Archive for February, 2009

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A Simple, Effective Site on a Budget

Published February 10th, 2009 in communications strategy, marketing, project profiles | 1 Comment »

The site Thinkshift just launched for the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition is a great example of making the most of your resources to create a site that serves current needs, allows room to grow, and requires minimal maintenance.

The Coalition had a limited budget, but urgently needed an updated site with new everything—content, design, and architecture. The new site has a strong focus, delivers substantial information, and is easy to maintain. The keys to making this project work:

Focus on key needs. A tight budget means a tight (small, targeted, concise) site—you can’t address everything. The Coalition is a member-based advocacy organization, so we focused on supporting advocacy priorities, promoting membership, and serving members. Period.

Use what you have. We were able to adapt copy written for a previous legislator information packet to create the “Why NGVs?” section. Without this running start, the organization would not have been able to provide such robust information.

Keep the design simple. Most of us love a bit of flash (or Flash), but when you’re on a budget, you need to keep your design specifications clean and focus on the user experience (rather than impressing people with flourishes). Even on a budget, you can get a good-looking, audience-appropriate, user-centered site as long as you are disciplined about limiting your options. Focusing on what’s going to make the site easiest and most engaging for users spurs creative, economical solutions.

Build for the future. The site architecture is extremely simple, with only five top-level navigation categories that are broad enough to accommodate all anticipated additions over the next several years. The site can grow deeper with ease, without changing the basic structure. A front-page feature and secondary navigation let us bring deep information to the fore when appropriate, without disturbing the simplicity of the home page.

Account for maintenance upfront. We addressed maintenance in our site creative brief—there’s no point in building a site you don’t have the capacity to maintain, and even the simplest site needs a maintenance plan. Without one, updates are likely to be sporadic, and effectiveness will nosedive.

State of Green Business: A Communications Wake-Up Call

Published February 4th, 2009 in marketing, sustainability | No Comments »

GreenBiz.com released its second annual State of Green Business report Feb. 2, heralding the report’s release with a daylong forum that drew nearly 500 people from 20 states to San Francisco.

One report conclusion highlights a trend we’ve followed for over a year: green marketing is failing to communicate. While green is going mainstream, and many companies, large and small, are doing good, there’s also a lot of greenwashing. And surveys show that people are overwhelmed and befuddled by vague and conflicting claims. The report notes, “…with the new players and products has come a new wave of claims that companies aren’t doing enough, aren’t telling their stories well, or both.”

The upshot, says the report, is that “despite the continued upswing in green business activity, there’s no concomitant rise in consumer awareness or trust.” The challenge for companies is credibility. Green messages and sustainability claims need to be specific and substantiated. That will help not only with customers but also with internal audiences: The report points out that while green has had C-suite attention for years, companies are failing to engage lower ranks. Communications (backed by genuine actions) are key to bringing management and lower ranks on board. Green can make people feel good about their company.

Forum participants readily admitted that there’s little consensus about what is green. For instance, everyone is talking about the new green economy and how it will spur job creation, but the definition of a “green” job varies.

But I think we’ll soon see less greenwashing and less confusion all around. Marketers are realizing that people want credible information, and universal standards and independent verification will help. (Two recent developments: Just last month, Underwriters Laboratories announced UL Environment, its green verification service, and in 2008 the Federal Trade Commission began a serious review of its environmental marketing guidelines—a year earlier than planned, due to the storm of green marketing.)

Green is also an imperative for the new administration, confirmed panelists who provided an insider’s view during the forum’s closing session. President Obama is following through with his commitments to curb global warming and promote a green economy. And it’s not just an add-on: green policy is coming out of the White House economic team.

You can see webcasts of all the forum panels at http://www.greenbiz.com/stateofgreenbusinessforum.

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