“Greenwashing” is an increasingly common occurrence as consumers seek products that are less environmentally harmful. PR practitioners and marketers are too willing, it seems, to sacrifice truth and accuracy to make the sale.

For instance, the American Airlines Arena in downtown Miami just last month was awarded LEED certification, even though it was built a decade ago. The reason it qualified for an environmental certification that didn’t even exist in 1999 is because of all the energy-efficiency measures built into the facility, not for environmental, but for economic reasons. The arena’s spokesman explained that the certification was important because companies want to know they are holding their event in an environmentally friendly venue.

Now that’s a greenwash if ever there was one.

In a recent study, TerraChoice Environmental Marketing found that fully 98 percent of the products that advertise as being environmentally friendly in fact commit one or more of the TerraChoice’s Seven Sins of Greenwashing.

In response to consumers demanding more “green” products, manufacturers have boosted the availability of such products between 40 percent and 174 percent in certain segments across the U.S. and Canada. But the study found that consumers are still being duped into buying products they think have less environmentally impact than they indeed do.

Here is TerraChoice’s list of the seven sins manufacturers regularly commit:

1. The Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off occurs when one environmental issue is emphasized at the expense of potentially more serious concerns. In other words, when marketing hides a trade-off between environmental issues. Paper, for example, is not necessarily environmentally preferable just because it comes from a sustainably harvested forest.
2. The Sin of No Proof happens when environmental assertions are not backed up by evidence or third-party certification. One common example is facial tissue products that claim various percentages of post-consumer recycled content without providing any supporting details.
3. The Sin of Vagueness occurs when a marketing claim is so lacking in specifics it becomes meaningless. ‘”All-natural” is an example of this. Arsenic, uranium, mercury, and formaldehyde are all naturally occurring — and poisonous. “All natural” isn’t necessarily “green.”
4. The Sin of Worshiping False Labels is when marketers create a false suggestion or certification-like image to mislead consumers into thinking that a product has been through a legitimate green certification process. One example of this sin is a brand of aluminum foil with certification-like images that show the name of the company’s own in-house environmental program for which there is no explanation.
5. The Sin of Irrelevance arises when an environmental issue unrelated to the product is emphasized. One example is the claim that a product is “CFC-free,” since CFCs are banned by law.
6. The Sin of Lesser of Two Evils occurs when an environmental claim makes consumers feel green about a product category that is itself lacking in environmental benefits. Organic cigarettes are an example of this phenomenon.
7. The Sin of Fibbing is when environmental claims are outright false. One common example is products falsely claiming to be Energy Star certified.

That’s what a recent survey would have us believe:

There’s a vacuum in strong leadership in the public relations and communications industry, at least that’s what top US PR leaders themselves say, according to a study released today by Heyman Associates and the University of Alabama.

Nearly 30 percent of those responding to the question said nobody came to mind when asked to name a PR leader.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama was cited most often as the nation’s most effective communications leader in response to the open-ended question — but he was named by just 4 percent of all those surveyed.

Others named nearly as often as Obama were Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, former President Bill Clinton, Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

Public-relations professionals mentioned most often were Harold Burson, founder of Burson-Marsteller; Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, and Jon Iwata, IBM’s marketing and communications chief.

“Politicians and celebrities were named more often than PR specialists because those who stayed on message and were highly visible in national media were the true leaders in the field, not those who worked behind the scenes,” said Dr. Bruce Berger, who chairs the Advertising and PR program at Alabama. “But the largest number of respondents simply said they couldn’t name a leader.”

The online poll of 222 PR practitioners was conducted as part of a national study — ”Excellence in Public Relations Leadership” — by graduate students attending Alabama’s Advertising and PR program. The report examines the key attributes of communications leadership and the qualities deemed most important by practitioners.

The survey found that the most important qualities of PR leaders include the following:

• Strategic decision-making: More than half of respondents said the most important quality among PR leaders is strategic decision-making — an ability to fully understand what drives an organization’s business and to develop working partnerships with organizational leaders.
• Exposure to sources of leadership skills and development: Work experiences, individual initiative, and access to role models are typically the richest sources of leadership skills and development; the lowest-ranked factors cited include training and genetics.
• Strong role models: Role models exert the greatest influence on beliefs about leadership values, practices, and questions; role models were described as exemplifying strong values and ethics (especially in times of crisis and tumult), possessing strong communication and strategic-thinking skills, and leading by example.

About the research: The project, launched in February 2008, included a deliberate sample of 1,000 diverse and experienced PR professionals selected from databases maintained by Heyman Associates. Among the 1,000 who received the online survey, 222 completed it. The final survey included 72 questions on the dimensions of communications leadership, today’s leaders in the field and their success factors. Some 60 percent of the respondents were female and 40 percent were male.

Three observations on this:
1. In our shop we believe that if you are doing PR correctly, you’re invisible.
2. Politicians are not public relations practitioners, no matter what their PR people tell you.
3. Going to graduate school in public relations is a major waste of time and treasure — unless you just want to postpone the inevitable of joining the workforce and becoming a productive member of society.

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