Greenfest Chicago Followup: Silverleaf Resorts Snookered Organizers to Promote Timeshare Resort with Cruiseship Giveaway

What a week! I have felt down-right journalistic these past few days as I’ve poked and prodded my way though a story that first popped up during Chicago Greenfest a few weeks back; a story about Silverleaf Resorts, a very-NOT-green timeshare company giving away an even-less-green Cruise vacation smack in the middle of Greenfest Chicago.

We got their main booth rep Michael Stevens on camera saying that there was nothing green about Silverleaf Resorts or their promotion, that they were there “talking to all the people that love green”, and that they were just “marketing for our resort”. I was given a rambling, semi-incoherent answer to my very simple question “how are you green?” that wandered into the absurd. Apparently, in Silverleaf Resorts world, having 300 acres of land makes you Green.

You can read the original post here, watch the video for the full dirt:

After I got back from Chicago, I started zipping around emails to the two main orgs behinds Greenfest Global Exchange, Co-op America, and their PR firm Organic Works Marketing for an explanation on how Silverleaf Resorts got their booth. Did someone at Greenfest drop the ball in the screening process? Did Silverleaf “mis-represent” themselves in the application process?

It turned out to be a little of both- a small dash of the first and a heaping measure of the latter. Jim Kinsella of Silverleaf Resorts snookered to the organizers of Greenfest. Someone at Silverleaf Resorts verbally told the Greenfest screeners that they had two sites that were built with green materials and practices. I have yet to find any evidence of anything green from Silverleaf Resorts and they have failed to respond to my request for comment/clarification. But it’s clear that whoever was in charge of screening the Silverleaf Resorts application was too trusting and didn’t do the necessary footwork needed to verify their green claims.

Silverleaf Resorts promised the screeners that they would only exhibit information about one of their green facilities and made no mention of the cruise give-away.

During the Friday setup, the Greenfest Floor Manager didn’t see the giant Cruise banner SIlverleaf Resorts later put up and apparently didn’t do a walk through on either Saturday or Sunday, when I saw it up behind their booth.

If I had to wager, I’d guess that most of the exhibitors at Greenfest fall squarely into the Kind Greenie category of people. They’re mostly nice crunchy kind folks who don’t try to lie and cheat on their exhibitor application. I can see how it’d be easy for the organizers of Greenfest to get complacent.

I hope this serves as a wake up call to the great people running Greenfest. There are lots of Jim Kensellas and Silverleaf Resorts in the world and more of them will be trying to get into our space. Don’t make it easy for them- they’re welcome when they actually green themselves up, in the meantime we’ve got to keep beating them back down.