Clean As a Whistle

21 Jun 2011 – Mark Lee

San Francisco is a trend-setting kind of place. Politically, technologically, environmentally, gastronomically, oenologically and otherwise, it’s a city that’s had a few moments.

A relatively recent addition to the Bay Area avant-garde is Method, a line of home care products launched in 2000. The products are colorful, effective and non-toxic, so you don’t need to worry about having them under your sink, while Method’s package design comes as close as possible to making soaps sexy – you actually want them on display. While not (yet!) as heralded for industry transformation as, say, Alice Waters or Thomas Keller in relation to food, with national distribution through Target and other retailers, and international expansion underway, Method’s made it.

Method to their madness

To want to revolutionize the cleaning products industry is a bit brilliant (why have we accepted toxic cleaners in our homes this long?) and, let’s be honest, a bit unusual. But Method founders Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan had a vision from the start. Detailed on their website here, the vision is summarized in these two sentences: “Eric knew people wanted cleaning products they didn’t have to hide under their sinks. And Adam knew how to make them without any dirty ingredients.”

So a sustainability (especially an environmental) ethic was present at Method from the beginning, and it is very evident today. What I find most remarkable is that instead of the traditional skull and crossbones poison label, Method products typically carry a message on their packaging something like, “It’s not a great idea to drink this, but, if you do, it’s not the end of the world.”

Clearly, I like what Method makes and how they do it – but has sustainability had much to do with their success?

Methodology

I was at Method with colleague Patrin Watanatada on June 10 for a discussion loosely focused on our new project Signed, Sealed… Delivered? (SSD), which will explore eco-labels, and their impact on trust and behavior change across the value chain. This conversation happened just after SustainAbility held an SSD design session with some twenty-five company representatives from sectors including food, paper, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, carpet and retail at the Sustainable Brands 2011 conference in Monterey (see Patrin’s blog on the design session here). I also gave a plenary talk on the future of sustainable value at the event.

With the Method team, we wanted to bring these elements together in a discussion about the ways companies win value from investments in more sustainable practices including, in Method’s case, certification (Method has used the EPA’s Design for the Environment certification for years, and is incorporating the Cradle to Cradle mark now) or going the extra mile on product ingredients in order to increase safety without affecting cleaning performance, even when consumers don’t get third-party validation (or don’t recognize) it’s been done.

Competitive edge?

Eleven years from founding, Method is thriving in a marketplace that is both more pressured (think recession) and more competitive (think of the spectrum of consumer choices available, from pioneer Seventh Generation to Clorox Green Works). But are consumers switched on to Method’s environmental bona fides?

Our conversation with our June 10 host Drummond Lawson (Method’s ‘green giant’ or ‘director of greenskeeping’) and some two dozen of his colleagues, including co-founder Adam, affirmed a headline we see elsewhere in the marketplace: sustainability performance matters to consumers, but is a primary purchase driver for only a small minority. No surprise there, but check out the more nuanced benefits and challenges of investing in sustainability performance and using certifications mentioned as well:

• Sustainability is not often the initial purchase trigger for Method customers, but it is a huge factor in customer loyalty once people discover the brand.
• Sustainability matters to employees, big time. (When your team members wear ‘soap is hope’ t-shirts with no sense of irony, you know they care.)
• Certifications – like those Design for the Environment and Cradle to Cradle marks Method has qualified to use – support Method sales people in discussion with buyers (where B2B conversations may be 30 minutes long) and serve as a shortcut for consumers in the retail aisle (where decisions are taken in seconds)…
• …but certifications don’t really help Method differentiate, because almost every product has a mark or label of some kind, and consumers struggle to discern the difference. In fact, eco-labels are almost by definition transitional tools; the more successful they are at raising supply and production performance standards across a category, the less of a brand differentiator they become…
• …and certifications are not easy for a strongly branded, design-differentiated company like Method to use. Simply put, the certification mark is typically the worst-designed element you will find on consumer packaging – it’s not what certification schemes purport to be good at, and it shows (!) – but there is little flexibility as to mark appearance. Once you are certified, you use the label the certifier provides, or not.
• In addition, eco-labels can carry negative baggage, at times conveying low quality, or high cost, or both; they can also affect presentation in the retail environment, trapping or marginalizing a product in the ‘eco-aisle’.
• Finally, we spent time debating whether certification schemes will peak in terms of influence, perhaps remaining in the field as testament to minimum standards attained, but existing in the background behind brands that convey directly the unique sustainability performance characteristics most important to their own discreet audiences.

As suggested in Greenbiz Editor Joel Makower’s recent post Green Marketing is Over. Let’s Move On, Method faces a dual dilemma shared by many companies: How much to invest in sustainability in the first place, and then how to extract value from the investment. When Joel suggests green marketing has jumped the shark, he does not mean stop investing, but that companies should more often look for returns elsewhere (for example, with employees, and in B2B relationships, places Method does find returns more readily).

I support Joel’s suggestion that we broaden the search for value, but I think too that Method and others must not accept current demand as the final word on consumer potential. That loyalty element, where consumers attracted to brands for other reasons stay with them because environmental attributes convert them from customers to fans, is too powerful to ignore. In an age where social media is fast becoming the ultimate certification, isn’t that loyalty, and the testimonials it engenders, the very thing that might create the next generation of customers, this time with sustainability part of their initial decision to buy?

Value #beyondlabels

The Method discussion was the first in a series of conversations we have planned to complement our SSD research program. As the project’s Twitter hashtag suggests, we want to look ‘#beyondlabels’ at whether and how certifications have the performance impact they target and whether they build the trust in B2B and B2C relationships they promise. But we also will go ‘beyond’ and explore how the actual certification marks or labels themselves work in the marketplace (Do consumers notice and care? Do they look good?), and then at whether brands themselves might be the next big thing building on the sustainability performance foundation eco-labels have built.

If these topics interest you, check out our initial whitepaper for Signed, Sealed… Delivered?, or contact me to arrange a discussion regarding sponsorship or other participation.