IBM's latest corporate branding efforts for its environmental impact appears on full-page newspaper ads. Or maybe it's a campaign to promote its green consulting services. It doesn't matter. The strategy is intended to kill trees, whether explicitly or not.If you actually take the time to read the ads, they're actually full of really good stuff. It turns out that technology can be used to do green relevant things without necessarily being particularly green themselves. Think of a giant thermostat, like for a city. Power grids are as leaky and lame as an inflatable swimming pool. If you control streetlights more intelligently, cars spend less time idling (and are more fuel efficient). Better modeling of purchasing needs can mean that stores can spend less money on energy, like for keeping storage spaces hot or cold. The idea that technology can do green things is pretty powerful, and it's a great commercial for a solutions offering from IBM. It could be the basis for it to claim that it cares about the environment, as you can credibly interpret its efficiency activities as being fundamentally green. So why newspaper ads? And for that matter, the visuals are abstract graphics, the text is excruciatingly long, and the eventual call-to-action is a lame invite: "Join us and see what others are thinking."This branding should be electronic, wasting electrons ripped from the fabric of spacetime, and not a finite resource (recycling notwithstanding). It should be unavoidably obvious, which would mean illustrative imagery, not graphics courtesy of Paul Klee. The text should be simple and direct, declaring facts instead of weaving around and among them. And there should be some central focus for participation by consumers (and/or whomever IBM is trying to reach).Imagine a checklist to apply to your own friendly, local utility, to ascertain if it's using the most advanced or effective technology to manage energy distribution/use. Maybe an online tool for businesses to share tech solutions to improve energy use or savings...maybe even a contest?There are lots of ways to do things to communicate the idea. Running abstract corporate branding ads isn't one of them.All it tells us is that IBM is willing to kill trees in order to tell us it's helping save the planet.Huh?
Link to original post