November 2008 Newsletter Tibits

ServiceMaster Building Services Received "Top Merchant" Status with Merchant Circle By-Monica Ross-Williams ServiceMaster Building Services of Wayne County recently was honored to receive "Top Merchant" Status with the Merchant Circle business website. We were extremely honored to obtain this achievement. With the course of four months of adding our listing to the Canton, Michigan serve area managed to connect with over 80 other businesses in Michigan and United States. We have received three reviews of our business and have added over 10 new members to the Merchant Circle Connection. Merchant Circle is a a privately-funded business based in Silicon Valley, dedicated to helping local businesses get connect to more customers quickly, easily and cost effectively. MerchantCircle is led by an experienced team and funded by investors who share our vision and believe in the power of local businesses. Backers include Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners and Disney's Steamboat Ventures, who each bring their specialized expertise to help us develop and improve the MerchantCircle experience. . Please feel free to add comments to our "Talk to Me" and/or Comment sections of our Merchant Circle page.

Newsflash-110% of Customers Shop Green By-Joel Makower This just in: pretty much every consumer is concerned about the environment and is thinking conscientiously about what they buy - how it's made, under what conditions, and by whom. All you have to do is make good, green stuff and they'll buy it! We've reached the tipping point! Sound too good to be true? It is, of course. But you wouldn't know it from the marketing studies I've been seeing - and the breathless headlines that result. As they continue to invade my in-box, I find myself getting increasingly irritated. Can market researchers be accused of greenwash? I'm beginning to wonder. Two examples: Approximately 50 percent of U.S. consumers consider at least one sustainability factor in selecting consumer packaged goods items and choosing where to shop for those products, according to a new survey by Information Resources, Inc. Nearly nine in ten Americans say the words "conscious consumer" describe them well and are more likely to buy from companies that manufacture energy efficient products, promote health and safety benefits, support fair labor and trade practices, and commit to environmentally-friendly practices, according to the BBMG Conscious Consumer Report. I don't profess to have studies that refute these, but you don't need to be a social scientist to know that neither of the above conclusions is on the money. Half of consumers do not consider sustainability when buying packaged goods - everything from cosmetics to cleaners, Rice-a-Roni to razor blades. (Do half your friends and family members shop this way?) And to think 90% of us are "conscious consumers" when it comes to the planet? C'mon. Half of us aren't even conscious about what we put into our bodies. Such studies aren't new. They have been coming out for years, boasting about the high percentage - usually, a significant majority - of consumers that say they are integrating environmental and social considerations into their purchases. I've written about some of these in the past (see here, here, and here). I don't mean to suggest that any of these research firms are misleading us. I know many of these people, and they are as earnest and diligent as the day is long. They ask questions, get answers, and crunch the numbers. But common sense - or simply looking around - shows us how far reality is from these numbers. Walk the aisles at your local supermarket or big-box retailer. How many of the products you see reflect sustainability values? How about the companies that make them? How about the stores that sell them? How many shoppers are bothering to ask such questions? Things are changing in ways that make some of these reports more sinister than seductive. Over the past six months, the G-word - greenwashing - seems to have risen from the dead to become a vibrant part of the conversation. There's now a Greenwashing Index, a Greenwash Brigade, greenwash lists, and lots of handwringing. And, of course, the Six Sins of Greenwashing. It's all good. As the number of companies making green claims grows - by the way, has anyone actually measured that growth? - we need vigilant watchdogs, even though there's far from unanimity about what is, and isn't, greenwash. (Ad Age's list of 2007's best and worst is telling - note that GE (via NBC Universal), Toyota, and Wal-Mart all showed up on both the good and bad lists.) In that light, these green consumer studies seem something of a sucker punch. "Come on, jump in. There's a vast audience waiting to buy what you sell. But it better be damn green, and your messaging better be pitch perfect in both tone and content. And your company better not have any skeletons, or be doing anything environmentally untoward or selling other products that don't seem green." We want it both ways. We want companies to do better, to green up their products, and to distribute them far and wide. We have high hopes and higher expectations. But we lack standards and basic agreement about how good things have to be - the products as well as the companies that make them. How does a company operate in an world of hyped-up market research, few norms or standards, and sky-high expectations from consumers and activists who monitor their every move? I'm not suggesting that we take whatever companies dish out. We need to shift products and markets in significantly greener directions. And they need to be good-quality, affordable products. Anything less is wasting our time and money - both limited resources, one of them nonrenewable. Source-Two Step Forward Web Blog http://makower.typepad.com/joel_makower/2008/01/news-flash-110.html