The document discusses the importance of the Gort Cloud, highlighting how it creates brand positioning, enforces credibility, and is technologically driven and fluidly expanding. It also lists the top 10 reasons why the power of the Gort is important, including the importance of honesty, convenience, appearance, cost savings, and keeping messages simple.
-Imagine a place where you get the support and help you need to launch your green business
-Need an investor, partner, distributor, done, all the stakeholders are there at your finger tips
Well guess what everyone, this magical place exists. It is an invisible force powering sustainability brands. It is the Gort Cloud.
The Gort Cloud is a small yet powerful green network that includes:
The Trendspotters, such as treehugger or inhabitat
Green Business News such as GreenBiz.com
Green Social Networks
Lifestyle networks like LOHAS
Environmental NGOs
Green Magazines such as GOOD
And leaders in the fields such as Paul Hawken and Dan Etsy
Gort is not based on the day after tomorrow,
but is instead the community that makes or breaks green brands,
that gets things done in the sustainability community,
that shows the interconnectedness between all green stakeholders
Why Gort?
It is a play on the Oort Cloud – an invisible cloud a light year away that is full of stellar debris that is the source of comets.
The Author, Seireeni believed this was the perfect metaphor for what the Gort Cloud is, an invisible, messy network that has a huge impact but is difficult to calculate.
-Properly positions brands
-offers credibility, filters greenwashing
-it’s growing!
-it’s online and therefore easy to access
Seireeni then goes through a bunch of cases, many we are familiar with such as Seventh Generation and Interfaces as well as a few new ones such as Nau Clothing and Hymotion, so if you aren’t sick of case studies yet, check this book out!
Seireeni, a self-proclaimed brand architect, ends the book by laying out his top observations for successfully selling green brands.
Transparency is key, it you exaggerate the greenwashing hammer will come down on you.
We already know this but green can’t be the major selling point, there has to be another value-add for a majority of the customers.
It has to be cost equivalent and perform as well as the non-green competition, if it’s too expensive, or doesn’t work, people won’t buy it just because it is green.
This one resonated with me the most, all of us in the room know this feeling and how frustrating it is when our friends and family don’t ‘get’ it because it is a part of the way we think. And green consumers are varied, they don’t fit into the usual demographic profiles marketers usually use.
People will buy it if they can easily access it; I did my case study on green works, because people could access it in normal stores such as walmart at an agreeable price point, they would buy it. It’s a convenient purchase because it is at the store they normally shop at.
It is easier to reach already green buyers than try to convert those not yet on the bandwagon.
Greenies want people to know they are green, Prius’s look funny but everyone knows you are driving a Prius, unfortunately we are still a bit snotty and want people to pat us on the back for our obvious greening.
The fear of now vs. the fear of later. Some successful products have maximized that, especially food products and personal care items. Toxins are a bigger scare factor than future climate change when it comes to purchases.
Gort Cloud is full of trendspotters and reviewers offering product stories, it not only offers credibility but it helps level out the competitive landscape.
And finally, Keep it simple stupid, our brains are on overload, don’t make it harder to make the purchase, you only have 2 seconds for a purchaser to make a decision, don’t muddle your message or they will just move on.
Amanda Ravenhill figures that we are all only two degree away from every player in the Gort Cloud.
It is our green rolodex to success, we just need to rock it.