Page 340 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

318 CHAPTER 10

Try Not to Micro-manage the Agency
Lastly, and most important—allow your agency to do what it does best. Try not to micro-
manage the process. Having said that, if our experience with Melaver, Inc. serves as a
basis for making generalizations about marketing for green entrepreneurial companies,
there is likely to be a huge degree of collaborative work between an agency and its green
client. Admittedly, while our work with Melaver, Inc. has been gratifyingly ground-
breaking in many ways, they do tend to drive us nuts from time to time. Such clients tend
to be deeply concerned that their messaging will somehow be inauthentic or grandiose,
and so tend to spend a significant amount of time—as they should—making sure that the
messaging is dead-on right. Finding a balance that is collaborative without being micro-
managerial is simply one in a long line of balances that a sustainable company tries to
manage well. An agency taking on a green client needs to be fully prepared for and
accepting of such a close, often intense relationship.

Finding an Agency in Eight Steps

If you choose to work with an agency, here’s a simplified method for locat-
ing one:
Step 1—Consult your local chamber of commerce and various business
guides to identify advertising and design firms in your area.
Step 2—Consult advertising/design trade publications to see which agen-
cies are doing breakthrough work, and which ones seem to have an inter-
est in sustainability. Here’s the short list:
■ Communications Arts (Order the advertising annual, at least.) https://
www.commerce.commarts.com/secure/subscrib.asp
■ PRINT https://secure.palmcoastd.com/pcd/document?ikey=0768WID01
■ HOW http://www.howdesign.com/magazine/

Step 3—Find the closest ADDY competition and peruse the work of the
winners.
Step 4—Make a list of agencies whose work you’d like to see.
Step 5—Invite each agency on your list to share its work with you. Eval-
uate the work based on what you’ve already learned in this chapter:
■ Is the message clear?
■ Does it talk to the target for whom it was intended?
■ Is the means appropriate to the target?