Color Blind Consumers

Anyone who’s recently watched NBC Universal’s networks like NBC, USA, Bravo or the Sci-Fi Channel, or a host of their other cable, broadcast, Web, and wireless offerings simply could not have missed how they leaped upon the environmental movement. “Green is Universal,” get it?

Through worldwide programming and events, the networks spent Nov. 4-10 focusing a lot of resources and even more programming educating viewers on a variety of ecological issues and the impact on the environment. They used every platform and touch point available to them to announce the importance of environmental awareness and point out that we all need to account for our actions as they impact our green, green earth, and that they were really, really in favor of it. Talk about caring for the planet, huh?

Okay, it’s a good thing to do. A noble thing. Even an important thing. So call me cynical, but you have to also figure that it’s likely that NBC Universal wasn’t just being altruistic and was simply looking for a way to co-opt “green” as a brand differentiator. (Some of you may remember that ABC – Lord knows why – “branded” its network “yellow” years ago, although I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with the environment.) Anyway, as to NBC Universal’s efforts, who’s not in favor of protecting the environment? It’s a no-lose situation, right?

Of course everyone is going to say, “I’m in favor of protecting the environment.” It’s got to be a win-win situation for the entertainment brands and the consumers and the whole world. And if you were to ask them if they’d be more favorably inclined toward a corporation or a broadcast network or cable channel that said that they were in favor of protecting the environment, I’m betting on a heavy preponderance of answers leaning toward the “extremely likely” end of the scale.

But those are easy questions and easy answers. And along with eschewing those “excellent answers,” and not-so- excellent questions, when it comes to branding and marketing and commerce, we’re also kind of picky about leveraging values that actually stimulate positive consumer behavior, increased brand equity and sales. Some sort of return-on-investment besides the corporation being able to feel all warm (globally or otherwise) and fuzzy and altruistic about what good corporately concerned citizens they’ve been.

So we turned to the real experts – the consumers. Brand Keys looked at the 60 categories we track in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index to see if there were any categories where being “green,” AKA “being environmentally concerned and aware” made a significant contribution to engagement, loyalty and profitability. The values always correlate very, very highly with positive consumer behavior toward a brand in the real marketplace, so knowing which value will contribute more (or less) helps brands distinguish between values that are leading-indicators and values that are just nice.

It turns out that in only 13 categories does being “green” make any contribution to loyalty and engagement. Those categories (alphabetically) were:

Airlines
Automobiles
Bottled Water
Car Rental Companies
Diapers
Energy Providers
Gasoline
Hotels (Luxury, Midscale, and Upscale, but not Economy)
Laundry Detergents
Office Copiers
Parcel Delivery
Quick-Serve Restaurants, and
Soft Drinks (Regular and Diet)

We’re being extraordinarily generous here when we say “contribution,” because when it comes to being “green,” consumers seem to be colorblind. It turns out that the high end of that scale was only a 9% contribution and those only showed up in the “Automobile” and “Gasoline” categories, so no surprise there. The others ranged from a 0.5% contribution (Bottled Water) to 7.5% (Energy Providers), with the rest falling someplace in that range. When it comes to driving engagement and loyalty in those categories, being “green” may sound nice, but strictly speaking, it isn’t needed.

And, it turns out that for consumers, the show business categories – Morning News Shows, Evening News Shows, Satellite Radio, Wireless Service Providers and Cell Phones (which were the closest categories we had to the NBC Universal “Green” roster) – being “green” and a concern for the environment made not a jot of difference. Nothing. Naught, zero, zilch zippo. Not insofar that in doing so consumers would actually be more engaged or more loyal.

So NBC Universal’s raison d’être? Let’s just chalk it up to corporate altruism and philanthropy and leave it at that. It is a good thing to be a more environmentally aware and concerned corporate citizen. Really.

But to borrow from NBC Universal, “the more you know” about which values actually drive your category, the more you’ll know about how to better engage consumers, bond them to your brand, and be more profitable. And that’s important too, because while there may be no business like show business, in marketing there are several businesses like accounting.

Robert Passikoff, Ph.D. is founder and president of New York-based Brand Keys, Inc.