I’d like to consider something dismal. As we experience what many might call a “green revolution,” the most powerful companies in the world are reinventing their businesses to incorporate and communicate their values and commitments to use, waste, pollute less and do more for society in general. But what if the movement passes without any real progress, because consumers get overwhelmed with noise about carbon emissions, natural, organic, and products made from recycled content, and they simply can’t sift through the bullshit any longer? What if the companies truly dedicated to doing good never get their chance, drowning in the tidal wave of noise that they thought would lead their businesses to the opportunity to make a real impact on people’s lives?
While I’ve always hoped that principles of sustainability would be permanently incorporated in the core of successful business, I fear that the way they are communicated today is only deafening the ears of the American consumer.
The outlook of Timberland, a company that I have grown to love for its pioneering efforts as a responsible business, isn’t good. Well, there is both good news and bad news for the company.
The good news at Timberland is that they are still setting new precedents in responsible, transparent business. Timberland recently decided to cut out all the dense prose out of their reporting, which no one reads anyway, and to provide the cold, hard data that matters in a dashboard format on a quarterly basis, saving the analysis and summarizing for a report that is released every other year (don’t expect another one until 2009). This is good for stakeholders and it’s good for Timberland since data will be made available to stakeholders on a more timely basis and less of Timberland’s resources will be wasted on content that no one is reading anyway.
The bad news at Timberland is that, as the company’s revenues continue their decline, there is the possibility that the company could quickly lose sight of its values, especially those aspects of its brand with which consumers can create an emotional connection. I fear that the company could too easily turn itself into yet another company that makes products without any real meaning or substance as it receives increasing pressure from Wall Street.
From the outside, Timberland appears disturbingly confused. It’s a pioneer in sustainability and responsible business, yet few consumers really know it. And for those of us who do, and love what the company does, it’s hard to believe that Timberland is designing clothes for those of us who share its values. Its management could learn a lot from the fanatical consumer base of Seventh Generation, which has catapulted its revenues and appears to do everything in its power to create a meaningful connection with its consumers. Meanwhile, I can’t find a single Timberland product that I like (or can afford, since I pretty much rule out all $30 t-shirts on sheer principle). It appears that while the rest of industry is touting their achievements in green, Timberland, a leader with the disposition of an awkward teenager, is still trying to find its voice.
If I were Jeffrey Swartz, Timberland’s CEO, I would build an entire department (how about a VP, Consumer Relationships) to focus on creating a meaningful connection with consumers (online, duh, it’s 2008), and let those connections guide the future of Timberland’s products, not the other way around.
I fear that as the green arms race presses on, consumers will become desensitized to companies’ achievements in sustainability because the medium, traditional advertising, trades authenticity for distribution, while never really engaging consumers in a meaningful way. I am scared by the possibility that Timberland and other values-driven companies will never drive or influence the future of business because when consumers were listening most intently, an army of companies sounded fog horns from inches away, without thought or knowledge of what the consequences might be, turning green into a throw away love affair, when it could have instead led to a wonderful long term, committed relationship between enterprise and our Earth.
Disclaimer: I value your trust in the objectivity of my writing. Please note that our company, BIG Inc., has relationships with and is in discussions with Timberland about its CSR communications. Yet, I didn’t sugar coat my thoughts above and was, if anything, more critical. I guess you could call it a bit of tough love.
Tuesday night sustainability leaders from all over the Bay Area made their way to the Berkeley facility of Clif Bar and Company to hear Gary Erickson, Kit Crawford (the husband and wife co-owners of the pioneering Clif Bar and Company) and Gary Hirshberg (President and CE-Yo of the tremendously successful and equally pioneering organic dairy producer Stonyfield Farms). The event, organized by the Good Business Network of sustainability decision makers and thought leaders, aimed to reveal the stories behind the entrepreneurs whom built wildly successful companies, from both financial and non-financial perspectives. The stories they shared were inspirational, of course, many of which I’d heard before or read in their books, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, published this year by Hirshberg, and Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar & Co.. I left convinced, however, that Clif Bar and Company and Hirshberg fundamentally disagree on the role of social responsibility in a company. The event by no means turned into a bloody fist fight (in which case my money would have been on on Kit), but left at least a few of us with an unsettled feeling that even some of the most respected people behind values-driven companies aren’t really working together.
Earlier this week, prominent blogger 
