Communicating greener strategies: a study of on‐pack communication

Developing and implementing successful green strategies depends upon good communication. Faced with an increasingly cynical public, companies are finding it difficult to communicate improvements in their eco‐performance to the marketplace in a way that will enable them to generate a competitive advantage. This difficulty is compounded by the problems involved in using traditional communications media for a task to which they are often poorly suited. Advertising for example, is difficult to formulate around green issues which are complex and hard to put across within the sort of short, style‐orientated information bite that characterises many contemporary campaigns. Companies are looking for alternatives, and for packaged goods manufacturers are using the product's package as a communications channel. It reaches all existing (if not all potential) customers, and on‐pack information is typically seen by consumers as relatively credible. This paper provides an exploratory study of on‐pack information in part of the environmental ‘front‐line’; the anti‐perspirant and deodorant (APD) market. Options for on‐pack communication are examined along with some of the issues that arise from trying to engage in environmental communication with the customer using packaging as the medium. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.