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The Guardian: Wiping out ‘greenwash’: just a fortnight ago, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about a Shell ad

Companies are keen to advertise their ecological credentials. But beyond the marketing spin, how green are they really?

Lucy Aitken  Monday November 19, 2007

Last Wednesday, November 14, was a big day for Eurostar. Not only did it open its St Pancras International terminus, it also made all Eurostar journeys carbon neutral at no extra cost to its passengers. Both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace – who can spot the merest splash of greenwash – have applauded Eurostar for the eco-friendly changes it has made throughout its business, as well as for how it is communicating them.

Through being transparent and truthful, Eurostar avoided accusations of “greenwash”, a practice which receives an arresting definition in a new book, John Grant’s The Green Marketing Manifesto. In it the co-founder of St Luke’s advertising agency writes: “You can’t put a lettuce in the window of a butcher’s shop and declare that you are now ‘turning vegetarian’.”

Window dressing

Many companies have put lettuces in their shop-fronts and found themselves attracting nothing but rotten tomatoes. Unsurprisingly, the big oil companies tend to regularly receive a drubbing from environmental NGOs. In fact, just a fortnight ago, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint from Friends of the Earth about a Shell ad claiming that the oil company uses its waste carbon dioxide to grow flowers. FoE corrected the ad, saying that it actually uses less than 0.5% of its waste CO2 for this purpose.

As Dax Lovegrove, head of business and industry relations at WWF, points out: “A lot of oil and gas companies talk about alternative energies and offsetting, but this distracts from the real issue because their industry is about sucking oil out of the ground. There’s still a long way to go before customers understand that we all rely on natural resources to supply us with the products that we use in our everyday lives.” He adds: “The rhetoric has to match the reality of what a company is doing to address sustainability issues, as opposed to tinkering around the edges, or communicating a red herring.”

One such example of “tinkering around the edges” is the drive by major UK supermarket chains to encourage consumers to reuse shopping bags. Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth, is disappointed by the tokenism. “Until the big supermarkets reduce the amount of energy used in their stores, minimise the distance that food travels and review their relationship with farmers, saving a few plastic bags is just window dressing.”

Kavita Prakash-Mani, of the independent thinktank SustainAbility, is similarly disappointed by the limited nature of most green marketing. In her view, even some of the most celebrated examples, such as General Electric’s Ecomagination campaign, leave a lot to be desired. Ecomagination emerged from the company’s business strategy to develop environmentally friendly technologies, including more efficient trains and fridges. GE is also working to reduce its own greenhouse gases by 1% by 2012. “GE has invested billions of dollars in Ecomagination, but it hasn’t really changed the rest of its business. It’s made out to be bigger than it actually is,” Prakash-Mani laments.

Popular, well-trusted brands have the potential to build on the relationship that they have with consumers, encouraging them to make adjustments towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Kia Motors, for instance, has been backing a walk to school initiative for the last three years. The car firm estimates that 20% of the traffic on the roads at 9am is connected to the school run and wanted to launch a project that helped tackle that congestion. To date, 250 “walking buses” have been set up involving 53 local authorities and 8,000 children. In 2006, Kia estimated that the initiative saved 100,000 commuter miles every week.

BSkyB was the first global media company to go carbon neutral and continues to set itself ambitious energy reduction targets. It has made changes in its supply chain such as reducing the carbon footprint of its vehicle fleet and set-top boxes. With 8.67 million customers in the UK, an obvious next step is to engage its customer base on green issues through stand-out marketing.

But the broadcaster’s environmental Achilles heel is its current set-top box, a bugbear for environmentalists because it must be left on stand-by in order to work. While praising BSkyB chief James Murdoch’s leadership stance on carbon reduction, Peter Madden, CEO of the sustainable development organisation Forum for the Future, criticises the hardware. “If we’re going to see the reduction in energy use that we need in the home, broadcasters like BSkyB need to be getting set-top boxes out there as soon as possible that can switch themselves off.”

Marketing pitfalls

Perversely, the companies that are making the biggest strides internally tend to be the most bashful in their communications, while those that are most vocal have the least to say. Solitaire Townsend, the managing director of the sustainability consultancy Futerra, believes that there should be a much stronger tie-in between a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments and its marketing. Her agency is also publishing a “greenwash guide” in January 2008 which will aim to help brands avoid marketing pitfalls.

Brands will need all the help they can get if the Advertising Standards Authority figures are anything to go by: in the first six months of 2007, the ASA received 268 complaints about 200 “green” ads. What’s more, the number of complaints has grown as green advertising has become more commonplace: in the last quarter of 2006, the ASA received far fewer complaints – 62 – about 40 “green” ads.

Townsend is determined to cleanse communications of greenwash because it undermines the validity of genuine green marketing. She also pours scorn on those companies who dip their toes in the water with what she terms “green spice”. “If you’re going to commit to green marketing,” she says, “make a firm stand and stick your head and shoulders above the parapet. There’s no point in small gestures.”

And all companies should be in the process of scrutinising their operations and their marketing, according to John Grant, who is eager to emphasise that, “no brands or sectors are exempt from sustainability”. Grant would like to see green behaviour “normalised”, a process which could involve a teabag brand endorsing composting, or a café chain penalising customers who don’t finish their food. When such things become “normal”, diehard Coronation Street viewers are as likely to cotton on to specific messages as those who spend their free time on Facebook. What green marketing doesn’t mean, urges Grant, is a communications strategy which extols a company’s green virtues when the reality is an entirely different story.

Green marketing Highs and Lows

Highs

Ariel (Procter & Gamble)

The lowdown: Turn to 30 persuades consumers to save energy by washing their clothes at 30 instead of 40 degrees.

John Grant: “People are looking for solutions. Brands and big communication campaigns like this one can really help.”

John Sauven: “The idea of washing clothes at a low temperature is a good one, but is P&G looking at its environmental impact in company-wide terms, or is this a niche thing?”

M&S

The lowdown: CEO Stuart Rose unveiled M&S’s Look Behind The Label campaign in January 2006. This year it has followed up with Plan A (because there is no Plan B) – a 100-point plan to make M&S a more sustainable business.

JG: “M&S is taking a lead, setting standards and making bold commitments.”

JS: “Plan A is a comprehensive first stab. I wouldn’t say M&S is at the top of the ladder, but it’s going in the right direction.”

Eurostar

The lowdown: To coincide with its opening at St Pancras International on November 14, Eurostar’s Tread Lightly campaign committed it to carbon-neutral journeys. It plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25% per traveller journey by 2012 and is offsetting the remainder.

JG: “Eurostar was already 10 times greener than flying. But it went out of its way to put right any detail that was less than admirable.”

Tony Juniper: “A fantastic first step which positions its sustainability efforts at the heart of the company’s operations.”

Lows

BP

The lowdown: BP adopted its Beyond Petroleum positioning in 2000 and has since used it to communicate its work with renewable energies.

JG: “Beyond Petroleum is a classic example of a company making real commitments and leading its industry in recognising the issue, but the advertising over-claim prompted a backlash.”

JS: “This is greenwash. BP is covering up its core business by talking about its niche business. There’s no substance.”

Lexus

The lowdown: A magazine ad for the Lexus RX400h was headlined High performance. Low emissions. Zero Guilt. The world’s first high-performance hybrid SUV. Category-leading low CO2 emissions. The ASA upheld the complaints it received about the ad’s misleading claims.

JG: “Lexus is not really to blame; its agency got it badly wrong. It makes you wonder if the case is hardening for working with specialist sustainability creative agencies that actually ‘get it’.”

Tony Juniper: “Not only was this ad an example of greenwash, it also showed utter disrespect and contempt for consumers. Even after it was ruled unacceptable by the ASA, I still saw it all over the bloody place.”

Live Earth

The lowdown: Live Earth was intended to raise awareness of climate change through a series of concerts hosted around the world in July 2007.

JG: “Live Earth was one of the disappointments of the year. It needed more of a point – a big demand or pledge like Make Poverty History – and demands addressing the G8 meeting. Light bulbs just weren’t enough for big event activism.”

JS: “Celebrities are not great advocates for sustainable living because most of them lead pretty unsustainable lives.”

Interviews by Lucy Aitken

John Sauven is executive director, Greenpeace; Tony Juniper is executive director, Friends of the Earth; John Grant is a co-founder of St Luke’s and author of The Green Marketing Manifesto

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/19/mondaymediasection.climatechange

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