Run, Kids, the Carbon Monster is Coming!

How do you get adults to care about the environment? How about scaring their kids shitless with the specter of a ‘carbon monster’ in the sky that’s going to get them if their parents don’t act against global warming? That’s the tact the British government has chosen to take with an ad that seeks to change skeptics’ minds about climate change, but has only angered viewers who saw it during prime-time television broadcasts.

The intentions behind the ad are understandable. It’s a response to a recent survey in Britain showing that 52% of people don’t think they’ll be personally affected by climate change, but 74% would change their lifestyles if they knew that climate change would have a serious affect on the lives of their children.

From the Times Online:

Ministers sanctioned the campaign because of concern that scepticism about climate change was making it harder to introduce carbon-reducing policies such as higher energy bills.

The advertisement attempts to make adults feel guilty about their legacy to their children. It features a father telling his daughter a bedtime story of “a very very strange” world with “horrible consequences” for today’s children.

The storybook shows a British town deep under water, with people and animals drowning.

Carbon dioxide is depicted as rising in clouds of black soot from cars and homes, including from a woman’s hairdryer. The soot gathers into a jagged-toothed monster menacing the town.

Watch the ad over at the Times Online.

Predictably, global warming skeptics are having a field day with this one, calling it propaganda. People in Britain who saw it on TV were so angry about it that the ad has been pulled and is currently being investigated.

But one fumbled ad doesn’t mean that people should forget or ignore the harsh reality. Children will, indeed, be the victims of climate change if we don’t act – in fact, the Telegraph reports that 250,000 children could die due to climate change next year and that number could rise to more than 400,000 annually by 2030.

Climate change is a real and pressing problem, and far too many people across the world are covering their eyes and plugging up their ears so they don’t have to deal with it.

Link [Times Online]

Denny’s Promotes Vegan Morrissey’s Concert with Free Hamburgers

Talk about tone-deaf, ham-fisted marketing: somehow, Denny’s thought it would be a good idea to promote the very vegan Morrissey’s West Coast concert with free hamburgers. Cue Morrissey’s head spinning like the Exorcist in 3…2…1…

From Ecorazzi:

On recent ticket orders for Morrissey’s upcoming west coast gig,Ticketmaster has allowed Denny’s to run a cross promotion offering a free hamburger. Why isn’t this okay? Only because Morrissey is one of the most outspoken vegetarian celebs ever!

Earlier this year, Morrissey banned all food that “used to have a face” from his concert hall and even walked off stage once because he was annoyed with the meaty smell from the crowd.

No word yet on if Morrissey knows about this promotion, but we’re pretty sure he’s going to FLIP when he does.

Hellooooo, Denny’s/Ticketmaster: this is the man who wrote the song Meat is Murder!

Apparently the company is promoting something it calls a ‘Better Burger’, which is suppossedly higher quality than the meat that it usually offers, and one of the choices is a Boca Burger. So, why not target that marketing a little better and push the Boca Burger? Vegetarians have drunken late-night cravings too.

Lame advertising + missed opportunity = FAIL.

Link [Ecorazzi]

Localwashing in Pictures at Grist

We’re always on the alert for ‘greenwashing’, but what about ‘localwashing’? It turns out, big corporations are just as eager to make money off your dedication to buying local as they are off what they see as “the green trend”. From Walmart to Citgo, huge companies are trying to lure our dollars out of our pockets using misleading and often downright deceptive ads claiming that they’re “local”.

Grist put together an amazing collection of the 12 of the most outrageous examples. Check out these three (images are at Grist):

Citgo: “Local. Loyal. Like it should be.” The crop of new billboards from the petroleum company owned by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan government makes sense only if the rather undemocratic president lives around the corner from you. Which he doesn’t.

Barnes & Noble: Maybe you’ve heard of this cute little bookstore around the corner. It’s got a DIY-looking video blog with the tagline, “All bookselling is local.” Except when it isn’t.

“Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, a U.S.-based subsidiary of European processed-food behemoth Unilever, has seen fit to subject Canada (Canada?) to an eat-local campaign,” reports Grist Food Editor Tom Philpott. He’s dumbfounded. Here are those locally sourced ingredients of which Hellmann’s is so proud:

WATER, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SOYBEAN OIL, VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, EGG WHITES, SALT, SUGAR, XANTHAN GUM, LEMON AND LIME PEEL FIBERS, COLORS ADDED, LACTIC ACID, (SODIUM BENZOATE, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA) USED TO PROTECT QUALITY, PHOSPHORIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS.

It’s absurd, but the sad thing is, a lot of people will fall for it. Head to Grist for the rest of the list, which includes Starbucks and Lay’s.

Link [Grist]

5 More Awesomely Funny, Smart & Effective Green Ads

Who says global warming isn’t a laughing matter? Last summer, Green Homes put together a collection of cool green advertisements that don’t just push an important message on everyone who sees them, but are also eye-catching and funny. Yes, funny. From putting billboards of giant naked asses above polluted waterways to selling natural cleaning products with sex, those 10 ads were classics – but we’ve found another five to tack on to the list.

“Until the sun shines out of your ass, use an energy-efficient lightbulb instead.” Who says Greenpeace doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Taking a page from the guerrilla marketing handbook, this ad campaign by the Global Environment Centre is certainly an attention-getter. The outdoor installation was constructed ahead of the Arts & Earth Festival 2006 in Malaysia.

Atmospheric pollution affects everyone – even the Wicked Witch of the West and Cupid. The Singapore Environment Council created these ads to raise awareness about the problem of pollution in our skies.

This ad was never actually created – it’s just a Photoshopped proof of concept – but it’s a clever idea. The shape and text of the ad were to be powerblasted onto dirty sidewalks using a large stencil form to gain support in an effort to reduce the pollution released by particular powerplants in Chicago.

“Look how much carbon monoxide you’ll keep out of the air we breathe by not driving for just one day.” That’s the message that was displayed on the giant black cloud attached to a car’s tailpipe after being inflated with a day’s worth of exhaust. This guerrilla ad by WWF appeared in China in 2007.

Ad Firm Proudly Trumpets its Clean Coal Greenwashing Work

The ‘clean coal’ campaign was widely ridiculed for being utter hogwash, but that hasn’t stopped the public relations firm behind the multi-million dollar advertising blitz from proudly trumpeting its role in the greenwashing extravaganza. R&R Partners – Advertising is bragging about the work it did for the coal industry’s main front group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (ACCCE).

From DeSmogBlog:

Rob Van Raaphorst, Account Supervisor, Public Relations at R&R Advertising and Persuasion explains that their company prepared, “a fully integrated marketing, branding and issue-advocacy campaign to educate our audiences on the importance of coal in their daily lives… Outreach consisted of grassroots, earned media, paid media and advocacy tactics that created a “surround-sound” effect targeting each of our audiences through all mediums and communications. Grassroots efforts included street teams, walking billboards, mobile billboards and recruitment and mobilization of an ACCCE Army (supporters of ACCCE and its mission) at presidential primaries, debates, conventions and other key campaign events.”

The coal industry spent $45 million on this piece of crap advertising campaign, along with $125 million in the first 9 months of 2008 lobbying against federal legislation to promote clean energy and a cap on global warming pollution.

All that money spent on ads – not cleaner technology or safety, as we saw earlier this year during several high-profile environmental disasters involving coal.

Golf claps, R&R Advertising. Give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve contributed so much to society.

Link [DeSmogBlog]
Photo credit: Not My Tribe

‘Clean Coal’ Group Making False Claims in Online Ads

An online advertisement by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (ACCCE), a front group for the coal and electricity industries, claims that 72% of opinion leaders support coal electricity. The ‘America’s Power’ ad, which has appeared on The Washington Post, The Hill and other news websites, redirects to a page that contains blatant falsehoods in an attempt to hoodwink the public into supporting coal.

SolveClimate took a closer look at the report. The first problem is with the ACCCE’s definition of ‘opinion leaders’, which basically translates to a tiny percentage of the American population – far too small of a number of individuals in the U.S. to be able to generalize the results of the poll. The ACCCE survey also claimed that the 72% represented “a significant increase over the past year and the highest level of support since the group began polling almost 10 years ago” – which sounds impressive until you find out that the ACCCE wasn’t even founded until 2008.

From SolveClimate:

The next claim is that “the poll shows that Americans are very optimistic about the future for coal. When asked the question ‘do you believe coal is a fuel for America’s future?’ — 69% of Americans agreed (compared to only 26% who disagreed).”

This claim is an outright lie.

According to the survey’s own methodology, 600 people who qualified as “opinion elites” were polled. It is not possible to generalize the results of a survey from a tiny selected minority out to the entire population at large. It would be like polling just my immediate family about our car buying habits and then trying to apply that to my entire community.

Without a statistical method to correlate your data with the wider population, you cannot draw any conclusions for the wider population. The press release doesn’t even attempt to provide a margin of sampling error. Riehle also said a margin of error wouldn’t be appropriate for the poll – “It’s not statistically the same kind of animal” as a Gallup poll or other random survey of the population, he explained.

So, what it comes down to is manipulation of poll results to convince Americans that “opinion leaders”, i.e. smart people who should know, believe that coal is the fuel that we need now and heading into the future.

Surprising? Not at all. The dirty energy industries are desperate to hang on. The backlash against so-called ‘clean coal’ scares them. Stunts like this are the last pathetic gasps of a dying industry, and they know it.

Link [SolveClimate]

Tesco Greenwash: Turn Lights into Flights!

A British supermarket seems to have failed to grasp the concept of going green. You see, Tesco has unveiled a new program that rewards shoppers for purchasing compact fluorescent light bulbs – wiTesco Greenwash: Turn Lights into Flights!th airline miles.  The ‘Every little helps’ promotion is meant to urge shoppers to cut back on energy at home, and then hop on an airplane and rack up a huge carbon footprint to make up for it.

From The Guardian, via Eden Bee

Tesco chief executive Terry Leahy is now offering air miles when you buy a low energy lightbulb. What next? Free packet of 20 Benson & Hedges with every Nicorette patch? A dozen king-size Mars bars with each box of Ryvita? Talk about counter-productive. It’s like being lost in the desert, miles from anywhere and eating your own legs to sustain yourself during your search for help.

Granted, the promotion actually allows shoppers to earn airline miles for all purchases – it’s just that some schmuck in the advertising department needed to find a word that rhymes with ‘flights’. LIGHTS! Genius!

But, as The Guardian’s Ed Gillespie points out, the real problem is that ads like this help feed into the notion that you can make a few small changes and still go about your very non-green daily routine – and call yourself ‘green’. It’s like taking a reusable bag to Wal-Mart and filling it with plastic crap from China. Not exactly helping things, is it?

Link [The Guardian] via [Eden Bee]

Greenwashing at its Best: “Even Our Store Bags are Disposable”

The Good Human spotted quite an amazing example of greenwashing this week in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. It seems that a pet store called Zoe & Guido’s Pet Boutique thought they’d jump on the ‘going green’ bandwagon in an attempt to drum up sales… and failed miserably.

From The Good Human:

The ad is kind of grainy, so if you cannot read it, here is what it says – “We are Going Green! Hemp and organic collars, toys, beds, disposable doggie bags…even our store bags are disposable!“. This is a great example of a company proclaiming to “go green” to sell products while not even bothering to find out what it actually means. Greenwashing at its best! This is what we all have to be on the lookout for as companies try to jump on the bandwagon without actually doing anything green at all.

The people who created this ad are clearly totally oblivious, and as ridiculous as it is to think that disposable bags are eco-friendly, the worst part is all the Sante Fe consumers who will just trust the ‘We’re going green’ and not take a critical look at what the store is actually offering. That’s why calling out greenwashers is important – ads like this totally dilute the message and people get screwed over.

The Good Human recently started up a new series called ‘Greenwash of the Week’, and they’ve found some real gems. Check out past examples including ‘biodegradable’ plastic water bottles, MTV attacking greenwashers (ironically) and plasma TVs instead of posters.

Link [The Good Human]

Lexus Reprimanded for Greenwashing

Lexus was recently forced to pull an ad claiming that its premium hybrid SUV was “perfect for today’s environment” and “perfect for today’s economic climate”.  Though the automaker claimed they were only trying to compare their hybrid comparably to non-hybrid SUVs, England’s Advertising Standards Authority disagreed, concluding that the ad misled people into thinking the SUV is more environmentally friendly than it really is.

Greenwashing is definitely running rampant right now, with manufacturers all too eager to cash in on what they see as a trend among buyers. MTV recently released a public service announcement warning us about just this – ironic, given their recent trashing of a pristine Costa Rican island for a reality show.

The fact is, even brands that you generally consider ‘safe’ will occasionally release a product that doesn’t quite meet green standards in their industry – but they won’t tell you that.  Always check out the specs – whether it’s a car, a food product, cosmetics, clothing or home furnishings.

Link [Matter Network] + [YouTube]

PETA Fail: Runs Ad Comparing Greyhound Horror Killing to Animal Slaughterhouse Killing Horror

PETA has done it again.

In a not-so-surprising-for-PETA show of good taste, the animal rights group attempted to run an ad comparing animal slaughter to the brutal murder of Tim McClean, the 22-year-old who was beheaded by Vince Weiguang Li on a Greyhound bus in Winnipeg bound Canadian bus on July 30.

“His struggles and cries are ignored … the man with the knife shows no emotion … the victim is slaughtered and his head cut off … his flesh is eaten,” reads the ad, which can be seen on the organization’s website.

The ad was intended to run in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic. The newspaper refused it. Rightly so.

If PETA was intending to make themselves look like insane, insensitive radicals who write heavy-handed copy more befitting of Emily Bronte novels, they’ve succeeded. They’ve done a bang-up job of alienating pretty much everyone. Well done, guys. This was definitely a classy choice.

Link [Globe & Mail]

Waste Management Inc.’s ‘Greenopolis’ Social Network: One Big Greenwashed Ad?

Is ‘Greenopolis’, the new green social networking site, a cool place for like-minded people to discuss their efforts to lower their carbon footprints and help the environment, or simply a multi-billion-dollar corporation’s effort to greenwash its reputation?

Greenopolis is meant to give people an easy way to communicate about green practices, providing environmental resources and facts. There’s also a ‘green merit badge’ system, that while meant to motivate and reward people for making incremental steps toward being more green, reminds me of the sort of my-shit-don’t-stink elitism that turns the general public off of the green movement (Smug Alert!).

TechCrunch, for one, thinks that Greenopolis is basically just an advertisement, and not a very well-thought-out one at that:

Frankly this should just be an application on Facebook and MySpace, it would get better traction. But that’s not what the consultants told Waste Management (a $20 billion company that, well, manages waste), I’m guessing, since today they’ve launched Greenopolis, a social network for greenies.

They’re committed, they say, to connecting people and businesses on green issues, and teach people about ways to be more environmentally sound. Like other social networks, members can create profiles and add friends. Users also rack up Green Points and have a Green Profile, which shows just how much they care about the environment.

Greenopolis, I suspect, is designed to show that Waste Management cares about the environment more than anything else. So in a way, it’s like an advertisement. See ZeroFootprint, a Canadian company we’ve covered that also creates local social networks around carbon offsetting in partnership with cities.

It’s a good point – is there really even a need for a stand-alone green social network? How many social networks can one person participate in? Are Greenopolis’ features enough to draw people away from Myspace and Facebook? Probably not, except for those people who are already committed to environmental advocacy. They’re not likely to get a huge influx of advertisers’ favorite targets: social-network-savvy teens and young adults with impressionable minds and lots of discretionary income.

One thing I noticed while browsing the member directory is that there are an awful lot of marketing professionals and companies pushing ‘green’ products (along with a whole lot of Waste Management employees). Greenopolis has the potential to become a greenwashed marketing free-for-all. Hopefully Greenopolis members approach product marketing on the site with a healthy dose of skepticism.

There’s also the fact that this is coming from Waste Management Inc., a $20 billion dollar company that rebranded themselves as ‘green’ after several toxic spills and illegal dumping allegations in the 80s and an accounting scandal in 1998. Their own ads certainly border on greenwashing – boasting, for example, that the waste they’ve collected has powered over 1 million homes, when recycling waste saves far more energy than burning it could create – plus, trash incinerators are the leading source of dioxins, super-toxic carcinogenic chemicals. Signs on their trucks say ‘Last year we recycled enough paper to save over 41 million trees’, yet they recycle less than 5% of the trash they collect.

Is Waste Management, Inc. using Greenopolis as a way to improve their image? Joe Vaillancourt, managing director of Waste Management’s organic growth group had this to say in a press release put out by the company: “We believe that by promoting and creating a dialogue about things such as conservation, recycling, and renewable energy that awareness about our environmental operations and our business offerings will increase.”

Is Waste Management America’s largest recycler? Yes – no other company has been able to get their foot in the door. But are they doing enough to legitimately call themselves green? No. You can’t trust when companies put out ads claiming to be stewards of the environment – even monster polluter Monsanto claims to be green. Since Waste Management Inc. has a virtual stranglehold on the trash industry in the U.S., they’ll continue to profit regardless of whether they make advances in green waste management practices. And as long as the public is convinced that they’re a green company, they can take their sweet time getting around to environmentally friendly practices that are expensive or inconvenient for them.

It’s difficult to categorically call ‘greenwashing’ on Waste Management Inc.’s ‘Greenopolis’, since the company has made some strides toward being greener – but not as many as they’d like the public to think (just look at their catchphrase – ‘Think Green. Think Waste Management’.) I’d like to see them take cues from Germany, where no biodegradable waste or recyclable materials go to landfills. Naturally, combating the waste problem here in the U.S. will have to be a joint effort between the corporations who package products, the consumers who buy them and waste management companies, so they can’t do it all on their own – but they can do more.

Efforts like creating a ‘green’ social network shouldn’t distract the public from the actual practices of Waste Management, Inc. The company has set themselves up for intense scrutiny through their green rebranding, so they’d better be prepared to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Just being the greenest waste management company in the country isn’t enough when other companies are barely making an effort at all. To truly be green, Waste Management Inc. needs to really step up their environmental initiatives.

Greenopolis may hold some value for people who lack any other forum to connect on green issues, though die-hard environmentalists aren’t likely to get much out of it other than possibly networking and/or educating others. As long as members are aware of the potential for greenwashing – and don’t participate as an alternative to actually being active in their own communities – Greenopolis could act as a portal to get green newbies interested and educated in environmental issues.

Link [TechCrunch] + [Greenopolis]

Brazilian Wax: Really Drives Home the Point that Deforestation Is Painful

Mildly NSFW…

Deforestation hurts, like a bikini wax. From Green.tv:

/cringe at both.