Page 330 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

308 CHAPTER 10

We created keyed hardscape maps, and walking tour maps, so curious shoppers
could tour the property and see the efforts that were made in creating a sustainable
property. (You can see the Walking Tour Map in Chapter 5.) It’s important once again
to note that the marketing process was key. Note how very different the marketing
proposition for the public is from the marketing proposition for the tenants:

■ Message: Shopping at Abercorn Common is anything but common.
■ Target: The shopping public, curious about this “LEED” business they keep hear-
ing about.
■ Means: On-site signage and maps.

HOW TO BRAND

Coming to understand a brand is a process. Even after years of working with Melaver,
Inc., we still work intently at understanding this company, what it feels comfortable
messaging out there in the public eye, what it prefers to keep quiet about, how it prefers
to work. For instance, as a bottom-up, shared-leadership company, Melaver, Inc. views
all of its staff members as the face of the company. This probably dates back to its time
in the supermarket business, when cashiers and baggers were trained to understand that
as the last points of contact with the customer, their roles in many ways were the most
critical for the business. This notion of everyone-is-the-face-of-the-company means,
among other things, that Melaver staff members want to personally own the marketing
materials that we create with them (not for them). That’s a challenging—and in many
ways inefficient—charge for an outside marketing company to deliver. And yet, that is
a critical part of the company’s persona, its brand. As in so many things with this com-
pany, the “how” or process is as critical as the “what” or final result.
Probably the hardest, most important branding work we’ve done for Melaver, Inc. was
done in the first six months. During that time, we conducted numerous workshops and
“brandstorming” sessions to define the Melaver brand. The company was not interested in
the slightest about our creating an image for them. On the contrary, what was desired was
the authentic company, warts and all. All parts of the company participated in these early
brainstorming sessions on branding, and some of them were no-holds-barred scary, in the
sense of staff members being brutally honest with one another. That, too, fits the com-
pany’s brand, which is largely about the shaping of lasting community and the disparate
jab-and-counter-punch give-and-take of conflicting perspectives trying to find good
enough resolutions to complex problems. Consider, for a moment, the various challenges
an ethos of sustainability poses: In the interest of reducing global emissions of carbon, we
need immediately to move away from the use of coal, which leaves nuclear power as the
current widely available alternative. Not a particularly palatable choice. Does a company
such as Melaver, Inc. focus its efforts on creating denser, vertical urban developments in
and around its home market of Savannah, even though rising sea levels over the next half
century are likely to tax the resources of the 75 percent of Americans living within one
hundred miles of a coast? Or does this company instead look to create community in more
rural environments inland, even though the footprint of such non-urban environments is a