Articles

Time for a brighter shade of green
Financial Times (London) 18-4-00

Why on earth would any normal person voluntarily visit a corporate website, especially that inevitably gloomy sub-space dedicated to the environment? I can understand evening surfers diverting from a sex or games site to check out the latest car (www.newbeetle.com is fun if you like Volkswagen's retro offering) or to download some music.

But what's the benefit of dropping into mind-numbing motherhood statements about corporate sustainability when campaign groups provide much more radical sites for those interested in the environment (www.Greenpeace.org is provocative and www.corpwatch.org is always fun)? Campaigners have mastered the web as prime communications medium, far outpacing the plodding multinationals.

Most corporate environmental information on web sites - if it exists - is boring and horribly predictable. It's what companies want surfers to know, not what visitors really want to find out. On the whole, it is also presented in the most uninspired way.

The primary reason seems to be an inability to understand the medium. Most (but not all) well-established companies struggle to use the web as anything more than a filing cabinet or corporate brochure. Some are beginning to break away (see www.sony.com) but even those companies who see marketing possibilities for their products, treat the environment space as a poor relation.

An example of this klutzy approach is the way so many companies merely place their paper-based environment reports on the web as downloads. Ford (www.ford.com) for example, warns surfers that it will take about 40 minutes to extract their opus. P&G (www.pg.com) offers the same download service as does Electrolux (www.electrolux.com) without providing the option of a dedicated web report - the way most reports will appear in the future. The web might be able to do many things, but it makes a lousy mailing service for paper-based information.

Failing to grasp the real potential of the web is perfectly understandable, given the age of those managers who have to make the decisions and the difficulty in justifying the cost of developing and maintaining clever sites.

This is not, though, a good enough excuse, as Shell (www.shell.com) shows with its highly interactive site that has uncensored discussion forums carrying raging debates (mostly uncomplimentary to Shell) on anything from pollution to human rights abuses. Clicking from here to ExxonMobil's site (www.exxon.com) is like going back in time to the dark days when corporate communications was about talking sweet but saying nothing. (Interest declared: we work for Shell, but not on their website).

Nestle's (www.nestle.com) site is a bit brighter but it also hides - unwittingly, we hope - information of genuine interest. The company has a perfectly reasonable statement on genetically modified foods (although www.dupont.com does better). which is virtually impossible to find. This is because it is not flagged on the home page and the search engine only responds to "biotechnology" instead of common terms, such as GMs or GMOs.

No single environment space stands out as best in class, although there are some interesting exceptions. Electrolux (www.electrolux.com) offers a service that calculates the cost savings of using those of its products which offer superior environmental performance. Ford has a separate website dealing with its new range of low-emission vehicles (www.thinkmobility.com) which is bright but still outshone by newbeetle.com.

Corporate websites will undoubtedly improve as their benefits become more obvious and managers get to grips with the opportunities the medium offers. They will also have to change their attitudes to communicating on their environmental performance, which seems to swing from wild boasts (very 1980s) to puritanical humility.

It's this puritanical streak which is so concerning. Environment spaces, on the whole, seem to be designed by Shakers - clean, neat, subdued and oh-so-dull. Coca-Cola (www.cocacola.com) for example, moves from bright marketing pictures and music downloads on its main site to a (literally) beige environment space where the recycling of aluminium cans and other exciting beverage containers is discussed in the most mind-numbing detail.

Please, please, bring on the dancing girls and stop being so politically correct. There are great opportunities for corporate communications departments - who usually run the web pages - to step from the dark to the digital age and seize the opportunities to use their company's environmental endeavours to build reputation.

It would be hugely exciting to embellish environment spaces with some zippy marketing. Why not offer free gifts to surfers who can answer questions on a company's much improved energy consumption figures? The prizes don't have to be big but they could link to the company's products - a can of oil, a pack of low-fat crisps, an electric bicycle... .

What's needed is something suitably enticing to make it worthwhile for surfers to stop over on their way to much more thrilling sites. Is it really pushing the dead hand of corporate communications too far to think of transforming the environment site from a dreary dull diversion, to a destination experience?