Naming your shade of green

When a person is born, the first thing we do is give her a name.  A name formalizes the baby’s existence, gives us an easy way to make reference to her and provides a gateway to understanding and communication.  Proper names are often given to inanimate objects, as well.  It’s a way of humanizing them and making them seem more “knowable.”  Give your third-quarter sales initiative a name, and people know you mean business.  Suddenly, everyone has a name to rally around, a cause to champion, an identity to share.

The name of the game lately has been sustainability. Companies have been establishing their green initiatives and then formalizing them with a name or at least a theme.

That means some good, yet challenging, work for writers like me.  Here are three such projects for high-profile companies.

1.

The first one is is for FedExCup and their effort to bring more sustainability to the game of golf, which by its very nature (or lack of it) isn’t particularly eco-friendly.  Basically a golf course is a vast monoculture of grass and a lot of fertilizer. However, through this program, FedEx is working with an organization called  The First Tee whose mission is to “impact the lives of young people by providing learning facilities and educational programs that promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf.” It’s a noble goal. Even if a golf course can’t necessarily create a full-fledged sustainable ecosystem, it can help sustain something at least as valuable. Successful children. So how do you combine golf and the future in a name? Like this.

FedExCup Fore!Ever

2.

This next one is for the chemistry company Buckman. It is, no doubt, a challenge for a chemical company to go green.  But Buckman is doing a lot to reduce its own environmental footprint and to help their clients do the same, reducing energy usage, water usage and waste in a variety of industries through advanced technologies. Buckman’s corporate color has always been green, so the name and theme for their sustainability initiative was a natural. Here’s the cover line and first page of copy from their just-published Sustainability Report.

3.

This last one is for International Paper. They just released a whole website based on this idea to showcase their sustainability efforts. Three of the sections there were written by yours truly: Carbon Footprint, Paper Sourcing and Recycled Paper.

There’s nothing unique or proprietary about “Down to Earth”. But it fits the general objective well, which is to provide straight talk on environmental issues and  set straight some commonly held myths about pulp and paper.  As I have said before, finding a unique name for your green campaign gets increasingly hard as more and more companies stake their claims. Better hurry.