Survey Finds Likely Voters Thinking Green

These respondents said green issues will impact their votes in the upcoming presidential primaries. The issues are of strongest interest to Democrats, especially likely John Edwards and Bill Richardson voters, the survey found.

The Eco-Insights Survey by a new applied target marketing company, Earthsense, profiles attitudes about global and national issues, candidates, green products, eco-friendly companies and purchase intent.

Earthsense CEO and founder Wendy Cobrda says, "We believe in and enable a common sense approach that we refer to as having 'earthsense'. The idea is to understand as much as you possibly can about your customers and prospects - not just by demographics or lifestyle - but more holistically by also looking at their attitudes and beliefs and the environment in which they live."

"Ultimately, our mission is to provide the insights and intelligence necessary to help companies make informed decisions and empower action with confidence, to impact the bottom line - and the Earth we share," she said.

More so than most other issues, the environment is politicized across party lines, the Earthsense survey found. Swing voters place a level of importance on the issue similar to that of registered Democrats whose voting intentions arefirmer. The importance of the issue for Republican voters lags by comparison.

President and founder of Earthsense Amy Hebard, PhD said, "Companies that focus on the ideals of people, planet, and profit as the three pillars of responsible business tell us that addressing social and environmental issues is not in conflict with their financial goals, and can be critical to long- term corporate success. But they are looking for smart data to help them prioritize and best address stakeholder concerns."

The Earthsense survey offers technology that integrates over 240 environmental, health and other databases to provide unique profiles of communities and consumer segments as background information.

Earthsense, launching today with findings from its inaugural research, has partnered with the online marketing planning platform Telmar as the delivery channel for accessing data to gain insights about consumers' attitudes, voting and buying patterns.

Craig Gugel, president of Telmar US, said, "To be effective with cause-related marketing, companies more than ever must rely on consumer and customer intelligence to establish a competitive point of differentiation and break out of the clutter."

American voters are likely to be targeted with more environmental messages during the run-up to the November 2008 elections than in previous elections.

Direct Group, a direct marketing solutions provider and one of Earthsense's other partners, is launching its own Voter Insight Solutions, a suite of direct marketing services based on a new national database of registered and unregistered voters, synthesized with data from Earthsense's attitudinal study.

Ken Palma, vice-president of database marketing at Direct Group says, "We are excited about integrating voter registration and preference data and our print-on-demand platform with this powerful 'green intelligence' from Earthsense. Political parties, action committees, lobbyist organizations and non-profit groups all will be enthusiastic about the potential of green targeting."