EnviroNews
EnviroMedia Is Blossoming by Thinking Green
Austin advertising agency helps companies tell of good deeds.
By Renuka Rayasam
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
(Sunday, April 9, 2006)—When the company started nine years ago, most of Tuerff-Davis EnviroMedia Inc.'s clients were government agencies and nonprofit groups. The Austin-based advertising firm took over the "Don't Mess with Texas" anti-litter push, which turns 20 next month, and helped the State of Texas develop a campaign to discourage teenage smoking.
But these days, EnviroMedia is riding a new market: The growing number of companies that want to tout their environmental efforts.
"Given the amount of choices that customers have, they will choose the environmentally friendly choice over another one, all other things being equal," said Stephen Walls, a marketing professor at the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business. "That's why so many companies use that as a competitive factor."
That's something EnviroMedia co-founders Valerie Davis and Kevin Tuerff realized when Dell called them about four years ago to bid on a new environmental campaign. Winning that account helped EnviroMedia go after more corporate clients.
Its corporate client roster includes H.E. Butt Grocery Co., Accenture and Abitibi Consolidated-Recycling. Enough companies are now coming to EnviroMedia that it is having to turn away work from smaller companies.
The agency started when Davis and Tuerff quit their jobs with the state to take Texas Recycles Day national. EnviroMedia got a huge boost when it won the "Don't Mess with Texas" anti-litter account, beating out eight agencies. Ads from the latest version of the campaign featuring Texas celebrities such as Lance Armstrong, Erykah Badu, Chuck Norris and Owen Wilson began airing during the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 2.
With annual billings of about $10 million and 36 employees, EnviroMedia still remains a niche agency. But it's poised to take advantage of the trend toward heightened environmental awareness.
"If you open up the paper, all of the issues that are hot in the news are issues we work on," Tuerff said. "There's an unlimited amount of work we can go after."
The marketplace stands in EnviroMedia's favor. Several companies recently have launched high-profile social and environmental efforts. General Electric Co. named its splashy alternative energy foray Ecomagination. Oil giants such as BP are spending heavily on ads to promote their environmental stewardship.
Companies are paying more attention to social issues "because they are being forced to by their stakeholders," said Paula Ivey, founder of Austin consulting firm CSR Group LLC. She also teaches a course on corporate social responsibility at the McCombs School.
Labor unions and groups such as the Sierra Club are exerting more pressure on corporations and exposing their missteps, such as environmental damage or poor treatment of employees.
As a result, consumers have more information about corporate behavior, thanks to activist Web sites and organizations such as Wal-Mart Watch.
Environmental issues might not affect what beer someone buys, but they do resonate with a key group of women who head households and traditionally make their family's major purchasing decisions, Tuerff said.
"It's the idea of appealing to that set of audience with an emotional tie," he said. "Here is what we're doing to protect the environment for your kids. That's really going to resonate with that target market."
While more advertising firms are creating divisions focused on such concerns, many companies are turning to outside agencies such as EnviroMedia. It's simply not enough for them to create an advertisement without actually making an environmental commitment, something Davis and Tuerff call "green washing."
"People are really smart about advertising messaging and PR, and they are able to sense when a message is authentic," said Walls at McCombs. "That's where companies like EnviroMedia are so important . . . It's not enough to create a message. They have to do actual things over a period of time."
EnviroMedia has been working with H-E-B since the agency was founded in 1997, helping the grocery chain promote an energy-efficient green store in Austin.
"It's a very competitive marketplace, no matter what you're selling," Davis said. A grocery shopper needs some way to figure out which store to patronize. "They know H-E-B is the low-cost leader. (The company) wants them to also know H-E-B does the right thing for the environment. It's one more thing a consumer might tick off."
H-E-B has been focused on the environment for more than 15 years, Environmental Affairs Manager Susan Ghertner said.
The company uses brochures created by EnviroMedia highlighting its efforts at recruiting events and passes them out to employees, she said.
"Because people ask; they want to know what you're doing for the environment," she said.
With its recyclable bottles and natural ingredients, New York-based skin care company Kiehl's already attracts environmentally conscious fans. The 155-year-old company realized that image would help it grow as it added stores, but it relied on internal marketing teams to spearhead the campaigns.
"We don't advertise," said Cammie Cannella, Kiehl's assistant vice president of global education. The company now encourages bottle recycling with promotions and bins in its stores. It recently purchased renewable energy certificates from Austin-based Green Mountain Energy Co.
Green Mountain, one of EnviroMedia's newest corporate clients, is seeing a surge of demand from companies looking to buy alternative energy.
About two-thirds of the companies listed on the Standard & Poor's 100 index produce sustainability reports chronicling their environment measures, according to Ceres, a group of environmental organizations and investors.
And the money has followed, with more investors putting dollars into companies they think are socially responsible. About $179 billion was invested in such funds in 2005, Ivey said.
"Socially responsible investors happen to be big shareholders in Dell and have significant clout," said Bryant Hilton, public relations manager for Dell's Sustainability Group.
The computer company turned to EnviroMedia after realizing the business opportunities that would arise from improving its environmental record. Those efforts could help it not just win over customers but also gain an edge in pursuing local government bids, which often have social goals written into procurement contracts.
"We first turned to them because they had experience understanding issues, how to communicate progress when we started moving in the right direction," he said. "They helped us network with the right stakeholders."
Dell started its computer recycling program with help from EnviroMedia after hearing from business customers who wanted someone to remove old equipment after it was replaced.
"Recovering used product is absolutely the right thing to do, but it's also a real service we can sell," Hilton said.