The problem with most special interest groups, whether it’s the CSPI, Greenpeace or M.A.D.D. is that they are often filled with people of extreme opinions. Leaders at these groups and the people that follow them actually DO believe that we marketers are evil. Like good conspiracy theorists, they stoke fear and never admit that a company could do good.

So it’s unfair to suggest that marketers should just pull them into the conversation. But I would add that smart marketers are partnering with interest groups that are more mainstream and more willing to partner. Take the Sierra Club, for example, which is partnering with Clorox on its Green Works line. Here’s a link to a blog post where I talk more about that:

http://www.marketingwithmeaning.com/2009/03/19/takeaways-from-the-economists-marketing-forum-ecsf09/

And you haven’t convinced me that people behind brands are going to lead the charge. I think brand as a term and as a concept has provided way too much cover for unsustainable business strategies and practices.

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP in a letter contained in the WPP Social Responsibility Report notes that we have had a “marginal effect” at changing consumer behavior about worryingly high levels of greenhouse gas. He acknowledges that the marketing industry “has been unwittingly complicit in causing the problem.”

So how do we as leaders in marketing convey to our clients and to our organizations that it is no longer business as usual and that we are not going to be “unwittingly complicit” in marketing unsustainable products and services?

How do we do this when our industry is laying off people and drowning in red ink, when marketing leadership on the client side is struggling with 28-month average tenure rates (most C-level folks tenure rates are measured in years, not months), when profits drive the use of emotional rather than rational messages (see Ad Age 3/2) and when there has been a collapse of our economic system, a major element of sustainability?

Sir Martin offers some advice that is relevant to both greenhouse gas and economic collapse.

“We are now confronted with an historic opportunity: to shape and encourage consumer demand for sustainable products and lifestyles; to restore the true value of durability; to reject the super?uous in products and packaging; to make much of what has passed for fashion deeply unfashionable.”

And I would add, to repair our reputation as marketers.

Maybe we should pull those watchdogs into the conversation.