The good news is that no one is expected to turn green overnight, but brands are expected to be truthful about their progress. “Restaurants should be honest about the extent to which they’re green. It’s OK to say you’re taking steps and not where you want to be,” Roth says.

Roth’s “secret green sauce” recipe to help avert the skeptical activist is to “prove it conclusively.” He cites the Green Restaurant Association, which is a third-party endorser of legitimate green practices by restaurants that has been around for 15 years but only recently gotten the industry’s attention. “I’m enthusiastic about their methodology because it’s about progress: It’s easy to enter, but to maintain affiliation you have to get progressively better every year,” he says.

In terms of getting the word out, social-media vehicles seem to be the method of choice among the experts I spoke with. Menken says that since it is only the activists and business people who have been getting the word out about green practices, “quick serves need to reinvigorate their messaging by going directly to the consumer. In the consumer space and the restaurant industry, these companies need to directly engage customers through blogs, online, and Twitter. Skip the influencer and go peer to peer.”

Roth agrees. “It’s a new paradigm,” he says. “With the development of social media, companies who are effectively communicating green practices are engaging their customers through this medium. Engage your own consumer as if you, the entrepreneur, are involved. It’s a communal premise—it’s not advertising.”

Benchmarks and Basics
That premise is exactly what seems to have helped Amanda West launch her restaurant, Amanda’s, in Berkeley, California, in 2008 that serves “quick-service foods that are better for both customers and the environment.” West’s background as a blogger on healthy and enviro-friendly living gave her the perfect forum, and credibility, for attracting dozens of local media, including television, restaurant guides, eco-publications, and other grassroots endorsements to create buzz about her store and attract patrons.

“I started out doing monthly e-mail newsletters to anyone I met,” West says, including to a local news reporter she met at a city council meeting who became Amanda’s first TV interview. “Networking is really effective. I met a woman at a Chamber of Commerce meeting who does East Bay green tours. We’re the first stop of the tour.”

West says she also donates a lot to community organizations involved with health and the environment, including the local public radio station. “A lot of people say they heard about us from that,” she says.

In some ways, small-scale operators like West may have an advantage in the green marketing trend. For example, a large company can promote its groundbreaking sustainability program on a national level, but still miss the local piece that consumers experience.

No matter the size of the quick serve, West’s advice is that “it is important to be authentic when you’re marketing. People appreciate our Google spreadsheet we embedded in our Web site that says what we’re doing well and what could do better. That’s really transparent. If you say you’re doing something well, why not say what you’d like to do better?”

This represents a 170% increase in usage.

The savings generated by these coupons almost reached $1 billion.

Who’s using digital coupons? Here’s the top ten cities:

1. Atlanta
2. Tampa
3. Cincinnati
4. St. Louis
5. Minneapolis
6. Nashville
7. Charlotte
8. Cleveland
9. Pittsburg
10. Kansas City

Here’s the top 10 watched videos:
1. Activision – Skateboard Dog
2. National Geographic – Deadly Predator
3. New Zealand Book Council – Going West
4. Victoria’s Secret – One Gift
5. Plane Stupid – Polar Bears
6. Intel – Cannonbells
7. Breast Cancer Awareness – Pink Glove Dance
8. Orbit – Clean it up
9. Epson – Extreme Gamer
10. Muscle Milk – Sexy Pilgrim

Now consider the themes of these videos. While not “green,” many have themes of health, wellness and the environment. Market research continues to point that the definition of green is a slippery one to pin down. Even though I just authored a book with the word green in the title, the major theme of the book is that awareness among consumers is growing around their questioning process on what to buy and who to buy it from. More and more I am seeing awareness as the definition of “green.”

Also note who is posting these high viewership videos. Video posting has grown beyond clever kids posting extreme sports or funny videos. Internet videos are rapidly emerging as the new “ad.” The really cool thing is that these ads are being watched based upon their entertainment and informative merits, not as an interruption in the programming you want to watch. A great internet video is unbelievably powerful in creating positive connections and awareness with targeted customers or thought-leaders.

The merger of awareness and internet videos affords a tremendous revenue growth opportunity for companies that can articulate how they are aligning values with value through social and new media channels. It is a major ingredient of The Secret Green Sauce for growing revenues, now!

The study found that Americans consume almost 12 hours of information per day! It breaks down like this:
• Television: 4.91 hours per day
• Computer: 1.93 hours per day
• Radio: 2.22 hours per day
• Computer games: 0.93 hours per day
• Phone: 0.73 hours per day
• Print: 0.60 hours per day
• Recorded music: 0.45 hours per day
• Movies: 0.03 hours per day

Another amazing conclusion from this study is that the United States consumes approximately 34 gigabytes per day or 3.6 zettabytes in all of 2008. (a zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes. A single exabyte is 1 million gigabytes)