Green advertisers in the fast lane

 
Direct marketing Pubeco wants to make mailbox advertising greener. Mailing Vert is green mailbox advertising. Both ideas come from France.  
As is well known, no household is protected from mailbox advertising. Despite stickers such as "Advertising not wanted," Swiss mailboxes are generously filled with brochures, flyers and advertising letters. In Germany, experts estimate that, in addition to normal letter mail, around 100 kilograms of "unsolicited mail" flutters into the house every year. In France, the figure is 40 kilograms. That's a lot of advertising and a lot of waste. The majority of mailbox advertising - various studies put the figure at over 80 percent - ends up in the trash can and is neither read nor briefly skimmed. A young company from the French town of Orchies now wants to improve this low usage and poor ecological balance. The idea is simple: instead of bombarding consumers with mailbox advertising every day, they offer the advertising in digital form on the Internet. The project is called Pubeco, a neologism of "publicité" and "écologique," and was launched by Yannick Lalleau and Romain Sarels. The main aim of Pubeco is to steer the flood of advertising in an orderly direction.
And this is how it works: A sticker on the mailbox informs the advertising supplier with the inscription: "No advertising. I am protecting my planet. I'm going to look at advertising on the Internet." On a website, the interested consumer can enter the zip code of his place of residence and within seconds is presented with those advertisements that should have been in his mailbox. The site is also a detailed sales promotion platform. In addition to the brochures, the user can also find out about store opening hours, store locations and promotions. The site also allows the user to rate products, companies and their promotional appearances.
The ecological centerpiece, however, is a clever partnership with an environmental organization. When consumers obtain information from Pubeco, they automatically support environmental projects by collecting points when they read the brochures. These points are then donated to the "Good Planet" organization. The companies that advertise are asked to pay.
"At the beginning, the companies were still skeptical," says Romain Sarels. But he says they have since been convinced of the idea because the Pubeco concept was born out of an ecological mindset. And apparently companies are paying attention to the idea. Forty retailers are currently working with the eco start-up. Even local authorities have discovered the platform to distribute newsletters and information.
The young project, which started in the spring, has not yet radically changed the habits of advertising companies. Marketing managers still believe that the majority of consumers prepare their purchases through the old mailbox advertising and not on the Internet. However, the sustainable idea is resonating with a rapidly growing number of French households. Many French people consider it chic to put the Pubeco message on their mailboxes. There are still only a few thousand of them. If the development continues like this, hopes co-founder Romain Sarels, the Pubeco community should grow to 100,000 households by the end of the year. But the declared goal is even more ambitious: Sarels and Lalleau expect that in a few years, 20 to 25 percent of all French households will be flying the eco-flag with the Pubeco sticker.
Advertising agency goes greenThe fact that France seems to be the epicenter of "green advertising" is expressed in yet another mailbox project. These days, the Paris-based direct marketing agency TBWA/Excel has added Mailing Vert to its offering. This is a sustainably produced advertising mailer. Together with various partners, such as distributors or printers, the agency wants to engage in clean direct marketing in the future that goes beyond the use of recycled paper.
The agency aims to integrate all members, from production to suppliers, into a greener and cleaner direct mail process. As the advertisers write, they want to improve the eco-balance of a mailing project by cleaning waste water, using raw materials from natural resources, minimizing waste and energy consumption, and optimizing the transport routes of the distributors. The service was created specifically for non-profit organizations because they want to demonstrate eco-openness in their communications due to their environmental activities. The first prominent customer of the new service is the "Frères des Hommes" organization.
Christian Lüscher