Among the many challenges companies face in their sustainability efforts is one of the most persistent and hardest to overcome: Getting your employees, and customers, to change their own behaviors.
This lack of engagement with green ideas, products and services has killed many a green initiative, and is one of the things that closed the coffin for both Google and Microsoft’s home energy management businesses, something that led GreenBiz contributor Truman Semans last week to opine on three possible solutions to the engagement dilemma.
One of the most obvious solutions — making behavior change fun — has also been one of the hardest to successfully enact. But yesterday, I got a chance to learn about how one company is marrying social media, gaming and education in a new campaign that is already showing signs of success.
SunPower Corp., the San Jose-headquartered designer and manufacturer of high-efficiency solar panels and arrays, launched last month a Facebook contest to educate consumers about solar energy. The company hopes the campaign will reach people it wouldn’t normally reach — especially if the campaign goes viral — while also beefing up its online community and planting the idea of rooftop residential solar in the minds of potential customers.