Green ad analysis

What does ad sell? Products, services and ideas.
I want to talk about an advertisement today which tries to sell a “green” idea: “CO2 is not a pollutant”.


The concept of “greenwashing”
As Kuntz raised the concept of “greenwashing” strategy used in advertisements in her article, which means big corporations usually use ads to persuade audiences to believe their products are environmental friendly, but actually they’re not.

It is an interesting topic for me, because once corporations do that, they’re not only using the persuade strategies to sell their product, moreover, they are selling their “green ideas” to the potential consumers. To achieve this , they use the public trust on brand product; try to make audiences to believe the idea that they should do something good to the nature and they can simply achieve this by choosing their product.


Analysis of the ad design
In contrast to printed advertisement, video ads have more abilities to attract the viewer. They can persuade especially through sound and images. And whereas advertising via radio has to rely on vocal attraction, television or internet are the mass mediums which can combine those three factors, image, sound and text, in order to persuade the audience as much as they could.

After watch this video ad, we may discover that there is no specific target audience, for the reason that it is selling an idea rather than certain products, as a result, they may have more wide coverage of audience. The general ambience of this advertisement is mild and nice, trying to avoid creating a tension atmosphere in order to make audience better accept their ideas. They have their immobile logo at the upper left corner, and the changing images of beautiful natural sceneries, with the background voice which sounds trustful. However, if we watch the video more closely, we would find that there is no direct image shows its connection with CO2, instead, we get the idea directly from the text, saying that there is no scientific evidence to prove CO2 is a pollutant; in fact, higher CO2 helps the earth’s ecosystem and support more plant and animal life. In other words, the pictorial elements and written material don’t match perfectly. If we only see the pictures without those texts, we would not get the right idea.

As for the design, I believe this ad is one of those simplest ads. No specific plot, no figures, only animals and plants as well as natural sceneries. The idea it tries to sell is “CO2 is green” but in fact those pictures can’t show the theme successfully.


Persuade strategies
In this ad, the most significant information they try to persuade people is in the first sentence, “Congress is considering the law that would classify CO2 as pollution. This will cost us jobs.” At this moment, audiences change their position as a “third person” immediately to the people who may get affected directly if this law passed.

The function of advertisements is clearly that they are supposed to influence us to buy the promoted product. People will get the strong psychological suggestion after they get imposed to particular ad for several times, which says, “This sounds not bad.” And “Maybe I need this.” It works the same here, after the ad keeps saying that there is no scientific evidence to say CO2 is a pollutant, in fact higher CO2 helps the earth ecosystem, and help more animals and plants. Some of the audiences will get to begin to think about this idea to some extent.

They use the logo with two small leaves on the words CO2 as their symbol. The color green strengthens their Environmental friendly idea for sure. Besides, they offer a website at last, for further information. However, it is a .COM website, which obviously means it is not for academic purpose at all.


Truth and reaction form audiences
I was surprised by this ad when I saw it for the first time, because the information about CO2 we get so far doesn’t like what it claims in this ad. There already have scientific evidences to prove that CO2 is the main course of global warming.

So I did some research, and soon found out the reason. The ad was generated by a veteran oil industry executive and a Houston-based of coal owner resources as part of a campaign to undermine the EPA’s (Environmental Protection Agency) ruling that CO2 should be classified as a pollutant. Their claims “CO2 is Green”, which backed up this dubious claim with statements like “higher CO2 levels than we have today would actually help the Earth’s ecosystems.” It may just be the most ridiculous example of greenwashed propaganda, and obviously, no one else could possibly be responsible but oil & coal interests.

As De Mooij raises in his book, there has five steps for persuading. They’re attraction, persuasion/argumentation, justification for the purchase, satisfaction and eventually trustfulness towards the brand and repetitive purchases. In this ad, they attract people’s attention by raising the totally opposite idea as people always know. Then comes to the major point--the way of argumentation. Green advertisement arguments with the assertion that the particular product is supposed to be environmentally and ecologically friendly. In this ad, oil and coal interests don’t show it directly, instead, they assert that CO2 is not a pollutant. Thus, people would convince themselves not to feel too much guilty when they use oil or coal if they accept the justification from the ad. In other words, they get satisfaction.

Does this ad works finally? I don’t think so. After checking the comments right after the video, I can find people still hold the belief that CO2 is a pollutant. As one comments, “Can't people understand that just because small amounts of something is okay, that doesn't mean that large amounts are fine. For example, we all need water to live, but too much water and we all drown. Obviously a certain concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is natural and healthy but too much can be a big problem”. Ads are always ads, no matter they are selling a product or an idea. The things we should pay attention is that not to trust whatever they say, instead, we should have our own critical thinking.


References:
C.f. De Mooij, Marike (2005). Global Marketing and Advertising. Understanding Cultural Paradoxes.(2nd ed). California: Sage Publications, p. 150.