I don’t think a book has left me so polarised in opinion as The Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant.

First off, Grant really knows his stuff – and has left me with some strong ideas like his cool, succinct definition:

“Green Marketing is about making green stuff seem normal, not about making normal stuff seem green”

and the Five I’s of Green Marketing:

• Intuitive, 
• Integrative (sustainability, technology, commerce), 
• Innovative, 
• Inviting (not hair shirt), 
• Informed. 

The book is crammed with practical examples and genuine make-you-think moments, such as the dissection of BP’s Beyond Petroleum blunder (they were doing very well environmentally for an oil company, but then decided to make a proclamation they could never live up to).

Unfortunately, instead of developing the 5Is, Grant presents a 3×3 grid of concepts versus green-ness and then for each of the squares, he presents two different strategies – 18 in all. This complexity would be OK in a text book, but Grant can never decide whether he is writing an academic treatise, a how-to, or a polemic. There are a number of factual errors (eg Jedi wasn’t adopted as an official religion after the 2001 census) and in my opinion Grant bestows green blogs with too much influence – OK, Treehugger.com is important in Green circles, but the average Joe in the street won’t have heard of it, let alone have read its criticisms of Anya Hindmarsh’s I am not a plastic bag, er, bag. Towards the end, he gets sidetracked into inventing examples of more innovative products/services, but fails to describe how these innovations would be sold to the consumer. The surplus of exclamation marks suggests the book needs a good edit! And the cover (plain card with a drab green hand stencilled text) goes against his own advice by being more hairshirt than inviting.

I would have much rather he stuck with the 5I’s and showed how they could/have been applied to a series of green products and services. Instead we have a very clever book which has got rather too caught up in its own cleverness.

Despite all these criticisms, I still really enjoyed most of it, learnt loads, and would recommend it as there is nothing else better out there. Let’s just hope that the second edition is simpler, better edited and that the facts have been checked.