The Guru is Right and Wrong, Part 2: Quantifying the Qualitative

In a previous post I mentioned that I saw a few points of note in a recent blog entry by Seth Godin. Part 1 mentioned how I agree with his take on brands approaching the "green" movement too simplistically.

I disagree with his thinking about a potential solution, though.

Seth's idea:
"Here's what's missing: a number. When you buy a fridge, there's a big yellow sticker with a number about relative energy consumption. Now, we could argue all day long about how to figure out the right number (should the number on the fridge include data about the amount of energy needed to make the fridge in the first place?) but an imperfect number sure seems better than no number at all."

The trouble is... the imperfect number would be too imperfect. It wouldn't be a valuable guideline for anyone except those who are blindly environmental and simply following it as a fad. And the whole idea is to treat this brand attribute as something more than a fad.

I recently worked for a very environmentally-conscious company and we faced a situation that demonstrates the complexity of environmental decisions. We wanted to sell a branded re-usable shopping bag.

On the surface you could say "Great. Each reusable bag takes the same energy and material to make as 40 disposable bags. And each one will last about 80 times longer than a disposable. Therefore, it's roughly twice as 'green' as disposable bags."
But, it's far more complex than this. Among the other factors influencing the greenness of a particular bag:
- where is it made? How far does it have to travel to get to the stores where it's sold?
- who makes it? Is it from a sweatshop in Asia? (Apparently, many of the shopping bags sold actually suffer from this problem)
- what's it made of and with what processes? Even if the materials are recycled or organic, there can be issues with sustainability, hazardous byproducts, etc. (Certain materials need special inks in order to screenprint effectively, for example)
- were animals or machines used to make or transport it?
- how biodegradable is it after the bag has outlived its usefulness?
and so on.

And these are just the obvious questions.

So how do you quantify a qualitative brand attribute like "greenness"?

I guess breaking down "the number" into a set of numbers or a little chart would be a good start. "This product scores 12 for distance traveled, a 95 for who made it, and a 34 for materials used."

At least this would help someone make a decision based on what matters to them (I might think sweatshops are okay, but don't want to see animals harmed...).

But it's still trying to put specific numbers to qualitative measurements -- the measurements are just more specific.

I'm not a big fan of certain Olympic sports for the same reason. I can tell who the better runner is because of the speed they completed their race. But who's the better gymnast? As we've seen over and over again, anything that relies on the opinion of judges is far less firm.

With big brand issues like environmentalism, I wonder if it's even possible to:
a.) Remove the judges from the equation
or
b.) Find good enough judges that most people are willing and able to trust.