Effie Awards

The Green Effie

Being a member of the first ever Green Effie Award Jury this year was an honor with a big responsibility. It also afforded us a great opportunity to applaud marketing communications campaigns that have moved the eco-marketing needle forward. To say the least, deliberating the inaugural Green Effie winner with a panel of marketing experts, all passionate and very knowledgeable about green issues, was spirited. That’s what the Effie staff kept telling us!

Wary of greenwashing, we debated each finalist’s entry, striking a balance between our passion for the environment and our marketing backgrounds. Throughout the judging session, we repeated the guideline over and over: “Campaigns must prove that they have moved the eco-marketing needle forward.” With this as our standard, we ultimately chose the top three winners.

GE’s “Ecomagination Round Two,” created by BBDO New York, set out to beat the launch of its iconic campaign and maintain GE’s edge in a landscape where credibility and believability were paramount to success. Created by JWT, HSBC’s “There’s No Small Change” campaign met its objectives, which included generating new accounts, protecting HSBC’s environmental credentials and meeting its financial obligations to shareholders. Wal-Mart’s “PSP 2007 - Personal Sustainability Project” (along with agency partner Saatchi & Saatchi S) rallied each Wal-Mart employee to make a small change, called personal sustainability practice (PSP), in order to play an active role in sustaining the Earth’s resources now and for generations to come.

In true Effie fashion, each Green Effie–winning campaign created tangible results, from Wal-Mart employees developing positive sustainability habits to HSBC customers making real change to GE creating and selling greener products. As Green Effie Jury member Charles Rosen of Amalgamated said, “We as agencies know how hard it is to get big companies to turn around.” These three client/ agency teams did it. And indeed, the green movement has the most to gain when extremely large companies take the opportunity to create change.

I applaud the Green Effie Jury members for their hard work and dedication to our cause. Thank you to the Effie Awards for appointing me chair of the Green Effie Award Jury.