Marketplace.org
“Have you seen our electric bill?,” my wife Beth said. “Turn the upstairs thermostat up a degree,” she commanded (at least that is how it sounded to me.) “No,” I reasoned (I’m always so reasonable), “it will be too hot in the kids rooms at the other end of the house.” And that is how that discussion ended in at least one liberal leaning ATL HH. You see, I’m all for saving the environment, and a few bucks. But not always at the expense of certain creature comforts.
A recent story on NPR’s Marketplace, “Bringing both sides for conservation,” shed a bit of insight on my aisle straddling HVAC POV. It detailed A UCLA study of a utility’s efforts to get customers to conserve by sending them comparisons of their usage vs. their neighbors.’ The goal was encourage people to want to keep up (or down?) with the more environmental Joneses next door.
What they found surprised them. In some HH’s, particularly those identified as politically conservative, their efforts had the opposite affect. Instead of consumption going down, it went up. A result the researchers attributed to some in that demo being resistant to being told what to do by any external big brother like entity. And reacting in a way to show their distaste.
How, the researchers wondered, did the concept of “conservation,” get so far from that of “conservatism,” two words based on same root word, conserve?
Before any of my more conservative readers/colleagues blow a gasket reading this, let me share the other side of the story, a piece in the WSJ earlier this year, Even Boulder Finds It Isn’t Easy Going Green, detailing efforts in one of the more liberal places in the country to get people to do the same thing as in the UCLA study.
Even in Boulder, it isn't easy being green
What they learned was, despite how liberal or environmentally conscious folks in those parts are, its just as hard to get a large number of them to do anything to save energy as it was the conservatives in the UCLA study. And the enemy isn’t politics. It’s simply human nature and inertia.
The lessons for marketers from both of these different, though strangely similar POVs is that going green is a noble goal that some buy into, and some do not. The secret to appealing to and leveraging those on all sides of environmental issues lies in finding some sort of common ground to stand on. That’s not always possible when it comes down to issues alone. But when you have something to sell, and you want to sell it more of it than you did before, you have to find a position that is as deep as it can be, while also being as broad as possible.
In this particular case, the UCLA study drew a positive conclusion. Whatever your politics are, one thing we all have in common is the desire to spend our own money on what we want. Whether it takes the form of cutting back to put a few extra bucks in the bank and/or save the planet, or to stash a bit of cash away to put it into a killer home theater system, the goal is the same. Freedom of choice. If you can be part of that as a marketer — giving the people what they want — you stand a strong chance of success. And isn’t that what the American way is all about?
