“Green Communications Initiative: Part of the Solution” Green Communications Initiative 11466Washington Place -­‐ Suite A Los Angeles, CA 90066 USA [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 Part of the Problem… ............................................. 1 1.1 How did we get here? ........................................................ 1 1.2 Conspicuous consumption ................................................. 2 1.3 Planned obsolescence ....................................................... 2 1.4 Greenwashing ................................................................... 3 2.0 Part of the solution ................................................. 3 3.0 Take the Initiative ................................................... 4 3.1 The Grass Roots Initiative .................................................. 5 3.2 The Public-­‐Private Initiative ............................................... 6 3.2.1 More about the adGreen .................................................. 6 “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem” from a speech by Eldridge Cleaver,
as he paraphrased it from Charles Rosner’s
1967 VISTA Program recruitment slogan
1.0 Part of the Problem… According to Worldwatch Institute, at only 5% of the world’s total population, the United
States gobbles up more than 25% of its energy resources. By 2003, the U.S. had more
cars than drivers, with gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles the best selling. New houses
were being built 38% bigger than in 1975, even though the number of people living in
each of those houses had actually decreased. At the same time, scientific evidence of
the human contribution to environmental degradation continues to mount to the point of
incontrovertibility.1, 2 In her new book, The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert makes the
systematic case that humans are in point of scientific fact in the process of rendering
extinct between ten and thirty percent of all species, a statistic that puts the current dieoff on par with the prehistoric natural disaster that eliminated dinosaurs. It’ s pretty clear
that as a species we not only must take responsibility to consume less environmentally
harmful stuff, but we must also consume less.
1.1 How did we get here? From the outset, psychology and modern advertising have been inextricably intertwined.
At the turn of the 20th century, the introduction of the cigarette rolling Bonsack machine
led to the mass production of cigarettes. Up to that time, all cigarettes were hand-rolled
– in the hands of a skilled worker at a rate of about 1,500 per day. The Bonsack machine
could produce 120,000 in the same 10-hour day. Manufacturers needed to create a
demand for the mass produced cigarettes that matched the increase in supply. Enter
Edward Bernays, now considered the father of modern advertising, who borrowed the
term “sublimation” from his uncle Sigmund Freud to promote the idea that our primal
instincts could be targeted and harnessed to meet the new demand. Bernays was
instantly hired by the tobacco companies to advance this new advertising technique to
create pleasurable associations with cigarette smoking. In one such campaign, Bernays
depicts a group of female suffragettes marching down a broad boulevard…demanding
the right to smoke.
By the 1950s, this technique was so successful that sociologists coined phrases to
describe the resultant broad based cultural/societal shifts. Who was being cajoled into
buying the quantities of newly mass produced goods? The very same people who were
working in factories and offices to produce them.
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Corporations manufacturing these products needed to create a middle class of
consumers to purchase their products as much as people seemed willing to be
manipulated into buying them. Conspicuous consumption was defined as the acquisition
of goods to publicly display economic power either as a means of attaining or
maintaining social status. Planned obsolescence was an in-built feature in the design of
these products – either a flaw that would shorten the lifespan of the product or a stylistic
change that would make an old model seem less desirable -- that would fuel the
behavioral addiction of consumers to conspicuously consume.
1.2 Conspicuous consumption Whereas up to then goods and services were consumed as a function of practical need,
by the mid-20th century, in order to meet the increase in supply of goods, consumers
needed to associate the acquisition of those same goods, without any practical purpose
being served, as a new form of social status. Goods producers needed the very same
workers who were making their products to purchase them. They needed to create the
desire among their workers, the new middle class, to be motivated to acquire these
mass produced goods as a form of public display of social status, rather than for their
practical utility. Here advertising played a key role and the rise of Mad Men-styled
agencies reflected the increasing demand of corporations to influence this audience.
1.3 Planned obsolescence In 1954, American industrial designer Brooks Stevens titled his speech to a group of
Minneapolis advertisers “Planned Obsolescence”. By his definition, this meant “instilling
in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than
is necessary.” Within ten years, this term would become popularized and taken
pejoratively to be identified with products that were poorly designed to break easily or go
quickly out of style. Again, advertising was quick to take up Stevens’ torch and run with
it, so much so that a popular 1960s Volkswagen ad campaign mocked the term, touting
their Beetle cars’ unchanging design as evidence of their resistance to the whims of
trending.
But there is an additional side effect to both conspicuous consumption and planned
obsolescence. That is the permanent psychological state this pairing instills in the
consumer of dissatisfaction. If consumers think that in order to be worthy we must
always have the newest-latest-best, we create the environment to be not only “wasteful,”
but also “debt-ridden, and permanently discontented individuals.”3
By the turn of the 21st century, this wasteful malaise had reached epidemic proportions.
Over 65% of all U.S. adults are overweight or obese and credit card debt is dangerously
high as we try to literally eat and buy our environment and ourselves to oblivion.4
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1.4 Greenwashing Still there were some bright spots. The passage of major legislation to protect the
environment in the 1970s with the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, as well the
Superfund to clean up pollution dump sites and the establishment of the Environmental
Protection Agency, went a long way toward creating and strengthening national
standards and brought public attention to the need for guidelines and regulation. This
public attention, in turn, resulted in a new cultural shift.
In order to adjust their advertising to this new consumer demand, many companies tried
to position their products as “green” even when the “green” message was clearly
inappropriate. The term greenwashing appeared for the first time in a 1986 essay by
environmentalist Jay Westerveld.5 He questioned a hotel industry practice of marketing
the reuse of towels as part of their environmental commitment when in fact, given the
savings in maid labor, water and electricity from fewer loads of washing, the practice
was really just a cost-cutting measure. Thus, the initial definition of greenwashing was
that of purported environmentally friendly practices with a deeper purpose of increasing
profit margins. Today, however, the term has taken on a broader meaning, referring to
statements of exaggerated environmental benefit or unsubstantiated claims of
environmental support in marketing, advertising and communications.6
In possibly the most iconic example of this misappropriation, a Shell Oil advertisement
touting its “clean” use of energy features a factory with flowers, etc. emitting from its
smokestacks. So many consumers objected to this ad that it was quickly pulled from
circulation.7
2.0 Part of the solution In order to stem the rising tide of greenwashing in marketing, advertising and trade
practices, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently issued revisions to its policies
on environmental communications known as the Green Guides (2012). The revised
Green Guides, while redressing many of the deficiencies from the original 1992 FTC
publication, still leave open areas of omission and contain curious gaps in understanding
real consumer concerns. A primary example of omission is the absence of guidance in
the area of Life Cycle Assessment--the technique to assess environmental impact
associated with all stages of a products’ life, from raw material extraction through
processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance to disposal or
recycling--something many consumers have specifically identified as an area of their
concern.8
We applaud the government’s 5-year research, development and resulting revisions, but
also note that the Green Guides do not address the underlying issue outlined as part of
the problem above. Two primary lessons can be taken from the information presented in
Section 1.:
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Advertising is a one-way street on which (1) a form of psychological manipulation
advances unsustainable levels of consumption and (2) supports the dictates of corporate
tastemakers driven by a need to increase profits without regard for any environmental
impact. This is a one-way street running only in the direction from corporate profit to
consumer. It is a one-way street on which consumers are not in the driver’s seat and
cannot arrive at a destination of their own choosing. It is a corporate monologue with
goals that have been advanced by modern advertising to the detriment of our
environment.
Seen in this light, the problem of greenwashing is in part a problem of the unpleasant
sense of psychological manipulation and of the perception by consumers of
powerlessness in this process. This is perhaps at its core the source of consumer
distrust.
As a consequence of web 2.0 technological advances, most particularly as expressed by
the social networking boom, many consumers began questioning the nature of this oneway exchange. Advertisers and agencies realized that with the new digital platforms
consumers would be quick to “out” any untruth in advertising. Or re-brand a producers
carefully constructed brand strategy with online comments– the process by which online
users can express deeply felt opinions about (in this case) a product. Leaving aside
trolling (the process by which online users, often hiding behind pseudonymous avatars,
comment to the point of abusiveness), in the very best of this expression websites like
https://www.greenwashingindex.com allow users to express specific concerns about
product messaging and its effect on the environment.
3.0 Take the Initiative But so far, there are no platforms – online or otherwise – that encourage a grass roots
effort for consumers to define, for themselves, what it will mean now and throughout the
21st century, to consume less.9
At GCI, our focus is on addressing this core issue – the need to protect our environment
by reducing human consumption in the part of the world most responsible for its abuse
by reducing that consumption overall. If earth’s climate warming is directly linked to
increased levels of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons, humans
need to burn less fossil fuel, produce less cement, cut down less trees, eat less meat,
grow less rice, use less nitrogen-based fertilizer, create fewer landfills, and refrigerate
less with chloro-fluorocarbons.
If the psychology of conspicuous consumption and planned obsolescence through
corporate design and advertising created the platform for mass acquiescence to
unsustainable consumerism in the 20th century, it seems self-evident that we must
reverse that trajectory in the 21st century. But corporate creators and promoters of these
and greenwashing are not going to willingly advocate for less consumption. Not unless
consumers themselves demand this change. It seems equally evident that change on
the scale necessary to make a difference to the protection of our environment must be
massive enough to represent, in the Gladwellian sense, a tipping point.
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So how then do we build the broadest based consensus? First, pick something simple.
Second, select an idea on which the largest possible number of people can agree:
We must consume less.
Communication is a process that by definition involves sharing. The Latin root of the
word comes from communicare, to share. Also at the root of communication is a
community. Communication necessitates an exchange of dialogue. But key to this
exchange is the question of who is initiating the dialogue. If advertisers initiate it, this
once again places consumers in the disadvantageous position of being told what/what
not to consume. At GCI, we see this dialogue as one from the base of working poor and
middle class consumers-upward, not as a top-down corporate soliloquy with marketing
and advertising middle men.
Therefore, at GCI we propose to nurture this creative dialogue on two fronts: (1) a grass
roots consumer initiative and (2) based upon the results of the grass roots initiative, a
public-private sector partnership through the certifiable adGreen.
3.1 The Grass Roots Initiative People take ownership of problems over which they feel they can exercise control.10
Consumers must be allowed to express their own opinions about the relationship
between current levels of human consumption, the environment and the need to
consume less.
By indices measuring both the spontaneity of responses and their use of “real world”
language (as opposed to jargon), studies have shown that participant creativity
increases when people are asked to answer questions that are open-ended (as opposed
to survey-like true/false, yes/no, or multiple choice).11 In other words, when allowed to
think for themselves and engage the full range of imaginative response, participants
come up with their own inventive answers to problems.
Using the power of social media, we propose to engage this consumer creativity by
generating open-ended questions that allow for the full range of creative responses to
solve the problem of consuming less. When being asked open-ended questions such as
“what does it mean to consume too much? “Just enough?” “What do you think are the
environmental consequences of too much consumption?” participants must engage their
imagination to think through their feelings about human consumption before posting their
responses to a wall, pinning them to a board, or tweeting them with hashtags. The lively
back-and-forth of digital media chat will serve to magnify and encourage this public
dialogue.
For example, a single image of a cell phone could be pinned to a board with the openended question: how often do you need to upgrade [picture of cellphone]? A second
board page, with an image of a floating pile of ocean debris, could be pinned with the
question: what do you think is the relationship between [picture of ocean debris] and
[picture of cellphone]?
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Using a technique called “Thematic Analysis” in data collection originally designed by
ethnographer Jodi Aronson (1994), consumer responses to this grass roots campaign
can be analyzed.12 It is expected that themes will emerge from fragments of ideas or
experiences in collective consumer comments that taken together will form a picture of
real consumer concerns.
This approach leaves room for the generation of additional grass roots public initiatives.
As thematic analysis is performed and consumer ideas for consuming less come to light,
initiatives for consumer actions can also be designed.
3.2 The Public-­‐Private Initiative Returning once again to Worldwatch, a key recommendation from their findings is for the
implementation of government reforms in partnership with new more efficient industrial
technologies to “rein in high consumption”.13 From the GCI perspective, these
partnerships must be based on real consumer concerns, directed by and from the base
of consumers, upward, as should be the case in a democratic process. Using consumer
data mined from the Grass Roots Initiative, GCI proposes to create a new, hybrid form of
interstitial communication, the adGreen. The certifiable adGreen will combine the
educational benefit of the free Public Service Announcement (PSA) with the target
marketing of paid advertisements. In this case, however, the certification process will
insure that both educational (PSA) and paid advertising components serve the mission
to consume less. Educational elements would be based on consumer concerns about
the relationship between human consumption and the environment. And only those
products that certifiably enable consumers to reduce human material consumption could
participate -- those that reduce household energy consumption, reduce carbon
emissions through renewable energy sources, and/or reuse recycled or waste materials.
This is a public-private partnership in which data-based consumer ideas about
consuming less, government based tax rebates and credits for green products, and the
green products themselves all work in concert to reduce human consumption. It is a
process that hopefully serves, at least in part, to ameliorate some of the worst
contributions of advertising to the tsunami tide of current human consumption.
3.2.1 More about the adGreen The GCI mission is to give voice to consumer environmental concerns and to take action
that allows consumers to consume less. To that end, the environmentally educational
component of the adGreen, based on consumer responses to the Grass Roots Initiative,
will specifically focus on advancing ideas consumers care about ways to consume less.
In addition, GCI will also enlist the support of a private sector development partner in the
process to create the adGreen. The development partner will be the maker of a product
that certifiably reduces human material consumption. This partner will be upheld to the
strictest standards set by a globally recognized neutral third-party, such as the
International Standards Organization (ISO), with its environmental standards.
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Third, GCI will work in concert with government on two fronts, leveraging government
incentives to create media discounts for the certifiable adGreen:
1. IRS “Green” Tax Credits:
GCI seeks to extend those rebates currently available to producers of green
products to media outlets willing to discount their certifiable adGreens. These
would include sections of the IRS Tax Code providing tax credits, rebates, etc. for
Alternative energy, Energy conservation and/or Recycling/reuse of waste14
2. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Public Service Licensing
Requirements:
At one time, FCC licensing requirements included a procedure by which each
television broadcast station was required to devote at least a half-hour of
programming to non-profit organizations or local community groups. Although
these regulations have been relaxed, broadcasters must still publish their efforts
at community and public outreach with form FCC 07-205. GCI proposes to
petition the FCC to extend this licensing requirement to include the certifiable
adGreen as an acceptable submission to form FCC 07-205.
In exchange for the environmentally educational public benefit component of the
adGreen, as well as the projected tax credits extended to participating media, green
products will receive substantial discounts on marketing costs.
Thus, a working formula for discounts for the certifiable adGreen could be expressed as
follows:
adGreen discount on media buy = costs - percentage discounts (from
PSA elements + IRS tax credits) above.15
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Why will the adGreen work? It’s a win/win for all stakeholders in the effort to protect and
preserve the blue and green of our miraculous planet.
Environment bene%its of lowered human consumption. Consumers Green Products learn ways to consume less. Discounts on %ixed marketing costs. Increased visibility. Restore trust in products (no greenwashing). Media Advertising agencies outsource accreditation to neutral third party non-­‐pro%it (GCI). Media outlets get new ways to satisfy FCC and IRS requirements. Government support for reforms assisting environmental protection. 8
1 Worldwatch Institute, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810, “Environmental
Impacts of Consumption”
2 Report on Climate Change, National Academy of Sciences (2014), http://nassites.org/americasclimatechoices/events/a-discussion-on-climate-change-evidence-andcauses/
3 The Waste Makers, Vance Packard, 1960.
4 http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810, “Social Impacts of Consumption in the U.S.”
5 Motavalli, Jim (2011-02-12). "A History of Greenwashing: How Dirty Towels
Impacted the Green Movement". http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/02/12/the-historyof-greenwashing-how-dirty-towels-impacted-the-green/
6 Communicating Sustainability for the Green Economy, Chapter 3 : “The Many Shades
of Greenwashing,” by Kim Bartel Sheehan, 2011, p. 44
7 Ibid., p.47
8 Ibid., p 46-48
9 Those websites that do exist on the subject of consuming less are not open-ended,
with questions aimed at a grass roots level for consumers to respond for themselves, but
are primarily “how to” guides. See
10 Pires, Stanton & Rita. The Internet, consumer empowerment and marketing
strategies. European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 40 No. 9/10, 2006 pp. 936-949.
11 Reja, Manfreda, Hlebec & Vehovar, 2003 Open ended vs. close ended questions in
web questionnaires. Advances in Methodology and Statistics, Vol.19, pp. 159-177
12 Aronson, J. 1994. A pragmatic view of thematic analysis. Qualitative Report, 2(1)
Spring. http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/BackIssues/QR2-­‐1/aronson.html
13 Worldwatch Institute, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810 -“A NewRole for
Consumption”
14 i.e. IRS Code Sections 25D, 30C, 38, 45, 45(k), 45M, 48, 48C, 50, 179D +
Any state mandated tax benefits, for example by California FTB and California EDD
15 Further details concerning the proposed assessment process for the adGreen are
available upon request.
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