Go woke or go broke: welcome to the dreary era of green advertising
The cinema advert opens with an aerial tracking shot of a sleek luxury cabriolet hugging the contours of the Corniche to a sumptuous soundtrack. Every cliché is accounted for: the rugged cliffs, the glittering sea, the stubbled silver fox behind the wheel, smiling to himself as he breathes in the heady scent of freedom. Until…
“Dad! It’s freezing back here!” “Dad, my Beanie Baby just flew off the back shelf.”
“Darling, your mother’s looking a bit green around the gills, can’t you slow down?”
Welcome to the woke world of Ad Net Zero in which aspiration has been jettisoned in favour of sustainability. As part of plans to go green by 2030, the advertising industry has pledged to show cars full of passengers on the Asda run rather than sexy singletons fulfilling their destiny (aka wastefully frittering fossil fuel) on the open road.
Given the whole purpose of advertising is to persuade – seduce – people into upgrading their lifestyles, I’m not sure how much Mad Men mileage there is in hitting us over the head with environmental messages.
Does anyone really want to see the Bisto mum wrestling with her kitchen slop bucket? The embassy guests taking one appalled look at the Ferrero Rocher and saying: “Ambassador, with this unconscionable amount of gold foil you are really spoiling the planet.”
Imagine that “Someone’s knockin’ at the door, somebody’s ringing’ the bell” Postcode Lottery ad in which the remorselessly cheery personnel turn up to find an entire road swathed in darkness, its inhabitants huddled in blankets to save on energy. A cheque for two hundred grand you say? Make it straight out to British Gas and the whole street can have boiled eggs for tea, cor lummy.
We’ll have vegan dogs, solaroperated appliances and straight-fromcentral-casting teenagers sniffing their discarded jeans and deciding they can go another fortnight without a machine wash to save water.
Soon it will be hard to differentiate between advertising and those menacing public information films urging mothers not to scald their babies with cups of tea and warning against the terrible dangers of swimming in gravel pits.
But there’s no turning back. Major brands risk losing wealth and status if they rely on old-fashioned ideas in their advertising, according to research from the University of Portsmouth published last year in Psychology & Marketing.
“The power of social activism on advertising, appears to be becoming a force to be reckoned with,” was the verdict of marketing lecturer Karen Middleton. “It’s not true that any publicity is good publicity – a complaint against any brand that then goes viral poses a serious risk to that brand’s wealth and power.”
Younger generations are exercising their power to hold large and previously unassailable brands or organisations to account and any hint of injustice – social or environmental – will be called out. In essence the choice is clear: go woke or go broke
I’m no slave to capitalism but I admit I quite enjoy a good advert – and not just John Lewis at Christmas – from Shake ’n’ Vac to Cadbury’s Finger of Fudge these were the jaunty anthems of my childhood, and I still know all the words.
But that was then. It’s dreary to think that these days virtue is the main sell. Who could have foreseen the dark arts of advertising getting a green wash? I just hope Don Draper never gets the memo.