Advertising could use its skills to drive consumer behaviour towards zero-carbon lifestyles. Is it doing so? Will it?

A poster at Davos this year (Twitter)

Useful and interesting article from Raconteur on “how the advertising industry can inspire climate action”. The article notes that the the most recent IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) survey urges a focus on consumption patterns, and creating low-carbon products (as Scientific American also reports). Will this compel a drive towards advertising shaping not “more or less” consumption, but “better or worse”? Some quotes below:

“It’s time to use the ad industry’s superpower in a more enlightened way. We must help businesses bring low-carbon products to market and inspire people to buy them. Changing behaviours requires more than attitude change, it requires shifts in how we live our lives. We also need to create inspiration, not shame. Motivation, not criticism and reward, not punishment,” explains Anna Lungley, chief sustainability officer at Dentsu International.

“Yet a lot of companies are scared to take the lead. They’re caught between being accused of greenwashing and being blamed for not doing enough. So, there’s this widespread failure to lead,” says Bill Alberti, managing partner of Human Truths at Interbrand.  “Brands need to drive demand for better choices, we all want to make the planet better, not worse. Brands therefore need to help people feel good about the differences they can make”.

How effective could better advertising be? Raconteur makes the point that, a decade ago, the Paralympics was only watched on TV by 14% of the British population. But Channel Four’s Superhumans campaign for its coverage, rendering the sportpersons as titanic heroes in their own struggles, had driven viewing to a third of the population for last year’s Tokyo event. Advertising has also successfully applied itself to topics like drink-driving, female empowerment and diversity/mental health issues. And more:

Patagonia, an example of best practice touted for years, is famous for telling consumers: “Don’t buy this jacket.” IKEA’s Activists Without Knowing It campaign linked activities in the home with environmental data to show that it’s easy to live sustainably. Circular economy brands such as Vinted now advertise a hassle-free, high-fashion lifestyle that is rewarding but doesn’t cost the Earth since clothes are secondhand and shared, not thrown away. 

Yet advertising could usefully tackle more ecosceptic users, who may be more interested in a message that sustainability means lower living costs, in an age where domestic costs are paramount. From Will Sansom, head of strategy at the Brooklyn Brothers:

A lot of messaging we receive from brands, Greta Thunberg or from a judgemental vegan at a dinner party, feels like a series of fingers are being wagged at us for being part of the problem. What advertisers should think about is inspiring people around their potential to be part of the solution…

This requires us to break free from traditional tropes of responsibility and duty and being sensible. Who said advertising about climate change needs to feel heavy? If we can make it relatable, fun and even light-touch, we could start seeing a real step-change.

Michela Graci, strategy partner at Coley Porter Bell, sums up the current position of many advertisers, who feel that they are good at making people feel proud of their consumer choices:

For the ad industry the answer is to make people feel smart and positive about intelligent spending, mastering new upcycling skills, and positioning mindful consumption as a new status signal.

More here. In another relevant piece from The Drum, they report a transatlantic initiative titled Ad Net Zero which aims to make the productive processes behind ad-making net zero by 2030. Yet does all this address the increase in material demand that advertising is fundamentally designed to do?

We have a critical dialogue with the ad industry going in these pages, and we were reminded of the power of “badverts” by this 2021 Guardian piece from Andrew Simms:

Findings from neuroscience reveal that advertising goes as far as lodging itself in the brain, rewiring it by forming physical structures and causing permanent change. Brands that have been made familiar through advertising have a strong influence on the choices people make. Under MRI scans, the logos of recognisable car brands are shown to activate a single, particular region of the brain in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Brands and logos have also been shown to generate strong preferences between virtually identical products, such as fizzy drinks – preferences that disappear in blind tests. Researchers looking to assess the power of advertised brands concluded that, “there are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans.”

Indeed, some of the earliest work in this area concluded, “Scary as it may sound, if an ad does not modify the brains of the intended audience, then it has not worked.” Yet this is little known more widely. Through a combination of experience and ad exposure connected to emotional responses, brands and their logos become more “mentally available”. This happens through the development of new neural pathways reinforced by repeated encounters.

Still other research demonstrates how exposure to different brands can influence behaviour, for example making them behave less honestly, or creatively. Customisable tools for neural profiling are now available to test the effectiveness of brands and logos on consumers, giving rise to what has become known as “neuromarketing”.

That’s bad enough for adults, but children are now at the mercy of so-called “surveillance advertising”. It is estimated that by the time a child turns 13, ad-tech firms would have gathered 72m data points on them. The more data collected from an early age, the easier it is for advertisers to turn young children into consumer targets.

Overconsumption in general, encouraged by advertising, has a climate and ecological impact. But advertising heavily polluting products and services, such as for fossil fuels, aviation and petrol-engined cars, is particularly damaging. It’s like the days when tobacco adverts were allowed.

In 2018 the car sector is estimated to have spent more than $35.5bn on advertising in key markets globally, roughly equal to the annual income of a country like Bolivia. And, in recent years, advertising has pushed a major shift to people buying larger, more polluting SUVs.

That’s the downside of advertising’s practice. And if they don’t shape up, then (as the Drum’s article further reports), there will be internal revolts from young creatives who don’t want to work on fossil-fuel-related accounts.