Was the 2011 Super Bowl the Greenest NFL Championship Ever?

Just Energy, a green energy retailer supplying renewable energy certificates to Super Bowl venues, is claiming that "the 2011 Super Bowl will be the greenest NFL championship on record." Is this true, or is it just greenwashing?

Just Energy is contributing heavily to the Super Bowl's sustainability with a commitment to offset all direct and indirect carbon emissions from power generation at major Super Bowl venues, including NFL Super Bowl headquarters, the Super Bowl Media Center, the AFC and NFC team hotels, and even the NFL Experience Football Theme Park. For every megawatt of electricity used to power these facilities, Just Energy is purchasing one megawatt of renewable energy from Sweetwater Wind Farm in Sweetwater, Texas. This will be the largest renewable energy credit program in Super Bowl history.

and then there is Cowboy Stadium, the site of this year's game. The stadium, which was the first to be recognized in the EPA's National Environmental Performance Track Program, has targets to cut solid waste by 25%, water consumption by 1 million gallons, and energy use by 20% each year. All solid waste from the Super Bowl will be diverted to local recycling projects, and leftover materials will be sent to local non-profits.

This year is also the debut of the Super Grow XLV program, a partnership between the Texas Trees Foundation and the Texas Forest Service that planted over 6,500 trees in 12 north Texas communities, marketing it the biggest tree-planting effort in Super Bowl history (other Super Bowl-connected tree-planting efforts have been going on for years). The program is intended to offset CO2 emissions from Super Bowl events.

Do these efforts add up to a truly sustainable sporting event? Soft of. Just Energy's renewable energy credits are helpful, but they aren't sustainable as producing all that renewable energy on site. And this year's event will use 15,000 megawatts of power, or enough electricity to power 1,500 homes for a year. It would be more impressive if the NFL could cut that number in half, but the Cowboy stadium does, at least, have noble energy goals, and the NFL is doing more in the sustainability arena for this year's game than it ever has before. Let's just hope every year from now on features the "greenest NFL championship" yet.

The Power of the Internet

As I look back on the past decade I believe the Internet and technology improvements or changes in the business (and personal) world will be what it's most remembered for. The Internet has changed the way business outreach is done completely in the last decade. It has created another outlet for organizations and corporations to advertise in and social media has created a totally new way for them to communicate with their target publics.

A month before the Super Bowl, CBS released that only four TV advertisement placements are still open, but one of the NFL's biggest supporters, PepsiCo, announced that 23 years they are dropping their sponsorship. Pepsi plans to shift its marketing budget to less costly digital venues, such as Facebook and other Internet social networking sites.

This shows just how the Internet is reshaping companies marketing techniques by offering them less expensive ways to convey their messages to customers. It seems that even though Super Bowl ads are made for TV, they aren't traditional television ads. It appears that companies buying Super Bowl ads are using that ad as a starting point to other PR and marketing opportunities. Companies will create their ads with the intention and hope for conversation on the Internet long after the game on ranking sites, blogs, twitter, etc.

In a time of companies slashing jobs and government bailouts to automakers, fearful of criticism for misused financial priorities, the Internet offers much cheaper outreach compared to the Super Bowl advertisements. However, of course this type of publicity is uncontrolled and can turnout negative instead of positive.

This trend in corporate outreach has caused marketing advisers to rethink their game. A read about a small marketing agency in the Twin Cities, Three Deep Marketing, that has mastered the ability to measure online website trafficking. The agency's popularity has really grown because of their success advising small to large companies on how to enhance their online marketing efforts. Their strategy is to figure out what consumers do when they view a company's website. They research and trace where somebody clicks, what they viewed, see if they filled out a form and figure out if they bought anything from the site. From this information they report and advise what a company should do to better utilize their website. I believe this trend will really grow.

The Super Bowl is not in distress to find corporate sponsorship - I don't want you to worry. Since PepsiCo decided to drop out, Korean Automaker Hyundai has moved up (since the networks offer the best placements to loyal sponsors.) Plus, there are still many big name sponsors creating ads for this year such as: Hollywood Studios, Cocoa-Cola, Doritos, Hyundai, Honda and Audi, Internet job sites CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com and Anheuser-Busch. I just believe that the coming decade will bring about many more changes and improvements online which will make it even more important to the business world.