The colour green: corporate conscience or fashion statement?

[bcraigie...@googlemail.com]

Hotwire has conducted a major audit looking at the greening of
corporate communications and its potential influence on consumer
purchasing habits across Europe.

They researched five sectors (retail, banking & finance, manufacturing
and automotive, utilities and technology & telecoms) in five countries
(the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) looking at how frequently
companies use green issues in their external communications vehicles.
In this instance press releases were selected as the representative
comms tool. We coupled this with pan-European consumer research that
identified how green issues affect the purchasing decisions of
consumers in the same sectors and countries.

Contrary to popular opinion, companies across Europe do not greenwash
their communications wholesale. The Hotwire study has found that
across all the sectors green appeared as a theme relatively
infrequently - in only 7.5%-17% of companies’ external
communications. French companies use green issues the most at 17%
while German companies are least likely at 7.5%. These are interesting
findings – with Germany very much an international leader in terms
of energy efficiency we put it more down to regional 'style' than the
reality of the companies’ initiatives. However, while it is good to
see that companies are not opting for a cheap greenwash across the
board, it is also interesting to note that they are not in synch with
consumer interest for green products and services. While companies
communicate about green issues relatively infrequently the consumer
interest in all things green is very high. When asked to score their
interest in ‘green’ between 1 and 10 (10 being the highest)
European consumers scored on average between 6.3 (Germany) and 8
(France). Consumers in Spain, the UK and Italy scored 7, 7.2 and 7.7
respectively. In other words, consumer interest is very high but in
terms of corporate communications, companies are not doing much to
satisfy the interest.

The technology & telecoms sector is an interesting sector in terms of
how it currently communicates around green, and what influences the
buying decision when purchasing technology products and services. The
UK is the only country that communicates in any volume (22% of
technology companies’ external comms) about ‘green’. At 5 out of
10, the consumer research indicates that ‘green’ is not a very
compelling driver for British consumers in the technology space,
however there is some interest and UK-based companies are doing a few
things to garner that interest. In the rest of Europe PR professionals
in the technology space have huge opportunities. While consumer
interest is pretty high at between 5.5 and 6.1, the companies’
corporate communications efforts have so far ignored the green agenda.
In France only 7% of external communications by technology companies
include the green theme, in Germany 1%, Spain 2.9% and in Italy 0%.
There are some big openings for being the green champion in the
technology & telecoms industries in France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
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Brendon Craigie works for Hotwire, providers of Technology PR for a
variety of companies in the Web 2.0 sector http://www.hotwirepr.com/digital-media/
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