Tonight I was reviewing the PowerPoint for the talk on Green Marketing I’m giving next week in Davos, Switzerland. And I was struck yet again by the big case study in my talk: a company that has been producing products from recycled paper for 60 years, but only bothered to tell anyone within the last decade.

What a marketing advantage they would have had, if they had made this commitment the centerpiece of their marketing–especially in the old days, when it was hard to find recycled paper goods at any price, and their pricepoint was competitive with non-recycled brands.

Instead, they actually went bankrupt before the turnaround management team rebranded the company and emphasized saving a million trees.

The lesson: if you’re gong to do the right thing, harness the marketing leverage it gives you! This is something I discuss extensively in my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), BTW.