Mr. Clean Fights Dirty: Why P&G Takes 2-Fisted Approach to Green Upstarts
Old-fashioned corporate giants such as Procter & Gamble (PG) are winning the battle over America's green consumers -- or at least are preventing upstart, eco-conscious brands from gaining a foothold. P&G, which makes Mr. Clean, successfully challenged Seventh Generation over its household detergents in the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, an advertising watchdog. Seventh Generation had claimed that "Seventh Generation Detergents are [100%] natural." After hearing P&G's grumbles, NAD ruled:
NAD determined that the reference to "naturally" in the context of the television commercial at issue should be discontinued and that the advertiser avoid conveying the message that its product is all-natural.It's one of a series of skirmishes over greenness that corporate America has brought against Seventh Generation and other companies claiming the green mantle. The greenness is in the details: Merisant, maker of the Equal sweetener, recently prevented Heartland (which makes Ideal) from claiming that its sweetener is "natural." Turns out that Heartland, whose web site is painted with the soothing green colors that designate environmental soundness, makes Ideal with sucralose, an artificial high-intensity sweetening agent. Other cases include:
It is Seventh Generation, however, that seems to have most irked P&G and other rival cleansing product companies. Marcal, the toilet-paper maker, has wielded its $30 million ad budget to ward off the Seventh Generation threat. Marcal has a recycled line but it's not as green as Seventh Generation's. Clorox (CLX) even launched a line of "Green Works" products that have wiped the floor with Seventh Generation. Seventh Generation, whose ad budget is just $1 million or less, has switched agencies twice the last two years as it attempts to grapple with the Clorox threat.
The recession has also played into the hands of the non-green companies, as consumers decided that they were no longer that interested in paying 10 cents extra for something with the word "organic" on it.
P&G, of course, makes Dawn, which is famously safe enough to get oil off birds, and the company has a whole green strategy of its own. But P&G also knows that the market for cleaners that work is larger than the market for cleaners that are nice to the earth. That's why such a large company bothers to bring nickel-and-dime actions against small companies like Seventh Generation. You could say that Mr. Clean -- which is too toxic to dispose of in a river, according to its ingredients -- isn't afraid to fight dirty to get his way.
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