I’m glad to see you agree with my views on this. I ended up steering clear of “going green” when branding this company. My goal was to create an authentic look for those in the industry as well as the “greenies”. You’re absolutely right – an energy efficient company obviously promotes energy conservation, but what makes them better than the other guys? How do they go the extra mile?

You mentioned some great selling points (Cost, convenience, support, reputation, etc), but I wanted to add to your “etcetera”. I think innovation is a huge one in this industry. In a company that’s rooted in the bettering of energy technologies, innovation becomes a huge selling point. Market your forward thinking ideas to the early adopters and watch your ideas turn into a marketable product!

You know, branding a solar company with the primary message of “going green” actually might be redundant in general. If, in fact, the primary customer base for the business is a group of consumers who have already made the decision to use solar power (and thus are simply comparing various vendors), the “going green” message is probably mostly wasted on that group. They surely don’t need convincing that going green is an important decision for them to make – they’ve already made that mental leap.

At that stage, you’re right, it *does* become about differentiating between companies, and particular competitive advantages within that sphere. Items such as cost, convenience, support, reputation, etc. become important branding factors here. Like a consumer who chooses between cars to buy, they don’t need to be convinced that they need a car, they need to be convinced which particular car is better. Just because it allows you to drive isn’t an advantage that ends up making a difference at this point – the assumption is made in the consumer’s mind that *all* the options have at least this baseline feature.

Likewise, the advantage of “going green” with a solar company is a weak value proposition – a consumer interested in solar panels assumes that *all* solar companies provide at least this value point. It becomes incredibly difficult to brand a business based on a value proposition that everyone has by default.

Just a few thoughts!