Ford, Zipcar, The Environment and Walking the Talk

Over the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about green marketing. As a city dweller with a relatively high degree of environmental awareness I’ve been pleased to see the environment take center stage as an economic argument as opposed to a moral argument. The rising cost of gas has made us all aware of the fragility of our Industrial Age framework for allocating this scarce energy asset. The appalling smog clouds of China and the environmental degradation wrought by that country’s rapid industrialization make the prospect of development without environmental awareness a non-starter. The fact of the matter is that in our age of super-scale industrialization servicing global markets, we can go from 0-100 in no time. The social and environmental impacts of this high scale world is so severe that even Chinese are even rethinking their environmental plans.

Yet as a marketer I cannot help but be bummed out by green as a label and not as an energized core of a brand. I  know, through the data amassed in BAV, that to simply state green and not live it is an opening for consumers to reject not only your product, but your company. Trust and authenticity are huge brand keys in this age of atomized media, and our dawning awareness of the importance of sustainable living creates an opening for abuse. Market gains generated by subterfuge will not hold.

Which brings me  to Ford, a company near and dear to my and my agency’s heart. Henry Ford’s assembly line was a momentous step forward for the Industrial Age. The idea that precision engineering was possible at scale previous to Henry Ford was simply the work of theorists(I think). Today we live with effect of this innovation as the smog clouds of Asia and the smog clouds of LA both attest to Ford’s industrial brilliance. What’s interesting is that in 2009 his great-grandson is actively laying the groundwork that will position Ford as a leader of  our coming energy resource limited, Network Age.

It started with grand statements of green roofs, higher fuel efficiencies and a new standard for environmental consciousness. Words of a leader and an estimable vision, but alas market booms clouded that vision and the massive profitability of SUVs and trucks became synonymous with Ford, synonyms that were not in line with this vision. However, below the surface the vision percolated into tactics and operations that would place Ford at the forefront of American car manufacturers in the coming post-Great Recession age.  As we eye the end of this recession and consider what post-recession 21st Century companies must stand for we see the trails of Bill Ford’s vision in global car platforms which maximize flexibility, limiting waste and creating a platform for customization, not standardization.

But his vision is manifest most strikingly in a radical partnership that appears to be forming between Zipcar and Ford.  This recent article from Fortune begins with the platitudes to the unique Zipcar business model, but ends with Ford being lauded for its vision for future transportation.  Ford is a manufacturer who sees Zipcar for what it is, not an alternative rental service, but an alternative to individual car ownership. A direct affront to a car manufacturers goal of selling more cars. With the industry struggling to deal with a loss in overall car sales it seems shocking that Ford would be the company that Scott Griffith, Zipcar CEO, says:

Ford is the only American-branded company in the auto industry that seems to understand what we’re doing and has some affinity for what we’re up to.

This reflects an organization that is thinking about how to build an enduring brand in a rapidly changing time. There is no doubt that Ford has more work to do, but as consumers look to future purchases, they can take solace in the fact that if they buy Ford they’re buying a product that is embedded with a vision of the future that we can all support.

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• Succeeding in the New Free Markets (frontofficebox.com)
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Tagged as: Automotive industry, Bailout, Bill Ford, Business, Environment, Ford, marketing, Scott Griffith, Vision