What Wellness and Natural Products Brands Need to Know about Earth Day Marketing, Greenwashing and Eco-Conscious Messaging

Earth Day has been a holiday for over 50 years now. But a lot has changed in both environmental science and messaging since 1970. More brands than ever before are open to leveraging environmental messaging—and a growing number of consumers are seeking brands that align with their views on climate change, sustainability, conservation and environmental justice. But the emotional resonance that eco-friendly marketing can hold and increasingly stringent advertising regulations concerning environmental claims can give some brands pause. 

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Forget “to be or not to be?”—the question for many brands around major holidays like Earth Day is “to greenwash or to greenhush?” Which is worse for a brand’s reputation, and how can companies in natural products, wellness and other industries strike the right balance of authenticity and on-trend messaging without getting called out or canceled? 

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Here’s how brands can hit the right note on high-visibility occasions like Earth Day and throughout the year. 

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Earth Day Began With Branding

Throughout the 1960s, environmentalism steadily moved from the fringes into the mainstream following a series of distressing events. Rachel Carson’s influential 1962 book Silent Spring was a huge public wakeup call to the negative impact of commonly accepted—even celebrated—chemicals such as the pesticide DDT, which had proliferated in domestic applications in the decades after World War II. 

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Carson’s work served as a reminder that human beings exist within an ecosystem, as part of nature rather than something separate from it. That existential twang was only enhanced in 1968 when NASA released the famous Earthrise photograph of our planet from the perspective of the moon. For the first time, humans were able to see the scale of their brilliant blue ball in the lonely dark of space. 

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Down below, the back-to-the-land movement became an influential component of the brewing counterculture, as young people moved from cities to rural communes where they were less reliant on both institutions and corporations. The rise of natural grocers and health food stores during this period stemmed from the same fundamental motivations—a desire for self-sufficiency, simplicity and a growing awareness of the environmental impact that human beings and their military-industrial and capitalist infrastructure had already made on the planet we call home.

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By the end of the decade, the widespread media coverage of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the flaming wreckage of the future Superfund site at the Cuyahoga River in Ohio catalyzed the nascent environmental movement. 

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Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson began working on a national campaign to further raise environmental awareness. But those efforts didn’t gel until Madison Avenue advertising giant Julian Koenig coined the name “Earth Day,” creating a broad umbrella under which activists and community organizers could operate.

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The Rise of Greenwashing in Environmental Marketing

Today, Earth Day has grown into a global, intersectional movement—and a tempting opportunity for businesses eager to position themselves as purpose-driven brands. Almost as soon as Earth Day’s inception, brands realized that pro-environment marketing messaging was more lucrative than actually investing in a reduced environmental footprint. 

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Just 16 years after Koenig developed the Earth Day concept, another New Yorker named Jay Westerveld coined the term “greenwashing.”

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Greenwashing, Westerveld explained, was the practice of promoting a business’s products or services as eco-conscious when, in fact, the primary objective was profit rather than reducing pollution. It took less than a decade for the Federal Trade Commision to agree with Westerveld that greenwashing was a big problem, resulting in the 1992 passage of the FTC’s Green Guides. 

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These truth-in-advertising principles were designed to clarify both how marketers could describe brands’ activities in regards to the environment and how consumers tend to interpret commonly used terms like “renewable,” “carbon offset,” “compostable” and “ozone-safe.” 

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Yet another term emerged in 2008 to describe how many brands responded to those advertising restrictions and the rise in consumer education around environmental issues—greenhushing. 

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Jerry Stifelman and Sami Grover defined “greenhushing” as the practice of companies downplaying their environmental efforts and successes for fear of negative publicity or economic impacts. After all, as proponents of fourth wave feminism, the gay rights movement and the trans rights movement can attest, no social movement is immune to backlash. 

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The politicization of climate change discourse, for instance, gave some brands pause regarding environmental messaging, as did the polarization of public trust in scientific institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. By early 2023, there was a 47% decrease in sustainability-focused marketing messaging. 

Why Natural Brands Need an Agency Partner Versed in Highly Regulated Industries

So where does that leave natural products and wellness brands that aren’t sure if eco-conscious marketing will be a boost for their brands or a bomb? It’s a quandary for sure—but one that marketing and PR agencies with experience in highly-regulated industries are well-prepared to tackle.

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Cannabis and psychedelics may be younger markets than other CPG sectors like natural foods, supplements, beauty and personal-care products, the auto industry or fashion. But they have also been subject to the kind of advertising regulations and legal liabilities that come with environmental messaging since at least the passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)—which was ratified by Congress the same year Earth Day was first branded. 

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Cannabis brands, for example, are intimately familiar with restrictions on health claims that often run counter to consumer interest in the potential of cannabis products to address their health and wellness concerns like sleep, anxiety or pain. They are used to building brand awareness without access to FTC-regulated networks like television and radio, or real freedom to post on most social media platforms.

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Even the fonts, colors, brand names and logos cannabis brands use must adhere to a patchwork of local, state and federal regulations designed to protect minors from the appeal of these long-stigmatized substances. 

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So an advertising agency like Grasslands that specializes in cannabis and psychedelics won’t be daunted by, say, the legal parameters of using terms like “organic,” “cruelty-free” or “all-natural.” It’s simply par for the course to navigate a dearth of publicly available scientific data on, say, the physiological effects of the cannabis plant or the greenhouse gas emissions of small-to-medium size enterprises. 

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How Brands Can Walk the Line With Eco-Conscious Marketing 

Whether brand leaders are crafting their Earth Day or year-round environmental messaging in-house or with an agency partner, there are a few best practices for success. 

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To avoid greenwashing—or even the appearance of greenwashing—it’s important to build an authentic brand that conveys expertise, authority and trust. It’s equally important to take a journalism-minded approach to any claims made and language used, not only to withstand media and consumer scrutiny, but also potential legal exposure. 

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Well ahead of high-visibility moments on the editorial calendar like Earth Day, take the time to audit the brand for:

• Mission, vision and values: What does the brand stand for besides its ability to make a profit? Where is it headed? Is it bringing the industry forward? What brand values does it share with the target audience? 
• Does the business have a defined brand voice, core equities and other foundational messaging that will ensure consistent communication across all marketing and PR channels? Will the environmental message feel as if it’s coming from left field or like it has always been a part of the brand’s message map?
• Has the brand undergone cohesive PR strategy development to determine whether it’s better to lean into environmental messaging or whether greenhushing will avoid a PR crisis?
• Has public-facing leadership undergone media training to ensure any environmental messaging is on-point, personalized and feels authentic?
• Has the brand pursued audience segmentation to understand how to finely attune its eco-conscious messaging to different demographics, and through channels where that messaging will be most visible and resonate? For example, narratives around wellness and climate change might perform well on social media platforms like TikTok, while e-mail marketing might be more effective for reaching older executives in your sales pipeline.

In addition to those steps to dial in environmental messaging year round, brands can make the most of opportunities like Earth Day to amplify their PR and marketing tactics with strategic partnerships, brand activations and experiential marketing that fully engage the audience and even create options for proactive pitching and newsjacking that cut through the noise in a crowded media market.

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‍Ready to build your marketing and PR strategy around consumer education? We’re always ready to talk through your brand’s unique needs and pain points to find a custom solution. Learn more about how we transform brands like yours with our proven process.