Green Pledge Giveaways -- Does the Pledge Deliver?

There's a green giveaway format that I commonly run across.  It goes something like this:

"Take the 'Go Green Pledge' and you'll automatically be entered in a sweepstakes for a great green prize."

That's the gist of it.  Simple stuff.

And the pledge?  It's usually fairly simple, too, like promising to replace all your incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, set your washer to cold water instead of hot, place your compostables in the compost bin, etc.

To see an example of this type of green pledge drive in action, check out Jet Blue's "One Thing That's Green" promotion.  Entrants can select from one of four green pledges: unplugging their battery chargers when not in use, participating in their community's recycling program; packing a waste-free lunch (with reusable containers); and keeping tires properly inflated on their vehicle. The lucky grand prize winner, selected at random, gets a brand new Honda CR-Z Sport Hybrid.  Fun stuff.

Pledge giveaways are wonderful for promoting great, bite-sized eco-friendly actions that people can take.  Still, these types of giveaways strike me as a shade short of green.  While Jet Blue, or any other company running a pledge giveaway, can hope all it wants that entrants actually follow through on their promise, it's obviously impossible to know whether they did.  To Jet Blue's credit, it includes an option on the entry form for follow-up (i.e., "Yes, please follow up with me to see how I am making a difference.")  I assume that follow-up consists of an email reminder, not a home visit.  The latter would be the only way to truly determine whether the entrant was making good on their green pledge, but is  obviously beyond the means of any company to conduct.

Since it is impossible to discern the actual effect of a pledge giveaway, what good is it actually accomplishing?  Again, it's great for educational purposes, introducing (or reminding) folks of relatively easy-to-implement changes which has value in and of itself.  But, they're not great for touting actual achievement.  So for Jet Blue to claim, as they do on their promotional website, that "In the past two years through our One Thing That's Green pledge, 75,000 people have saved nearly 100 million gallons of water, 5 million kilowatts for electricity and more than 1 million gallons of gasoline," is a bit well, disingenuous.  But hey, if the company has evidence to back up this claim, I'm all ears.  I didn't see any on the promotion website.

There is a always a trade-off when you construct a giveaway:  the easier it is to enter, the more entrants you will get.  And a pledge entry, one which asks the entrant to simply check off a box on a web form, is incredibly easy.  But, given the lack of accountability, it has limits as a green giveaway: great for informing; lousy for actual achievement.  And it's the latter which can leave companies, even those with the best of intentions (and a neat green prize), susceptible to the charge of lots of talk and little action. 

In other words, Giveaway Greenwashing. 

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Communal Green Prizes Offer a Win-Win

As the chief Ecobunga! deal hunter, I've reviewed thousands of green giveaways.  Most of them are structured along similar lines:  an online entry, a random drawing, and a grand prize and runner-up prizes awarded to a few lucky winners.  So when a company runs a promotion that deviates from this basic formula, it catches my eye.

Seventh Generation, maker of non-toxic household cleaners, is sponsoring a community-oriented Earth Day giveaway that awards prizes to both a grand prize winner and that winner's community.  The top prize in the company's Green Your Town Sweepstakes is a green home makeover in the form of a $10,000 shopping spree at RealGoods.com, a Gaiam subsidiary.  That prize alone is enough to make the giveaway a stand-out.

But Seventh Generation added a twist.  Not only will the winner enjoy the chance to green their home, but 1000 people in their community will also receive a green home gift -- a reusable tote filled with free Seventh Generation products and educational materials.

Now, that's what I'd call a win-win!  You've got 1001 happy folks:  the grand prize winner and the other 1000 people who unexpectedly get some freebies and a chance to learn more about greening their homes.   Plus, by rewarding the broader community, Seventh Generation demonstrates that it is interested in helping more than just one home go green.  Widespread adoption of green cleaning habits is what they're after, which benefits both the community and, needless to say, Seventh Generation, too.

Of course, one of the considerations that marketers must be mindful of when they come up with a nifty promotion like this is the "doability" factor.   What, exactly, are the logistics involved in fulfilling those 1000 runner-up prizes?  Curious myself, I checked out the official rules for the fine print:

... up to one thousand (1,000) Green Home Starter Kits [are] to be randomly awarded to 1,000 households within a 100 mile radius of where the Grand Prize winner resides, or as otherwise determined by the Sponsor. Each Green Home Starter Kit will include a Seventh Generation branded eco tote bag and Seventh Generation products (products may be awarded as coupons).

This answered some questions.

1. By substituting coupons for actual products you reduce shipping costs and minimize the prize outlay (as it is almost certain that not all of the coupons will be redeemed.)  
2. "Community" is defined as a 100 mile radius around the winner's residence, which is helpful should he or she live in a sparsely populated area.  But, wisely, the rules leave open the possibility that this radius could change -- good news if the winner lives smack in the middle of Manhattan. 
3. These runner-up prizes are to be awarded randomly, so there is no encumbrance on the winner to provide names, nor the possibility that they would simply choose all their friends and neighbors to receive the goodies.

Even with these stipulations, this type of giveaway, with its relatively grand scale, is not a breeze to execute.  But, still, it's an interesting promotion to emulate and one that could probably be adapted to suit the resources and budgets of smaller companies.

I've seen many giveaways in which entrants vie to win a prize on behalf of their town (a "green your school" contest or a community garden giveaway), but Seventh Generation's Green Your Town Sweepstakes is the first I'd come across which offered individual rewards throughout an entire community based on a single winner. No matter who wins the the grand prize, I'd be willing to bet that they will have a lot more friends right after those 1000 runner-up prizes are awarded!

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