New Roles for Landscape Architects: Marketing the
Triple Bottom Line

by Patricia Ann Gibbon

Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee:
Professor Kristina Hill

2001

The overall purpose of this thesis is to create a green marketing plan for the Port of Seattle that could guide the Port's overall vision and day-to-day operations as well as educate and promote more responsible environment behavior among the Port's key stakeholders -- King County residents, customers, peers and Port employees. Through this process, this thesis provides landscape architects with information about the basics of marketing including how to create a strategic marketing plan and develop a successful campaign.

To develop this green marketing plan, this thesis reviewed and evaluated the green marketing practices at two other ports: Port Vancouver, British Columbia and the Port of Portland, Portland, Oregon. Both of these ports actively employ green marketing strategies and are major competitors of the Port of Seattle. By analyzing their green marketing plans, messages, and methods a more comprehensive understanding of the role that green marketing played in port activities emerged. A checklist was developed to analyze the green marketing materials. The concepts behind the checklist were gained through the literature review and interviews with marketing executives from corporations and marketing consulting firms.

Green marketing is a new approach to communicate businesses and governmental entities triple bottom line business operating strategy. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the profession, landscape architects are in a special position to embrace a new role for themselves - marketing the triple bottom line. The intersection between the work of landscape architects and the strategies of the triple bottom line allows landscape architects to facilitate the triple bottom line by creating, developing, and implementing community and environmental designs, by researching and analyzing environmental changes associated with projects, and by understanding the multi-purpose nature of projects and sites. Likewise, it allows landscape architects to communicate the triple bottom line by helping their clients ascertain environmental, community and economic needs and by delivering project information. All of these activities require landscape architects to enter the realm of marketing.