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Marketing - when green claims backfire
07 Jan 2008
Stretching a product’s green merits turns consumers off, says Mallen Baker
At an event for marketing directors a while ago, I heard one executive comment that in his business the marketers referred to the CSR team as the “sales prevention team”. Ouch.
The observation was offered up with some apology, but the key message was that the marketers were “can do” types, who needed to see opportunities and ways to sell. All they heard from their corporate social responsibility colleagues was unattractive jargon and a list of things not to do.
They have a point. Corporate social responsibility teams need to learn better to communicate internally.
But we are now seeing evidence that the marketers need to understand that some of the “don’ts” are just as important as the “dos”. This is best seen in upheld complaints over false green claims in advertising.
The observation was offered up with some apology, but the key message was that the marketers were “can do” types, who needed to see opportunities and ways to sell. All they heard from their corporate social responsibility colleagues was unattractive jargon and a list of things not to do.
They have a point. Corporate social responsibility teams need to learn better to communicate internally.
But we are now seeing evidence that the marketers need to understand that some of the “don’ts” are just as important as the “dos”. This is best seen in upheld complaints over false green claims in advertising.
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority is compiling a nice list. Shell, which said “we use our waste CO2 to grow flowers”, was in breach of the advertising code because the wording could be seen to imply that all the company’s waste CO2 was so used, not just 0.33 per cent of it.
Scottish & Southern Energy was pulled up for claiming that its “power2” scheme used tree planting to “balance out” consumers’ emissions – a claim that the ASA found could not be substantiated on current understanding of what level of CO2 is absorbed over the lifetime of a tree.
Several car companies have been at the receiving end for suggesting that their vehicles are low emission, when what the footnotes on the ads admit is that they are lower emissions than other vehicles in their class, which is one of the more high impact polluting classes. Lexus in particular was rapped for using the claim “Low Emissions, Zero Guilt” for the implication that the car had minimal environmental impact. It all depends where you think your guilt threshold is, perhaps.
Boeing was pulled up for giving carbon footprint claims per passenger for its new planes based on 100 per cent occupancy rates, whereas the industry standard is to use just under 80 per cent occupancy as a benchmark.
What has been achieved by all this “sell, sell, sell” can-do marketing activity? Anyone who observed the first wave of green claims in the late 1980s and early 1990s will know the pattern only too well.
Scottish & Southern Energy was pulled up for claiming that its “power2” scheme used tree planting to “balance out” consumers’ emissions – a claim that the ASA found could not be substantiated on current understanding of what level of CO2 is absorbed over the lifetime of a tree.
Several car companies have been at the receiving end for suggesting that their vehicles are low emission, when what the footnotes on the ads admit is that they are lower emissions than other vehicles in their class, which is one of the more high impact polluting classes. Lexus in particular was rapped for using the claim “Low Emissions, Zero Guilt” for the implication that the car had minimal environmental impact. It all depends where you think your guilt threshold is, perhaps.
Boeing was pulled up for giving carbon footprint claims per passenger for its new planes based on 100 per cent occupancy rates, whereas the industry standard is to use just under 80 per cent occupancy as a benchmark.
What has been achieved by all this “sell, sell, sell” can-do marketing activity? Anyone who observed the first wave of green claims in the late 1980s and early 1990s will know the pattern only too well.