Think Green : Company Says It Pays to Be Environmentally Correct

Harvey Hartman’s company has been spending a lot of time talking to teen-age girls recently, but it’s not really them the company is interested in: It’s their mothers.

Hartman’s business is telling manufacturers how to sell things to the environmentally conscious, those who worry that the products they use--like those infamous disposable diapers--are loading up landfills and spoiling the environment.

The green movement was always kind of like apple pie and motherhood--after all, no one’s likely to admit to being in favor of gouging holes in the ozone or watching the polar ice caps melt.

But environmentalism, says Hartman, is really in now. Persuade people that your products won’t ruin the environment for their grandchildren and, these days, you may make some money on it. At the very least, you’ll have a leg up on competitors who are less sensitive about this issue.

“The consumer is ripe for this kind of thing,” says Hartman. “There’s a big opportunity for companies here.”

And it’s those idealistic teen-age girls, Hartman thinks, who will badger their parents into buying environmentally sound products.

After all, many of these parents are baby boomers in their 30s and 40s who got their first taste of environmentalism back in the 1960s. By the time the first Earth Day rolled around in 1970 they were clomping around in Birkenstock sandals and bell bottoms and circulating petitions to save the whales.

Since then, so the theory goes, they have been too busy having careers and families to worry much about the environment.

Now a lot of these people--these hypothetical yuppie parents--are rethinking their lifestyles. At least that’s what Hartman has found in focus group research. (Focus groups, incidentally, are small groups of people brought together to talk for market researchers.)

Those groups show “that many of today’s parents who grew up in the ‘60s are harking back to their countercultural roots,” says a report by the Hartman Group.

“Their latent environmental concern is now being reawakened largely by their children.”

None of this is news to smart marketing people. What Hartman offers is advice on how to fashion a nuts-and-bolts marketing plan to take advantage of it.

Want to talk about his company? Hartman suggests meeting at a busy coffee shop during breakfast. It will, he says, be quieter than his office, which is actually his Newport Beach apartment. He uses it to hold down expenses against cyclical turns in the business.

Still, the place is filled to overflowing these days, Hartman says; people dashing in and out, phones ringing incessantly.

“There is a subtle magnetism in nature,” says a quote from philosopher/environmentalist Henry David Thoreau on the front of one of his company’s pamphlets, “which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.”

Some business people who know him say Harvey Hartman has that kind of salesman’s magnetism, even if they don’t always yield to it by hiring him as a consultant.

“Usually I tell people to send me stuff in the mail,” says Ron Kirkpatrick, who runs Adolph Coors Co.’s community relations office in Cerritos. “But Harvey called up and managed to talk me into having lunch, and we actually ended up doing a little business with him.”

Hartman, 45, used to be general manager of computer manufacturer Wang Laboratories’ Orange County office. About two years ago, he decided to go into business for himself as a consultant telling companies how to use social issues to sell themselves and their products.

But one issue seemed to Hartman to get bigger and bigger: the environment.

Study after study, Hartman found, showed that people were more willing to buy products that were friendly to the environment. And a lot would pay more for them. The studies generally found that people with higher incomes tend to have more green buying habits and that women are more prone to buy than men.

The biggest attraction for green buyers was companies that use recycled packaging. But a small minority of consumers even keep track of which companies are known polluters and which have good environmental records.

The problem now, says Hartman, is that so many companies have taken a stab at this green market--some with less than truthful claims for their products--that consumers are starting to get turned off.

Even kids, Hartman’s studies show, are becoming a little jaded about advertising claims for supposedly environment-friendly products.

“A lot of companies jumped on the bandwagon in the last few years,” says Hartman. “But they didn’t do their homework. And their products didn’t live up to their billing.”

“Look at this,” says Hartman, leafing through a thick, bound copy of a study done by his company. Leaning across the restaurant table, he points to a graph with long black bars running across the page.

The graph says half the consumers the Hartman Group surveyed find universities to be trustworthy sources of environmental information. Forty-seven percent found television and radio news trustworthy. And 46% said they trusted newspapers and magazines, the same number that said they trusted environmental groups.

In contrast, only 23% trust what the government tells them about the environment. And a paltry 13% trust what corporate America tells them, according to Hartman.

The last group “is what we need to do something about,” Hartman says. “Companies have shot themselves in the foot and created a lot of mistrust, even if they didn’t purposely set out to mislead people.”