Who Makes Your Naughty or Nice List?
With an increased eye on the environment, it should be no surprise that consumers are revaluating their lives with an eye on reducing waste. Why,then, are some companies still leaving a large carbon footprint with direct mail?
Forest Ethics, a non-profit environmental organization, attributes direct mail's contribution to climate change as the equivalent of more than nine million cars, or the emissions generated by heating nearly 13 million homes for the winter.
To shine some light on the culprits, Forest Ethics released its 3rd annual "Naughty or Nice" scorecard for the direct mail industry. The list finds a direct mail industry in transition, with some companies adopting green practices, and many others clinging to outdated standards. However, the overall trend is one of progress, as 10 companies made Santa's 'Nice' list this year, one more than a year ago and more than three times the number in 2005.
Receiving holiday-themed scores of naughty, nice, or checking twice, 21 companies were evaluated according to four criteria: whether or not endangered forests are cut to produce the company's catalogs; whether the company uses Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper; the amount of post-consumer recycled content in the company's direct mailings; and the company's efforts to reduce overall paper consumption. Among the highlights:
•Naughty
Capitol One and Chase earned a big lump of coal for their eagerness to fill American mailboxes with an endless deluge of credit cards.
Eddie Bauer has made no commitments on forest and paper policy.
•Nice
Crate & Barrel unveiled a sterling new policy this year, with commitments to stay out of endangered forests.
Timberland and Bloomingdales' catalogs are currently being phased out entirely, providing new evidence that the industry is more deeply integrating online commerce into their marketing strategies.
Williams Sonoma Has 99 percent FSC-certified catalog paper.
Forest Ethics spokesperson Ginger Cassady said: "Public concern for the environment has never been stronger, and consumers expect brands they trust to meet new standards for environmental, social, and economic responsibility."
We at 1to1 agree with Cassady and would like to congratulate those who made the "Nice" list. However, I'd like to add a couple more who didn't make the "Naughty" list:
Pottery Barn. While this is my favorite, how many catalogs can I possibly receive with the same console tables and decorative pillows? A message to Pottery Barn: Sending just one each season is plenty.
ING. I transfer cash into this online bank's savings account each month, but the company still must not realize that I'm a customer because I continuously receive offers to become a new customer. I did, however, recently speak to Martin de Lucinete, program manager at ING, who said he is working on centralizing the bank's marketing efforts so this shouldn't happen going forward. But it couldn't happen soon enough.
We want to know - who is your "Naughty" or "Nice" direct mailer?
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Kevin's point is well taken. As the Marketing Director for 1to1, I - along with the whole team -am concerned about the environmental impact of what we do. Like every business, we are challenged to balance the realities of business with our environmental concerns.
Publishing a magazine inherently requires the consumption of paper, ink, etc. There are a couple of efforts that we have underway in an attempt to mitigate the impact we're having on the environment. Most prominently, we have just launched a digital edition of 1to1 Magazine. This gives our readers the option of receiving the same great content and graphics just in a digital format. We see lots of folks choosing this option. We are also regularly evaluating the costs of recycled paper - and how financially viable it is to make that transition.
The print publication - and the ability to offer our subscriber list for direct mail - is critical to driving revenue as a "free" controlled circulation publication. But we are active in our attempts to find more efficient ways to do business.
How do you think Forest Ethics would view your direct mail efforts with 1-to-1 Magazine?
You send direct mail to folks, subsidized by advertising, and you suggest you may rent our name/address to folks, causing more direct mail to be sent to us.