Ideal Bite: "Keeping It Real" . . . and Fun

Whatever happened to all those green shoppers, conscientious consumers, cultural creatives, and LOHAS fellow travelers? You know, the ones that swear that they’d gladly purchase the kinder, gentler product . . . if only they knew what to do? Where’d they all go?

I’ve been tracking these so-called values-based shoppers for more than 15 years, since I wrote The Green Consumer (now long out of print), and I don’t have a decent answer to these questions.

Since the late 1980s, a succession of market researchers have told us that they’re out there -- in big numbers: millions of Americans, and millions more Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, Australians, and assorted others. Each year since 1991 (except 2004), Roper (now NOP World) has conducted a Green Gauge Report that provides market segmentations of green consumer groups based on surveys of 2,000 U.S. consumers. The percentages within each segment ("True-Blue Greens," "Greenback Greens," and all the rest) have fluctuated over the years, but not by much.

The truth is, the gap between green consciousness and green consumerism is huge. And problematic for companies that all too often rely on the Same Old Marketing Tactics when trying to reach values-based shoppers. They more often than not miss the mark, get frustrated, and give up. The result is that consumers are left with relatively few green choices, and company marketing gurus (having “proven” that there’s no market for green products) move on to whatever's next.

What’s needed is a way to build a bridge between these two parallel universes.

That’s where Ideal Bite, a venture launched this month by two sales and marketing vets, could be just what the eco-doctor ordered.

Ideal Bite is trying to connect these two worlds through dual offerings: a slick daily e-mail tip aimed at educating and aggregating an audience of conscientious shoppers, and a market research service for companies to help them “get a direct dial right into these consumers and ask their opinions,” in the words of Jennifer Boulden, one of firm’s co-founders.

It's important to know that these aren’t your usual eco-tips. What sets Ideal Bite apart is its self-styled emphasis on being entertaining and fun and “sassy.”

And realistic. One of the many things I like about Ideal Bite is that it is unapologetic about being imperfect -- that is, it acknowledges right up front that most people don’t want to be inconvenienced much in “doing the right thing,” even though they may believe deeply in the underlying values. It needs to be easy and uplifting. So, you won’t find guilt, preaching, or fear-mongering on Ideal Bite. “It was clear to us that there is a gap between what people wanted to do and their unwillingness to go out of their way or change their lifestyle,” Boulden told me recently. “Most people aren’t going to be making their own bug spray or start biking to work.”

Boulden -- with a background in business strategy and marketing at IBM, Hearst, and the World Resources Institute -- founded Ideal Bite with Heather Stephenson, who served as vice president of an online advertising sales network that went public in 1999, then started a rooftop-garden design/build firm. They head a team of writers, designers, and researchers who “get” that, to be effective, environmental education has to be as entertaining as it is enlightening. Ideal Bite’s daily tips, blog, and other offerings reflect that irreverence -- “keeping it real,” as Boulden and Stephenson put it. I have to say that it’s refreshing.

Ideal Bite hopes to marry permission-based marketing with market research to foment a rich conversation between companies and consumers about green products and services. Explains Boulden: “If a company develops a new green product and wants to run it by consumers without having to poll the entire world, we can help. In doing so, we’ve taken thousands of dollars and weeks out of the equation to let this conversation happen much more efficiently.” From there, a company could offer coupons or other incentives to the Ideal Bite audience -- a direct line into the heart of the green marketplace.

If it works, Ideal Bite could go a long way toward breaking the vicious cycle of green marketing failures and frustrated green consumers. Says Boulden: “There is a spot open now to be that cool, fun, sassy voice to consumers, and to help them align their values more closely with the options that are out there. If companies aren’t rewarded for doing the right thing, this is all going to go away.”

---

CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE AUTOMATIC E-MAIL UPDATES WHENEVER A NEW ARTICLE IS PUBLISHED TO 'TWO STEPS FORWARD'

---