How to translate Green Marketing for Environmental Communication

1) What is Green Marketing?
2) How to communicate Green Marketing?
3) Green Marketing and Localization 

As a response, new market models have recently emerged, including green marketing, which aim to promote corporate commitment to the fight against environmental damage and to produce environmentally sustainable products and services.

What is Green Marketing?

The term refers to the creation and sale of sustainable and environmentally-friendly products and/or services. The expression also encompasses a wider range of activities, including the transformation of production processes, the use of eco-sustainable packaging and the adaptation of company communication strategies.

To implement this practice, it is important for companies to adopt proper green marketing strategies overall that reflect the real environmental commitment promoted by the individual brands. So it isn’t enough to dye the labels green and mark the packaging as eco-friendly!

Companies must aim to transform their production activities and develop a brand identity that is in line with their green philosophy, viewing this as an advantage over the competition. Furthermore, it is important that internal business practices reflect the corporate mission: employees must therefore be personally involved in this process and lead by example.

In terms of external communication, it is essential for companies to promote green marketing campaigns aimed at actively involving consumers, also educating them about responsible use and consumption practices.

Not all consumers have the knowledge to evaluate sustainable marketing practices promoted by brands. This is increasingly exploited by some companies, who attempt to apply unfair greenwashing practices, i.e. misleading marketing campaigns that do not reflect the company’s real activity.

How to communicate Green Marketing

Knowing how to communicate your mission is a fundamental element of business communication. Given the growing awareness of environmental issues among consumers, it is important it is to communicate green marketing business practices to the outside world.

It is important here to understand that environmental communication has to be as correct as it is effective. These two aspects are however distinct and independent dimensions. While correctness refers to the accuracy and truthfulness of the technical information, effectiveness refers to the ability to reach a specific target through your message.

Green marketing should be communicated externally in a way that is:

• clear: it is important that the target audience understands even the more technical details without any misunderstanding.
• accurate: the information must be complete and must clarify the benefit of the business activity, referring to specific aspects
• relevant: false merits should not be attributed to the company’s product, referring to its innate characteristics as if they were innovative
• coherent: the message must say exactly how the product is used and state its benefits clearly and simply
• reliable: information must be true and supported by reliable evidence, accompanied by an official source that allows the most relevant information to be traced
• understandable: it is good practice to use graphics and symbols to facilitate understanding of the message

Green Marketing and Localization

It is a constantly growing model in a variety of market sectors: fashion, e-commerce, technical-industrial, tourism, and food to name a few. Not only that, the number of international companies investing in sustainable solutions is also on the rise.

So what is the relationship between green marketing and technical translation and/or localization? As we have seen, it is essential in this new marketing landscape for brands to be attentive to the content of their communication. Particularly in order to clarify the company’s business objectives and demonstrate its real intentions.

This aspect can prove to be even more important internationally. When addressing a distant target audience, from a cultural and linguistic point of view, it’s crucial to convey messages in line with the company’s tone of voice and identity.

At this stage, localization and technical translation services can help brands committed to green marketing to develop a coherent form of communication, which allows them to get in touch with their target audience while keeping their corporate image intact.

Specialized translation agencies are able to write bespoke, creative texts and to translate certifications accurately, according to the standard requirements of the relevant sector.

We hope this brief overview of green marketing and the link with localization and technical translation has been interesting and has presented a new field of application for language services.