GreenBiz reports on a recently released joint study from Yankelovich and Getty Images, the ‘MAP Report 2: Aspirational Environmentalism‘:
Firms seeking to advertise their green credentials should shun generic images associated with climate change such as polar bears and melting ice floes, according to a major new survey of green advertisements and consumer attitudes.
The study from picture agency Getty Images assessed 2,500 advertising campaigns from last year for its annual “What Makes a Picture” (MAP) report and concluded that many of the conventional images used to promote green campaigns were in danger of becoming visual clichés.
“When it comes to the visual language of the environment, we are in danger of killing it as a meaningful symbol with visual cliché,” said Lewis Blackwell, creative advisor at Getty Images. “The first lesson we must learn in order to grab any attention is to make Death to Environmentalism our mantra and kill off the clichés of ecology.”
Rebecca Swift, global creative planning director at Getty Images, warned that pictures of ice caps and polar bears in particular “will not resonate with consumers in the future.”
The report recommends that advertisers instead embrace more localized images that are relate more closely to consumers’ experience of the environment. “Whatever the product, the closer to home you can pitch the communication the better the opportunity to win over the hearts and minds of consumers to green products and behaviors,” it claims. “This is probably not good news for communicators who have been enjoying economies of scale in recent years by running global campaigns.”
It also advises advertisers to challenge consumers’ negative attitudes towards the environment head-on, arguing that campaigns should not shy away from addressing issues such as consumer indifference, concerns over greenwashing and resentment about the commercialization of a social cause.
These are important findings. At the same time, the study does not tell us anything we could not infer from previous research, and also good marketing practice. Advertisers and marketers need to empathize with their target ‘consumers’ – I use this term reluctantly, as I believe we should increasingly relate to people as citizens instead of consumers. Empathizing means acknowledging the reality of where people are:
- a combination of apathy, frustration, resentment, some of it that can be linked to Steven Running theory of Climate Grief
- cynicism and doubt bred by experiences of greenwashing
- guilt from being asked to make life changes that are impossible to achieve, given present solutions
- a thirst for information
- a physical reality linked to place, time, and personal experience; make it personal, make it local.
Practically, this means giving people solutions to real problems, not trying to force upon them products and messages decided by wannabe green marketers. The ‘Green‘ magic can only go so far.
La Marguerite 
Great post Marguerite.
I agree with giving people solutions to real problems.
Also, as an idea, rather than using the word “consumer”, perhaps the marketing community should start to shift its paradigm and start to think in terms of “HIGHs” rather than in terms of “consumers.”
A “HIGH” is a Human Interested in Genuine Help.
Thus, in the future, if a company has a great product that solves a real human problem, and (hopefully) if that product is friendly to the environment, then those advertisers could genuinely think in terms of achieving the desirable reach and frequency not with “targeted” consumers, but rather with genuinely interested HIGHs.
Also, from a human standpoint, I’d rather be thought of as a human, or as a HIGH, rather than as a consumer.
(I also like to do other things with letters. For example, teenage boys . . . I have two . . . I sometimes call Hairy Hormonal Hominids.)
Cheers.
I like your idea of an acronym. I just wonder about the drug association with the term HIGH? Personally I like ‘citizen’ with maybe a qualifier. Thanks for starting this brainstorming!
The most effective green advertising I can recall involved an image of a Native American crying as he looked at a landscape littered with pollution. It ran in the US in the 1970s, I believe. There were posters and TV ads as part of the campaign. I think it may have been an Ad Council piece.
There was also a poster produced that was incredibly powerful. They have it hanging up at my CSA. I’ll try to remember to copy the verbiage down and send it to you.
Lynn
http://www.organicmania.com
Thanks Lynn. I would love to see it!
Campaigns, and the “Big Green” Part II
I agree with Lynn about the campaign with the Native American crying amidst the trash.
Authentic human faces say a lot. If people see someone in a true state of deep sadness or anguish, or pain, they usually feel it, thanks to their mirror neurons and whatever else.
Another great campaign that made a point, in my view, was the one involving a father who talks about the climate problem for awhile and then stands aside at the last minute, to let a train (of climate change) apparently wipe out his daughter, who had been standing behind him.
I think the creative thinking and ideas will be “there”, i.e., not impossible to come up with, but the larger issue seems to be the cost of media? With so many billionaires around these days, it seems, and many of them concerned about the planet, why doesn’t one of them donate two or ten or even fifty million dollars for some great (and genuine and educational) global warming ads?
I also like “active” ideas, e.g., the notion that Stanford and Cal should have a “Big Green”, as mentioned in an earlier post. Given the immense importance of the global warming issue, and of sustainability in general, they (Stanford and/or Cal) could get help in terms of genuine heart-felt appearances. Heck, Joan Baez lives not far away. The Grateful Dead (who gathered recently to support Obama, I think) has its own roots in the Palo Alto area. Stanford has a new stadium. If Joan Baez and the living members of The Dead, and some others, got together at Stanford or Berkeley, to raise awareness of global warming, and if some of the leading scientists were to also attend, tens of thousands of people would attend. Get Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and etc.
Consider: On March 23, 1975, when I was only 16, I attended the SNACK benefit concert at the old Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, which was a benefit to raise funds for local students. I still have my old torn ticket and the yellowed newspaper articles. 60,000 people came, a full house! Among the performers and speakers: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Marlon Brando, Neil Young, The Band, Jerry Garcia and Friends, Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, The Doobie Brothers, Santana, Jefferson Starship, Mimi Farina, The Miracles, Willie Mays, and so forth. Why did they all come? It was a good cause, and Bill Graham invited them!
Today, the cause is the Earth’s climate, other species, and future generations. Sounds like a good cause to me! Are there nice stadiums? Yes, one at Stanford or one at Berkeley, or both. Who could kick-start things and make the invitations? Perhaps the student body at Stanford, or perhaps the student body at Berkeley, or perhaps both, and/or perhaps Arnold or Maria? (Has anyone contacted Maria?) If Stanford and Berkeley aren’t about the young generation, and about science, and about the future, and about wisdom, and about the planet, then what ARE they about?? And, to inject some competition into the matter, if Stanford and Berkeley and California don’t do something like this, then Harvard or wherever should do it, and probably will.
Oops. Sorry for length. I’m just appealing to the Trees and Bears to DO something.
Cheers.
Humanity is shrinking as a result of larger concerns. We have left Disneyland and are heading closer to reality now.
This is a sign of maturity; the public no longer will believe mass marketing so readily. True, the environmentalist must change suits, the spotted owl saver must put on a doctor’s coat and prevent the advent of dengue fever climbing from the warmer South.
The whale watcher must don a business suit and sneakers to catch up with consumer finances, because health and money concerns are coming home to stay. That’s climate morphing at work. No more cute pictures to appeal to the tender hearted.
i’ll save you a photograph of the penguins.
I caught Getty’s webinar last year and you came from that presentation feeling like if you didn’t use the right shade of green with a tree or an ocean, you just missed your market message. Consequently, the problem was perpetuated.
Another consultant told me that I had to have green on my site or else it didn’t match my message of what women could do to change the world. I left the warm colors alone. Once the world turns green, then it comes back to branding.
It comes back to disruptive advertising vs. walking your brand advertising. The first is looking to entertain/grab your attention, the second builds on a platform of authenticity.
We’re watching the success of those two methods now between Clinton and Obama. Looks like authenticity is winning.
Please link to this post on Environmental Leader for more findings from Getty Study:
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/02/10/backlash-against-green-marketing-images-brewing/
[…] other day I get a mail informing me of ‘Progress on polar bears‘. Never mind all the research saying that you’ve got to make global warming personally relevant . . […]
Lynn wrote: “The most effective green advertising I can recall involved an image of a Native American crying as he looked at a landscape littered with pollution. It ran in the US in the 1970s, I believe. There were posters and TV ads as part of the campaign”
“Keep America Beautiful” was a 1971 ad campaign. It was great for its time, but wouldn’t work today. Mostly because Iron-Eyes Cody, the actor in the ad, wasn’t actually Native-American, but of Sicilian descent.
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