By Mark Fogelberg
With so many industries (and their respective marketers) experiencing the movement toward GREEN, I began to wonder how brands can differentiate green efforts to a marketing advantage.
Embracing my inner geek, I spent some time evaluating the highly competitive world of computer hardware in regards to green. (Disclaimer: I run a Dell desktop, HP Vista laptop and an Apple iMac at home. Therefore, I used these companies for my research.)
Interestingly, each company’s home page now offers a link to their environmental efforts.
Michael Dell wants his company to be "the greenest technology company on the planet" and Dell’s taking action. An aggressive new recycling program offers returning Dell customers a 10% discount and a chance to make a difference by donating the old machine to those in need.
Innovating on many fronts, HP just introduced the first EPEAT Gold desktop. With a 5 year lifecycle and energy efficient design, this machine cuts energy consumption by 80%. The company has been aggressively buying green energy and has turned into a recycling dynamo.
After being unfairly slapped by Greenpeace, Steve Jobs made sure that consumers can now see the efforts made by Apple in his recent "A Greener Apple" post. The company now lays out a detailed 17 year timeline as part of its recent site redesign.
It will be interesting to see how the brands position their efforts going forward. Will Dell, HP and Apple’s green efforts be embraced in their advertising and marketing? If so, which outlets will be best served by their points of differentiation? How might ad agencies exploit the strengths of their client’s green efforts?
Technorati tags: green marketing environment Apple HP Dell
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