Rules of thumb in green (IV): John Grant - 5 I's of Green Marketing

To go on with this 'rules of thumb series', I cannot forget the Five I's of Green Marketing as John Grant described in its Green marketing Manifesto:

1) Intuitive > Making Better Alternatives Accessible and Easy to Grasp

This is about making breaktrough green stuff seem normal.

For the majority of people, sustainable living and consumerism appears difficult and arduous. Our job as creative marketing people is to make it intuitive, second nature, just common sense.

2) Integrative > Combining commerce, technology, social effects and ecology

This is a shift for the green movement, which was founded on an anti-technology romantic tradition and was incubated more recently by anti-corporate activists straight out of Marxism and the peace movements.
The breakthrough idea was sustainability, which is an approach to imrpoving quality of life, both now and for future generations, by combining economic development with social and evnironmental development.

3) Innovative > Creating new products and new lifestyles

Many are saying that green innovation in the next 20 years will be like the IT space over the last 20 years. People have started to use the term g-commerce. In fact it is not just an analogy; some developments are enabled by the internet - like the ability to collaborate in design, build communities and so on.

4) Inviting > A positive choice, not a hair shirt

Before the current green marketing boom, there was a previous cycle of hype and disappointment. We have to get it right tihis time. Green now is partly a design challenge. And green products are often better: more efficient, durable, healthy, affordable and so on. But we also have to tackel the culture of green lifestyles, create new myths and codes which are utopian, joyful and fun, rather than seeming like unpleasant medicine to avoid a dystopia.

5) Informed > Lack of knowledge is what most distorts people's behaviour

Green marketing is mainly about education and participation, and has little to do with brand image. There is a revolution going on in health, lifelong learning and citizenship due to the new accessibility of information.