Selling and Promoting Green Without the Wash

How To Differentiate And Make Green Meaningful To Your Customers And The Media

Mar 6, 2009 at 1:00 pm

Presented by: Joanie Parsons, President, Parsons Public Relations; Julie Colehour and Bryan Cohen, Colehour + Cohen

Session Description:

With everyone these days jumping on the green bandwagon, it's hard to tell what's true green and what's simply greenwashing. Consumers, and the media are increasingly skeptical. In addition, the conversation around green is quickly evolving and increasingly sophisticated. Yesterday's answers cannot answer today's questions. Whether selling a green home in today's marketplace or pitching a green story to media, you need to know how to speak to a new, more savvy audience, and to meet skepticism with facts and common sense. You'll hear from experts from the marketing and the public relations side of things share their ideas on how you can be successful selling and promoting your green projects!

Bios:

Joanie Parsons is the president of Parsons Public Relations, a Seattle-based, full service strategic communications firm serving sustainably minded clients and organizations. She has established her company as a leader in promoting green building and development, representing our region's most innovative builders, architects and developers in a fast-evolving and expanding industry. Joanie and her company have won several awards for their commitment to social and environemental sustainability. In addition, Joanie is a noted speaker on green communications as well as emerging trends in marketing and public relations.

Julie believes that individual actions can change the world. She has spent her career working to motivate people to alter their behaviors for social good. Her causes have included everything from organic farming to water conservation to green building to recycling and energy-efficient products. Julie has helped support the EPAs ENERGY STAR program for the past ten years including co-authoring and supervising the implementation of the original national launch plan. This effort led to a 41 percent national awareness of the ENERGY STAR label in just three years. She holds bachelors degrees from the University of Washington in Business Administration (marketing) and Environmental Studies. She is frequently called upon to speak on social marketing at venues across the country. Julie has been recognized for her work through many awards including five Silver Anvils from the Public Relations Society of America. In 2001, she was named one of The Puget Sound Business Journals 40 under 40 young outstanding executives. She is also co-author of The Environmental Marketing Imperative (Probus Publishing, 1994).

Bryans motto is everyone needs a little PR. He loves the underdog. He loves causes. He loves doing media relations. He has spent the last 12 years of his career either on the phone pitching media, creating campaigns that will draw the media to a particular client or training clients on how to present to the media. Bryan has worked for a diverse clientele to include government organizations such as King County, Seattle Public Utilities, ENERGY STAR and EPAs Best Workplaces for Commuters Program as well as non-profit and corporate accounts like The Seattle Jewish Film Festival, TisBest, Simpson Strong-Tie and Cedar Grove Composting. Bryan has placed stories on The Today Show, Good Morning America, USA Today, NPRs Morning Edition, ABCs World News Tonight, Newsweek, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Reuters, Home Magazine, Good Housekeeping as well as hundreds of stories in local markets throughout the U.S. Bryan earned a bachelors degree in History and Political Science from Claremont McKenna College.