What is Edu-Marketing for Environmental Products & Services?

True Edu-marketing vs. White or Greenwashing

Edu-Marketing, or educational-based marketing, is the concept of creating an educational curriculum and transforming it into digestible marketing content for the masses in various forms (articles, videos, magazines, infographics, interactive quizzes, email updates, online courses, etc.) thus helping people better understand your area of expertise and positioning yourself and/or your organization as an Industry Leader. As opposed to whitewashing and greenwashing, which are the deceitful practices of covering incriminating or unpleasant facts about an organization with inaccurate niceties. In this blog we’ll dive into the importance of edu-marketing and take a look at some examples and contrasts to whitewashing and greenwashing. Let’s jump in!

While nearly any industry and any topic can technically employ the edu-marketing strategy, it is especially necessary for industries that are making a positive impact on society and the planet; those leaders and individuals that take the lead and enlighten the masses on the topics that have the potential to truly benefit humanity. It’s so important that we begin to shift the focus from marketing tactics that take advantage of society and manipulate truths to benefit the few.

Why is this? Well, it seems that we have experienced a massive amount of miseducation and frankly, lies for the sole sake of profits. For example, in the book Trust Us We’re Experts, journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber dive deep into the ways that big industries have paid off “experts” and created front groups of fake scientists to lead false movements and misguide people.

Like the time SmithKline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million to use its logo on products + in ads for the smoking cessation product NicoDermCQ and other Nicorette anti-smoking aids.

This is a perfect example of how edu-marketing for natural herbs that help with smoking cessation like Catnip, Coltsfoot, or Horsetail plant, would be a better benefit to humanity. However, big pharma and willing-to-be-bought non-profit organizations, have teamed up to misguide the public with false reasoning to push their products.

Unfortunately, the reality remains that we’re more likely to recognize and have access to Nicorette, a $60/box pharmaceutical drug when it comes to quitting smoking rather than Catnip, a $10/high quality organic tincture bottle, or any other herb that we are probably more willing to take than a pharmaceutically synthesized product.

Edu-Marketing with integrity is so clearly needed now. We have been inundated with sellouts and front groups, whitewashing and greenwashing so much so that we likely have beliefs skewed in their favor, whether we know it consciously or subconsciously. And this has mostly been successful because less than honest companies with substantial financial backing can easily justify the cost for fraudulent “experts,” creating front groups, funding lobbyists, and creating corporate spin that act like real causes and sound logical on the surface. Take for example the front group People of Color United, that was established in 2004 by the (anything but color) conservative group Bradley Foundation whose aim was to diminish John Kerry’s perception during the 2004 Presidential Election via personal attack radio ads aired in swing states on primarily black radio stations.

You see, we are in dire need for education-based content marketing with integrity to uplift the well-intentioned and honest companies and movements that need to happen in our soceity. This is especially true for industries like cannabis and energy where major players can either side with greed and harm public good or greatly serve humanity with things like broad-spectrum medical cannabis and sustainable energy. These things when conceived of solely on logic shouldn’t technically need marketing. Clean water, natural health, sustainability, renewable energy, decentralized economy, these are things we all want for ourselves and when we set corrupt politics aside, our neighbors as well. Unfortunately, though, we have come to a juncture in our society where these things do need marketing. MASSIVELY smart marketing at that, to combat the missing or false information that has created mass self-sabotaging, false belief systems that have been implanted in us all at some level.

There is a dire need for education based content marketing that uplifts sustainable products and renewable energy over the barrage of bad choices that we've become so accustomed to accepting. Click To Tweet

It’s time to start disrupting the status quo of industries that have taken advantage of the dumbing down of society in order to tell lies or at the very least cover up truths, solely for profits-sake. It’s an era for NEW Industry Leaders, and if you are like me, you don’t care where the solutions to the big issues of today come from. You just care that they happen at the highest integrity, highest efficiency levels, and are the longest-term solutions that get to the heart of the issues we face.

Arguably this can be accomplished in many ways from many organizational standpoints. Yes, of course, our government should be ensuring that its citizens get their basic human needs met like clean food, clean water, and housing. As we move forward, we will need all hands on deck. This includes every type of organization, non-profit, small business, church, enterprise corporation, and local community be involved with educating about the truths which affect humanity and the planet.

How do we do this?

By holding to integrity. By educating. By incorporating edu-marketing.

It’s with great hope that we see more of these earnest edu-marketing tactics that serve to win back the minds and the reasoning of people.

Below are some contrasting white/greenwashing vs. true edu-marketing strategies.

Fake vs. Real Edu-Marketing

The Cannabis Industry

Cannabis Propaganda + Fear by Above the Influence

VS.

Cannabis Edu-Marketing from Jenasis Medical Group

Sustainable Laundry

The health of our laundry is a very overlooked topic in most people’s lives. Yet, laundry is a very intimate thing when we really think about.Both household laundry and dry cleaning have the potential to be extremely toxic when using traditional detergents and traditional methods of dry cleaning. The 4 top toxic ingredients in common laundry detergents are 1) Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)/sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) 2) 1,4-dioxane 3)NPE (nonylphenol ethoxylate) and 4) Phosphates. Likewise, the singular most toxic method for dry cleaning clothes is PERC, a chemical known to induce spontaneous abortions in women who are pregnant and work near the chemical, among a long host of other violent afflictions. Below is an example of a laundry detergent who calls itself green but hasn’t quite quit all toxic junk and a dry cleaning company that uses truly non-toxic methods that believes in educating on dangers of the mainstream dry cleaning toxin, PERC.

Planet Laundry Detergent, though better than most still contains 6.1 ppm of 1,4-dioxane not listed.

The Eco Laundry Company Educates by sharing data on the health effects of chemical exposure to PERC .

Renewable Energy

The Greenwashing of Nuclear Energy vs. Education of Solar Energy

Nuclear energy is entirely greenwashed now. Some try to defend nuclear energy as renewable energy but uranium deposits are a finite resource on this planet, so the designation should not include this option. Read this to learn more about the debate.

However, the Nuclear Sector has done a fine job explaining away the problems of toxic nuclear waste and letting us forget about the radiation still wreaking havoc from the long list of nuclear disasters that occurred around the world. Most recently the Fukushima Disaster and the radioactive materials that now spread across the pacific ocean and U.S. Coast poisoning our oceans, wildlife, and seafood.

The Greenwashing of Nuclear Energy via NEI

Edu-Marketing on Solar Energy via the Union of Concerned Scientist

These are just a handful of examples that display the importance of integrity based educational marketing, or edu-marketing. When dealing with truth, there is no wiggle room. When it comes to integrity and becoming the master of your content, true edu-marketing is the cornerstone for leading a movement and leaving a legacy.

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