Rights & wrongs of green media messaging

Media Week recently asked me to project manage an online supplement on Green Media. During research for an article on brands joining the fight against climate change, I came across the television advertising campaign for the Volkswagen BlueMotion Polo.
Green media messages around cars are either confusing or misleading. Only last month, Renault was forced to withdraw a press ad showing leaves emerging from the exhaust pipe of its Twingo car.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the company had "exaggerated the environmental benefits" of the vehicle. The regulator was also critical of the advertisement's use of the Renault logo Eco2, which refers to the manufacturer's campaign to help reduce carbon emissions.
The ad gives the impression that the Twingo is good for the environment and emits low emissions compared with other similar small cars. If you check out the Department for Transport's top ten low CO2 cars however, you won't find the Renault Twingo.

The car that tops the chart is the Volkswagen BlueMotion Polo. VW's agency Tribal DDB could have leveraged the bragging rights and few would have begrudged them. Instead, Tribal DDB produced two inspirational TV ads that ran for six weeks from last October. They should have run for longer. I don't recall having seen either of them but they're both excellent examples of how green communication strategies should be managed.

The first, features plastic bags growing in quantity as they float across the cityscape before the voiced message: “Driving a BlueMotion Polo instead of your normal small car for a year could reduce your carbon footprint as much as recycling over 25,000 plastic bags.”



The second is a drawing animation featuring the car on a journey across penciled landscapes. The message is: “A week spent driving a BlueMotion Polo instead of your normal small car could reduce your carbon footprint. In fact, it could reduce it as much as recycling 2,669 sheets of paper.”



In subsequent print ads, a BlueMotion Polo is dwarfed against a wall of recycled cans. The strap-line reads: “Driving a BlueMotion Polo for a year could prevent as much carbon pollution as recycling over 5,000 cans.”

By communicating environmental messages that the consumer can relate to, VW is not only pole position when it comes to low emission small cars. Its brand marketing is also leading by example.