Green as a Mission
Part 2 of the series: “How to make People want to pay for Green”
This is a five-part series, you’ll find the link to each individual post at the end of this one.
The power of stories
Capitalist democracies subscribe to Bodin and Hobbes’ idea of the Monopoly on violence: Only the State can force people to change their habits. Everyone else has to make them want to. So non-State-imposed changes in consumption habits happen when a consumer’s expected new wellbeing is worth the monetary sacrifice it will require.
If I’m making minimum wage, I could define greater wellbeing as the ability to put something fancier than processed pasta on the plate of my children so that they: 1) Enjoy a healthier diet and/or 2) Feel better about themselves at a school with children whose parents make more than I do. Both are worth more of my money (if I can afford it).
In another reality, if I read yacht-buying magazines as much as the Financial Times, buying a 40,000€ Patek Philippe to replace my 130€ Casio might be critical to my wellbeing. It will tell me, my family and my friends that I am a respectable and successful hedge fund manager. Or oligarch.
The higher up on Maslow’s pyramid a purchase is, the more it is motivated by psychological, rather than physiological, wellbeing. It’s the story the marketer is telling you and the re-appropriation of that story going on in your mind that seal the deal.
“Well that’s the kind of consumerist thinking that got us in trouble in the first place”, you might object, adding that 100 years of marketers manipulating us into believing we need more than what we have is the root of the problem. A reaction I definitely understand and in large part agree with. The point here is that for bad and for good, humans are fundamentally driven by stories.
As someone who’s good at telling them once said (1):
Sometimes we think people are only motivated by money, or they’re only motivated by power, or these very concrete incentives, but people are also inspired by stories. [The Declaration of Independence] was just a good story about what could be.
Barack Obama
The story of who I am with an iPhone in my pocket is what makes me spend 1259€ on the thing, even if that’s unreasonable for my budget. The story of how I’m already living in the future with my Model S is what makes my buy a Tesla. Of course, I rationalise my purchase talking about the features and seamless integrations and digital ecosystems, but I never really had or made the time to compare features of all options available. If I did, Apple would not be able to command such high prices.
In the words of the highly quotable Simon Sinek (2):
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.
The role of our own, internal stories
Let’s use a more mundane illustration than an iPhone or a Tesla: I’m in a supermarket in Paris. In my left hand I have an avocado imported from Peru costing 0.99€. In my right hand I have an organic avocado coming from Spain costing 1.49€. I’m on a budget this month but really want me some avocado toast: Should I really fork out an extra 50cts apiece?
Frankly, I have no idea what the 0.99€ avocado producer’s “WHY” is, nor his 1.49€ colleague’s. Sure, one’s organic and one isn’t. One has a massive carbon footprint and the other doesn’t. But where his avocados were being sent to likely wasn’t up to our Peruvian friend. However, the supermarket’s purchasing department knew exactly why it bought the avocados it did.
As I’m standing in this supermarket it’s clear to me that what matters most to the supermarket is having on display the range of products that maximises overall customer purchase probability. They want avocados for every budget and every set of beliefs because their own belief is that convenience maximises sales. The fact that not minimising carbon emissions will cause long-term trouble to our supply of avocados is probably something they agree with, but don’t act on.
So, from the moment my set of beliefs as a customer has shifted towards carbon emission minimisation as a priority (because of what I read, who I vote for, the story other brands are telling me), I’ll simply stop shopping in this supermarket. I’ll look for one I can trust to embed carbon-minimisation into every product selection. Perhaps that means I’ll be eating less avocados and more tomatoes because my budget will impose it. But that’s OK because the switch is consistent with the story in my mind, itself the re-appropriation of the stories I’ve been told and believed in.
Bottom line: If you’re a business hoping to appeal to customers who care about the footprint of what they buy, you can’t just add organic or local variations of your existing product line and change nothing to your legacy lineup to not alienate the rest of your clients. The “…oh by the way, this one’s Green” strategy can not be seen for anything else than what it is, a gimmick.
In Green startuppy terms, it goes something like this:
If Green is a FEATURE, you’re just making something more expensive (and no-one will want to pay for it)
If Green is a MISSION, price won’t matter to early adopters (but they won’t forgive you if your product sucks)
Gimmick vs. Story, Feature vs. Mission
Briefly put, a company’s mission is its “WHY”, the story it tells of the future it wants to project itself and its customers into.
Let’s use the example of the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, by quite a bit: Electricity & heat production (3).
Luckily enough, I’m quite familiar with the French energy utility market (4).
At papernest, my core job was to profitably generate leads for our sales team to sell (mainly) energy contracts to. Users would call in, be pointed towards the providers available both in their area and in our portfolio of partners and papernest earned a commission for the business generated with each partner. Sign of the times in 2016–2017, the word “green” started popping up quite a bit in energy utilities’ comms and branding and we thus had to make it appear in our sales pitches too… but in a specific order. First, our salespeople had to mention the chosen provider’s price was cheaper, then mention the offer was cancellable any time and then finish off with “oh by the way, the energy’s also green”.
Unsurprisingly, customers with whom you’d dig a bit further along the Green axis would quasi-systematically admit being perfectly happy to go for “green” energy, provided it didn’t cost them more.
So how then does an energy provider like Enercoop manage to exist, being green AND more expensive…? They make it abundantly clear on their website: You’re not just buying electricity, you’re buying into a project. A citizen collective that cleans up the country’s carbon emissions while reinvigorating local, independent energy production. Sure, their price is on average 17% higher, but that’s because they’ve decided to play a fair game and give strong economic incentives to their partners.
You can disagree with them (as I do) that wind and solar are better than nuclear energy to minimise full-scope emissions of CO2 (5). But there is no way to be mistaken as to what you’re in for as a customer of theirs. Your Maslowian brain knows you’re acting for the collective long-term wellbeing, and sees that it is good. Since Enercoop are telling you collective long-term wellbeing is their deal, you’re perfectly OK making budget reallocations to afford the extra 17% (should you need to).
On the other hand, if we look at a provider like Engie, their claim to greenness comes from what’s known in French as a “Garantie d’Origine”: For every kWh of theirs that you consume, Engie promises to “re-inject” a green kWh into the grid. They’re not changing anything to the production of the energy you’re paying for but adding a layer of post-hoc energy trading. The green kWh does not need to be reinjected at an agreed upon date, nor does it even need to be produced in France — Engie can buy its green kWh in Iceland for example, which is not connected to the French grid. All this information you learn from the collapsed footnote on the Engie webpage and with a few Google searches for “garantie d’origine”. If that doesn’t scream “Marketing gimmick to keep up with the Joneses”, I don’t know what does 🤷♂
Unsurprisingly, it will be very hard for Engie to create a Maslowian connection with their customers and get them to pay any extra money for their green marketing feature.
What does a good Mission look like?
Something I’ve had a good amount of time to think about, working on the brand and mission in two different startups and doing consulting work with other startups as well.
My definition of a company’s Mission (also referred to as its Purpose) is the reason it was created and why its planned contribution to society and to the planet matters.
An example I like is Tesla:
The overarching purpose of Tesla Motors […] is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution.
Elon Musk, in his 2006 Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan
A good Mission, as far as I’m concerned, has three characteristics:
- It’s Compelling
It gets employees out of bed in the morning. It gets customers lining up for hours or days to be the first to own your product: They’re buying self-esteem with a price tag. Thinking about the Mission gives employees and customers both a Maslowian boost and a warm fuzzy feeling inside. - It’s Believable
Republicans in America making a last-minute purpose pivot to “Ending white privilege and oil subsidies for a reinvigorated social contract that secures a peaceful future for our children” would be a perfect counterexample. Not that I think it’ll ever happen. - It’s Backed by actions
You’re delivering on your promises, the result of which reinforces (or diminishes) point 2.
As I posited earlier, companies with a good Green Mission have the luck of price not mattering to early adopters. They will however face backlash far greater than a company with a weak Mission if they don’t respect their commitments. The more you claim to save the World, the more your failures are going to cost you (something we’ll explore further in part 4).
In that sense, Tesla has ticked all three boxes. It’s not however just a question of strength of Mission, it’s also a question of strategy and having delivered the right products in the right order.
And for that… on to part 3 we go!
Notes & Sources
- “The Final Year”, Documentary by HBO (2017). Here Obama is answering the question asked by a Vietnamese student: “In your 8 years as president, what have you learnt about leadership?”
- Simon Sinek, “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” (2009). IMO, a book that makes an important point but that could just as well have been a long article.
- Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest
- Which is actually an odd one for the “green” angle of this article, since our Charles-de-Gaulle propelled nuclear strategy has us already sitting at the very bottom of the grams of CO2 per kilowatt/hour charts. There is still some coal and oil to get rid of in the mix for sure, but France’s biggest challenge will be grappling with ideology to realise that nuclear has a lower full-scope footprint than solar or wind, by quite a bit. Jean-Marc Jancovici always has interesting ways of putting it.
- On this my thinking is strongly influenced by the work of Jean-Marc Jancovici (again), Matthieu Auzanneau and the people at the Shift Project (all French). For a different viewpoint, you can check the likes of Project Drawdown.
