Cooling Off on Dubious Eco-Friendly Claims

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AT an annual gathering of the advertising industry a year ago inCannes, the environment was the topic du jour. “Be seen, begreen,” one agency urged on the invitation to its party at ahillside villa.
Al Gore, invited by another agency, delivered a message linked to“An Inconvenient Truth,” his book and film aboutclimate change: That the ad industry could play an influential rolein encouraging businesses and consumers to change their ways andslow global warming.
The sun was still beating down on the Côte d’Azur lastmonth as advertising executives from around the world returned forthis year’s festival. But Mr. Gore was nowhere to be found,and the party buzz was about the American presidential election,the Euro 2008 soccer tournament and even the business ofadvertising itself. Green marketing, while booming, had lost someof its cachet.
The advertising industry is quicker than most to pick up onchanging consumer tastes and moods, and it seems to have graspedthe public’s growing skepticism over ads with environmentalmessages.The sheer volume of these ads — and the flimsinessof many of their claims — seems to have shot the messenger.At best, it has led consumers to feel apathetic toward the greenclaims or, at worst, even hostile and suspicious of them.
“After 18 months, levels of concern on any issue tend to dropoff,” said Jonathan Banks, business insight director inBritain at Nielsen, the market research company. “I fear thatsomething similar may happen with this.”
With everyone from oil companies to dishwasher makers to bankstrotting out their environmental credentials, complaints aboutgreenwashing, or misleading consumers about a product’senvironmental benefits, have risen.
The Advertising Standards Authority, an industry-financed groupthat monitors ad content in Britain, said it had received 561complaints from consumers about green claims in 410 ads in 2007, upfrom 117 complaints about 83 ads the year before.
The European Advertising Standards Alliance, an umbrella group forsimilar organizations across Europe, reported sizable increases incomplaints in other countries, including in Belgium and theNetherlands, particularly involving automotive advertising.
The guidelines of the British standards authority say thatenvironmental ads must not be misleading, but these rules areinadequate to deal with the growing volume and complexity of greenmessages, said Matthew Wilson, a spokesman for the agency. Theauthority is weighing tighter standards, as is the Federal TradeCommission in the United States.
As regulators work out their response, bloggers and other Internetcritics have already started to expose what they see as greenwashadvertising. A French group called l’Alliance Pour laPlanète, for example, cites an ad for a Japanese sport utilityvehicle that was billed as having been “conceived anddeveloped in the homeland of the Kyoto accords,” theinternational emissions-reduction agreement.
In cases like this, it may be the ad’s approach that strikespeople as wrong, rather than the concept of trying to link a brandto environmental concerns, said Mike Lawrence, executive vicepresident for corporate responsibility at Cone, a brand strategyagency in Boston.
The problem, he said, occurs when marketers make exaggerated claimsabout a product’s attributes, which may be fine when sellingtoothpaste or vacations. Most people probably know that thetoothpaste will not actually make their teeth sparkle or help themget a date.
But when a company says its product will improve the environment,consumers can sense if the claim is puffed up, Mr. Lawrence said.“This can really backfire with environmentaladvertising,” he said.
To address this problem, agencies are advising marketers to avoidvague and unsubstantiated claims — the kind that bloggers andother critics are quick to pounce on. Instead, they suggestpointing to a specific step the advertiser has taken or askingconsumers to take a small but concrete action.
For example, Procter & Gamble, which makes laundry detergent,has been running a campaign in Britain that urges consumers toconserve energy by washing clothing at 86 degrees Fahrenheit ratherthan at higher temperatures.
Similarly, Reckitt Benckiser, which makes dishwasher detergent, hasbeen advertising what it says are the environmental benefits ofwashing dishes in a machine, rather than by hand; this consumesless water and energy, the company says. (Skeptics may note thatReckitt does not make detergent for hand-washing dishes.)
Agency executives say there is growing demand for specialists whocan help companies avoid common pitfalls, like boasting ofone’s green credentials at the wrong time (after a corporateembarrassment, for instance). Big agencies have been creatingdedicated units to work on environmental campaigns, andgreen-focused start-up agencies are proliferating, too.
“We’re going to get to a point where green isubiquitous, and you have to do something pretty different todistinguish yourself,” said Arlene Fairfield, senior vicepresident at the DDB Brand Integrity Group in Seattle.