When an old-economy warhorse General Motors blares to BusinessWeek that it must Live Green or Die, it’s safe to say things are changing around here. But if marketers don’t fix step in now to counteract consumers’ green fatigue, that revolution will come to a screeching halt, according to SB’08 co-chair Jacquelyn Ottman, who kicked off the first official day of the conference with green-branding call to arms.

Branding experts are stepping up in the clean tech, natural personal care, and green building sectors. But not all clients are well served, said Ottman. The culprit? Marketing messages laced with squishy terms like renewable, green, environmentally friendly.

As a result, a new term has slipped into the lexicon: green fatigue. Consumers are so inundated with green-product messaging that they can’t decide which represent genuine progress and which are just so much greenwash.

Skip the babies, kill the daisies, and pulverize the planets! (Really, she said that.) Consumers are tired of seeing the same trite images. They know that the products can’t be as green as they’re cracked up to be when they’re surrounded by this imagery.

Companies are very conscious of the potential for green backlash, or being branded a greenwasher - as well they should. Sustainability blogging is up 50%, and you can bet quite a few cyber-pundits are playing the Gotcha Game.

So how can you market your green initiatives in a credible and effective way, both now and in the future?

1. Focus on primary benefits. From the start, marketing efforts for Toyota’s Prius have focused on benefits such as fuel economy and a quiet ride, which are much more meaningful to consumers than saving the planet. Highlight on close-to-home concerns such as cost savings and health benefits, and link corporate environmental initiatives to social benefits such as better-paying, more equitable jobs.
2. Be transparent. Timberland’s EcoMetrics label for footwear dishes the dirt on the product’s energy use, global warming contribution, and materials efficiency. This is the sign of something much bigger to come, Ottman predicted, Soon, more labels will be linking consumption to carbon footprint.
3. Start from the inside out. Ensure the credibility of your corporate campaigns by embedding sustainability in long-term strategic goals and empowering employees and consumers to take small steps to reduce their environmental impact. Want real-world examples? Look no further than the three finalists for this year’s Green Effie awards: HSBC’s No Small Change consumer-outreach campaign (which promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy over carbon offsets), Wal-Mart’s Personal Sustainability Project (which is changing the lives of 1.5 million Wal-Mart associates), and GE’s Ecomagination campaign (which spotlights innovative technologies that can help the environment and the company’s bottom line).

Things are changing quickly - last year’s hot topics have given way to a new crop of ideas and strategies, said Ottman. But some things stay the same: In the end, the principles of successful marketing apply to green marketing as well: build great products, highlight the underlining value, and consumers will come.

~Emily Rabin Cowan, SLM Managing Editor