New Products Sell Energy Efficiency by Stressing Engineering

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Wednesday, April 11, 2012

New Products Sell Energy Efficiency by Stressing Engineering 

By BRYN NELSON

SEATTLE

ON the second floor of one of the oldest Sears stores in the country, “Ellen” is blaring from one of the newest arrivals in the electronics section, a 60-inch LCD flat-screen television with LED backlighting and built-in Wi-Fi.

If you stare longingly at the set, a sales associate may begin quizzing you about your brand preference, price point and the size of your TV room.

Is energy efficiency important to you? That kind of question might be more standard for potential buyers of the store’s front-load washers and kitchen appliances. Even so, roughly a third of the television models on display bear a small orange label with a fast-forward button on it and a message that says, “Most efficient. Engineered to be the best of Energy Star.”

The label provides a good “visual cue” for broaching the subject of energy efficiency, said the store manager, Gary Lorentson, and can help tip the balance toward a greener selection.

What the label doesn’t say is that it was intended largely to bypass an appeal to do-gooderism in favor of winning over your more predictable inner tech fan. And if you go home with a 60-inch television boasting killer picture quality, you may get extra satisfaction knowing that your engineering marvel consumes only as much energy as a 75-watt light bulb.

A convergence of clever advertising and engineering advances in televisions, appliances and housing components is allowing green marketers to recast high-efficiency options as practical problem-solvers for the home rather than as saviors of the planet. Newly honed pitches steeped in consumer psychology are linking up the traits people crave — cutting-edge quality, say, or convenience — with the energy savings and reduced emissions championed by environmentalists.

The trick is to avoid evoking past stereotypes of green products with references to “the planets, the babies and the daisies,” said Jacquelyn A. Ottman, a New York-based advertising consultant and the author of the 2011 book “The New Rules of Green Marketing” (Berrett-Koehler).