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MARKETING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 299

Melaver, Inc., however, enables us to take an in-depth view of how one green mar-
keting strategy evolves over time. Let’s consider this evolution in greater detail.

Phase 1: Getting Organized

Melaver, Inc.’s road to green began well before we arrived on the scene, starting back
probably in the late 1980s as family shareholders wrestled with how to practice real
estate differently. This slow evolution carried into the 1990s, as management and staff
zigged and zagged in various directions, taking steps toward becoming greener without
really managing to integrate the various pieces into an overarching sense of purpose or
executional focus.
Cayenne Creative was brought into the picture to help Melaver, Inc. with two inter-
related issues: clarifying the value proposition of the company for all staff members
and creating coalescence around the notion of sustainability.
The first of the two issues may best be understood in the context of a seminal article
by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, entitled “Customer Intimacy and Other Value
2
Disciplines.” Treacy and Wiersema argue that successful businesses by and large have
one value discipline at which they excel. They provide superb, customer-intimate ser-
vice (for example, Ritz-Carlton Hotels), or they are known as product innovators
(Apple), or they are highly profitable as a result of being operationally lean and efficient
(Dell, Wal-Mart). On occasion, albeit rarely, successful companies are able to focus on
two of these three value propositions. No company, the authors contend, performs well
if it spreads itself thinly across all three disciplines. The staff at Melaver, Inc. felt pre-
cisely this sense of being spread thinly across value disciplines, executing none well.
The company was ostensibly in the business of providing service to its clients (mostly
tenants). But it also seemed interested in being a product innovator (through its green
orientation) and interested in creating operational efficiencies (through developing high-
performance buildings). At which value discipline was it supposed to excel?
Compounding the confusion over value disciplines was the specific focus on being
green. The shareholders of the company had become convinced this was the direction
to go, as had senior management. But the staff was still puzzled about, and not a little
fearful of, the changes this orientation seemed to imply. Cayenne was thus brought in
to help in a process we call brand engagement. In the words of Martin Melaver, sen-
ior management wanted to introduce this “new” Melaver to the employees in a way
that would help integrate brand sensibilities into the behaviors of the company. And
they wanted us to do it at their annual corporate retreat.
We found ourselves asking what was then and still is a challenging question: “What
the heck is a sustainable real estate company?” Fully knowing we were entering
uncharted waters, we began where brand should always begin—with an understand-
ing of corporate values. We conducted a series of workshops with various employee
groups within the company. We learned that the four Melaver corporate values were
Ethical Behavior, Learning, Service to the Community, and Profitability. We also
learned that, although the employees had a general understanding of these values,