WWF Eco-Executive Game Thinks Green Marketing Will Save The Planet

Posted on 02. Jun, 2010 by Ross in Climate Change, Corporate Policy

Looking to lower your company’s corporate carbon footprint? Well, look no further than putting out some green marketing material through your PR company.

Sounds daft, right? Well, that’s just part of the advice which the WWF is dishing out as part of it’s latest interactive climate change awareness project. Called CEO2, the game puts you in the driving seat of a company and makes you choose where to put you company’s resources over the next two decades. You can lead an insurance giant, car manufacturer, chemical company or energy supplier, choosing the investments which you feel will maximise shareholder returns whilst lowering your company carbon footprint and enthusing your customers.

With the aim of highlighting the wide array of environmental business decisions which you could take to steer your company forward you would expect WWF, who partnered with Allianz in creating this game, to have been quite comprehensive with the green options available. They have certainly not held back on the projects you can give the green light to, from hydrogen cars and super-insulation to energy efficiency and ultra-supercritical coal. The game was also never going to be shy of ruffling a few feathers: for example, watch out for the effect of the energy industry acknowledging the truth about peak oil after 2020 upon your share price!

However, CEO2 is also both inconsistent and surprising, especially when it comes to green marketing. Three of the four sectors which you can control have the option to launch green marketing campaigns, but the surprising thing is that the WWF seems to think that a green marketing campaign is the best way to save carbon!

In both the motor industry and insurance industry, a green marketing campaign across the first decade costs 5% of your budget but results in a carbon emission reduction of 5%. That equates to the level best cost-vs-carbon reduction investment available to you as company CEO, but quite how a bit of marketing by itself will reduce your company emissions fails to be explained. Indeed, the ‘intelligence report’ accompanying the option warns of the dangers of greenwashing, and that 90% of green claims last year were exaggerated or misleading, yet the game rewards you more than any other action for walking down the greenwash tightrope.

Green marketing produces even greater results further down the line. In the second decade a 1% budget expenditure on green marketing in the car industry can result in a 5% carbon reduction from your company’s carbon footprint - by far and away the best investment available! Just to confuse the picture, chemical companies spending 10% of their budget on marketing receive a far more realistic 0% carbon reduction, whilst green marketing is beyond the capabilities of energy companies: perhaps the WWF think they already have too much blood on their hands…

As a general novelty awareness piece, WWF’s CEO2 is certainly a success and cleverly put together. But with too many arbitrary assumptions and approximations, don’t expect any easy answers to appear. Indeed, the only people likely to benefit from this are marketeers, who can now spin themselves as the environmental crusaders capable of slashing carbon footprints - until asked just how they’ll accomplish it!

Image of a green staircase (green marketing is a steep stair to climb, and a slippery slope to fall down!) by Ksionic @ Flickr