Being Good vs. Doing Good

I was looking at a company called Innocent today. They make fruit smoothies, and other foodstuffs. The products are all-natural, and their corporate ethics are squeaky clean. They’re doing “good” simply by being good.

It’s an interesting distinction. Some companies operationally ARE good (i.e. have a conscience), and then there are companies that go out and DO good.

Companies that ARE good: Tom’s of Maine, Innocent (drinks), Method (soap), Icelandic Glacial water, Starbucks fair trade coffees, Kashi and other organic foods, etc. A Hybrid car may fall into this category. They make internal decisions about how they run their business with one eye on profits, the other on impacting the world. The sustainability movement pushes for this sort of thing, and it’s a huge part of “good” marketing. Their customers are fans because of the way they do business.

Then there are companies that DO good. Many of those are featured in this blog. Pedigree helping shelter dogs, Quaker feeding the hungry, Diet Coke advocating heart health, Tropicana saving the rainforest, etc. These companies aren’t necessarily “green” or operationally “good” at all. But they see the value in helping society – not just for the world, but for their brand.

Ideally a company will do both. They’ll BE good, and they’ll DO good as well. But heck, I’ll settle for either.
They’re both very real reasons to choose one brand over another, especially in a parity category. (“Would you like to buy the soda that’s two cents cheaper, or the one that saves babies, ma’am?”)

So while WalMart keeps tweaking it’s operations to become more “green” (thanks in part to the efforts of SaatchiS), shoppers will be looking for ways that part of their consumer buck can go toward making the world a better place in the regular course of buying dog food.

Hey, lazy people can save the world too.

Tropicana Saves The Rainforest, Freakonomics Misses The Point

(Thanks to my colleague Tracy Y. for tipping me off to this one.)



Freakonomics isn’t just a bestselling book, it’s a major blog on NYTimes.com.

Here’s an excerpt from a March 2nd post:
“Saving the Rain Forest One Glass of Orange Juice at a Time, By STEVEN D. LEVITT.
I was drinking Tropicana orange juice this morning. The company has a clever marketing campaign. If you go to its website and type in the code on the Tropicana carton, Tropicana will set aside 100 square feet of rain forest to preserve on your behalf.
What’s clever about this?
Whenever a company can give away something worth 11 cents that people think is worth $5, they are doing something right.”
(Read the whole article, HERE.)

The trouble with this analysis is that it only looks at the math. Would a free giveaway (say, a nice pen, or a mug, or a button) that seemed like it must’ve cost $5 but only really cost the company 11 cents get the same customer response as saving the rainforest? I don't think so.

Doing good is a far better value-add. It casts an aura; a halo effect that regular promotions just don’t have. It becomes something people care about. A lasting reason to believe in that brand. And that’s worth even more to Tropicana than the cost of land in a rainforest.

Imagine the campaign they could build around this message.

(I do agree with F’onomics when they say, “I think corporations do not exploit the opportunities to bundle consumption of their products with contributions to charity as much as they probably should.” But for different, less quantifiable reasons.)