JUNE 2011 |
www.opp.org.uk WORDS | Gordon Miller
BUSINESS Put it positively
How do you “sell” green property ideas to the mass market? Well, what you shouldn’t do is use images of polar bears stranded on ice fl oes. Instead, new research suggests, marketers need to emphasise the upsides and not the downsides of turning green.
S
ELLING sustainable or green homes is arguably the developers’ biggest
challenge right now. The world over, housebuilders are being compelled by legislation to construct more energy and water effi cient homes – with attendant additional costs. But how do you sell them?
Do you: a) Emphasis the sustainability aspects of the homes and the benefi ts they bring? b) Make the sustainability aspects of the homes a secondary message? c) Ignore the sustainability aspects and focus on the ‘normal’ selling triggers? Research published in April by leading brand agency Ogilvy Earth called “Mainstream Green: Moving sustainability from niche to normal” shows that 82% of those polled expressed a desire to act sustainably in their lifestyle, including their purchasing decisions ... But only 16% do so. The 66% in-between are the so-called “middle green” and the focus
of the study: to understand, fi rstly, what their barriers are, and secondly, what marketing messages can be adopted to reach them. But why does this matter? Well, it’s a huge marketing opportunity to sell your homes that is being missed if one disengages from the “green” issue. And, an opportunity to uplift the selling price of your property is also being overlooked according to research. What barriers to adoption did the middle green express in the Ogilvy Earth study? The main fi nding was that, via either complicated, pious or guilt inducing marketing messages (polar bears on ice fl oes, for example) and premium pricing, sustainability is not aimed at them (an extrapolated 200 million people in the US) but at “granola eating hippies and elitist snobs”. The effect is that the mainstream feels alienated from the subject and simply disengages or retreats to an “ignorance is bliss” position. For the marketeer the double-edged sword is that the 16%
who do act on their intentions, the so-called “super greens”, are being well served (even over-served) by the reinforcing messages. Furthermore, this sector’s market share is not growing signifi cantly in percentile terms. Tellingly, the study revealed that men in particular perceive green to be a feminine issue. The majority of males interviewed expressed embarrassment at, for example, using a recycled shopping bag, or at the prospect of driving a hybrid car, such as a Toyota Prius. If those are the expressed barriers, what steps can be taken to overcome them? Ogilvy Earth argues that more “normal and less niche” marketing needs to be used. It uses the analogous approach of selling “expensive” Stella Artois versus “cheap” Budweiser. Stella Artois, if I
“A huge opportunity to sell your homes is being missed if you disengage from the ‘green’ issue”
Stick | to what really motivates buyers ... make them feel good rather than guilty
can remember and decode its message, emphasises the value of spending more on a beer than the normal one: “reassuringly expensive” was the slogan. Set yourself apart was the message. Budweiser, on the other hand, uses imagery of (males) bonding over a beer, backslapping, and camaraderie: be one of us is the message. So, pushing that imagery and messaging into the property arena, and to turn the mainstream on, green homes need to be presented as what everyman – and more pertinently everywoman – aspires to and not only to those on the extremes i.e. “granola eating hippies and elitist snobs”. How exactly do you achieve that? Generally, making people feel guilty does not encourage them to buy products. Other studies have called this “sell heaven and not hell”.
Gordon Miller is the Sustainability and Communications Director of membership organisation Sustain Worldwide. Gordon founded and runs the sustainable residential development website www.
whatgreenhome.com, and is a licensed BREEAM International Assessor. For more information about Sustain Worldwide, contact +44 (0)20 7754 5557
www.sustainworldwide.com
Are there any examples of where the above approaches have been effective (in selling more products)? The Ogilvy Earth study argues BMW’s eco- friendly car line, Effi cientDynamics, has made a good fi st of “turning eco-friendly into male ego-friendly” taking a different approach than that of marketing the Prius. “The Prius targets early adopters with its quirky shape and ads featuring kids dressed as fl owers standing smiling in fi elds. Now, if you’re targeting early adopters looking to telegraph their green credentials, this approach is perfect. But inherent in this campaign is the message that cars are bad and must be neutered. That approach will never win over more mainstream men who want their car to tell the world how manly and successful they are. And it would never have rung true from a brand like BMW.”
It asks not “How do you make the car less bad?”, but “How can you make it better?” The Effi cientDynamics cars look like quintessential BMW cars, if not slightly sleeker. The ads look like, well, car ads and it’s an approach we’d do well to emulate in property. So, there you have it: Vorsprung
Durch Technik (translation: progress through technology.) Or was that Audi not BMW? Now, that’s another whole different marketing issue ...
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