NBC's "Green Week": Not Media Business as Usual

This is "Green Week" at NBC Universal, a seven-day revelry of environment-themed content spread across the company's various TV channels and other properties. The 150 hours of programming — integrated into everything from news and sports to soaps and entertainment — is certainly a first for a major media company.

What, really, is NBC doing? Is this a one-off stunt intended to "green up" its image before it returns to, as they say, regularly scheduled programming? Or is this something more substantive, more integrated, longer-term — a milestone in the greening of the mainstream media? (Disclosure: NBC Universal, like its parent company, General Electric, is a client of GreenOrder, with which I am affiliated.)

I've watched the process unfold, reviewed strategy documents, and talked to the company about its efforts. My only-slightly-biased conclusion: There's more going on here than meets the eyeballs that NBC is trying to attract.

First, the basics. Green Week involves the full spectrum of NBC properties, including its eponymous TV network as well as CNBC, MSNBC, NBC News, NBC Sports, SciFi Channel, Sundance Channel, Bravo, USA Network, and Telemundo — plus Universal Studios and its related theme parks, and the company's websites, including female-focused iVillage. Dozens of shows will have environmental themes or messaging, from Sami and Lucas' green wedding on "Days of Our Lives," to MSNBC's examination of green issues in the 2008 presidential campaign, to "The Office" (based at a fictional paper company) considering recycled paper, to CNBC's broadcast from a clean-tech conference. Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, Bob Costas, and other heavyweight talents have been conscripted into the effort. Local NBC stations will incorporate green-themed stories into their newscasts and some will run a half-hour special on "Going Green at Any Age!" Universal Pictures will run environmental public service announcements as part of its online movie trailers and as ads in theater lobbies.

There's more. You get the idea. Suffice to say it's a full-court press.

The whole endeavor no doubt makes great fodder for cynics: What is the company's actual environmental commitment? Is it walking it's talk, or just preaching? Is this just another way to tap into the growing wave of advertisers' green(washing) pitches? Will consumers even care? And why only one week — shouldn't it be a year-round commitment?

In a nutshell: What's really going on here?

"The time became right to recognize that green is a rapidly growing cultural and business phenomenon and is presenting brand new opportunities and challenges," Lauren Zalaznick, president of Bravo Media, who heads NBC Universal's Green Council, told me last week. "And that, as a company, we should be the green media market leader, and be ready."

Zalanick says the company identified three key "customers" for this effort: consumers of its programs, movies, theme parks, and other properties; advertisers, of course; and the company's 16,000 worldwide employees. Regarding that last group, she says, "We want college grads coming into the marketplace — 80 percent of whom say they want a job with positive environmental impact — we want them here. We want to be best in class in every way as an employer of choice."

Interestingly, when I asked Zalanick where she anticipated the most push-back about Green Week, it was this same internal group. "There's no one more cynical than a disgruntled group of large conglomerate employees. They have had many, many, many mass e-mails and initiatives. The longer they're here, the more they say, 'I've seen things come, I've seen things go.' So we have a great challenge to be very real."

"Very real," explains Zalanick, includes various efforts to reduce the company's environmental impacts, including replacing a fourth of its vehicle fleet with hybrids by the end of 2007, evaluating its paper suppliers for environmental content (the company's office paper currently contains one-third recycled content), and conducting an environmental audit of its facilities worldwide. (NBC Universal will work with GreenOrder to provide an independent, quantitative analysis and verification of its environmental footprint.)

What about consumers? Will the typical viewer of college football care that next Saturday's Air Force vs. Notre Dame match-up will include a segment featuring Notre Dame student's and faculty's quest to capture carbon dioxide from power plants?

Zalanick believes they will. She cites research conducted last month in which NBC Universal measured viewers' environmental awareness, habits, and expectations. "We heard loud and clear that there was a very high expectation that consumers have about companies. Over two-thirds believe that businesses have some responsibility for the social good. That's a lot." She says the company plans to track audience awareness and actions over time. "We'd like to hear back that we've had an actual impact — that we caused viewers to buy a hybrid, to not buy plastic water bottles, to turn off their power strip instead of the on-off-standby switch. We want those kinds of activation results." It will be a big challenge "activating" mainstream consumers, as most environmental groups and others have learned over the years, but every little bit helps.

Green Week will no doubt rankle some critics as, variously, being too commercial, not green enough, not serious enough, not entertaining enough, or whatever. Says Zalanick: "We're going to be under a microscope. We're going to plead for a lot of attention, and we're going to get it, and we're really going to try to do everything right. What I hope is that the shoutdown of our perceived imperfections doesn't scare anyone else from trying to do it."

Viewed in its entirety, NBC Universal's approach, imperfections and all, strikes me as a substantive — and welcome — contribution from the mainstream media: a synergy of internal programs to reduce the company's footprint and engage its employees and talent, with an external focus on the company's massive, hydraheaded audience reach. And to do so in a wide range of styles, voices, and depth. One internal document positions the approach as "hopeful, empowering, and pragmatic, not moralistic or preachy." Sounds about right.

A big question, of course, is what happens after Green Week is over. Zalanick agrees that environmental content "should become part of the fabric and rhythm of our every day" and that this, indeed, will be the company's long-term goal. (Internally, this has been described as a "multi-year, ongoing initiative.") "I think it's like any pro-social initiative that starts with some particular mandate," she explains. "It starts out as something conscious, something you have to point to. And the road is filled with potholes and cynics. It would be like saying, 'Was our goal in 1987 to hire a woman, then never do that again?' No, the goal was to have it become the fabric of medical schools and law schools and board rooms and everything in between. The goal was to stop talking about it, for it to be part of the everyday."

No one says it will be easy. "We're learning how to walk," admits Zalanick. "In a few years, we won't have to think about walking any more, and our commissaries are going to be right, and our lighting is going to be right, and our corporate car fleet is going to be right. And we're going to know how to do it. What I found is that we were already doing a tremendous amount of stuff that, for a media company, we were not particularly good at communicating. We never took it on as something we needed to prove to the world. I actually think we were incorrect on that."

Will Green Week help position NBC Universal as "the" green media company, attracting new viewers and advertisers, delighting its employees, and luring the next generation of talent along the way? How will all this affect, or infect, its competitors? What will Wall Street think? The rumor mill has GE selling off its media business in order to better focus on its core industrial products. Will being seen as green enhance NBC Universal's market value?

As they say on TV: Stay tuned.

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Comments

[Mark McElroy]

Hi Joel:

This will, indeed, be interesting to follow. So many questions to answer. Like how can a company that utterly relies on unsustainble consumerism, via advertsing revenues, possibly undertake a sustainable course? Will they forswear all advertising that encourages consumers to consume unsustainably, or producers to produce unsustainably?

And what about their social footprint? If NBC cares so deeply about their social impacts, why are they restricting their efforts to only environmental (aka, "green") issues? Has anyone explained the meaning of sustainability to them -- as in that there are multiple non-financial bottom lines, not just environmental ones?

And last, exactly what approach will GreenOrder be taking to perform that comprehensive "environmental footprint" (oops, there's that missing social dimension again)? How do we know that what GreenOrder will be doing will have anything to do with actually assessing the sustainability of NBC, and not just evaluating its recycling or energy usage habits? Is there real rigor going on here, or is it just the usual attempts by a company to bask in the halo effect of green superficialism?

Indeed, is there any generally accepted definition of "green" out there, or do we all get to define it in anyway we like? So far every definition or usage of the term "green" that I've ever seen arguably has nothing to do with sustainability, and instead actually undermines it as if it does. So which part of that, and the prospect of another big company like NBC adding fuel to it, are we supposed to feel good about? Perhaps NBC could do us all a big favor this week and answer that question.

Regards,

Mark

[Chris Hansen]

Joel, great comments here. Are we seeing the greening of major corporations with NBC leading the way, or is it more corporate greenwashing? You pose some thoughtful questions. We'll see. I took the liberty of commenting further on my blog: marketgreener.com. I've been a fan for a while and I'm glad I can now join the conversation.

[Melissa]

Hi Joel,

Thank you for this enlightening article. We were contacted by NBC universal recently and they wanted to do something with our new "green" ATV prototype, I hadn't heard of their "green week" initiative, now it makes perfect sense! Thanks for tying it all together!

Thank you,
Melissa Brandao
President
barefoot motors

[Christopher Haase]

Nice piece and comments on the Green media frenzy NBC has put together.

The new NBC site and coverage look "green", but smell "brown" to me.

I am never absolutely sure why they do or start these campaigns when they do.

Global warming has been serious PBS and government content for over three decades.

Timely covered by NBC ONLY when it is marketable and profitable.

I would also love to be cynical about the whole thing... but,
I believe people are smarter than the "green" facade NBC is hiding behind.

And after all is done, a few who watch will take the important sustainable issues to heart and continue to protect our future.

Thanks again Joel,

Chris

[David Fox]

In May this year, Murdoch committed News Corp to being carbon neutral by 2010:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/fox_news_corpor.php
and it sounds like they're taking action:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/14/news/companies/pluggedin_gunther_murdoch.fortune/index.htm
Competition for the greenest media company? Bring it on!!
(Of course as Mark rightly points out in the first comment, there is a lot more to being sustainable...)

[Cyherder]

It is official! NBC has gone over the deep end. I guess the next step is for them to change their name to the DNC-BC. This way everyone will know that NBC supports a political party versus the truth.

What is the truth? We do not know why the planet is warming. We do not even know if the planet is warming. The planet Earth has been hotter in the past than it is now. The Earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling. The computer models that are predicting the crisis cannot even predict what the weather will be in 10 years or what the weather was like 10 years ago so why are we relying on them to predict the weather 100 years from now.

Change the channel! Save your brain!

[Keith]

NBC being green? NBC doesn't fart without GE saying it can do so. This whole directive is about making money for GE. Jeff Immelt says it's good to be green because it makes some green for it's stakeholders. (full discloser - I am a GE stakeholder). Why not add to this story and talk about the green projects that are available and in the works at GE. Only then will you understand why it's green week. If it wasn't a money maker would they still be so green? Not likely, as the saying goes, it's not easy being green.

[Orion]

As a graduating student from the GreenMBA program at Dominican University I find it interesting that a number of people go out of their way to point out that NBC wouldn't be doing this if it weren't going to be profitable. Well Duh, they are a for profit corporation, what could be more obvious. I think what is actually interesting is that NBC and GE are finally beginning to realize that green is the future, and sustainability is profitability.

[Jason Gingold]

Lots of good dialogue here.

I think at this juncture, any major media company that makes an effort to stir and steer the conversation must be lauded. And so I doff my cap to them.

That being said, I too must admit my own skepticism with Green Week. I think the proof would have been in the aftermath (as you've pointed out "what comes next"). If Green Week kicked off a new commitment to deeper rooted policies and procedures for NBC/Universal, I think there would be a higher mark on the report card. I'm not suggesting integration of a green platform into all future plotlines of programming, but an internal commitment to tout and talk about. Lead the way by taking a walk down that road, rather than settling for letting others know the road exists.