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The Awareness Customer Is A Revolution
by Bill Roth, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:15 AM
Consumers' pursuit of economic and environmental sustainability combined with their growing use of new media are creating a marketing revolution. Evidence of this emerging revolution is now being
documented by research tracking consumer procurement of green products and consumer adoption of new media. Gail Research documents that 85% of Americans have purchased a green product. Its finding
supports the J.D. Power & Associates report tracking an unprecedented shift in web "conversations" from the question of "Is Global Warming real" to "What do we do about it." The consumer adoption
of new media is seeing similar dramatic change. The 2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study documents that new media are now being used by over half of Americans. And among those Americans using new media,
almost 80% interact with a brand and/or company. Ninety-five percent of new media users believe a company should have a presence there. This convergence of consumer trends in adoption of
sustainability and new media is defining a new customer class, the Awareness Customer. This is an important distinction from classification of consumers into shades of "green." For example,
the Awareness Customer is defined by the three distinct leadership groups:
- CEOs are performance-driven and have set goals for tracking and reducing emissions.
- Concerned Caregivers define sustainability as wellness and are keenly sensitized to issues of diet, health care, the economy and the environment.
- The Millennial Generation sees sustainability as its future and is the only Awareness Customer who will pay more to buy green.
Among Awareness
Customers, the Concerned Caregivers and the Millennial Generation are moving through a self-directed path that uses social media in a starfish problem-solving process of learning, experimentation and
then procurement. The phrase I found in a Web 2.0 conversation that captures the essence of this process is "Know it, Embrace it." The manifestations of "Know it, Embrace it" are complex,
evolving and growing. For example, a CEO of a green retail website shared with me an estimate that there are 20 million "Mommy Bloggers" posting their feelings, actions and observations across the
fullest range of wellness issues. "Is this a marketing opportunity or just spontaneous writing therapy," was a key question this CEO raised, where the answer is still emerging. My anecdotal
example is a woman I surveyed walking out of a Target store after buying her first bottle of Green Works. She bought it because of a social pressure to "do something." Her purchase was an impulse buy,
driven by the labeling. She was conflicted on whether she had made the right purchase and volunteered she was going to use the Internet to learn more. She listed "diet" and "organic" as other issues
of concern regarding what she and her family should be eating. She left the parking lot driving a full-size Jaguar toward her home located in an upscale community of large homes. So how do
you market to the Awareness Customer? The successful strategies I see emerging combine competitive pricing, a "Prove It, Conclusively" branding strategy and "Know it, Embrace it" marketing to create
The Secret Green Sauce for growing revenues and brand equity. And for the first time since I began tracking this space, I can now point to actual businesses across market segments who are harvesting
green revenue growth, enhanced brand equity and profits.