Going “green” is all the rage. Personal care brands like Tom’s of Maine, Burt’s Bees and Body Shop were always green, but now you can find green trailblazers in nearly every industry.
One such trailblazer is SunChips, a division of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay. Earlier this month the company announced the launch of a 100 percent compostable chip bag to be fully rolled out by Earth Day 2010, and that one-third of the materials in current bags are already renewable.
And on April 22nd, Earth Day 2009, the company announced it has teamed up with National Geographic for a “Green Effect” contest awarding $20,000 to each of the five most outstanding ideas for creating green change in communities.
SunChips is making their commitment to the environment a core element of their brand positioning. According to a recent MediaPost.com article, “The brand’s chips are all “relatively healthy,” so there’s no disconnect between the product’s content and its environmental image, and they are being manufactured in a Frito-Lay plant in Arizona that runs on solar-generated, renewable fuels and recycled water.”
In addition, SunChips’ tagline – “Little Things Can Change The World. Healthier Planet, Healthier You” — helps consumers make a personal connection to the brand’s green benefits.
To support their move into the green space, SunChips is unveiling an aggressive, integrated strategy that includes:
* Public relations and messaging
* 45-second TV ad showing a time lapse of the 100% biodegradable bag decomposing over 14 weeks
* Digital campaign centering on the video, available on popular blogs and high-traffic sites such as Facebook
* Print ads running in People will include samples of the new biodegradable material
* National point-of-purchase campaign
* Plus a separate TV ad buy on prime time and cable about the company’s solar-energy initiatives
So what can we learn from them?
The MediaPost.com article quotes Margaret Kline, director of innovation with brand-building consultancy Fletcher Knight who says that to stand out amid the din of increasingly confusing green claims being made by all kinds of products, “you can’t just flop a wind-energy or other green message on a label. You need to make the green benefits relevant to the brand experience as a whole. And particularly with food and consumables, you need to convey that it’s good for the consumer, as well as for the earth.”
How much is enough?
Whatever your brand position, it’s important that you are consistent across all marketing channels. In the case of SunChips that means pushing “green” in everything they do.
