies determine if their roll outs would be successful in the green arena. I realized quickly that everyone needed more education and then rolled out my Creating Authentic Green Value Webinar series, http://www.marketing-insider.com/secrets_of_green_brands_webinar/

There is so much to learn in this ever changing green and sustainability marketplace. One thing is for sure, though, certain rules still apply.

• Education is paramount to make customers aware of what you mean when you indicate a product, service or brand is green/sustainable. The more education, the better in my opinion.

• Knowing your customer and that not all green consumers and business think and act the same

• Knowing how to effectively position your message, when to say what, what to say in general

• Determining where you can position your company in the over-crowded green marketplace to allow it to rise above the clutter and not be one of the “me too” generations

• Knowing what else you need to work on internally to be successful in launching a green campaign and how your message should follow your greening process

• Knowing what the trends are in the marketplace, which are here to stay

What doesn’t work:

I just read an interesting article today in my local business publication about sales. The author talked about how people blame the economy as opposed to their product or service. I started thinking about this and how it applied to marketing and selling green products and services.

I can no longer count on my hands how many times people indicate to me that their green product or service is not selling because of the recession. My question is, “are you sure about that or is it because you don’t know how to market or sell it?

Here are some other questions to ask yourself before you blame the economy for your woes:

1. Is it the economy or has your green product or service just run its course? Maybe your product or service is obsolete. Maybe there is an another product or service that filled the gap you once occupied (or tried to occupy) because you didn’t know how to secure your positioning.

2. Is it the economy or do you just have bad customer service? Have you scaled back so much that your customers can no longer be serviced. Remember, people expect their dollars to go farther because they have less in a recession.

I travel a good deal and while traveling, especially to new cities, I take the opportunity to explore the city, talk with working people and really get my pulse on this city. My motive is to find out:

1. How green/sustainable is this city?

2. Who is driving the efforts?

3. How are they managing during this recession?

4. Which industries have felt it more and which have felt it less?

Why is this important to me?

My company often gets asked to come in and wave our magic wand to tell someone they are green or sustainable enough to print their brochure talking about it. I say this tongue and cheek because we were asked not that long ago to do this.

A company wanted to produce a brochure stating how green their products were. They wanted my company to come in and do a quick little assessment and tell them they were green enough to produce this brochure. The challenge was that they had never had any type of sustainability platform, no guiding principles, no audit on energy usage, etc., etc. Knowing this, I knew in order to be able to accomplish what they wanted, my assessment had to be even more in-depth than I normally did so that I would prevent the company and really my company (oh yes, consulting firms and agencies can be greenwashed as well) as well from being greenwashed.