If GOP Could Go “Green,” Couldn’t Your Business?
How to engage the skeptics, whether on the topic of marketing to women or on the topic of sustainability, is a driving passion for me. What are the words, framing, and concepts that will be “accessible” to most people, and open up the conversation – so it doesn’t have to be men versus women or conventional business thinkers versus sustainable business thinkers? That was the seed of my recent HuffingtonPost “diatribe” and my pondering continued, as I mulled Thomas L. Friedman’s Sunday column in the New York Times.
He writes how Senator Lindsey Graham, the long-time, extremely conservative congressman, may well be key in making “green” a universal constituent (i.e. human) issue rather than a blue state/red state battleground on the Hill. Wow! What Graham is aware of, and wants to get across to his colleagues, is the following:
“You have to get the people in the present to buy into the future.”
and…
“We’ve got to get started, because once we do, every C.E.O. will adopt a carbon strategy, no matter what the law actually requires.”
What Graham has come to realize is what any business should have long known, given the money they’ve surely invested in consumer research. The two segments politicians and businesses really need to reach are Hispanics and young people. With regard to young people especially, the truth is that they grew up expecting “green” in their households, in their schools and from the brands they buy. All of those current expectations will only translate into their future, adult decision-making processes about: where to work, what house to buy and which congressperson to vote for (and so much more).
Sustainable business practices appeal to and resonate with younger generations, and a lot of other people today. The present is greatly connected to the future. Whether you are that “almost adult” person now, or have children, nieces, nephews, or grandchildren who’ll live “in the future,” that fact can’t be denied.
So, do we want the products we sell or companies we work for to seem as irrelevant to future generations as “one more short, white Republican over 50″ (Graham’s self-description)? I think not. Instead, we should all be looking for ways to bridge old to young, traditional thinking to new thinking, energy wasteful to energy effective and unsustainable to sustainable.
Whether you are GOP or CEO, disregard the sustainable expectations of the younger generation at your peril.
