A Clockwork Green

From trash bags to face cream, every brand right now is pitching a green product. What in the world does it mean anymore to say your brand is green? For too many consumers, unfortunately, not much. Stretched by brand managers over recent years to cover more and more ground, green has become an umbrella term for what is today a grab bag (albeit a reusable canvas one) of attributes, attitudes, values and behaviors. A colleague of mine recently told me he considers green to be shorthand for “behaving ethically.”