Spring 2012 - Georgetown University: Web hosting

MINI PROFILE
Green Dream
Lynn Miller (EMBA ’97) recalls haphazardly dashing from
a client power lunch at the Oval Room to a protest
down the street against the Keystone XL tar sands
pipeline in front of the White House late last year.
“I was the only person in the line in a business suit,”
Miller says, laughing. Her friend planned to be arrested as a statement
against the pipeline, and Miller had promised she would be
there for her.
It might not be typical behavior for a buttoned-up CEO, but it’s
just an average day for Miller, the CEO and founder of 4GreenPs
(www.4greenPs.com), a Bethesda-based marketing firm focused on
developing marketing programs for sustainable, eco-friendly clients.
Her passion for green often permeates her own life, something she
credits to an otherwise normal
event: the birth of her second
child.
“The organic market was
just starting to take off, and
I was spending a lot of time and energy researching when it made
sense to pay premium for green and organic products [for my
baby],” Miller says. To cut through the clutter, Miller began her first
blog (she now has two, plus an online community), called “Organic
Mania,” to cultivate conversations with individuals who had the same
questions she did. As her interest grew, she rechristened her new
marketing company from “Miller Strategic Marketing, LLC,” which
worked with startup ventures, to the current “4GreenPs,” with a
Georgetown University McDonough School of Business
ALUMNINotes
renewed focus on green clients. The name is a play on the “four Ps”
of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.
Since then, she has helped numerous clients, such as Seventh
Generation (green cleaning products), Mom Made Foods (organic
meals for children), and Sunnovations (solar hot-water technology).
“When you become a parent, I think you develop a heightened
sense of the legacy you’re going to leave behind for your kids,” Miller
says. “The biggest challenge we have right now is climate change
and the degrading environment, and I didn’t want my kids to look
back and say, ‘What were you doing back then?’ ”
Recently, 4GreenPs, which she founded in 2006 after leaving
Texas Instruments, has focused on teaching green companies of all
sizes to be self-sufficient in their marketing strategies so their work
continues even after Miller and her staff finish the job. The company
is shifting toward consulting for larger companies with bigger
footprints and more potential for impact on policy changes. Miller
and her team develop promotional plans, including steps such as
rebranding or redeveloping media pitches to grab the attention of
more mainstream media outlets. Miller says one goal of her work is
to help make sustainability a normal way of life instead of a conscious
choice.
“The next frontier is integrating sustainability into the design of all
products — especially inexpensive, mass market items — so that
the consumer no longer has to seek out ‘green’ products or choose
whether or not to buy the more sustainable of two product options,”
Miller says. —Chloe Thompson
Lynn Miller (EMBA ’97) uses
her marketing skills to help
eco-friendly clients.
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