Smells Like Green Spirit

 
Column Green is the color of hope, even in advertising. Entire industries are now trying to save their reputation and sales with increasingly brazen greenwashing. But environmental organizations and critical consumers can smell it from afar and are demanding legal consequences. 
Andreas Beinat, "Marketing Manager from Baden-Dättwil" and thus apparently representative of the trend-conscious average Swiss, likes to drive. And he does so with a clear conscience. Because "modern engine technology reduces more than 95 percent of pollutants", he says enthusiastically in the current NZZ Folio, which is dedicated to the "car of the future" and claims in the subtitle that "an industry is on the move." What is undoubtedly on the move are advertisers who have been put in a bind by the climate crisis and growing eco-awareness - often in the direction of misleading messages and strategically preferred in special editions on environmental topics. With over ten pages of green product and image advertising, the October issue of Folio is a "green issue" cleverly disguised by its parent publisher. Incidentally, this magazine trend, which even politically unsuspicious magazines such as Annabelle have recently jumped on, was started by the American Vanity Fair, which translates as "Vanity Fair".
But back to Mr. Beinat. Of course, he does not testify to his post-pubescent "joy of driving" in the editorial section or - despite a deceptively similar claim - in a BMW campaign. (Instead, the Bavarians flirt on a panorama page in the aforementioned folio that the earth is white and blue like their logo when viewed from space). Instead, the harmless and good-humored Biedermann advertises Cleverunterwegs.ch, a concerted "information platform" of Swiss car importers. What you would otherwise have to search for in the various we-have-recognized-the-signs-of-the-times subjects of the members can be found there at a glance: The entire industry arsenal of wind-soft arguments as to why free citizens can and should confidently continue to demand and practice free driving thanks to progress in minimizing emissions.
For commercial communicators, climate change in the automotive industry and this campaign in particular are probably just examples of somewhat clumsy "cause-related marketing". For environmental organizations, however, such eco-pornography constitutes targeted disinformation and should be legally actionable. Corresponding investigations are also underway in many places: in Brussels, for example, an EU investigation is underway against ExxonMobil (www.exxon-files.eu), the world's largest company in terms of turnover. And Greenpeace Switzerland recently appealed to the Commission on Fair Trading because of a multi-million euro campaign by the oil association suggesting that oil consumption is climate-friendly.
In view of the scale and urgency of the problem (underlined once again by the Nobel Peace Prize), however, toothless self-regulatory bodies in the advertising industry are hopelessly out of their depth. What is needed are tough, legally binding sanctions against all those clients and agencies that knowingly spread environmentally and climate-relevant misinformation. At the same time, a company that really handles resources and emissions responsibly must be allowed to continue to communicate this competitive advantage.
The answer to ecopornography does not lie in the establishment of an eco-dictatorship. The state simply has to make shameless greenwashing recognizable as such and enforceable, then social ostracism and purchase boycotts will follow as if by magic.
Oliver Classen is press spokesman for the development policy organization Berne Declaration (EvB) and previously worked as a media journalist.