The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

College of the Liberal Arts

DRAWING EMOTION FROM RHETORICAL APPEALS TO NATURE:

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CORPORATE GREEN ADVERTISEMENTS

A Thesis in

Communication Arts and Sciences

by

Christopher M. Toutain

© 2010 Christopher M. Toutain

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

August 2010

ii

The thesis of Christopher M. Toutain was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Stephen H. Browne

Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences

Thesis Adviser

Jeremy Engels

Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences

Thomas W. Benson

Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Rhetoric

Head of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.

iii

ABSTRACT

As concern over environmental change has increased over the past several decades, so

too has the presence of advertising messages that feature appeals constructed on the theme of

environmentalism. Whether these messages are extolled for raising public consciousness of

environmental issues, or criticized as merely corporate posturing, or “greenwashing,” there is no

question the messages have become part of contemporary public culture. As such, these

messages should be considered for the potential implications they have for the way people

conceive of and interact with the environment. This project engages those possibilities,

considering the application of nature themes in “green corporate advertisements” to invite

emotional responses from the audience. The ways these emotions are invited bear implications

for the ways audiences understand nature, and the present state of environmental communication.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................... 1

The Rhetorical Landscape of Environmental Communication and Popular Culture...........1

Importance of Popular Culture and Media......................................................................... 10

Extending Studies in Green Advertising........................................................................... 13

Explanation of Target Campaigns..................................................................................... 17

Chapter 2. FREEDOM AND THE TOYOTA CAMRY HYBRID............................................... 20

Bringing “Green” to Traditional Products......................................................................... 20

Depictions of Nature.......................................................................................................... 23

Evoking a Desire for Freedom........................................................................................... 27

Freedom Outside Nature.................................................................................................... 32

The Rhetorical Problems with the “Freedom to maintain................................................. 35

Chapter 3. GREEN GUILT AS DAWN SAVES WILDLIFE...................................................... 43

Environmentalism Through Cleaning Power.................................................................... 43

Invitation of Guilt.............................................................................................................. 49

The Rhetorical “Tempering” of Green Guilt..................................................................... 54

Chapter 4. RELIEF IN CONVERSION TO IBM......................................................................... 70

IBM Green Machine Commercials and Environmental Ideology..................................... 70

Implications of Nature, Conversion, and Ideology........................................................... 82

Human/Nature Interaction................................................................................................. 86

Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 94

Chapter 5. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................ 97

Appendix. Camry Hybrid Commercial Shot Sequence Description........................................... 107

Notes............................................................................................................................................ 109

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................125

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The Rhetorical Landscape of Environmental Communication and Popular Culture

Turn on a television, flip through a magazine, read the billboards as you drive down the

highway. Before long you will encounter an advertisement for a consumer product that not only

promises to improve your life, but save the earth at the same time. This type of advertising is

known as “green advertising.” These messages encourage “people to buy more by suggesting

they should buy a certain product because it is good for the environment.”1 In this project I will

examine the environmental appeals of three different green advertising campaigns with the aim

of constructing a better understanding of the rhetorical appeals present in these ads. Improving

this understanding will assist in providing a clearer grasp of the reasons for the success of these

appeals, and the possible implications these messages have for broader cultural perceptions of

the environment and environmentalism. The project will launch primarily from critical

perspectives and a theoretical grounding based on previous works in environmental

communication and rhetoric, media, and popular culture.

The examination of three specific environmentally themed corporate advertising

campaigns will seek to answer the question: in what ways do these ads utilize nature to invite

particular emotional responses from the audience? Some additional questions that will be

considered to aid in answering the primary question will be: To what degree does nature appear

to be the product of consumption? Is nature depicted narrowly or broadly? What role does the

distance between humans and the environment play in the appeals? And what function is nature

depicted as serving in the advertisements?

In order to give the texts and questions appropriate attention, one target emotion will be

considered for each campaign. The target emotions and corresponding consumer advertising

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campaigns that will be examined in this study are: (1) a desire for freedom, present in Toyota‟s

campaign for the Camry Hybrid; (2) societal guilt/responsibility, present in Dawn dish soap‟s

Dawn Helps Save Wildlife campaign; and (3) relief, specifically from environmental

responsibility, present in IBM‟s series of Go Green commercials. Each of the coming chapters

will be devoted to one of these campaigns. The chapters will first explain the advertisements,

consider the depictions of nature, and present arguments for the invitation of the proposed

emotional appeal in each. After the various nature-based emotional appeals have been unpacked,

the advertisements will be examined for the ways the depictions of nature and invitations of

emotion construct rhetorical messages that have potential implications for audience response and

broader social constructions of the environment and interactions between humans and the Earth.

The environment and environmentalism are both enormous topics. It is expected that a

certain amount of variation in the answers to these questions will be found between

advertisements calling upon different emotions. The use of nature to evoke guilt is likely not the

same nature used to invite a desire for freedom. Therefore, beyond the previously listed

questions, the individual advertisements will also be considered against one another. The

advertisements will be compared for several important reasons. One is that it will allow for the

consideration of why some applications of nature appear more or less in specific emotive appeals

and not others. Additionally, as components of contemporary popular culture, these

advertisements are rarely encountered in a vacuum. Rather, popular culture allows for the

“coalescence of ideas and images” about a concept.2 Therefore, comparing the advertisements

will assist in constructing ideas about the possible impacts of these ads collectively, as audiences

constantly encounter multiple ads at once.

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Environmental Rhetoric. The potential value and contribution of this project depends

considerably on the rhetorical weight that can be supported at the intersection of environmental

communication, media, advertising, and popular culture. A better grasp of the various

components of this intersection, the history behind them, the previous studies in which they have

been a central focus, and where the study of rhetoric fits into these topics is necessary prior to

looking critically at the specific advertisements for this study. Scholars in a variety of fields

have studied environmentalism for quite some time. Some of the key works in the field of

rhetorical studies include Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacuqeline Palmer‟s 1992 Ecospeak, the

1996 publications of Earthtalk, edited by Star Muir and Thomas Veenendall, and Green Culture,

edited by Carl Herndl and Stuart Brown, and recently, in 2006, Robert Cox‟s Environmental

Communication and the Public Sphere. These books address a wide variety of aspects of

environmental rhetoric – ranging from language functions, to the specific words used in public

forums, scientific activism, utopian visions, published environmental narratives, and public

policy making, to only name a few.3 Although many of the specific studies in these works do not

directly consider advertising and corporate messages they involve aspects of environmental

rhetoric that are relevant to a complete understanding of the societal reception of advertising

messages. The words used in town hall forums on environmental concerns may differ from the

words used in advertisements. However, such a study remains useful in illuminating the

intersection of society, the environment, and persuasive appeals. For example, while Ecospeak

does not directly address corporate green advertising, it provides valuable insight to the origins

of environmental thought, dating back to Thoreau and Muir. It also illuminates the more recent

shifts towards rhetorics of sustainable development presented under the heading of business

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solutions.4 These foundational works on environmental communication will be of primary

importance for this project, despite the distance they have from advertising.

Another reason these works on environmental rhetoric are crucial to this study is the

historical background they provide. Nature has been a common value signifier for advertising

messages since the 1920‟s.5 Since it was not until the 1970‟s that “critical attention to „green‟

advertising and marketing surfaced,” a wider collection of work on environmental rhetoric will

allow for an understanding of the roots of contemporary environmentalism, and a view of how

conceptions of the environment and environmentalism have shifted over time.6 The term

environmentalism has evolved over time. While contemporary appeals and arguments on

environmentalism frequently address concerns of global health and human existence and impact

(such as Al Gore‟s popular film An Inconvenient Truth) environmentalism originated from a

concern for conservation. As noted by environmental scholar Robert Cox: “environmental

communication grew out of the work of scholars who used the tools of rhetorical criticism to

study conflicts over natural resources, including wilderness, forests, farmlands, and endangered

species.”7 From this narrow beginning, the field expanded as scholars began “to include the roles

of science, media, and industry in responding to threats of human health safety.”8

Most recently, rhetorical studies have examined the further expansion of the field of

environmentalism and the inclusion of depressed, urban conditions. Scholars such as Robert

Bullard, James Garvey and Phaedra Pezzullo have developed the area of environmental racism

out of concern for the ethics rooted in handling environmental change. Their works have called

people to not only view the environment as the untouched “natural” spaces found in state parks

or other undeveloped areas, but also those concrete-filled urban spaces that are equally if not

more susceptible to pollution and toxins.9 These works are aimed at gaining audience

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recognition that issues such as petrol chemical plant pollution in poor neighborhoods in New

Orleans are just as much environmental concerns as the logging of trees in Oregon or

snowmobile regulations in state parks.10

Critical Works on Green Advertising. Unlike the work of Bullard and Pezzullo, not all

efforts involving environmental communication and the classification of environment or

environmentalism work to expand the definition. One particular type of message that may

function to limit the definition of environment(alism) is the kind found in corporate

advertisements for consumer goods. It seems logical that corporate green advertising would

limit the scope of environmentalism. Ultimately, green marketing is about selling products.11

In

the expansion of the term it has come to encompass some very harsh, ugly situations that are

unlikely to be useful for a company attempting to sell a product. Toxic tours function in part to

open the eyes of the audience to the severity of situations beyond their daily lives. Green

product advertisements focus on how individual audience members‟ lives will be improved

through the purchase of a product or consumption of a good. Therefore, while concerns of

environmental racism and toxic sites often focus on a future that will become increasingly

negative in the absence of action, consumer advertisements appeal to the potential for an

improved future through the purchase of a product. The requirement of a positive depiction of

nature limits the types of nature presented in green advertisements. Such limits inevitably work

to reduce the definition of the environment.

The examination of consumer advertisements that present environmental appeals and/or

narratives is not a completely new venture. There are several previous scholarly works on

advertising and environmentalism that will help guide this project. Three works in particular that

have trajectories similar to the aims of this project are Greg Dickinson‟s “Joe‟s Rhetoric: Finding

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Authenticity at Starbucks,” “Rejuvenating Nature in Commercial Culture and the Implications of

the Green Commodity Form,” by Mark Meister, Kristen Chamberlain, and Amanda Brown, and

“Good Food From the Good Earth: McDonald‟s and the Commodification of the Environment,”

by Stephen Depoe.12

Each one of these works examines a different marketing campaign or

commercial design for specific applications of nature within a larger environmental appeal.

At first glance Dickinson‟s piece on rhetorical messages at Starbucks appears to have

little to do with the environment. Much of the article focuses on the construction of personal

identity and authenticity. However, Dickinson also develops substantial critiques of Starbucks‟

application of nature across the brand – from the product and store décor, to advertising and

packaging.13

Dickinson argues that for Starbucks, a focus on nature and natural is important

because it attests to the quality of the coffee. Upon walking into a Starbucks one at once smells

the “ground and brewed coffee,” which “immediately tells the visitor that the coffee is „fresh,‟ a

sense that is closely connected to „natural.‟”14

The natural origins of the coffee are further

extended, Dickinson suggests, by the wide use of the color green in Starbucks‟ logo, and

throughout the store.15

Dickinson also examines Starbucks‟ use of nature and natural to replace

or hide certain aspects of the coffee industry. He asserts that Starbucks‟ use of the color green

invites the audience to connect the company with “the lush rainforests of Central America,”

rather than the rampant economic inequalities present in the coffee industry between poor coffee

farmers and wealthy roasting and distribution companies:

The green steps over one set of uncomfortable global relationships that make coffee

possible, covering the (brown) bodies of the people who grow, pick and process the

coffee and in so doing locates the Starbucks customer‟s body in relation with the coffee

trees and rainforests rather than oppression and back-breaking work.16

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With this critique Dickinson establishes several points that will be important for this project.

One of them is that appeals to nature do not have to be directly tied to environmental concerns in

order to be applied in advertising and corporate messages. An appeal to nature does not by

default classify an advertisement as built from an environmental standpoint. Additionally,

Starbucks‟ application of “natural colors” in an attempt to divert attention away from less

desirable aspects of the coffee industry suggests that the theme of nature is a very powerful one.

It not only has the capacity to set an environmental tone, but can also function as a rhetorical

frame to guide the eye of the customer away from problematic issues, regardless of the direct

connection being made to the environment. The ability for nature to direct attention in

advertising often leads to concerns of greenwashing; or claims that companies continue to

operate in non-environmentally friendly ways despite the suggestive presentation of a line of

“green” products.17

An understanding of the use of nature to frame persuasive appeals is crucial

to critiques of green corporate advertisements. Almost every one of these advertisements must

simultaneously present some aspect of the company or product as environmentally friendly or

sustainable, while at the same time making an appeal to increased consumption – which by

definition almost always runs counter to environmental efforts. As noted by Sharon Beder:

Since manufacturers still make environmentally damaging products and retailers still sell

non-green products on the shelves next to the green ones, it is evident that green

marketing is merely a way of expanding sales. If they were genuinely concerned to

protect the environment they would replace the unsound products with sound ones, not

just augment their existing lines.18

The connection between nature, natural and the environment that Dickinson addresses is

a focal points of Stephen Depoe‟s: “Good Food From the Good Earth: McDonald‟s and the

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Commodification of the Environment.” Two of Depoe‟s arguments in this piece are very useful

for this project. One is the idea that appeals can be made that will shift the groundwork of

environmental issues. The other is that this can be achieved, in part, through the

commodification of positive environmental themes. In critiquing a McDonald‟s advertising

campaign, Depoe suggests that by simultaneously presenting the audience with ways

McDonald‟s was becoming more environmentally friendly, and ways the audience members

could personally eat healthier at McDonald‟s, the company was attempting “to define the

environmental issue in order to shift the discussion away from considerations of public welfare

and corporate responsibility and toward technical and personal dimensions of those issues.”19

In

other words, the company was seeking to highlight the impact individual consumers could have

by purchasing a hamburger boxed in recycled cardboard rather than Styrofoam, in an attempt to

divert attention from larger company-wide environmental impacts (stemming from production,

transportation, etc).

Depoe also argues that McDonald‟s strengthened the environmental claims of the

campaign through the commodification of the “good earth.” He explains:

The products of business, from blue jeans to McDonald‟s hamburgers, can be understood

not just as objects intended for use of consumption, but as texts with a range of possible

ideological meanings to be negotiated by consumers of those products. Commodification

occurs as producers of goods and services attempt to manipulate the cultural meanings of

products by linking those products with broader, positive community values in order that

consumers will associate the product with the positive communal value.20

Depoe examines this commodification in one of McDonald‟s television advertisements. He

argues that by attributing positive values to the earth and those bodies within it as “natural,” the

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commercial depicts agriculture “as the point of merger between our concerns about the

environment and out concerns about proper nutrition.” From this approach McDonald‟s builds

the larger claim: “the earth is „good‟ in that it provides the food and that it remains undisturbed

by that production.”21

In addition to critiquing the use of nature both as a framework for environmental appeals

and as a good to be commodified to promote consumption, nature itself can also be a

consumptive good. Meister, Chamberlain and Brown consider this in “Rejuvenating Nature in

Commercial Culture and the Implications of the Green Commodity Form.” They argue that

“Nature remains, and will always be conceived in American culture as a commodity form,

precisely because it operates in a capitalist system,” and that as the green commodity form is

desired, “the consumption of nature in green commodities, such as nature-based beauty products

. . . increases public demand . . . for nature „as a product.‟”22

For Meister, Chamberlain and

Brown, this desire to consume nature is problematic. They argue that in the case of AVEDA

products and promotional materials, “advocacy for the environment simply involves being a

„conscious‟ consumer who buys environmentally „friendly‟ (themed) products and does not

address the embedded ethical questions of redefining environmental advocacy as

consumerism.”23

After a detailed analysis of AVEDA products the authors find that “ultimately,

the green commodity form (as depicted by AVEDA) fails to change ecological consciousness

while reinforcing consumer consciousness.”24

These specific case studies of corporate advertising and promotional campaigns will

inform this project not only through the conclusions they have drawn and the ways the critiques

have been carried out, but also through the points that appear when these pieces are read

together. Reading Dickinson‟s piece alongside the article by Meister, Chamberlain and Brown

10

suggests the possibility of new perspectives and ideas to be found in green corporate

advertisements by simultaneously examining nature as it functions as frame (Dickinson) and as

product (Meister, Chamberlain and Brown). The work of Depoe along with Meister,

Chamberlain and Brown also affirms that nature and the protection and care of the environment

are themes that are frequently the subjects of corporate commodification. The combined

contribution of these works provides a groundwork from which to launch an analysis of green

consumer advertisements aimed at a new set of critical questions.

Importance of Popular Culture & Media

Green consumer advertisements that are built on appeals to nature hold rhetorical

significance beyond a simple presence or absence of rhetorical appeals. Commercial advertising

is a component of contemporary popular culture. As such these advertisements play a significant

role in the ways consumers conceive of nature, the environment, environmentalism, and their

everyday worlds. People are constantly interacting with messages of consumption in their daily

lives, and these interactions impact their beliefs and worldviews. In the introduction to their

edited book, Enviropop, Mark Meister and Phyllis Japp note that for “cultural critics from

Habermas to Marx and Raymond Williams to Judith Williamson” popular culture has been “an

incredibly powerful epistemological force” that “is a major contributor to our understanding of

many facets of life, including the environment.”25

They situate advertisements as part of this

culture: “advertising constantly urges us to consume more of everything, arguing that satisfaction

and happiness are achieved through purchasing goods of all sorts.”26

Regarding the intersection

of commercial advertising and the environment and nature, Meister and Japp explain:

What we do know is that nature is a prominent backdrop for advertising. Whether we are

watching television advertisements for soda pop or shampoo or turning the pages of a

11

nature magazine, we constantly encounter the very powerful symbol of nature. . . . we

consciously and unconsciously learn from popular culture the practice of consuming

nature.27

Understanding the intersection of commercial advertising and the environment is

rhetorically useful not only for those involved in green marketing. It is also important for the

larger scholarly community invested in developing a body of knowledge relevant to

environmental rhetoric. Meister and Japp turn to Habermas, Marx, and others to place value in

the rhetorical force of elements of popular culture regarding the way people understand their

lives. Such a view suggests that when a green consumer advertisement impacts one‟s view of

nature relevant to a particular product, it simultaneously has an impact on that person‟s broader

view of the environment. In Julia Corbett‟s chapter in Enviropop: “A Faint Green Sell:

Advertising and the Natural World,” she draws from Schudson to explain:

ads have special cultural power. In addition to being repetitive and ubiquitous, ads

reinforce messages from primary institutions in the social system, provide dissonance to

countering messages, and generally support the capitalistic structure that the advertising

industry was created to support.28

The logical conclusion to this line of reasoning is that a car commercial that highlights reduced

fuel emissions does more than suggest to the audience the purchase of that particular car and the

gain of the environmental benefits associated with it. It also plays a role in how those same

audience members understand nature in town hall discussions, local protests, or political

platforms.

The potential these consumer advertisements hold to impact the rhetoric of

environmentalism (and possibly reduce the scope of environmental classifications through a

12

limited use of nature) would certainly be a reason for further examination of the rhetoric found in

green consumer ads. Unfortunately, such a claim in the present project would be largely

overstated. It is beyond the reach of this project to definitively examine the role advertisements

possibly play in shrinking the scope of environmentalism. However, there are still significant

implications to be drawn from the force of the rhetorical messages in green advertisements that

are located in contemporary popular culture.

A brief return to the work of Meister and Japp, along with the rationale of media and

environmental scholar Alison Anderson highlights the role advertisements play in the popular

construction “of the complex ways in which perceptions of the environment are produced and

consumed.”29

The following quote is drawn from a longer narrative in the introduction to

Enviropop, which depicts the actions of “the average, middle-class American family,” from the

time they wake up, until they go to bed.30

It is provided to highlight the degree to which average

audience members‟ “knowledge and understandings of the environment are constructed and

maintained via a constant stream of language and images derived from popular culture”:

On a typical day, Mother glances at the kitchen calendar with the beautiful mountain

photographs as she puts on the morning coffee. While completing breakfast, she turns on

the Weather Channel and, while waiting for the local forecast, views scenes of hurricanes

in the South and tornado damage in the Midwest . . . . Father comes into the kitchen for

coffee in time to catch both the newscast and an ad showing an SUV being driven up

impassable mountain trails and perching atop the Grand Canyon . . . . On her lunch hour,

Mother shops for some greeting cards, selecting those with nature photographs that depict

a serenity and beauty woefully absent from her harried life. Father grabs a sandwich at

his desk and leafs through travel brochures to decide where they should spend their

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summer vacation . . . . This stream of images and ideas from popular culture is a messy

domain, filled with fragments of information, bits of dramatic stories, visual images, and

examples . . . . understandings of environmental issues and policies are constructed from

such mediated news reports, literature, or entertainment.31

Audiences encounter these streams of environmentally tinged messages imbedded in pieces of

popular culture throughout their daily activities. Even if someone is not actively pursuing such

messages, they can still have impacts on one‟s perceptions and world views. Further, in his book

The Culture of Nature, Alexander Wilson credits the intersection of culture and the environment,

at least in part, to the “environment of promotion and advertising that reaches far into our lives

and bodies, as well as out into the natural world itself.”32

The studies and conclusions offered by these scholars are important for this project

because they not only support an understanding of popular culture as a vital component of

societal meaning making, but also identify commercial advertising as a significant force in

popular culture. Therefore, while this project may not be able to reach definitive claims

regarding the change in size or scope of environmentalism due to corporate advertisements, it

will hopefully provide insight as to how people are called to construct views of the environment

and human interaction with it through the deployment of nature appeals in consumer ads.

Extending Studies of Green Advertising

Specific definitions of rhetoric vary depending on those providing them. One of the

central components in many definitions is the aspect of persuasion. Insofar as persuasion is

foundational to understanding rhetoric, it creates a link between rhetorical studies and

commercial advertising. Television commercials, magazine ads, billboards, radio spots, and all

other forms of advertising exist to persuade the audience to purchase a product, or otherwise

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consume a good (i.e. watch a television program, listen to a talk show, etc.). With that in mind it

seems that a rhetorical study of advertisements or advertising campaigns holds significant

potential to explain how persuasive messages are constructed in the advertisements, and the ways

in which these advertisements, as a component of popular culture, potentially impact audiences.

While the mere presence of persuasive appeals in advertisements may not provide a

wealth of substance for a rhetorical study, there is much to be considered as to how various

persuasive themes are utilized in different ways in advertisements. A rudimentary example of

this is the presentation of power in car and truck advertisements. While the persuasive root

remains power, different companies and advertisements utilize this theme to draw upon a variety

of perceived goods and emotions in the audience. The power good in sports cars, often deployed

as speed, creates appeals to freedom or attraction of the opposite sex. These appeals are very

different from the dirty, hard-knuckle power to “get the job done,” constructed in the towing

capacity of heavy-duty trucks. Both of these types of power are different still from appeals to

“escape,” attainable with the off-road power of SUVs.

Obviously, there can exist great differences in the emotive force of rhetorical appeals

based on a similar social or cultural good. Bearing this in mind, it seems that rhetorical studies

can be valuable in critiquing advertising messages. While a rhetorical study may not be able to

determine if messages are persuasive, it can be useful in determining how they are persuasive.

Examining the various applications of a similar persuasive appeal is valuable for rhetorical

studies because it not only provides insight to the function of rhetoric, but also presents

perspectives on how societies view and value their worlds. If the ability to “escape the daily

grind” was not a widely held societal value, the power of an SUV to charge into a dense forest

would be substantially less persuasive. Such a connection between advertising appeals and

15

societal values holds particular importance to rhetorical studies in times of large-scale shifts in

societal values. As Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson note in their book Sign Wars: The

Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, companies are under constant pressure “to find fresher,

more desirable, and more spectacular images to enhance the value of products.”33

More

rhetorically significant however, is that in order to do this, “Advertisers routinely raid cultural

formations for the raw materials they need to construct new, more valuable signs.”34

Such

cultivation of culture for new persuasive advertising signs and appeals seems to suggest that the

presence of a new persuasive appeal in advertising might signal a shift in the cultural values of

the target audience(s). Therefore, consumer market-wide shifts to new or different persuasive

appeals not only present examples of successful advertising by companies.

One very apparent shift in advertising over the past decade is the ever-increasing

presence of “corporate green advertising.” As pointed out by Meister, Chamberlain and Brown

in their work on “Green Commodity Form,” companies have been utilizing “green” themes since

the 1970‟s. However, a survey of magazines over the past ten years suggests a sharp increase in

the utilization of such themes in the late 1990‟s and early 2000‟s.35

Goldman and Papson

suggest that the birth of green advertising came in response to the “growth of the environmental

movement and an awareness that overconsumption contributes to environmental destruction.”36

In response to these realizations and pressures, advertisers began developing “green” advertising.

Here again, Goldman and Papson provide a concise explanation of the process of this green

advertising:

By appropriating signifiers from nature and transforming them into commodity signs,

advertising repositions „thoughtful‟ consumption as a solution to encroaching

environmental disasters. We argue that environmental marketing relegitimates

16

consumption by buffering corporate practices from criticism and by alleviating the guilt

associated with overconsumption by creating a distinction between good consumption

and bad consumption.37

The continued presence of green themes in advertising should be understood to indicate a

successful match of persuasive messages to audience desires or values. Such a correlation, along

with the recent longevity of green advertising seems to suggest that audience interest in

environmental concern is more than a fleeting fad. It suggests that this interest is one that has

embedded itself in contemporary culture deeply enough to support an entire genre of advertising.

These conditions present green advertising as an important topic for rhetorical study; particularly

when read with the pattern of cultural influence suggested in Enviropop. Green advertising was

born out of a cultural desire for environmentalism. Its presence in advertising and popular

culture influences the ways people conceive of the environment. Understanding the

constructions of nature in green advertising is significant because these cultural influences have

the potential to play a role in societal views beyond advertising. They could potentially impact

the way people approach environmental topics well beyond the purchase of a consumer product.

The term “nature” will be featured to a great degree in this project. It is therefore useful

at this point to clarify my sense of the word. In an attempt to avoid classifying nature in

advertisements by vague “you know it when you see it” kinds of guidelines, a rough sketch of

the requirements of a nature appeal seems necessary. After surveying a wide range of green

advertisements, nature appears to be utilized in a form that falls somewhere between the views of

early conservationists and contemporary scholars of environmental racism. In these

advertisements, nature can exist along with people; however, it does require very minimal

degrees of development or urbanization. Similarly, although nature is often visually cued in

17

these advertisements by the color green the color alone does not create an appeal from nature.

There are advertisements that make environmental appeals utilizing the color green without

making further allusions to nature.38

Ultimately, appeals to nature rest on a depiction of some

environmental force (climate, habitat, plant, animal, etc.) that falls, at least partially, outside of

human control.

The frequent presence of nature appeals in consumer advertisements seems logical for at

least two reasons. First, nature has a longstanding history within the environmental movement.

The modern environmental movement finds its origins in conservationism, which understood

nature to be where people were not, and was interested in preserving these spaces for “consumers

who sought healthy environments in which to live and pristine environments into which they

could escape from the routine grind of urban, industrial life.”39

A second reason that corporate

advertisements have logically gravitated towards nature is that it is something that is likely to be

quickly and easily recognized by a general audience. Nature can be visually conveyed by a host

of images and settings, from a forest to an ocean, a bee pollinating a flower to elephants

wandering an open field. Were a hybrid car commercial to make environmental appeals by

presenting the audience with the scientific information behind the car‟s hybrid engine, many

audience members may struggle to follow the appeal. On the other hand, a Toyota Prius

commercial showing the car driving through a landscape that turns greener and more lush as the

vehicle passes is an appeal likely to be more easily recognized during the course of a 30 second

television spot.40

Explanation of Target Campaigns

Each of the following content chapters will contain detailed descriptions and contextual

background information on the advertising campaigns. In presenting specific advertisements for

18

critical analysis there are questions of selection that must be addressed before the advertisements

can be viewed as legitimate texts. Of all the possible corporate green advertisements, why

analyze these? What makes them special? Or, more importantly, what makes them at once

respective of the state of green advertising while also rhetorically interesting? In order to select

advertising campaigns that would best satisfy these questions, as well as a detailed rhetorical

analysis, a wide range of popular magazines dating back to the mid 1990‟s were surveyed for the

frequency of green advertisements. The advertisements were noted for the types of appeals

based on nature, and for the types of products these ads were promoting. Not all green corporate

advertisements utilize nature to construct an environmental appeal. Some place sustainability at

the fore, while others appeal to the health and longevity of the earth, quite apart from its natural

state. One example of this would be an ad that focuses on the reduction of urban smog as the

benefit of a particular product.

After applying the filter of nature appeals the next step was to indentify three emotions

that are frequently drawn upon in green advertising, as well as three various product types. In

order to avoid identifying emotions and then attempting to fit product advertisements to them, or

vice versa, the next steps of identifying the advertisements were carried out in a very particular

order. First, broad product categories were identified. Three categories that encompass a large

amount of nature-based consumer ads are transportation, household consumer products, and

business and technological solutions. The next step was to identify the various emotions drawn

upon in the different categories. In this step the various product categories were considered

against each other because identifying an emotion for a particular category without keeping the

other categories in mind risked overlap or lack of diversity of the target emotions.41

After

surveying the product categories it appeared that freedom was frequently appealed to in vehicle

19

advertisements, guilt and responsibility were common to ads for household products, and relief

was visible in technologies ads. Of the other present emotions these three were chosen because

of the diversity they have relative to one another (whereas freedom is very consumer-centered,

guilt and responsibility have stronger ties to society).

The last task after the product categories and target emotions were chosen was the

selection of the specific marketing campaigns. The three campaigns that will be critiqued in this

project (Toyota, Dawn and IBM) were chosen because they represented the three product

categories and displayed the corresponding emotions. They also offer diversity in the type of

green product that is being presented. The Toyota Camry represents a traditional product that

has been adapted to fit green advertising appeals. The Dawn campaign is not based on any

“greening” of the actual product, but rather a company promise that corresponds to consumer

purchase of the product. Finally, the IBM campaign represents the new category of products that

have been constructed specifically for environmental appeals. Such diversity in the “greenness”

(or lack thereof) of the consumer product itself was sought for the purpose of diversifying the

types of nature appeals presented in the campaigns. It only seems logical that one would have to

approach the construction of green appeals differently for a car or SUV than for a windmill or

water conservation system; and different still for a green campaign based on company donations.

Lastly these campaigns have been chosen because they present appeals across a broad range of

advertising media. Combined, the three provide a variety of television commercials, as well as

magazine advertisements, and website campaign content.

20

CHAPTER 2: FREEDOM AND THE TOYOTA CAMRY HYBRID

Bringing “Green” to Traditional Products

The rise and proliferation of green corporate advertising in mainstream media is not

something that arose entirely out of its own creation. Nor is it something that functions

separately from traditional appeals. Rather than presenting audiences with entirely new

persuasive appeals, many green advertisements have been built upon existing appeals with which

audiences are already familiar. Similarly, many green advertisements also attempt to capitalize

on emotional responses that have been present in previous non-green ads. The capitalization of

green themes in advertising is called “repositioning,” as it “involves „taking the same old stuff

and repackaging it according to the latest taste.‟”1 Although this is a somewhat negative

definition, it is certainly the case the many companies have continued to market traditional

products with slightly adjusted “green” appeals. The degree to which this repositioning results in

an overlap or appropriation of traditional appeals in green advertisements depends somewhat on

the nature of the product category. Some products have only recently been created for the

purpose of “greener” living. Other products, however, existed prior to environmental concerns

and rely completely on environmental repositioning in order to fit appeals of environmental

concern. An example of one such product is the automobile.

One emotional response suggested in traditional advertisements that is mimicked in green

campaigns for vehicles is the desire for freedom. This chapter will address the invitation to a

desire for freedom present in appeals to nature in green advertisements. The desire for freedom

is one that deserves rhetorical consideration in environmental communication because there are

many different types of freedom for which an audience can be invited to yearn. These various

freedoms in nature have implications for conceptions of environmentalism. The freedom to

21

explore wilderness is built on a conception of the environment as meant for human use; while the

freedom to enjoy clean air may be rooted in a worldview that positions humans as responsible for

the protection of the environment. Additionally, there is an inherent conflict between finding

freedom in nature, and freeing oneself from responsibilities to the environment. Therefore, the

way people are called to construct notions of freedom and the environment stands to have a

significant impact on the perception and communication of environmental ideologies.

These concerns will be addressed in this chapter by analyzing a television commercial

that utilizes depictions of nature to invite audience desires for freedom. Although the plain

invitation of a desire for freedom is not rhetorically problematic, the way it is constructed

through appeals to nature in the commercial presents concerns for environmental rhetoric. The

following analysis will first examine the ways that nature is constructed as a subject in the

commercial. From there, it will consider how the appeals to maintenance of the status quo of

both the subject of nature and the daily routines of the audience lead to an oversimplification of

environmental concerns.

The primary advertisement in this chapter is a thirty-second television commercial for the

2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid. The commercial is part of Toyota‟s “Moving Forward” brand

marketing campaign.2 In order to best allow for a consideration of the rhetorical components at

work in the advertisement, a detailed description of the commercial will be provided. The video

portion of the commercial can be split into two sections. The first twenty-four seconds of the

commercial feature the rapid presentation of twenty unique video segments. The vast majority

of the shots depict some type of natural environment. Some of them also feature a Camry in the

environment. These clips are shown one after the other, with many of them being displayed for

little more than a second (a detailed list and description of the individual clips can be found in

22

the appendix). The remaining six seconds of the commercial present the Camry in an all white

showroom familiar to car commercials, and then display the Toyota, Hybrid Synergy Drive, and

Moving Forward logos on the screen. Along with the video, the thirty-second commercial has an

aural dimension that similarly runs the length of the ad. The audio track is made up of three

distinct components that all make separate entrances to the commercial. Rushing wind is the

first sound heard at the beginning of the commercial. It is one of many nature sounds that

continue throughout the commercial; with many of them corresponding to several of the video

clips. The next sounds to enter the commercial are the musical instruments that make up the

background music. The musical track begins with a single piano line and slowly grows, adding

percussion instruments and synthesized strings. Seven seconds into the commercial the final

layer of audio is introduced. It is the voice of a narrator discussing the relationship between the

Toyota Camry and the environment. The narrator‟s lines are as follows:

When does the best-selling car in America become the best car for America? When does

an engine become an engine of change? Introducing the first ever gas-electric Camry

with Hybrid Synergy Drive. It‟s time to move forward.3

The commercial is an ideal text for this project because it presents an intersection of

consumption and environmentalism that is built on appeals to nature and the invitation of an

emotional audience response. However, there are countless advertisements for hybrid vehicles

for which the same argument could be presented. Beyond the content of the advertisement itself,

this commercial was identified because it represents a moment of popular explosion of a green

product into mainstream markets. The commercial is for the very first model of the Camry for

which a hybrid version was offered. This point exemplifies the idea of repositioning traditional

goods and appeals to fit environmental arguments. The Camry itself, being a mid-sized sedan

23

and a consistently popular Toyota model, likely appealed to a larger audience than the ultra-

compact hybrids of earlier years. The presence of a mid-sized sedan likely increased audience

attention to the commercial. Additionally, it came during a year in which Toyota hybrid sales

saw one of the steepest increases in the company‟s history. The spike in sales again speaks to

the potential for the commercial to have played a role in the establishment of hybrid vehicles and

advertisements in popular culture.4

Depictions of Nature

Prior to considering the ways that nature and freedom intersect to construct

environmental messages, we must first examine the depictions of nature in the commercial. The

presence of nature in commercials for hybrid vehicles is not an appeal that should be taken for

granted, or accepted without question. One reason for this is that not all hybrid vehicle

commercials feature appeals to environmentalism or environmental concern. Hybrid vehicles

run on a combination of gasoline and battery power. Therefore, they get more miles per gallon,

and consume gas at a slower rate than comparable traditional engine-powered vehicles. Such

improved efficiency is not only environmentally beneficial, but is also easily presented as a price

point. There are many advertisements for hybrid vehicles that simply highlight the economic

benefits of driving a car that gets better gas mileage. These advertisements say nothing of the

potential benefits that increased gas mileage holds for the environment. The television

commercials for the 2008 and 2009 models of Cadillac‟s Escalade Hybrid fit this category of

appeal to mileage without appeal to nature or the environment.5 The Cadillac commercials

clearly lack appeals to nature, as they feature the SUV being driven around downtown city

streets with nothing but concrete and buildings in the background. However, being able to point

to nature scenes in the Toyota Camry Hybrid ad does not automatically mean there is a green

24

message being presented in the commercial. The simple presence of a mountain, a stream, or a

forest alone is not enough to create an environmental appeal. Long before the trend of green

corporate advertising blossomed, companies utilized natural settings as backdrops for cars,

trucks, and SUVs to speed through, drive over, or careen down.

What, then, makes the presentation of nature in the Toyota commercial an environmental

appeal? Put simply, it is the presentation of nature in an “attempt to associate [a company‟s]

products, services, or identity with environmental values and images.”6 As we will see, this is

most certainly the case with the Camry commercial. However, there are also two related aspects

of the depiction of nature in the commercial that further contribute to the environmental message

presented. These aspects are the diversity of the nature depicted in the commercial, and the

relative fixity of the Camry in that nature. Traditional car advertisements position the vehicle as

the subject and nature as the backdrop. They also frequently present the vehicle moving through

nature. In Toyota‟s Camry Hybrid commercial the two aspects of nature diversity and Camry

fixity combine to build an appeal in which nature becomes a second subject in the commercial.

The appeals perhaps even present nature as a subject equal in importance and primacy to the

Camry itself. These aspects are able to carry the rhetorical weight of an environmental appeal

because of their prominence in the commercial.

The most apparent aspect of nature in the commercial is simply the amount that it is

present during the thirty-second television spot. Of the twenty unique visual clips that make up

the commercial, sixteen of them include a clear depiction of nature (ranging from particular

tangible artifacts to broad, sweeping vistas). Further, of these sixteen, nine of them are

completely devoid of any part of the Camry. The extended absence of the primary subject of the

commercial draws further attention to nature. Presenting nature by itself calls the audience to see

25

it as a subject as well. The same prominence is also visible in the amount of time allotted to the

various shots. Roughly twenty of the commercial‟s thirty seconds include a depiction of nature,

and nearly half of that time lacks any visual of the car. In presenting nature with such frequency

and length the commercial invites the audience to pay close attention to the nature as it is

depicted. By priming the audience to devote attention to nature themes, the aspects of diversity

and fixity are able to bear more rhetorical weight.

One of the most notable features of the frequent nature scenes in the Toyota commercial

is the broad range of environments depicted. There are several types of diversity that can be

identified between the nature scenes. Geographically, the commercial captures elevations

ranging from mountaintops to river valleys. The fourth shot is of an alpine mountain road that is

clearly above the tree line. The nineteenth shot presents lush rolling plains that could easily host

a farm on the backside of any one of the hills, just out of view. In addition to geographic

diversity there is also diversity of scale in the commercial. Nature is highlighted for both its

expansive grandeur and intricate detail. The contrast of scale is easily seen between the close-up

shots of the flowers. In the former, each petal is discernable and highlighted against a blank

background. In the later, the distant water disappears into the sky along the horizon, with the

exact meeting point so far away that it is discernable.

The presentation of such a broad range of nature scenes suggests that they exist in the

commercial to highlight the environment as subject, rather than merely play background to the

Camry. Such a suggestion is furthered by the depiction of several places the Camry simply

cannot go. The mountain highways the Camry is shown driving down certainly play into the

vehicle‟s appeal. However, the snow filled canyon in shot eight, or the river in shot nine

highlight aspects of the environment that are clearly beyond the direct benefits of purchasing the

26

car. The Camry is neither an all-wheel drive SUV that could power up the snowy mountain, nor

a heavy-duty truck capable of charging across a river. Since the Camry is unable to provide the

audience access to the nature scenes that are presented in the commercial, the existence of these

scenes must be understood to serve a different purpose. The goal of presenting nature as a

subject provides such a purpose. The presentation of these scenes for nature‟s sake is further

underscored by the diversity of scale. The Camry can certainly take someone from foreground to

horizon across the valley in scene nineteen. However, there is no apparent connection between a

car and the tight shots of the flowers in scene five. With no link between the Camry and the

flowers, one is led to search for an explanation of the flowers outside of the direct appeals to the

car.

The presentation of nature as subject in the commercial is crucial to building an appeal

for the wellbeing of nature. The juxtaposition of nature scenes outside the existence of the

Camry, and narration suggesting that the Camry is the “best car for America,” and one that

contains “an engine of change,” constructs a very clear environmental appeal: purchasing a

vehicle with Toyota‟s Hybrid Synergy Drive engine is an environmentally responsible decision

that will reduce the stress humans are placing on the environment, specifically, the nature

depicted in the commercial. The construction of nature as subject through diversity is furthered

by the relative lack of diverse environments in which the Camry itself is displayed. For as broad

a range of nature scenes captured in the commercial, the Camry itself is presented in very few

environments. Throughout the entire commercial the Camry is only shown driving through two

different nature scenes: a forest, and a road lined with brush and other short foliage. At no point

in the commercial does the car drive through the snowy mountains or come to a stop along the

riverbank.

27

The small number of nature scenes in which the Camry is present work to distance the

audience from the vehicle. Although the car is moving in all of the scenes in which it is included

(except for the final showroom shot), it does not travel with the audience to the diverse places the

other shots take those viewing the commercial. The separation of the audience from the Camry

is also suggested through the movement of the camera throughout the commercial. There are

several shots where the camera is clearly moving because it is attached to – or inside – the

Camry. However, the camera continues to move in the nature scenes that do not include the

Camry. Therefore, while the commercial highlights the ability of the Camry to move it also

suggests a different type of travel apart from the Camry in the presentation of the various nature

scenes.

However, the apparent separation of nature from the Camry, and the presentation of

nature as a separate subject in the commercial raise questions of the rhetorical benefit of such a

move. Such a separation is not necessary for a hybrid car commercial to make environmental

appeals from nature.7 The nature that the hybrid is depicted as benefiting (through reduced

carbon emissions) could easily be the nature that appears alongside the road as the car passes.

Why would it be rhetorically desirable to divert audience attention away from the Camry in order

to focus on nature as an additional subject in the commercial? One possible explanation for the

focus on nature as subject in the Camry commercial is that it is intended to draw out an

emotional response from the audience; specifically, a desire for freedom.

Evoking a Desire for Freedom

While there are basic needs people require to survive, the majority of product

advertisements people encounter on a daily basis are not things upon which their lives hinge.

The non-essential nature of many consumer goods makes audience consumption of them less

28

than a given. Such conditions spur producers to associate their product(s) with positive values,

benefits, or outcomes, in order to assist in audience validation of the purchase of the products. It

is this lack of product necessity that keeps advertisers “continuously scouring” popular culture

for the “raw materials” with which to construct the newest commodity signs.8

For American consumers the quality of freedom is a familiar theme. A privileging of

freedom can be found in appeals from speech and civil rights to national ideals for freedom. One

notable example of this is President Bush‟s speech after the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11.

In the very first sentence of the speech he announces that the attacks were attacks on America‟s

freedoms.9 Freedom is also a value that is incredibly versatile in corporate advertising because it

can be utilized in a wide variety of ways. For example, a car or truck can offer the audience the

chance for freedom, as it is seen kicking leaves into the air as it drives off into the distance down

a countryside road. However, there are many other ways a desire for freedom can be drawn from

the audience. A fast-acting cleaning product can provide the freedom to avoid spending one‟s

entire weekend scrubbing the bathroom. A diet supplement allows people the freedom to eat

what they want and still lose weight. Freedom is also frequently employed in advertisements for

new technology. A wireless computer network enables people to work from any room in the

house, unbound by cords. Similarly, a personal television console allows people the freedom to

watch their favorite television shows anywhere.

The range of appeals that utilize a desire for freedom is important in understanding the

Camry Hybrid commercial. Some car advertisements call attention to a vehicle‟s ability to

provide freedom through the places the vehicle is able to take a driver, by virtue of its power,

speed, traction, or other qualities that play out literally where the rubber meets the road. The

destinations, and the features the vehicles need to achieve them are very diverse from car to car

29

and advertisement to advertisement. However, one typical commonality is the presentation of

the destination, vehicle, and driver (either seen or implied) together in one place – having either

arrived or en route to the freedom-providing destination.10

The Camry Hybrid commercial utilizes nature to break this unified presentation of

destination, vehicle, and driver. Despite this break it still invites a strong audience response of a

desire for freedom – built upon the appeals to nature. The commercial uses nature to underline

the current environmental diversity and the freedoms these spaces allow people to escape from

urban environments. In this way the environmental appeal in the commercial is not attempting to

draw an emotional desire for freedom, or for more freedom, but rather a desire for continued

freedom.

The idea of continued freedom rests on the depiction of the scenes in the commercial as

places that, although devoid of any human presence, are still navigatable. People could visit

them if they so desired. The sense of nature in the commercial as something that can be visited

and explored is conveyed through the movement experienced in viewing the nature. The slow

movement of the camera down the river (scene nine) suggests the audience is floating on a boat.

The fast approach upon the snowy canyon (scene eight) conveys the feeling one might

experience flying in a plane or helicopter. At first glance this movement may appear trivial.

However, the motion in the scenes provides an explanation as to how the shot was captured. A

still photograph of these scenes may be as aesthetically striking as film, and display the nature

scene with equal effectiveness. However, it does little to explain how that nature was captured.

The movement in scene nine suggests the camera was mounted on a boat. Such a condition

informs the audience of the existing freedom to experience that landscape given the proper

watercraft. Similarly, the moving approach to the snowy canyon gives the sensation of some

30

type of aircraft. Through these suggestions of the available means of navigation into the

depicted wilderness areas, the Camry commercial presents the freedom to explore and appreciate

the wilderness as something currently available.

The present possibility for one to freely explore the nature scenes shown in the

commercial helps to create an enthymematic environmental appeal for the possibility of that

freedom in the future. The unstated premise in the commercial is that traditional vehicles are

damaging to the environment. Further it is understood that these vehicles will lead to the

eventual degradation of the nature depicted in the commercial if people fail to capitalize upon

new automobile advancements such as Toyota‟s Hybrid Synergy Drive technology. These ideas

are explicitly stated in many environmental appeals, specifically those for hybrid cars. Another

of Toyota‟s Camry hybrid commercials features a father who both drives a hybrid, and raises his

son to be bilingual (speaking both English and Spanish in the commercial). When the son asks

why the father drives a car that uses two fuel sources and speaks two different languages, his

answer is for his son‟s “future.”11

Through these enthymematic appeals the Camry Hybrid commercial calls the audience to

acknowledge and appreciate the current amount of freedom available in nature. The current

existence of nature helps to invite a desire for the continued opportunity for that freedom. By

preventing the degradation of nature with the purchase of hybrid vehicles the audience will

continue to have natural spaces into which to escape. The most complete presentation of this

complex appeal is visible in the eighteenth and nineteenth scenes of the commercial. What is

presumed to be the Camry‟s engine and exhaust system is on display, in front of a red curtain

with a green, grass floor. The precursor to this scene includes the narrator asking the first half of

a question: “When does an engine . . . ” Then as the red curtain is pulled back to reveal lush

31

green rolling hills, the question is completed: “become an engine of change?” The combination

of the narrated question along with the opening of the curtain positions the new engine as the

subject that will lead to what is behind the curtain. However, while the engine may be

innovative, the vista the curtain reveals is nothing new. It is not an improved nature, rather one

just as striking as the others presented throughout the commercial. There is nothing hyper-

natural about the green hills. Nonetheless, the appeal that the engine will lead to the possibility

of the revealed environment is unmistakable. It is this appeal that completes the invitation to the

audience to feel a desire for freedom related to nature, and environmental concern. The freedom

depicted through the diverse range of nature scenes, and the camera movement through them,

asserts the present opportunity to escape industrialized urban settings and enjoy the freedom of

nature. That the “engine of change” does not reveal any visible change at all suggests that the

future of the audiences‟ freedom in nature will be jeopardized if changes are not made. Through

the camera movement in the scenes without the Camry it is suggested that the car will not serve

as a tool to gain physical freedom to those spaces. However, the Camry‟s engine will allow for

the health of those spaces to persist. Such preservation will allow people to continue to access

them through other means.

The invitation to feel a desire for freedom through appeals to nature in the Camry Hybrid

commercial is also intensified by the relative ambiguity of the nature scenes. While the

commercial displays a great diversity in nature scenes the shots provide very little locational

information. There are no road signs, iconic landscapes, or familiar scenic overlooks. The

mountains in scene eight must be in a geographical location capable of allowing for snow

accumulation. However, for most audience members this scene could be located in almost any

alpine mountain range.12

In choosing wilderness vistas to capture in brief video segments, the

32

director of the commercial could have selected more recognizable visuals. Familiar places such

as Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Panalu‟s black sand beach, or specific sites in Yosemite

National Park made famous by the work of Ansel Adams are altogether absent from the

commercial. From a rhetorical standpoint this absence seems to further instill a desire for

freedom in the audience. The nature depicted in the commercial works to suggest that not only is

the Camry able to take owners to developed places of wilderness, like state or national parks, it

can also navigate truly wild, unmarked, undeveloped nature as well.

In the case of appeals to nature, depictions of wilderness often stand in direct contrast to

cityscapes: nature scenes present “pristine environments into which [people can] escape from the

routine grind of urban, industrial life.”13

While people are possibly seeking out these

environments for a “pristine” aesthetic, the notion of “escape” in this explanation is

fundamentally people-oriented. On a surface, visual level, one might desire an escape to nature

for the preference of grass over concrete or starlight over neon signs. However, none of those

man-made objects would be in the state one desires to escape were it not for the presence of

humans. Such an understanding of some of the fundamentals of escape and freedom assists in

considering how much of an impact the presence or absence of iconic wilderness scenes has on

the suggestion of a desire for freedom in the Camry commercial. Had nature been depicted

through iconic tourist destinations it simultaneously would have reduced the possible role of

freedom in the commercial. Since tourist locations inevitably suggest the presence of other

people, a lesser degree of escape into the wilderness would have been rhetorically suggested.

Freedom outside nature.

Many aspects of the Camry Hybrid commercial that suggest an audience response of a

desire for freedom are built on appeals to nature alone. However, there are others drawn from

33

other aspects of the intersection of automobiles and the environment. The freedom of the

audience‟s personal lifestyle is another aspect of many green consumer vehicle advertisements.

The concern for this aspect of audience freedom is rooted in the potential fear that hybrid

vehicles limit the transportational freedom people have come to expect in the cars they drive.

Similar to the concern that a changing environment could restrict diver freedom, so too could a

vehicle that sacrifices power or utility in order to gain reduced emissions or increased gas

mileage. This concern, and the reassurance against it, is very familiar to hybrid vehicle

advertisements. In a Ford hybrid commercial it serves as the central argument of the

commercial. It features a man resting against his Fusion Hybrid explaining that he was initially

not going to purchase a hybrid because: “I don‟t want to drive an egg, I want some power. But

then we drove it and I was like, oh, it‟s a car!”14

A similar argument intended to reassure

audience members that they will not lose their freedom if they purchase a Camry Hybrid exists in

the first line of narration in the commercial. The reassurance provided in the assertion that the

new hybrid version of the Camry is not different than the previous models, aside from reduced

emissions. The line, “When does the best-selling car in America become the best car for

America?” asserts that the hybrid version of the Camry is essentially the same vehicle as the

traditional Camry – “the best-selling car in America.”

The assertion that the two versions of the Camry are ultimately the same provides the

assurance that in making the transition to a hybrid Camry, drivers will not have to sacrifice their

freedom by deciding on a less powerful or less rugged vehicle. Such assurance is also provided

by the visual presentation of the engine itself. As the audience is being informed by the narration

that the hybrid and non-hybrid are almost the same car, the engine and exhaust system is shown

on a display stand. What is presented looks very much like any typical engine. Aside from the

34

addition of a “nickel metal hydride battery” near the rear of the car, most audience members

would likely be hard pressed to identify it as a hybrid engine.15

The presentation of the engine

functions similarly to the assurance the man in the Ford commercial provides by explaining his

apprehension about a hybrid until he drove it and realized it was “a car.” Presenting an engine

that looks like a “car” engine suggests its capacity to provide just as much freedom as a

traditional model.

The assurance that a hybrid vehicle will still be a “car” is one that may not initially

appear to be related to nature or environmentalism. Therefore, the connection between the two

appeals will be briefly considered prior to further examining appeals rooted in the power of

hybrid cars. The popular apprehension about having to relinquish freedom or power in order to

reduce one‟s carbon footprint or improve the health of a forest is a concern that appears

frequently, across a broad range of green consumer advertising. The Camry Hybrid commercial

specifically needs to attend to this concern because of the appeals to nature within the

commercial that suggest a desire for continued freedom. The magnificent spaces shown in the

commercial would not be any less magnificent if the Camry Hybrid (or all hybrids more broadly)

was significantly less powerful or versatile than the traditional models of the past. However,

those spaces would lose the appeal rooted in their potential to provide freedom or an escape from

urban life if the Camry Hybrid was unable to allow people access to the nature that the

commercial promises the new hybrid technology will protect. Although these popular

advertising norms of assurance in green consumer messages allow for coherent appeals to nature,

they also lead to a minimizing of the complex relationships in environmental issues.

35

The Rhetorical Problems with the “Freedom to maintain.”

The Camry commercial negotiates the conflict between environmentalism and the

maintenance of daily life by constructing freedom appeals both within and outside of nature.

There is a freedom to be had in all of the nature spaces presented in the commercial. At the same

time the Camry promises to provide the audience the freedom to explore those spaces. However,

these appeals are also rooted in a promise to maintain the status quo both from environmental

and behavioral standpoints. The nature depicted in the commercial is neither a lost nature

looking to be recovered, nor a possible nature that is better than the current conditions. The

nature scenes are not presented in any way to suggest they exist in any time other than the

present. There are not time-lapse renderings of glaciers, sea-level prediction maps, or other past

or future renderings. In the absence of these past or future presentations the audience is given no

reason to believe that the nature scenes presented in the commercial are anything other than

images depicting current conditions. The freedom to explore nature that the audience is offered

through the Camry is a freedom to venture into those spaces, as they currently exist.

Appeals to present nature are quite familiar to green advertisements. They are likely

popular because they allow for audience members to be interested in the environment because of

the various natures they currently enjoy. The audience does not need to reflect back to the past

or project to future environments. They can be invested in the spaces with which they are

immediately familiar. Unfortunately these appeals present problematic notions of freedom when

they are coupled with the freedom of daily routine that is also presented in the Camry

commercial.

One familiar green consumer advertising message embedded in this commercial is the

assurance that helping to change and improve the health of the environment will not require

36

audience members to drastically alter or inconvenience their current daily lives. Although it is

not explicit in the commercial the way(s) in which the Camry is the “best car for America,”

(“best” could mean a variety of things, from most economical to most convenient, etc.) the visual

cues of pristine nature settings clearly suggest that in this case “best” means most

environmentally sound. The sentence presents the apparent coincidence (which is really no

coincidence at all) that the car that is already the most popular among the audience members also

happens to be the most environmentally friendly. Such a coincidence suggests that the purchase

of a Camry Hybrid will provide audience members the chance to help the environment without

making any real changes in their daily lives. Such an appeals to convenience is common at the

intersection of environmentalism and consumption. The narration in the Camry commercial is

very similar to messages found in consumer driven environmental resources such as The Green

Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time, It’s Easy Being

Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living, or perhaps the most blatantly titled, The Lazy

Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living.16

Rogers and Kostigen‟s The

Green Book is a popular publication that presents celebrity-delivered environmental tips. The

section in the chapter on “shopping” is prefaced by: “we‟ve created the „Simple Steps‟ to be just

that. . . . they give you the biggest impact with the least amount of effort.”17

Although these

types of environmental appeals present the audience with options and activities that are relatively

easy to follow, they are often criticized for simultaneously denying the actual scope and

intricacies of environmental concerns. In his critique of McDonald‟s “Good Food from the

Good Earth” campaign, Stephen Depoe considers environmental activists‟ concerns that “the

environmental movement, encouraged by big business, has shifted its emphasis „from macro- to

37

micro-pollution, from shaming industry to exploring personal guilt, from government to family

policy.‟”18

From these concerns Depoe suggests:

Corporate strategies such as those employed by McDonald‟s, which attempt to transform

the environmental debate from a question of corporate responsibility and public policy to

a question of personal choice and consumption, contribute to an unhealthy interiorization

and privatization of the environmental issue.19

A very similar set of concerns present themselves in the best-selling car/best car comparison in

the Camry commercial.

The appeal is made to assure potential buyers that the decision to purchase a hybrid will

not come at the cost of driving an under-performing vehicle. However, it simultaneously

reinforces the idea that environmentalism is best approached from an angle that requires little to

no accommodation in the daily lives of audience members. These messages function to

rhetorically shrink the complexities of environmental systems. By assuring audiences that they

will not have to adjust their daily lives in order to solve environmental problems these messages

consequently assert that environmental problems are elementary in either degree or complexity,

so as to be rendered solvable without any significant change in human behavior.

In addition to drawing focus away from companies and towards the consumption patterns

of individual audience members, the “simple steps” appeals also risk approaching an apocalyptic

tone. As considered in her analysis of apocalyptic rhetoric and Al Gore‟s documentary, An

Inconvenient Truth, Laura Johnson draws upon the potential for apocalyptic fears to come to the

fore when responses to large problems seem too small or trivial.20

Such a reaction is possible

when the audience is aware of the seriousness of the problem, but is still only provided with

small, convenient solutions to the situation. Although not necessarily an apocalyptic example,

38

imagine what a likely reaction would be to being told that the solution prevent a ship with

multiple holes in the hull from sinking was to bail water with soupspoons. Similarly, convenient

consumer-friendly steps to saving the environment might be easy, but if they cannot be imagined

to have a significant enough impact, people still may feel helpless about the future of the

environment.

The Camry commercial does not encounter this problematic incongruence between

overwhelming apocalyptic problem and underwhelming simple step solution. The nature

presented in the commercial is not shown to be in any irrecoverable distress. The audience is

presented with multiple natural spaces that appear to be flourishing. Nor is it the case as in

Depoe‟s examination that the simple steps solutions are attempting to convert corporate

responsibility into personal guilt. The invitation of feelings of guilt through nature appeals will

be considered at length in the next chapter. The serene nature presented in the Camry

commercial, however, does little to invite feelings of guilt. Additionally, the musical score in the

commercial is powerful, and the narration, by suggesting that the “best-selling car in America,”

is now “the best car for America,” insists that the audience is already on the right path towards

environmental protection.21

However, the dual assurance of freedom through the purchase of the

Camry (both the freedom to explore existing nature, and the freedom to not have to alter one‟s

daily routine) presents another potential problem with the simple steps solution to environmental

concerns.

Providing simple step solutions as an assurance of freedom in nature seems to contradict

the suggestions of environmental progress present in the commercial. There are several aspects

of the commercial that suggest forward progress. Scene two features a power button being

pressed, as opposed to one already turned on. The narrator in the commercial also asks “When

39

does an engine become an engine of change?” The answer to this question presents the clearest

suggestion of progress: “Introducing the first ever gas-electric Camry with Hybrid Synergy

Drive. It’s time to move forward.” Forward progress is a powerful and important appeal in

environmental communication. Messages calling people, companies, or governments to take

action to combat environmental concerns utilize this notion of forward progress to spurn action.

However, when the progress is presented through simple step solutions that are also built on

audience member desires for the freedom to maintain their daily lives the implications of calls

for forward progress seem immediately muted.

The muting of notions of forward progress is not, however, due simply to the utilization

of a simple step solution in the commercial. Simple step solutions are based on the negation of

the requirement for any substantial change in the daily lives of the audience members being

asked to adopt the steps. Such an environmental perspective is clearly explained in the preface

of Rogers and Kostigen‟s The Green Book:

Neither of us lives in a tree or rides a stationary bicycle in a closet to generate electricity

for our homes. We bet you don‟t, either. This book is derived from our desire to be

environmentally friendly while remaining selfish consumers.22

Despite the reassurance of no need for any change in the lives of audience members, simple step

solutions are frequently components of environmental appeals for forward progress. As The

Green Book presents very specific ways people can act in an environmentally friendly way,

many of them are aimed at money or resource gains and improvements over time. For example,

the book suggests people try to purchase used sporting equipment whenever possible because “If

5 percent of the money spent on new sporting goods were directed at used goods instead,

Americans could save $250 million per year, enough to buy solar panels for twenty thousand

40

houses.”23

In many of these appeals simple steps will ideally lead to global environmental

change through the accumulative impact of small audience actions.

The freedom the audience gains by only being asked to take very small, unobtrusive

actions does not lead to messages of progress in the Camry commercial because of the

simultaneous presentation of a desire for freedom in current environments. The commercial

asserts that the simple action of driving the hybrid version of “the best-selling car in America,”

will allow a driver freedom to explore nature, while simultaneously protecting it. However,

there is nothing in the commercial to suggest that nature will be in any way improved. The lack

of such a suggestion leads to a reading of the appeal that nature will merely be maintained. At

first glance the suggestion that the difference between presentations of present nature and future

(or improved) nature may seem insignificant for implications of freedom and progress. In order

to understand this distinction it is helpful to examine another hybrid vehicle commercial that

clearly presents the improvement of nature as a result of simple step solutions. One example can

be found in another one of Toyota‟s commercials. A set of television commercials for Toyota‟s

Prius Hybrid all feature the car driving through landscapes that become greener and more lively

as the Prius drives past.24

As the car moves down the road the hillsides turn from a cloudy white

to a lush green, the rivers rush faster, and flowers can be seen blooming. Although the nature

presented in the commercial is one constructed by humans it still contains a coherent suggestion

of the impact of the Prius on actual nature. This advertising campaign presents an understanding

of forward progress through simple steps. The narrative in the commercials is that by driving the

Prius hybrid the owner will be helping the environment flourish.

By inviting a desire for freedom through both presentations of nature and assurances of

simple steps the Camry commercial constructs a call to action in the interest of maintaining the

41

status quo. If audience members purchase a Toyota Camry hybrid they will be able to maintain

their daily routines because the hybrid is presented as being the same as the traditional model.

Through driving a hybrid they will also be maintaining the environment as it is depicted in the

commercial.25

Such a message is rhetorically problematic for environmental communication

because it reinforces the notion that the environment is something that can be fixed or protected

without any inconveniences to humans. Additionally, it places a barrier for continued

environmentalism at the current state of nature. The freedom to not have to alter one‟s routine

by purchasing a hybrid that functions and provides the same freedoms as a traditional car could

be much more environmentally beneficial if it also allowed for an improvement of the

environment, or expansion of discussion about the condition of the earth. However, this is not

the case in the Camry commercial. The coupling of the freedom in driving a Camry hybrid with

the freedom to explore presently healthy, serene nature settings allows for more complex

environmental considerations and discussions to be ignored. As previously addressed, the

depictions of nature in the commercial function to invite a desire for freedom. By presenting

nature in a current state, and without any indication that said state is less than ideal the audience

is called to maintain nature as presented by driving a hybrid. Beyond that maintenance,

however, there are no appeals in the commercial to suggest further environmental action or

concern.

The Camry Hybrid commercial associates nature and simple step solutions with freedom.

Such an association suggests that the switch to a hybrid vehicle will solve environmental

problems by maintaining natural wilderness areas and audience freedom to enjoy those spaces.

The simple steps approach to environmental concerns is certainly one that can easily be adopted

by a large percentage of a given audience, especially the target audience of consumer

42

advertisements. However, it is not an appeal that is without rhetorical drawbacks. Simple steps

approaches have been shown to at times present solutions that seem inconsequential compared to

environmental problems. In this case, it has been shown that simple steps can also work to limit

environmental concerns. Such limiting can reinforce the quality of the status quo, and reduce

opportunities for discussion of environmental concerns beyond a simple maintenance of current

conditions. As environmental messages continue to be presented through corporate

advertisements it is important for audience and environmental communication scholars alike to

be aware of the rhetorical limits of various appeals. This analysis shows that one of these

conditions is the pairing of simple step solutions to environmental concerns with freedom

appeals based on nature. By inviting the audience through depictions of nature to feel a desire

for freedom the message appears to simultaneously project that same freedom on the simple

steps assurances of personal convenience. Such a combination thus leads to a message of

environmental maintenance that limits the scope of understood environmental concern in the

commercial to future degradation.

43

CHAPTER 3: GREEN GUILT AS DAWN SAVES WILDLIFE

Environmentalism Through Cleaning Power

The last chapter critiqued a product that underwent production changes in order to be

presented as a green consumer product. In addition to repositioning the advertising appeal to

encourage customers to replace their traditional cars with a hybrid model, the Camry itself was

changed. Toyota repositioned the Camry both through advertising appeals and product

adjustment. However, not all consumer goods being sold with green marketing appeals have

undergone actual product changes. One of the goals of this chapter is to analyze the appeals of

one such product, to consider how green corporate advertising functions (and/or functions

differently) for products that have made no environmentally aimed adjustments to the product

itself. How are emotions invited through appeals to nature when the only repositioning of the

product takes place at the marketing level? How do companies convince audience that even in

the lack of a changed product, a traditional consumer good is now one that has “a minimal

impact on the environment . . . relating to both a product‟s attributes and its manufacturer‟s

track record for environmental compliance.”1

The primary consumer product and advertising campaign for this chapter is the 2009-

2010 “Dawn Saves Wildlife” campaign, for Proctor & Gamble‟s Dawn dish soap.2 The Dawn

campaign utilizes a wide variety of media. Beyond traditional television commercials, there also

exists a complete multiple-page website devoted to the campaign. The efforts also expand into

the online social networking site, Facebook, through Dawn‟s advocacy group: “Everyday

Wildlife Champions.”3 The critique of this campaign will consider all of these outlets.

However, the focus will be devoted to appeals made through the television commercials and the

Dawn Saves Wildlife website. The reason to give priority to these modes over the social

44

networking outlets is that they more clearly align with the focus of this project. The transition

from corporate advertising to corporate advocacy is certainly a rhetorically interesting one.

However, a careful consideration of the Everyday Wildlife Champions‟ Facebook page risks

derailing the aim of analyzing green corporate advertising. There is an entire body of

scholarship devoted to green corporate advocacy. Unfortunately, given the scope of the project it

is a body that is best left for another time.

Various channels for the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign will be considered in this

critique. And although they all have different visual and textual elements, a detailed description

of the television commercial and campaign website will provide a substantial base from which to

engage other aspects of the broader campaign. These two channels in particular will be detailed

because together they provide the most complete description of the appeals presented to the

audience. The reason for analyzing the website along with the television commercial is that the

website is crucial to the completion of the appeals the commercial presents to the audience.

The commercial is a thirty-second segment that features orange-gloved hands washing oil

off of baby animals. These shots of ducklings, otters and penguins are interspersed with cuts to

display bottles of Dawn sitting next to the buckets in which the animals are being washed. The

audio track for the commercial is Joe Purdy‟s song “Wash Away,” and it runs the entire length of

the commercial uninterrupted by any voices. All of the narration in the commercial is provided

by text displayed on the screen. Over the course of the commercial the animals that are being

washed progressively become cleaner. An oil covered duckling shown stumbling (its movement

presumably inhibited by the oil) early in the commercial turns into a clean, fluffy duckling

announcing the end of the commercial with a quack at the camera. As the cleaning process

occurs throughout the commercial the textual narration provides the audience information in the

45

following segments: “Thousands of animals caught in oil spills [break] have been saved using

Dawn [break] Now, your purchase can help [break] 1 BOTTLE = $1 TO SAVE WILDLIFE

[break] Tough on grease yet gentle.” Lastly, as the commercial nears its end the audience is

provided the website for the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign.

Upon following the website address provided in the commercial, one arrives at the front

page of the “How Dawn Helps Save Animal Wildlife” website. The multipage website is

devoted entirely to the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign. Although the site is hosted on Dawn‟s

(and subsequently Proctor and Gamble‟s) webspace, there are no readily available links

throughout the campaign webpages that direct audience members back to Dawn‟s larger

corporate site. If one wants to find information about other Dawn dish soaps or products, he or

she will not be able to easily navigate there from the Wildlife campaign portion of the website.

Such isolation is rhetorically significant because it suggests Dawn‟s devotion to the campaign –

opportunities are not capitalized upon to present audience members with additional promotional

information about Dawn while those audience members are exploring and learning about the

advocacy efforts of the company. The presentation of such devotion is an important part of

assuring the audience that the utilization of nature in the campaign is ultimately for the sake of

nature itself. As will be examined further in this chapter, concerns of exploitation are rampant in

critiques of advocacy appeals. Environmentalist Paul Hawken somewhat aggressively claims:

“Green marketing by definition is a fraud. The leopard‟s new spots will wash off in the first acid

rain, because green marketing is based on a view of the customer that‟s just as demeaning as the

one that got us into this situation in the first place.”4 An advocacy website that led viewers back

to the corporate homepage would likely be a feature that would draw such accusations of

exploitation.

46

The front page of the website reiterates the 1 BOTTLE = $1 slogan from the commercial

and features more pictures of young animals. In addition to this page the website consists of

roughly a dozen pages. The pages are organized under five subject heading tabs. The “How

Dawn Helps” pages note the history of Dawn being used to clean animals after oil spills, an

assertion corroborated by a letter from the executive director of the International Bird Rescue

Research Center. The “How You Can Help” pages directs users to the page to make their

purchase donation, and provide lists of steps people can take to “Help Protect the Environment”

and the organizations that are involved in similar pursuits. “Inside the Rescue” provides links to

pictures of larger wildlife rescue efforts. The “Special Edition Dawn” section reiterates the use

of Dawn as an effective cleaning agent for de-oiling harmed animals and provides more link for

the dollar donation activiation. Lastly, the “Everyday Wildlife Champions” section is focused on

the social networking of the campaign – providing users links to e-mail friends about the

campaign. This section also highlights ways to become active in advocacy group activities

through online networking sites such as Facebook.

A common theme throughout the website is the protection of the environment and

wildlife. The specific focus regards environmental recovery efforts in the aftermath of an oil

spill. While these various pages highlight different aspects environmental recovery efforts, and

the role Dawn dish soap plays in these efforts, the one aspect that runs across all of the pages is

the presentation of nature through small animals. While becoming an advocate is certainly

another of the appeals constructed across the campaign, the decision to highlight personal

involvement throughout the website does not appear to have been made. Unlike depictions of

environmental activists, which are only displayed on some pages, every page of the website

features a young animal. Considering the primacy of these animals, the following section will

47

discuss the use of nature in the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign. Such an examination will seek

to elucidate the connection between animals and nature that is constructed in the campaign. The

connection is crucial to the examination of the appeals to guilt through nature in the campaign

because the animals are used to focus a construction of guilt in the commercial. Therefore, in

order for the guilt appeals to be understood as rooted in nature, the animals must be understood

as a representation of nature.

Presenting Animals as Nature. The simple presence of animals in the Dawn Saves

Wildlife campaign does not necessarily invoke appeals to nature. Even in the name of the

campaign itself: “Wildlife,” does not guarantee an environmentally focused appeal or message.

Throughout the grounding works of environmental communication there are very few direct

connections between wildlife and the health of the environment.5 One reason for the relative

lack on this intersection may be rooted in the broad concerns of preserving nature outside of

human presence, as a space into which humans could escape. As Bullard notes in Dumping in

Dixie, environmentalism was a movement that originated in a concern about the preservation of

natural spaces for recreational purposes.6 These early concerns appear to have functioned with a

very broad scope; and perhaps such a scope rendered concerns of specific animals, species, or

wildlife irrelevant. Scope also seems to be the cause of the separation of wildlife and

environmental concerns in more recent environmental communication. Appeals of apocalyptic

environmental narratives, from Carson‟s Silent Spring to Gore‟s An Inconvenient Truth, often

trivialize concerns for wildlife as they present a much larger apocalyptic message of global

disaster. For example the health of the whitetail deer population, or the habitat of China‟s panda

bears do not matter to a great degree if the planet is about to plunge into an inescapable ice age

or run out of fresh water.

48

Wildlife does, however, exist as part of nature, and environmental concerns frequently

overlap and intertwine with concerns of specific species or creatures. An example of this

relationship can be seen on the “Partners” page of the Dawn Saves Wildlife website. The page

highlights nine different wildlife organizations. A brief mission statement is provided for each

organization. Some of the organizations, like the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, are clearly

focused on rehabilitating birds. Despite this frequent focus there are also groups that feature

much more environment-centered missions; Fundación Patagonia Natural was established “with

the objectives to maintain Patagonia‟s flora and fauna, protect the environment and promote

responsible use of its resources and ecosystems.”7

The focus of the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign is the rescue of small animals. The

campaign expands from one built on concerns solely for animals to one built on environmental

concerns for nature. Such expansion is achieved through the presentation of a familiar

environmental problem that has impacts far beyond the immediate wildlife in the commercial. In

addition to the environmentally focused advocacy groups, the campaign gains green appeal by

associating the animals with disasters that have widely recognized environmental impacts. The

first line of text in the commercial makes clear that the animals presented have been caught in oil

spills. Discussion of animals caught in oil spills calls audience members to reflect on the past

disaster of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. With the help of post accident specials such as Nova’s

“The Big Spill,” the Exxon Valdez accident has a place in the memory of the audience that

allows for the simple presentation of orange-gloved hands washing oil off small animals to likely

recall memories that involve larger environmental concerns.8 The memories and knowledge of

oil spills carry the audience from concerns for individual animals to the problems of entire tidal

ecosystems covered in oil. The connection to the environmental impact of oil spills allows the

49

campaign to be received as a green consumer advertisement rooted in nature appeals larger than

the rehabilitation of birds.

Invitation of Guilt

The audience knowledge of the environmental devastation of oil spills is important for

the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign because it works to invite feelings of guilt in the audience.

Green corporate messages work to inform the audience of how they can improve the

environment through the purchase of a product; and “maintain the perception that individual

actions can make a difference in reducing danger to the earth‟s ecosystem.”9 However, the

rhetoric of current green advertisements would suggest that this message alone is not enough.

Audience members seem to require more motivation. In the previously examined Toyota

commercial, this “more” was assurance that the buyer‟s life will also improve through the

purchase of the product (due to increased freedom). Instead of adding to the environmental

appeal by highlighting how the product will improve the daily lives of the purchasers, the Dawn

campaign provides the audience with additional information of specifically how they can

improve the environment through the purchase of the product. Such an assertion seems to rest

on the ability of the commercial to evoke feelings of guilt in the audience. A commercial could

provide a multitude of information on how a given product is environmentally beneficial, yet in

today‟s simple steps environmental culture the information alone might not be enough to

motivate action. If the purchase of a green product is not going to offer personal satisfaction

through the product itself (such as freedom with the Toyota Camry Hybrid), where can

advertisements turn to locate such satisfaction? One option may potentially be found through the

resolution of suggested feelings of guilt.

50

A brief consideration of previous critiques of guilt appeals and green messages will be

useful in analyzing the construction of feelings of guilt through nature appeals in the Dawn

Saves Wildlife campaign. In her article on environmental advocacy and the construction of

“discourse communities,” Arlene Plevin analyzes aspects of environmental appeals built on guilt,

and the potential benefits and drawbacks they present.10

Three of her points that will be helpful

in conducting a rhetorical critique of the Dawn Saves Wildlife commercial are: that an overload

of similar environmental guilt appeals has the potential to lead to numbing apathy; guilt appeals

must provide the opportunity for successful resolution of guilt; and guilt appeals naturally

construct us/them dichotomies.

In the very first paragraph of her article on “green guilt,” Plevin contemplatively presents

one of her main concerns surrounding advocacy groups‟ deployment of guilt appeals in their

environmental messages:

Once again, into my mailbox come the guilt-garnering pleas of a certain type of

environmental group. If I check off the box marked “YES” and enclose a minimum of

fifteen dollars, I join the ranks of other environmental defenders. . . . Will I be produced

by the appeal‟s detailed suggestions, swayed by its pathos, and act accordingly? Or after

numerous such letters, might I be numb to those seemingly endless requests?11

The sheer number of green guilt appeals that exist in popular culture present several concerns.

As Plevin suggests, flooding an audience with guilt appeals not only will likely result in them

feeling overwhelmed or “numb.” Additionally, the continued presence of a never-ending stream

of guilt appeals suggests to the audience that very little progress actually comes of these appeals.

The never-ending existence of green guilt messages could very easily lead to feelings of

apathy in the audience. J. Michael Hogan considers similar apathetic responses to apocalyptic

51

messages in American political discourse during the 1980‟s nuclear freeze. He asserts that

beyond simply predicting the end of days, in order for messages of apocalyptic rhetoric “to

inspire action,” they must also “provide the „assurance of deliverance.‟”12

The absence of this

assurance only leaves the audience with feelings of impending doom. These feelings of

impending doom lead to apathy, as the end appears inevitable.

Such a comparison is not to suggest that apocalyptic messages are necessarily the basis

for messages of environmental guilt. Although Rachel Carson‟s Silent Spring certainly presents

a well-known apocalyptic narrative to which many discussions of environmental issues

inevitably jump, Plevin notes that guilt appeals are fundamentally different from apocalyptic

messages. She asserts that often the marginalization of environmental groups leads to a

preference in “the motivational force of guilt” to “encourage a standard of preferred action,”

(action that will resolve feelings of guilt) rather than the scare tactics of “the rhetoric of doom.”13

Guilt appeals differ from apocalyptic messages in their ability to call for a unified action

from the margins. Nevertheless they still require a degree of assurance similar to apocalyptic

appeals. The audience needs to be assured that the action(s) they are about to take will in fact

improve the current situation – thus absolving their guilt. However, Plevin‟s description of the

continuous flow of green guilt messages suggests that goals are not readily being achieved. The

continued presence of these messages implies that there is always something for which to feel

environmental guilt. If this is the case, an apathetic response seems quite logical. Why attempt

to resolve personal feelings of guilt over one environmental concern, if another will replace those

feelings of guilt as soon as the absolution-granting step for the first issues it taken?

Along with the necessity that guilt appeals provide a step for the resolution of feelings of

guilt, the action must also be something that can have an impact in small amounts as well as

52

large ones. Plevin identifies that the construction of a belief “that individual action can make a

difference,” is crucial to the success of guilt appeals.14

Plevin locates this construction in

Habermas‟ explanation of lifeworlds. In drawing from both Plevin and Habermas, Plevin‟s

position is that since “the shared lifeworld offers a storehouse of unquestioned cultural givens

from which those participating in communication draw agreed-upon patters of interpretation for

use,” it facilitates “a leap from reading about something to doing something corrective.” It is

from this “action-oriented rhetoric” that guilt gains its rhetorical force.15

The ideal guilt

resolving action step as described by Plevin is one that seems very Habermasian. It asserts that

the equal contributions of individuals will unify to have a great impact – much like the equal,

individual contributions to the construction of the ideal public sphere.

The construction of dichotomies is also important for guilt appeals. Very often in

environmental rhetoric dichotomies naturally develop between hegemonic political forces and

marginalized environmentalists. The marginalization of environmental groups impacts the

rhetorical messages presented in various ways. Kevin DeLuca argues that it is the

marginalization of environmental voices is that ultimately leads them to present arguments

through “image politics” – the only means through which their voices will be heard.16

Similarly,

Plevin sees the marginal position as a motivating factor to unite people towards a common

action:

the initial marginality of environmentalists, their sense of being on the outside and

consequently powerless, plus the desire to quickly have an effect, can suggest why the

publications of two major environmental groups, the National Wildlife Federation, and

the National Audobon Society, have resisted the rhetoric of doom, looking instead to the

motivational force of guilt, elvolving out a [sic] sense of like-minded readers.17

53

In the case of guilt appeals the common action is a step to resolve guilt. However, in the case of

a dichotomy in which one group (typically the environmentalists in these messages) is

marginalized, the action step is also an act against competing forces.

Additionally, the influence of political dichotomies eliminates the existence of any

middle ground on a particular issue. Similar to President Bush‟s post 9/11 announcement to

other nations that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” inaction, or

noncommittal is not an option when there are two, and only two sides.18

For Bush, eliminating

middle ground meant if people were not actively in favor of America‟s anti-terrorism policies

they were necessarily opposed to them. Similarly in environmental rhetoric, if members of the

audience are not actively in favor of the proposed action of a particularly advocacy group, they

are consequently anti-environment. If an action step is proposed, failure to participate in that

step qualifies one as part of the opposition.

While President Bush‟s rhetorical dichotomies were constructed out of a unique period

ripe with patriotism and desire to reaffirm national power, environmental dichotomies are often

constructed from positions of marginalization. As Plevin notes, the history of marginalization of

environmental advocacy groups led to a desire to unify on a position against the dominant

powers.19

As environmental concern and advocacy has broadened and grown into mainstream

media and culture, the assurance of this marginal position from which to operate has shifted. In

light of this shift, it seems that one way environmental groups have managed to retain a marginal

position is to champion a voice for voiceless nature. Even a man as recognized and politically

influential as Al Gore is able to call for marginal group building (and through it, construct

us/them environmental dichotomies), when he speaks up for species losing their habitats to

melting glaciers. In her critique of “Green Guilt,” Arlene Plevin explains that environmental

54

groups can often be observed utilizing “photographs of injured birds, damaged riparian areas,

severely polluted sites, and bulldozed land . . . showing it to be vulnerable and susceptible to

environmental illness, to underscore a sense of urgency and set up an „us‟ versus „them‟

duality.”20

Plevin provides a caption from a photograph of oil refineries in EnviroAction to

further elucidate this dichotomy: “Question: Will the anti-environmentalists prevail and allow

pollution as usual?”21

At first glance this caption may seem like more of an accusation (placing

guilt on the “anti-environmentalists”) than a motivation for feelings of guilt in the audience.

However, it sets up the dichotomy of anti-environmentalists versus environmentalists. Such a

dichotomy calls the audience to fall to one side or the other. The construction of anti-

environmentalists versus environmentalists denies the existence of any middle ground. By

removing all but two positions, audience inaction automatically classifies them as anti-

environmentalist: “guilt comes when you don‟t act.”22

These concerns of apathy, participation, and identification will drive the following

critique of green guilt appeals in the Dawn Helps Save Wildlife campaign. The next sections

will address several ways the campaign appears to negotiate the messages inviting guilt so as to

avoid the pitfalls with which Plevin is concerned. They will also consider how the campaign is

able to capitalize upon what are presented as the strengths of green guilt appeals. Although this

will certainly not be an exhaustive list, four particular rhetorical moves will be addressed, three

of which directly involve the campaign‟s appeals to nature.

The Rhetorical “Tempering” of Green Guilt

One of the concerns that Plevin presents in “Green Guilt” is how guilt appeals and

narratives can present themselves in a way that avoids inviting an apathetic response in the

audience. Such apathetic responses to environmental rhetoric are not unique to guilt appeals.

55

Concern over apathetic responses to apocalyptic narratives in environmental communication is

something that has previously been addressed by rhetorical scholars. The work on apocalyptic

environmental rhetoric and apathy is useful in understanding environmental guilt appeals

because of the rhetorical aspects the two types of appeals have in common. A reading of

Plevin‟s “Green Guilt” suggests that in addition to inviting apathetic audience responses,

apocalyptic rhetoric and rhetorics of guilt are similar in their reliance on “the language of

urgency,” and the potential both types of appeals hold for creating in the audience “the desire to

act quickly.”23

Considering these similarities, a useful work to inform a critique of the Dawn Saves

Animals campaign is Laura Johnson‟s article on the tempering of Al Gore‟s environmental

apocalyptic rhetoric in his film, An Inconvenient Truth.24

Gore‟s film has been dismissed as

merely “another apocalyptic environmental text.” Johnson sets out in this critique to examine

Gore‟s rhetoric in order to rescue the film from this quick dismissal. Her central claim is that

Gore “tempers” his environmental apocalyptic narrative in several crucial ways that “complicate

and distract from [the film‟s] apocalyptic images.” She finds this tempering allows for “an

interplay of various environmental rhetorics that [are] potentially more effective than the

gloomier rhetorics of many” purely apocalyptic texts.25

To achieve this end, Johnson highlights

several of the tactics she sees Gore employing in order to “render [his apocalyptic rhetoric]

reasonable to a modern audience.”26

Such an approach to examining the potential invitation of

audience understanding, feeling, and response is one that seems very useful and appropriate for a

critique of the guilt appeals present in the Dawn Saves Wildlife Campaign. The central

argument in moving into the critical analysis is that the Dawn campaign “tempers” appeals of

guilt in much the same way An Inconvenient Truth tempers apocalyptic messages. If this

56

tempering is achieved in the Dawn campaign, Johnson‟s argument would suggest that the

messages of the campaign will be more palatable to the audience, and invite fewer apathetic

responses. Although the entire campaign and all its constitutive aspects will be considered in

examining the tempering of guilt appeals the primary focus will be on the construction of guilt

appeals through nature, and similarly, how nature contributes a tempering impact to the

campaign.

The success in tempering both apocalyptic and guilt appeals seems to reside in the ability

to negotiate, and lessen, overwhelming and debilitating levels of disaster. When messages of

doom, gloom, or guilt become too large audiences are likely to feel as though their response will

have little to no impact on the problem, due to the overwhelming magnitude with which it is

presented. Nordhaus and Shellenberger support this point with an excerpt from a New York

Times op-ed piece by the “Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental writer Kathernine Ellison:”

As the mother of two young boys, I want to do everything I can to protect their future.

But I feel like a shnook buying fluorescent light bulbs – as Environmental Defense

recommends – when at last count, China, India and the United States were building a

total of 850 new coal-fired power plants.27

In apocalyptic rhetoric, tempering occurs to lessen the inevitability of a world-ending future. In

guilt appeals, messages are tempered to decrease either the guilt, or the degree of the problem.

The goal in this tempering is to present the problem through which the message of guilt is

delivered as comparable to the action step asked of the audience in order to resolve feelings of

guilt. The primary ways that the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign tempers the messages of guilt

through appeals to nature are: by depicting nature through a very select group of visual

representations; by presenting a narrative of rescue of nature over the course of the thirty second

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television commercial; and by the strategic separation of appeals to nature and advocacy from

appeals of consumerism and adaptation of nature to middle-class lifestyle.

The Dawn Saves Wildlife advertisements work to temper the messages of green guilt, in

part, through the selective depiction of nature. In this case, “selective” has a dual meaning. The

campaign is selective both in terms of the subjects chosen for presentation, and the ways in

which they are presented. The campaign is built on the assertion that Dawn “saves wildlife.”

The designation “wildlife,” read in relation to early environmental definitions of “wilderness,”

includes all life forms that exist in an area “that is not cultivated or otherwise under civilized

human control.”28

However, the animals presented in the advertisements are all a specific type

of wildlife: young, friendly looking creatures – baby ducks, seals, otters, and penguins. These

animals are presented as both the subjects of the commercial, and as logos for the campaign on

the actual soap bottles and on the campaign website. The selection of these animals as stand-ins

for all “wildlife” and as the logos of the advertisements readily presents an identifiable face for

the campaign. Dawn Saves Wildlife does work to save wildlife, but specifically, it works to save

the baby duckling, or the young sea otter.

Presenting a unique face of nature in guilt appeals seems to be one way to rhetorically

negotiate the problem of the “seemingly endless requests” of green guilt messages calling the

audience to help save the environment.29

Plevin suggests that one of the problems with the guilt

appeals presented by so many environmental advocacy groups is that they all look the same. The

previously quoted narrative she provides of opening a typical environmental advocacy group

mailer highlights this problem. The Dawn commercial is to some degree certainly asking the

audience to “save the environment,” in a manner similar to the mailers Plevin critiques.

However, it is also asking the audience to save the specific faces of the animals presented in the

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commercial. It seems that such an appeal would be more likely to stand out in the mind of an

audience member than an appeal from the Sierra Club, that broadly asks audience members to

“Sponsor a Wild Place,” and subsequently, the multitude of faceless creatures within it.30

Creating a rhetorical difference between the Dawn commercial and a “typical” green guilt

appeal, seems to be one way of tempering the pitfalls of overwhelming guilt. Unlike the

magnificence of nature that is highlighted in the Toyota Camry Hybrid commercial and the

numerous appeals Plevin discusses, the Dawn commercial focuses on the individual creatures of

nature. There is no guarantee that this type of guilt appeal will be any more successful than

traditional environmental appeals, such as those built on fly-over videos of forests, or time-lapse

pictures of receding glaciers. However, the presentation of specific animals as a representation

of nature does seem to set the Dawn commercial apart from the guilt appeals built on the

grandeur of nature that may lead to apathy due to the repetitiveness of the appeals.

Another way that the selectivity of nature in the Dawn campaign may work to temper

feelings of overwhelming guilt is by presenting the individual faces of the specific creatures in

the commercial. Such presentation may temper guilt because it shrinks the scope of the problem

with which the commercial is asking the audience to assist. Gore‟s An Inconvenient Truth

received some criticism for depicting the problem of environmental change to be one much

greater than the action steps he was asking of the audience. In their book on environmentalism

and politics: Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possiblity,

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger point out that Gore‟s film features the problems of

environmental change on a very large scale: with “pictures of planet Earth taken from outer

space.” Yet they further note that many of his proposed solutions are “simple things,” like the

calls to “replace your light bulbs, insulate, don‟t consume so much stuff, and so forth.”

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Nordhaus and Scheelenberger claim that the resulting contrast in scale between the problem and

the solution alienated many environmentalists.”31

Such alienation seems rooted in the rhetorical

disjunction caused when the audience is told that the problems facing them are of an enormous

global scale, yet they should attempt to counter them by making only slight adjustments in their

daily routines.

There was certainly an opportunity to enlarge the scale of the presentation of nature and

wildlife in the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign. Since the appeal is based on the dish soap being

used to clean animals caught in oil spills, one obvious angle would have been to present an

expansive, oil-covered shore. Similar to the before and after pictures of receding glaciers in An

Inconvenient Truth, a video or still shot of countless animals along the coast at the site of an oil

spill would have provided rhetorical force to the great degree of damage done by oil spills.

However, while such a shot would have captured the magnitude of an oil spill, it also would have

risked presenting a problem that would be perceived as overwhelming. Nordhaus and

Shellenberger view aspects of Gore‟s rhetoric as overwhelming because after a number of

apocalyptic appeals he calls the audience to reverse human-caused environmental problems by

carrying reusable bags to the grocery store or switching to compact-fluorescent light bulbs.32

In

this case the “assurance of deliverance” that Hogan finds necessary in apocalyptic appeals is the

idea that detrimental environmental change can be stopped and reversed by human actions.33

The problem is that asking the audience to prevent world-wide sea levels from rising by turning

off the lights when they leave a room seems to be an inconsequential action that stands little

chance of providing the necessary apocalyptic assurance.

A similar situation would likely be the case had Dawn utilized oil-spill pictures of a

greater scale. Dawn dish soap may very well be used to clean entire shores of animals.

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However, little assurance of delivering the audience from their feelings of guilt can be found in

the power of a single dollar donation when stacked up against an entire oil-covered coastline. By

presenting single animals the commercial decreases the magnitude of the guilt invited in the

audience. The commercial does not cast the audience as responsible for the fish, rocks, algae, or

foliage damaged by the oil spill. The responsibility is to only the specific animals featured in the

commercial. Asking the audience to assist in the rescue of a particular duck, otter, or penguin is

a much less overwhelming requirement for the absolution of guilt. The value of a single dollar

donation stands to provide a much greater impact for a single duck or seal than it does for an

entire ocean-side.

Messages of guilt are also tempered in the Dawn commercial and on the website by the

dual presentation of nature in states of distress and health. Again, these two conditions of nature

are presented through the depictions of the animals in the commercial. The variation is a simple

one, but should not be overlooked. Over the course of the thirty-second commercial there are

shots of oil-covered, rescued animals, in various stages of being cleaned.34

The most apparent

dual presentation in the commercial is of a duckling. Towards the beginning of the commercial

the duckling is shown completely covered in oil, so much so that it is unable to even walk. The

camera captures the duckling‟s webbed feet sliding on a table as its knees buckle under the added

weight of the oil, and it splays out chest-first on the table. Moments later the duckling is seen in

orange rubber-gloved hands as soapy water washes away the black slick. The cleaning process is

then shown completed near the end of the commercial, as the duckling is presented standing on

its own, and shaking itself off – it‟s down now clean and dry.

A similar combination of stages of cleaning is present on the website for the campaign.

There are pictures of the rescue process in which the animals are covered in oil. Along with

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these pictures are ones of the clean animals. The type of clear, chronological narrative presented

in the commercial is not possible on the website. The site is composed of multiple pages, and the

viewer has complete discretion of how he or she chooses to navigate the site. Therefore

attempting to construct a chronological narrative across several pages would likely be futile.

However, a similar narrative of the cleaning process is suggested through the juxtaposition of oil

covered animals stumbling on oily beaches, or in the hands of rescue workers, placed on the page

next to a pair of clean baby ducks perched atop the Dawn logo. These animals are found clean

thanks to the product upon which they are sitting.

The presentation of the cleaning process throughout the commercial constructs a

narrative of environmental protection that tempers the problem of overwhelming guilt by

drawing attention to the feasibility of improving the environment. In her consideration of guilt

appeals in environmental advocacy, Plevin notes that Carson‟s famous use of narrative to depict

her apocalyptic town has the potential to scare the audience into apathy.35

Carson depicts a town

where among other problems:

The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation

as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, disserted by all living things. Even the

streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.36

If the water is toxic, the grass is dead, and the pollutants in the air have killed all the birds, how

can audience members be expected to put up a fighting resistance? The Dawn commercial, on

the other hand, tells a hopeful story – in which animals are saved, one at a time. In addition to

presenting the duckling in various stages of the cleaning process, the narration in the commercial

and the website asserts that numerous animals have already been saved thanks to the cleaning

power of Dawn. These assertions temper the message of guilt in the campaign. The audience is

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still being called to feel guilt in the absence of action, but presenting the feasibility of the

cleaning process has the potential to reduce overwhelming apathy in the audience. Unlike An

Inconvenient Truth, the Dawn commercial presents the audience with a problem that is depicted

with the same scope as the proposed audience solution: donate one dollar at a time, to save one

animal at a time. Additionally, there is no way for Gore to completely assure his audience that

the actions he is proposing will actually improve environmental conditions. Dawn, on the other

hand, is able to present prior instances of success in which their product has saved animals.

Presenting the audience a resolution step that has a proven history of success helps temper

apathetic responses that arise from pessimism surrounding the prescribed action step.

Unlike the typical environmental advocacy group donation-seeking mailer, the Dawn

Saves Wildlife campaign is rooted in consumption. For each bottle purchased by the consumer,

a dollar can be donated to help save wildlife. The initial purchase is requisite for the subsequent

donation to occur. There is no place on the Dawn Saves Wildlife website to simply donate

money outside of the purchase of a bottle of dish soap. The codependent relationship between

consumption and donation is one that raises concern for many critics. In these relationships the

donation not only rests on the act of consumption. There is also a risk of exploiting the social

issue at the center of a campaign. Such “cause marketing” weaves social issues into advertising

strategies of the commodity-goods market. This weaving risks turning “activism into a

consumer fad.”37

Many aspects of the Dawn commercial appear to temper the overwhelming

feelings of guilt by functioning differently from the typical advocacy appeals Plevin discusses.

The donation process in the Dawn Helps Save Wildlife campaign, however, seems to mimic the

approach of these advocacy groups in a way that not only tempers feelings of guilt through the

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requirement of audience action, but also allows the campaign to avoid criticism of the

exploitation of nature-based advocacy for corporate gain.

The similarity is that the campaign requires that audience action be taken beyond the

initial purchase of the product. The Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign is built in part upon the

slogan: 1 BOTTLE = $1.38

However, the donation process is not as simple as the slogan

suggests. Halfway through the commercial the audience is informed: “Now, your purchase can

help.” What is rhetorically crucial here is that the audience is told their purchase can help – not

will help. Despite the straightforward slogan 1 BOTTLE = $1, no money is actually donated to

the campaign until the purchaser of the bottle returns home, gets on his or her computer, goes to

http://www.dawnsaveswildlife.com, and enters the donation code found on the bottle, along with

a zip code and purchase location.39

At first glance this condition of Dawn‟s donation process appears to be a classic example

of one of the primary critiques of green consumer advertising. Companies often want to appear

as green as possible, without actually having to make consolations that would impact their

productivity or their bottom lines: Depoe explains:

this strategic transformation occurs in corporate advocacy when corporations respond to

external challenges by strategically relocating issues typically discussed in public

contexts (such as the environment) into realm of technical expertise or personal choice in

order to deflect attention and criticism away from the corporate practice or policy

position.40

These concerns, which often lead to accusations of corporate “greenwashing,” could easily be

launched at the Dawn campaign.41

In this case the greenwashing would be Dawn‟s attempt to

present a very environmentally generous campaign, while simultaneously hoping that few

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consumers will follow through with the online activation of the dollar donation. The argument

that the company is merely attempting to appear more environmentally friendly while little real

action is also supported on the actual soap bottles. The campaign slogan “1 BOTTLE = $1” is in

a font size that more than doubles the clarification of how that dollar actually comes to be

donated.

While there certainly is rhetorical space to accuse the Dawn Saves Wildlife Campaign of

greenwashing, the separation of purchase and donation can also be understood as a conscious

decision to provide the audience greater relief of their guilt. As Plevin notes, messages of guilt

must provide the audience an action step through which they can resolve their guilt. If the Dawn

Saves Wildlife campaign simply donated money upon the purchase of the bottles of soap, the

only action the audience would be able to take would be the initial purchase of the product.

Since the dish soap itself is not different or “greener” than regular Dawn, the purchase of the

product by most consumers would be one of their typical consumptive habits, rather than an

environmental choice. Such a donation process would perfectly fit the simple steps consumer

approach to environmental protection. These appeals may be very successful in persuading the

purchase of “an easy green replacement” product. For example, Sun Chips biodegradable bags

are more environmentally friendly than traditional chip bags, yet the transition between materials

has almost zero impact on the purchase habits, consumption, and overall consumer experience.42

These appeals function as attractive simple steps because the change has taken place in the pre-

consumer stage of the product. The appeal of Sun Chips now being packaged in biodegradable

bags is that consumers can now be environmentalists (albeit to a very slight degree) without

hardly having to think about it, or change their daily lives or patterns of consumption.

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While such “easy” environmental action is potentially a rhetorically positive aspect of an

advertising campaign aimed at simple steps, it seems that it could be less fulfilling for an appeal

rooted in feelings of guilt. If the payoff necessary for feelings of resolution in a guilt-based

appeal is an action being taken by the audience, the simple purchase of a typical household

product may not be significant enough to resolve the suggested guilt. Requiring the consumer to

take an action step beyond the simple purchase of the product may provide a stronger resolution

to the guilt appeal. Such a stronger resolution step may have implications for the success of the

environmental appeal. Although it is beyond the parameters of this project to make any

conclusive statement regarding the success of the appeal, it seems that a more defined action step

would make the advertisement stand out from the sea of environmental guilt appeals that Plevin

suggests may lead a community to “be worn out and down by the rhetorical strategy of guilt and

be deconstructed into inertia and apathy.”43

By requiring the audience to act beyond the simple

purchase of the dish soap, the campaign positions nature as something the audience has to work

for in order to absolve their guilt. Plevin notes, “what must follow from „successful‟ guilt is an

action which can mediate the guilty feelings.”44

In this way the appeals to the survival of the oil-

covered baby animals are strengthened by the rhetorical suggestion that people‟s requested future

action will determine the health of the animals.

In addition to providing an extra action step through which the audience can potentially

find resolution for their feelings of guilt, the separation of donation from purchase also distances

the campaign from critiques of consumer-based exploitation of nature. In a critique of Gap‟s

Product (RED) campaign, Kathleen Kuehn examines some of the problems of donation programs

that are directly tied to the moment of purchase. She notes that Product (RED) claims to be built

on allowing “consumers to „upgrade their choices‟ by purchasing RED products over others –

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products they would be buying regardless. If a consumer happens to be shopping for an iPod,

the logic goes, then why not purchase the RED one (and make Apple send $10 to a good

cause)?”45

While these types of consumption-based advocacy appeals guarantee a donation at

the time of purchase, they also risk reducing the importance of the advocacy cause to a mere

selling point. In her conclusion on the Product (RED) campaign, Kuehn notes:

The problematic of co-opting compassion is not the only contradiction within the Gap‟s

Product RED advertising campaign. Drawing from Goldman‟s work on green marketing,

he notes that socially conscious campaigns justify – and legitimize – consumption for

progressive ends by integrating the conflicting value of morality and superficial

aesthetics in its products.46

Similar concerns of guilt appeals leading to consumption-based exploitation also exist in appeals

to nature. Beder explains that “Green marketing provides a profitable outlet of expression for

guilty conscience. Those who do the right thing in the supermarket alleviate their concerns and

may even believe that their actions are all that is required to protect the environment.”47

However, Beder then turns to Alan Durning and Wayne Ellwood, who present the exploitative

natures of these appeals: “At its worst, green consumerism is a palliative for the conscience of

the consumer class, allowing us to continue business as usual while feeling like we are doing our

part;” and “consumers, finally satisfied that they can „do something,‟ may seek no further than

their shopping trolleys to help the planet.”48

By asking the audience to take additional action

beyond the purchase of the Dawn dish soap, a distance is created between the appeals to nature

in the campaign and the co-optation of compassion for strictly consumptive ends.

As relatively simple as the act of going to a website and entering a donation code may be,

it is still an action the audience must take beyond the purchase of a product that is already part of

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their everyday lives. Kuehn and Goldman note that many of the aspects of moral appeal and

consumption that are present in Gap‟s campaign also occur in various advertisements aimed at

constructing environmental messages. They contend that the Gap‟s Product (RED) campaign is

similar to the differentiation process in environmentally based consumer appeals. These appeals

are “rooted in the promise that „suburban environmentalism can be reconciled with one‟s life-

style without changing that life-style.‟”49

While very similar to this promise, the added action

step in the Dawn campaign seems to assert that the promise of suburban environmentalism can

be reconciled with one‟s life-style through a few simple changes to that life-style. Although

slight, this distinction is important. “Social justice consumer campaigns” that make the promise

of reconciling moral appeals and consumptive patterns without any change in life-style “cloud

the real issues, and [ask] middle-class consumers to solve the world‟s problems through

consumption.”50

Such an added action step tempers feelings of guilt by reassuring the audience

that the nature presented in the campaign is not simply being exploited for the benefit of Proctor

& Gamble‟s bottom-line.

The Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign does not ask consumers to solve the presented

environmental problem through consumption alone. Rather, the campaign asks for audience

action to be taken after the moment of purchase has passed. Initially, the audience‟s ability to

resolve the problem rests on consumptive appeals. However, the purchase of the soap alone does

not likely resolve much guilt. While some resolution may form through supporting a company

that helps save animals in crisis, the resolution suggested by the campaign – the $1 donation –

does not materialize unless the consumer takes the post-consumption action of submitting the

online donation code.

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The separation of consumption and donation does open a space for criticism of corporate

greenwashing (through the assumption that Dawn – or Proctor & Gamble – actually hopes that

consumers do not follow through with the donation step). At the same time, it avoids criticisms

of streamlining donation into consumption. Likely, advocates of the Gap‟s campaign would

respond to these critiques with the assertion that moral appeals and consumption are not

antithetical, and these campaigns are a way to gain donations from those who might not donate

otherwise. However, when the moral appeal is one focused on environmentalism, streamlining it

with consumerism risks the construction of a fundamental opposition between consumption and

conservation. Such a contradiction leads to questions like: was this purchase necessary? And if

not, is the dollar or two being donated through this purchase going to offset the production of the

product? The gas used to ship it? What waste will come from the product‟s packaging?

Without the separation of purchase and donation the concern that green marketing is geared

toward increased consumption rather than environmental improvement seems all the more valid.

Many products that construct environmental appeals through “consumption only”

messages are ones that are inherently “greener” by virtue of production or purpose. For

example, the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs or post-consumer paper products has a

measurable environmental impact that differs from the use of comparable traditional products (in

this case, incandescent light bulbs or non-recycled paper). Dawn‟s campaign, on the other hand,

has to navigate the problem that the dish soap is not making the consumer‟s daily habits any

more environmentally friendly (assuming most of the audience does not go rescue oil-covered

animals during their weekends). In the absence of a post-purchase donation requirement, the

appeal to nature in the campaign would be conflicted. It would at once be a contradiction

between:

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Buy more Dawn dish soap, so more money is donated to help save the environment.

And:

As more dish soap is purchased, more resources are expended towards corporate ends

that are not necessarily environmentally interested.

Ultimately, the same conflicts of consumption and environmentalism are in play

regardless of when and how the donation occurs. The donation of a dollar after the purchase of a

bottle of soap has the same impact on the environment as the donation of that same dollar at the

moment of purchase. Separating the two steps provides an additional action that stands to assist

the audience in resolving feelings of guilt. It also allows the audience to separate their

consumptive habits and actions from their environmental concerns and support. Allowing the

audience to differentiate between these behaviors is an important step in tempering appeals of

guilt because it helps avoid questions of whether or not the donation offsets the consumption;

because if it did not, feelings of guilt could not be resolved.

Apathy would seem to be a logical response to guilt appeals rooted in a concern for

nature. The consumption of the product is part of a never-ending cycle that encourages

consumption in order to protect the environment, while that very consumption risks furthering

potentially negative environmental impacts. By separating consumption from donation the

Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign tempers feelings that nature is being exploited for the sole

purpose of consumption. Tempering these concerns invites the audience to receive the appeals

to nature with less pessimistic worry for the cooptation of the nature depicted in the campaign.

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CHAPTER 4: RELIEF IN CONVERSION TO IBM

IBM Green Machine Commercials and Environmental Ideology

So far, this project has examined advertisements for traditional products that have been

modified to be more environmentally friendly (the Toyota Camry Hybrid) and products that

while not necessarily any greener, have adopted advocacy interests to present environmentally

concerned appeals (Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign). In addition to these types of campaigns, a

third green product category is that of consumer goods that are advertised as having been

produced for environmental improvement. The last advertising campaign that will be examined

in this project represents this category. The previous chapter on the Dawn Saves Wildlife

campaign considered the ways tempered guilt appeals appear to negotiate potential rhetorical

drawbacks to “simple steps” environmental solutions. This chapter will consider the possible

rhetorical benefits of these simple step appeals. For all of the drawbacks, the depiction of nature

in environmental consumer advertisements as commensurate with simple steps appeals stands to

be rhetorically beneficial in negotiating the ideological gap between the environmental themes of

“ecocentrism and technocentrism.”1

IBM is an enormous multinational corporation that develops business-based technology

equipment and services. On the surface, IBM may not seem to fit the category of new products

devoted to environmentalism. The production and distribution of environmentally friendly

products was certainly not the goal of IBM in years prior to the rise of green marketing. In fact,

while the company dates its roots as far back as June of 1911, IBM‟s first “corporate policy on

environmental affairs,” was not issued until 1971 (which, conveniently coincides with the birth

of green advertising as identified by Killingsworth and Goldman and Papson).2 However, the

field of technology is one in which the products of involved companies are constantly changing.

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Therefore, although the company was not built on the idea of green technologies, neither it is still

producing the products it originally manufactured. Business and technology solutions have

constantly shifting sets of exigencies. While the Toyota Camry Hybrid has been adapted to be

more environmentally friendly, the main goal behind the vehicle has remained relatively

unchanged over the years – moving people efficiently from place to place. In the field of

technologies there was no desired adaptation of environmental adjustments to the development

of power-saving “Smart Grids,” or “Advanced Water Management Systems.” There was simply

no exigency to construct these systems in the first place, prior to concern for the environment.3

Analyzing an advertising campaign for a product with a distinct environmental exigency

not only rounds out the types of campaigns addressed in this project. It also provides an

opportunity to consider the environmental rhetoric surrounding the messages from a much

broader, more complete perspective than the previous campaigns. The Toyota and Dawn

advertisements provided opportunities to consider the use of nature appeals to invite feelings of

desires for freedom and guilt in audiences. Similarly, the IBM commercials will be critiqued for

the ways nature is deployed to invite responses of relief from environmental obligation.

However, both the Toyota and Dawn campaigns were to some extent bound by advertising

norms and rhetorical forms. There exists a vocabulary and pool of traditional appeals for both

vehicles and household products that place rhetorical constraints on the ways these products are

presented and discussed. Such is not the case for a product that has been constructed in response

to recent environmental exigencies.

The critical section of this chapter will be approached by considering the environmental

ideology(ies) that are presented in the advertising messages. Such an approach will allow for the

clearest analysis of the environmentally driven vocabulary and norms of presentation present in

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the commercials. Two pairs of environmental communication scholars will ground a

consideration of these ideologies. Michael Spangle and David Knapp, and M. Jimmie

Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer have previously addressed environmental ideologies, and

constructed continuums that will be useful for the present analysis.4 At the outset of a piece on

environmental discourse Spangle and Knapp attend to previous methods of organization and

classification of environmental ideologies. They launch their classifications from previous work

done by Timothy O‟Riordan and Killingsworth and Palmer. O‟Riordan sets up a scale of

environmental ideologies that features “ecocentrism” on one side, and “technocentrism” on the

other.5 These larger categories are split into four sub-categories. Ecocentrism leads to “deep

ecologists” on one end of the scale. This end focuses on the intrinsic rights of nature.

Ecocentrism also leads to “self-reliance soft technologists” toward the center, who seek

environmental protection through small-scale community improvement. Technocentrism

similarly identifies “cornucopians” who focus on growth and man‟s ability to solve the problems

of nature at the opposite end of the scale as deep ecologists. Finally, towards the center there are

“environmental managers” who favor growth and exploitation of resources, provided

accompanying environmental regulations.6

Spangle and Knapp find this continuum problematic because “it is overly simplistic in its

explanation and classification of the philosophical tenets of the middle-ground environmentalists

and omits the position of mainline business and industry.”7 They similarly find the continuum

provided by Killingsworth and Palmer to be less than ideal. On this scale, presented with an

accompanying visual representation in Ecospeak, environmental perspectives are placed along a

continuum that designates “human attitudes toward the natural world” as “nature as object,”

“nature as resource,” or “nature as spirit.”8 The problem Spangle and Knapp point out with this

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scale is that “it has limited value for explaining how all three perspectives use the data of science

– which treats nature as object – as rationale for their knowledge of the environment.”9

From these critiques of prior explanations of environmental ideology, Spangle and Knapp

offer their own labels for various environmental perspectives. They label their perspectives as

“radical functionalism,” “resource functionalism,” “resource environmentalism,” and “radical

environmentalism.”10

These perspectives are similar to some of the scales previously offered.

However, they are directly tied to the understanding and use of scientific data. The ability to

understand the implications of data for environmental discourse and persuasion is very important

for considering the IBM green commercials. Three of the four television commercials from the

campaign turn on the importance of research that suggests how much money will be saved with

the adoption of new green technologies. While this is certainly an advantage of Spangle and

Knapp‟s categories, one problematic question is: how are we to approach appeals that are built at

least partially outside of data? One of the persuasive aspects of the IBM commercials that will

be discussed is the presentation of a conversion narrative. In Turning to Earth: Stories of

Ecological Conversion, F. Marina Schauffler explains ecological conversion as “an

encompassing transformation that touches every facet of an individual‟s life – physical, spiritual,

emotional, psychological, and political.”11

Given the commercials being considered and the

presence of conversion narratives it seems that it will be beneficial to have ways to think about

environmental ideologies that do not revolve around data, as well as ones that do. For this

reason, while the categories provided by Spangle and Knapp will be central to understanding the

commercials, previous models provided by O‟Riordan and Killingsworth and Palmer will also be

considered.

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In addition to being a company that fits the category of producing goods and services

developed specifically in response to environmental concerns, IBM is also a company that

provides diversity in the various types of environmentally friendly technologies. After spending

a significant amount of time browsing the “IBM and the Environment” section of IBM‟s website

(both the current version and previous versions as obtained through the Internet Archive) it

appears that the environmental technologies produced and supported by IBM can be placed in

one of two main categories. One of these categories is of technologies with environmental

goals/concerns as the product, and the other is of those technologies with similar goals/concerns

as the byproduct. An example of this distinction is the difference between a water management

system and an energy efficient computer network system. The water management system is

directly aimed at the environmental concern of diminishing water resources. The reduced carbon

footprint of the energy efficient computer network a positive byproduct gained while achieving

the goal of supplying computer support. Both categories feature technologies built in response to

environmental concerns. However, the distinction between product and byproduct is one that

will be helpful in considering the ways that nature is utilized in various IBM advertisements.

The main focus of this chapter will be on a campaign for an IBM technology that features

environmental concern as a byproduct of the technology.

Beyond the “green” segments of IBM‟s website, the company‟s television commercials

for the 2008 “Stop Talking, Start Saving, Go Green” campaign will serve as the primary texts for

analysis in this chapter. The campaign ran four similarly themed thirty-second television

commercials that highlight the contrast and subsequent integration between the business world

and the environment. Traditional business in the commercials is presented in black and white;

nature is depicted with the introduction of colorful cartoons. An environmental believer,

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explaining and subsequently converting the mindset of a seemingly uninterested or skeptical co-

worker/supervisor, also ushers in the presentation of nature in each commercial. All four

commercials also feature widescreen header and footer bars at the top and bottom on the screen.

At the beginning of each commercial the color of the bars is IBM‟s signature blue. Then, as

“nature” presents itself in the commercial, the bars turn green. An additional aspect of all the

commercials is the song “Optimistic Voices,” as background music. Judy Garland‟s song from

The Wizard of Oz rounds out the audio portion of the commercial. The song starts playing as the

scene turns from black and white to color, and the cartoon creatures, trees, and flowers appear.

Although there are similarities between the commercials and they all use the same

depiction of nature, the rhetorical appeals present in them do differ enough to consider them

individually. For clarity‟s sake the four different commercials will be explained, and from here

on out be referred to as the “elevator,” “blade center,” “proposal” or “boardroom” commercials.

Since the commercials share the same general development of pessimism to optimism, black and

white to color and introduction of soundtrack, the best way to differentiate them is to consider

the dialogues of the characters in the commercials. Fortunately, each commercial has an amount

of dialogue that makes a full description of it very manageable. The elevator commercial

features a young man and woman talking as they enter an elevator. The two, similarly dressed

and visibly close in age, appear to be of equal status on the corporate ladder. The man is quickly

cast as the green skeptic. He is shown squirming in the elevators colorful forest cartoon animals

flood the space, along with the appearance of a large tree. As this introduction of characters

takes place, the following conversation occurs between the man and the woman, with

interjections from a cartoon bird and rabbit:

Man: “What‟s going on?”

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Woman: “We‟re going green.”

Man: “Green?”

Woman: “New software.”

Bird: “Software.”

Man: “Software can help us go green?”

Woman: “It‟s all about automation, consolidation, efficiency, we‟ll save millions in IT

spending and energy costs.”

Man: “Millions?”

Woman: “Millions.”

Man: “How much did we spend on energy last year?”

Rabbit: “Millions.”

Man: “Millions.”

Woman: “Get used to it.”

A similar exchange happens in the blade center commercial. Instead of an elevator, the setting is

a large computer server room. The room features a single server tower in the center. Again,

there is a green supporter and a pessimist. However, this time there is also a difference in job

status. The plaid button-down short-sleeve shirt worn by the man who clearly knows more about

the server suggests a lower level technology support position than the other man, who is wearing

a full suit and tie. The technology support worker carries on the following conversation with the

man in the suit, explaining the new system:

Boss: “So this is it huh?”

Tech: “Yeah, the IBM Blade Center. It‟s like twelve times as energy efficient as our old

rack servers.”

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Boss: “It‟ll help make us green?”

Tech: “It‟ll help make us very green.”

Boss: “How?”

Tech: “Like this.”

(As he fits in a server component, the cartoons and colors magically sprout from the

blade center and Garland‟s song begins to play.)

Boss: “Does this happen every time?”

Tech: “Pretty much. Yep, watch out for that one.” (As a skunk sniffs around the boss‟

feet)

The proposal commercial is similar to the first two, but displays the greatest contrast between

supporter and skeptic, and boss and lower-level employee. The commercial features the same

woman from the elevator commercial, presenting an energy proposal to her boss, for him to sign,

and send to his superiors. The dialogue develops as follows:

Man: “I‟ve been looking over your green proposal.”

Woman: “Great.”

Man: “Its fine, just fine, I‟m sure it‟ll make people feel real good about the company,

should go over big with the tree-huggers too. See the folks that I report to, they don‟t eat

granola. So let me ask you, why would I sign this?”

Woman: “This plan could cut our energy costs by forty percent.”

Man: “Forty percent?”

Woman: “And we spent 18 million dollars on energy last year.”

(This is again followed by a burst of cartoons, colors, and music.)

Man: “Where do I sign?”

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Woman: “Just sign right there.”

The proposal commercial displays a clear conversion of environmental skeptic to supporter. The

blade center commercial ends with the boss jumping to hide behind the blade center to avoid a

skunk. The proposal commercial, on the other hand, ends with the boss seemingly happy, and

eager to sign the proposal.

The notion of environmental conversion is then extended with reversed roles for the

boardroom commercial. In this final commercial the boss – who was previously converted in the

proposal commercial – is now pitching the environmental proposal to a table full of people.

Given the previously established position of the boss, the people at the table are presumably the

company‟s board of directors. In a black and white room with people dressed in suit sitting

around a circular table, the boss has the following exchange with the board member sitting across

the table from him:

Board member: “What is this?”

Boss: “This is a plan to help take the company green.”

Board member: “Green? You mean like light bulbs, recycling?

Boss: “These guys cover everything – data centers, PCs, networking supply chains, top to

bottom.”

Board member: “Cute. But where is the business value in tree-hugging?”

Boss: “It could cut our energy costs by as much as 40 percent.”

Board member: “40 percent?”

Boss: “40 percent.”

At this point in the commercial the board member opens a folder sitting in front of him.

As it is opened, the bluebird springs from the notepad inside. Then the music and colors enter,

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more animals appear from the papers, a tree sprouts up through the middle of the boardroom, and

the board members (now in color) begin dancing around the tree.

Appearance of Nature in IBM‟s Go Green Commercials

Arguments for the importance of green technologies can be rooted in a range of appeals.

In addition to appeals to nature, arguments ranging from economic viability to national security

could all be reasonable appeals to various environmentally interested technologies.12

Bearing in

mind the range of options in which to ground appeals for green technologies, IBM‟s use of

nature in these commercials is an interesting choice deserving of critical attention. In their book

Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson note

that modern advertising has long utilized nature “to signify experiences or qualities that urban-

industrial everyday life failed to provide.”13

However Goldman and Papson go on to assert that

part of what industrial life fails to provide is an undeveloped condition of nature: “Contemporary

advertising is still littered with representations of nature that signify antimodern desires.

Generally, these nostalgic narratives set up a semiotic opposition between nature (the

countryside) and the city.”14

These observations seem to place undeveloped nature in conflict

with the progress narrative of technological advancement.

To add to the complexity of the conflict, the relationship between humans and nature

does not stop at a simple semiotic opposition. Another examination of environmental rhetoric

that specifically addresses the construction and orientation of human and nature boundaries is

“Thomas Cole‟s Vision of „Nature‟ and the Conquest Theme in American Culture,” by Gregory

Clark, S. Michael Halloran, and Allison Woodford.15

In this work the authors critique the

paintings of nature scenes by the artist Thomas Cole as a way to examine the shaping of

relationships between American national culture and nature in the early nineteenth century.16

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Clark, Halloran and Woodford‟s critique is useful for an examination of the IBM campaign

because they develop the significance of Cole‟s paintings beyond a simple nature versus

civilization dichotomy. They utilize Barbara Novak‟s work to explain that for contemporary

audiences of Cole‟s work, the paintings were much more than definitions of nature and

civilization. Rather, “they saw Nature as a divine handiwork, and thus believed that seeing the

divine in Nature was analogous to seeing the face of God.”17

Clark, Halloran and Woodford

apply this conception of the divine to underscore the importance of the culture of nature and the

relationships presented between humans and nature in a variety of rhetorical texts, ranging from

paintings to poetry.

The culture of relationships between humans and nature is certainly a topic that could

have been discussed while considering the previous two chapters of this project. The Toyota

Camry ad is built on the relationship the audience expects to have with nature serving as a

recreational space. Similarly, the Dawn campaign is grounded in the relationship of humans as

guardians of nature. However, both of these instances contain a certain amount of distance

between the nature and the intended audience. In the Camry commercial nature functions

primarily as a background or a subject devoid of humans. Likewise, although the audience in the

Dawn campaign is being called to donate to a campaign that directly assists harmed animals, the

audience members making donations are not the people doing the rescue work.

An analysis of the relationships between nature and humans seems the most appropriate

for the IBM Go Green campaign because there are multiple layers of relationships to be

considered in the appeals. The IBM campaign displays relationships on a rhetorical level similar

to the other campaigns in this study. Beyond this level, the IBM campaign also most explicitly

presents a literal representation of the nature/human relationship through depicting the

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explosions of nature in each commercial at the moment of environmental conversion. The

relationships between humans and nature, and ideas of environmental conversion provide for a

significant amount of rhetorical overlap. Discussions of the Divine in considerations of the

culture of nature and human interaction are similar to the inclusions of the emotional and

spiritual aspects of ecological conversion. Schauffler notes that these spiritual aspects infuse a

“dynamic divinity in the natural world, prompting varied forms of revelation – from visions and

experiences of fusion with the whole to a transformed sense of self and surroundings.”18

The history of nature‟s undeveloped condition serving as the appealing factor in

marketing seems to contradict the fundamental importance of industrial progress implicit in the

advancement of technology. It is a contradiction that has varying degrees of severity depending

on the purpose of the technology at hand. Such a conflict seems less crucial for technologies that

focus on environmentalism as product. An argument built on the antimodern appeal of nature in

an advertisement for a cleaner energy system like wind turbines aligns the desire for

undeveloped space with the technologies necessary to keep those spaces pristine. Goldman and

Papson refer to this alignment as “the restorative power of science,” and note that a common

theme in industries advertising “is the narrative of how their corporate direction of science has

already created enlightened solutions to aid in the restoration of the planet.”19

However, not all

of IBM‟s “green” technologies specifically target environmentalism as product. Such an

alignment would likely appear forced if applied to technologies featuring environmental benefits

as byproducts, rather than the operative goals of the technology. Although a new computer

server system may be more energy efficient (and therefore “greener”) than a previous model, the

product in this case is the functioning of the computer server, a goal that clearly fits a narrative

of progress rather than one of planet restoration.20

Despite a brief appeal in each of the IBM

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commercials that highlights the money saving benefits of the new green technologies (like the

possibility of saving over $17 in the proposal commercial) the main argument is clearly

constructed through the appeals to nature.

Implications of Nature, Conversion, and Ideology

At the center of each of IBM Go Green commercial there is a necessary conflict between

traditional ecocentrist and technocentrist environmental ideologies. IBM currently advertises for

a remarkably broad range of green technologies ranging from expected ones like wind power and

more efficient lighting, to things like improved banking strategies and retail systems. Despite the

presentation of all of these technologies as “green” solutions, some are much more product-

based, others are clearly green only by virtue of the byproduct of the technology. Such variation

is important because it has implications for the type of environmental ideology that will best fit

the presentation of a given technology. In this section the presentation of nature in the IBM

commercials will be considered along with Spangle and Knapp‟s ideological environmental

perspectives. The presentation of nature in the commercials will be considered for the ways it

assists in combining both the functionalism and environmentalism ends of an environmental

ideological continuum.21

The following critique will expand from an understanding of the ways the IBM

commercials present and utilize nature in the Go Green campaign. Specifically, it will address

the ways that nature appears to invite audience responses of relief from environmental obligation

or responsibility. It will also consider the reasons this may be detrimental to the overall

environmental messages of the company. The first two sections of analysis will briefly consider

the depictions and presentations of nature through the visual and aural elements of the

commercials. The last section will address the interactions between the depicted nature and the

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humans in the commercials. These interactions will be examined for the ways that the depictions

of nature in the commercials appear to negotiate the conversion narrative and simple steps

appeals so that they are coherent with both radical functionalism and radical environmentalism

ideological environmental perspectives.

Visual. The components of nature (ranging from squirrels and bird, to flowers and trees)

are all colorful animations, very reminiscent of Bambi, or other Disney films set in a rich forest.

The decision to present nature in the commercials through animation sets up an environmental

dichotomy. In each commercial, upon the moment of environmental conversion nature springs

from out of nowhere. In these moments, dull, cold, business spaces transform into colorful

heavens of nature. Something particularly striking about this movement in each commercial is

that there is no transition period. The commercials display two realities: one devoid of nature,

the other a perfect slice of a flourishing forest.

Not only is the shift between these two depictions of the environment jarring, it also

suggests that these are the only conditions in which nature can exist. There are either spaces that

humans have washed clean of nature, or there are spaces where nature flourishes. Such a

construction instills several problematic notions about environmentalism. One is that

environmentalism is merely a matter of flipping a switch. As soon as a decision is made or

someone is converted to environmentalism, complete, perfect, and uninhibited environmentalism

can occur. This clear dichotomy rooted in a simple technological decision plays in important

role in inviting the audience to find relief in the commercial. It suggests that as soon as the

company subscribes to the new technology, the surrounding environment will flourish, and no

longer be reason for environmental concern. Such a dichotomy also denies that anything less

than perfectly flourishing nature qualifies as nature at all. Additionally, this type of

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environmental dichotomy risks short-circuiting continued discussions of environmental

improvement. Prior to the introduction of the green IBM technologies, the commercials are cold

and devoid of nature. After this, nature appears and seems to be perfectly healthy. The

insistence of an immediately perfect nature potentially relieves the audience of their concern for

or felt obligation to nature. Providing this type of relief may assure the audience of the

environmental benefits of IBM‟s technologies. Unfortunately, the assurance of relief in such a

dichotomy potentially paints environmental problems as easily solvable. Instead of leading to

discussions of the new technology as a first step in a larger process of environmental

improvement, these conditions seem to suggest a complete environmental solution, after which

attention can be devoted to other concerns.

Aural. Another important aspect of all three IBM commercials is the introduction of

music at the moment the animated nature begins to appear. In each commercial nature is ushered

in with birds chirping, the creaking of trees rapidly growing, and Judy Garland‟s song,

“Optimistic Voices,” from The Wizard of Oz.22

The same portion of the song plays in all four

commercials. During the selection of the song, the lyrics that are audible in the commercials are

from the chorus: “You‟re out of the woods, you‟re out of the dark, you‟re out of the night. Step

into the sun, step into the light.” The lyrics are important not only for the rhetorical suggestions

created through them, but also for the nature theme within them. Although “Optimistic Voices”

may not traditionally be thought of as an appeal through nature, in the context of the IBM

commercials a song about “woods” and “sun” certainly bolsters the visibility of nature.

Choosing Optimistic Voices as the musical accompaniment for the IBM commercials

appears to be an interesting rhetorical choice when it is considered in the context of its original

appearance in The Wizard of Oz. On the surface the song itself fits the message of the

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commercial. The technologies that IBM presents call audiences to step out of the technological

“dark ages” and into an enlightened position of environmental friendliness. The song narrates

quite well the animated characters‟ introduction of colors and light into the previously grey

business world. However, since the song was originally written for The Wizard of Oz, the film

likely comes to mind for many audience members. The moment in the film that Optimistic

Voices plays follows the poppy scene. Dorothy, Toto, the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow

are all on their way to Oz. The context of the IBM commercials presents several similarities to

the movie when reading the rhetorical suggestions of the song. The poppy scene that

immediately precedes the song in the film features Dorothy and her friends getting trapped in the

poppies because the wicked witch places a spell on the flowers to make Dorothy, Toto, and the

Lion fall to sleep. Although the group can see Emerald City off in the distance, they are unable

to move forward due to the spell. An identical set of conditions can be read at the beginning of

the IBM commercials. The businesses are stuck in the tiresome condition of typical

technologies. They are unable to make forward progress towards the realization of a better

company. After the Good Witch frees Dorothy and friends from the poppies, Optimistic Voices

starts playing as the group walks down the yellow brick road, towards Emerald City.

At this point in comparing the IBM commercials to The Wizard of Oz, the similarities

become interesting for what is rhetorically suggested about environmentalism by reading the

commercial over the film. The companies in the IBM commercials are moving towards greener

operations like Dorothy‟s group is moving towards their destination of Emerald City. The

comparison is strengthened by Emerald City‟s representation of Green. The song is certainly

very appropriate for conveying a message rooted in a search for progress. Nonetheless, it is an

interesting choice because a search for greener technologies so similarly overlaps with the

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depiction of Emerald City. In The Wizard of Oz, Emerald City turns out to be a false promise. It

is not the perfect solution Dorothy and her friends thought it would be. As such, when reading

the IBM commercials with the Optimistic Voices original context in mind, one is invited to see

the search for greener technologies as the search for Emerald City. Ultimately, as Emerald City

turns out to be less than promised, the use of Optimistic Voices risks suggesting that the shift

towards green technologies will similarly not provide the positives promised.

While much of the commercial is geared towards constructing conversion to green

technologies as a simple step, the comparison drawn between new technology and the Emerald

City suggests the steps may not be that simple. Since Dorothy‟s journey to Emerald City did not

result in the simple solution she was hoping for, the audience of the IBM commercials is called

to question the feasibility of green technologies. This creates an interesting undertone that runs

counter to the assurances of simple solutions in the commercial.

Human/Nature Interaction

The use of Optimistic Voices (particularly in its original film context) is one that raises

questions regarding the feasibility of green technology application as a simple step solution.

However, the simple steps approach it is still one that is supported in many aspects of the

commercial. In addition to the purely visual and aural appeals to the relieving solution of simple

steps, the approach is also suggested through the interaction of humans and nature in the

commercials. The reassurance of simple steps is something that becomes important for the

invitation of relief in the audience. If the steps really are as simple as promised, yet have

significant environmental impacts they stand to provide the audience a rhetorical relief from

socially suggested feelings of environmental guilt – as seen in the Dawn campaign, for example.

Beyond the value of simple steps in all types of environmental advertising appeals, they seem

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particularly attractive for business commercials, because of the assurance they provide for the

general audience.

The presentation of nature in the IBM Go Green commercials is done in a way that

invites an emotional response of environmental relief in the audience. Despite the beneficial

feelings of comfort such an appeal presents, it also risks downplaying the importance of

environmental change. As we have seen, the varying degrees between environmental problems,

and “simple step” solutions in An Inconvenient Truth seemed to risk “constructing the audience

as powerless through his (over)emphasis on places in catastrophe and American political

failings.”23

Such overemphasis does not appear to be the case in the IBM Go Green campaign.

Nonetheless, the commercials display an environmental rhetoric that is equally troubling. In the

case of these commercials, the solution is indeed a simple step. The apathy invited by Gore‟s

film is avoided in the commercials by a reassurance that the simple step will in fact solve the

environmental problem(s). Although such reassurance avoids apathetic responses, it seems to

invite other feelings that lead to the same non-active response in the audience. In addition to

feelings of overwhelming doom leading to audience inaction, the same result could occur if the

audience finds environmental problems so slight as to not demand immediate action. This

rhetorical drawback is not one that should be swiftly dismissed. It deserves to be weighed

against the potential benefits of simple steps appeals at the intersection of nature and relief in

technology advertisements.

The IBM Go Green commercials were nationally televised advertisements. While the

appeals in the commercials are designed for everyone‟s consumption, the actual technologies

presented are ones that would only be used by a small portion of the audience. The average

home consumer is neither in a position to utilize energy efficient computer servers, nor is in a

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position to make that decision for his or her workplace.24

This distance that exists between the

typical audience member of the IBM commercials and the assurance of the environmentally

beneficial application of the products is reduced by the simple steps approach to nature appeals.

Another example of environmental communication rooted in simple steps appeals can be

found in Trask‟s It’s Easy Being Green. In the introduction to the book Trask explains

“everyone is leading busy lives and is therefore, to some extent, wrestling with how to balance

better environmental stewardship with modern pressures and reliances.” She pinpoints these

pressures as the exigencies behind her “handbook for all those who aspire do [sic] more to

protect the environment but want it to be simpler.”25

The cornerstone of environmental simple

steps appeals is that the actions being asked of the audience are of minimal impact on their daily

lives. The appeal is ultimately that if people could make their lives more environmentally

friendly while keeping their daily routines essentially the same as before, why wouldn‟t they?

By reassuring the audience that certain suggested environmental solutions can come at absolutely

no inconvenience to the audience it seems only logical to adapt the solutions. Many simple step

environmental appeals focus this logic on convincing the audience to adopt certain green

behaviors. These can range from carrying cloth bags to the grocery store to “report[ing] tap

leaks and faulty toilets in public places to management so they can be fixed.”26

The IBM

commercials, however, appear to be applying small steps in a slightly different way. Rather than

convincing audience members that it is only logical for them to adopt these new technologies or

behaviors, the commercials suggest that it is only logical that companies will adopt them. In this

way, the idea of simple steps is being used not to bring about change in the audience, but to

assure them that change will logically occur within big business. Assuring the audience that

businesses will take advantage of IBM green technologies invites a sense of relief in the

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audience by enforcing the adoption of large-scale environmental measures beyond their

immediate control.

At this point, despite an explanation for the use of simple step appeals in the IBM

commercials, the question of why the depictions of nature appear in animated form deserves

more consideration. The interactions between humans and nature both within and outside the

IBM commercials play a significant role in the implications formed from the use of animated

forms of nature in the commercials. On the surface the answer to the decision for cartoon

versions of forest creatures appears simple. The presentation of nature in a manner reminiscent

to a Disney film clearly suggests a quick, guaranteed solution that will free the audience from

responsibility or obligation. The connection of nature depicted in the commercials and the

entertainment and ultimate happy ending involved in watching an animated children‟s film is

very present in IBM‟s campaign.

However, when the choice for the use of animated depictions of nature is not

unquestionably accepted as the logical default for the commercial, several rhetorical implications

about humans, their interactions with nature, and the role of environmentalism present

themselves. In order to consider these implications it is necessary to ask the question: in what

ways would the IBM commercials have presented different rhetorical implications for

environmental messages had the nature presented in the commercials been actual live animals?

The most significant implications that live depictions of nature would have on the

commercials seem to involve the interactions between humans and nature in the commercials.

There is a conflict present in the commercials between the human control of nature and the

relevant environmental impact of “simple steps” solutions. The following section will consider

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some of these conflicts in an attempt to understand the selection of animated nature and the

rhetorical suggestions these choices have for the audience.

In a very straightforward way the IBM Go Green commercials construct a relationship

between humans and nature in which humans are in control of nature. A human desire for

control over the environment is not something that disappears in environmental discourse.

Killingsworth and Palmer note:

Environmentalists hold in common with their ostensible opponents a number of values,

practice, and elements of discourse. They tend, for example, to express their appreciation

for the land in terms of possession, consumptions, or personal experience.27

It is here pointed out that while environmentalists differ from developmentalists in their desired

use of natural spaces both groups are interested in use from a perspective that is rooted in human

control. Such control can be seen across many of IBM‟s green technologies. Despite the fact

that the environment is presented as an immediate benefactor of “green buildings” or “smarter

water management” these new technologies are based on harnessing the power of the sun to help

cool a building, or use available water resources in the most efficient ways possible.28

Very few

of IBM‟s technologies are interested in a green technology that is completely divorced from

human interaction with the environment.

In addition to the importance of control for green technologies, some sense of control is

also crucial for the simple steps environmental solution. A sense of control is implied in the

simple steps solutions because the solutions can only work under conditions of relatively stable,

and understood environmental situations. Asking an audience to improve the environment by

switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs or driving hybrid vehicles are often coupled with

support for these actions in the way of statistics confirming the amount of carbon emissions

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saved by these particular simple steps.29

These numbers imply an environment that is, if not

controlled, at least relatively stable and understood. The simple steps can solve the

environmental problems because the environmental situation is under control.

The notion of control is very present in the IBM commercials particularly at the

intersection of human action and the introduction of nature. In all of the commercials the

animated nature creatures are not introduced until prompted by at least one of the humans

present. There is some variation in how obvious this prompting is between the commercials.

The elevator commercial is the least obvious, with the animals walking into the elevator at the

same time as the woman who is promoting the green technologies. Conversely, the prompting is

very clear in the blade center commercial. It is not until the technology worker literally engages

a component of the blade center while explaining that the new green technology will work “like

this” that nature emerges. In this scene he is quite clearly in control of the emersion of nature.

Human control of nature also suggests an interesting component for the conversion

narratives of the commercials. As previously addressed, each commercial features someone

previously in favor of the new green technologies, and another person who is skeptical as to the

benefit or success of these new measures. Over the course of the commercial the skeptic is

converted to a believer. In three of the four commercials, however, the animated creatures play

no role in the actual conversion.30

The humans in the commercials are in control of the

discussion and the environmental believer is completely responsible for the conversion of the

skeptic. F. Marina Schauffler explains that for humans, environmental conversion results as a

“response to experience . . . . we recognize that our lives are governed by different perspective

and priorities than they once were.”31

Yet, in the IBM commercials the experience that leads to

conversion is a conversation with the environmental believer, rather than a direct experience with

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nature. Therefore, nature in the commercials appears as a representation of the conversion but

does not have any impact on the conversion itself. The appearance of animals and trees at the

moment the skeptic is convinced of the benefits of the new green technology helps confirm – not

facilitate – the conversion. The presentation of nature as something that serves the purpose of

being paraded around as evidence of conversion rather than an agent of change itself supports an

understanding of the environment in which humans control nature. From the perspective of

environmental communication this situation is rhetorically limiting. It narrows the available

ways humans are conceived of interacting with the environment. If humans are controlling

nature the two will never be equals and the environment will always be constructed as present for

human use.

Concerns of human control over nature also explain to some degree the decision to

represent nature through animated characters in the IBM commercials. No doubt part of the

choice for animated nature was that it clearly conveys the whimsical, cartoon-like – and likely

relieving – result of the conversion. However, the animation also appears to negotiate potential

conflicts between the rhetorical implications of a desire for human control over nature, and as

assertion that supports the success of the simple steps approach. One of the requirements for

(and often detriment to) the success of simple steps environmental messages is the ability to

convince the audience that a significant environmental change will occur if the simple steps

being suggested are adopted.32

The IBM commercials appear to be claiming such an assurance

by depicting the nature that appears as a result of the conversion in the commercials to be of a

very diverse, complete ecosystem. In each commercial an entire forests‟ worth of creatures

appears – from plants and flowers to deer and butterflies. Such diversity suggests that the

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adoption of the new IBM green technologies will not only reduce carbon emissions or save an

endangered type of wildflower, it will allow for the “greening” and conservation of entire forests.

Why does the necessity to convey the significance of the environmental impact of simple

step solutions suggest the use of animated depictions of nature in the IBM commercials? One

answer seems to be the implications animated depictions of nature suggest for understanding

human control of nature. Certainly one choice for the IBM commercials could have been to

depict the same scope of nature through live plants and animals. However, if that were the case,

the emergence of the animals into the business space would seem much less controlled. Such

would especially be the case in the blade center commercial. The skunk pursuing the

businessman would be less comical and more problematic if the skunk were a live animal rather

than an animated creature. Ultimately, the animations are of human creation and this suggests a

far more controlled situation than if the nature was live.

In the absence of any depiction of nature in the IBM commercials the conversion that

occurs would be one of a radical functionalism perspective. Spangle and Knapp identify this

perspective as one that approaches “the environment in terms of technological progress, human

need, and economic development because . . . the environment functions as a resource for human

development and management.”33

The problem with this perspective from the standpoint of a

company advertisement is that it does not provide audience assurance regarding the green

interests of the company. A radical functionalism perspective (or nature as object or

technocentric view in earlier literature) privileges human progress over the health of the

environment. Without the animated creatures the IBM commercials would only assure the

audience that the company is interested in saving business money. Despite the fact that such an

interest currently happens to align with environmental concerns, should the two cease to align, an

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entirely economic appeal would suggest that IBM would shift its interests toward economics

before the environment. The presentation of a radical functionalism perspective would also be

problematic for the commercials because it would not allow for implied feelings of

environmental responsibility or obligation. Ideas of humans as stewards of nature, rather than

pure benefactors of the planet‟s goods falls more to the center, or environmentalism end of the

environmental ideological continuum. It need not be a radical amount, but without some degree

of environmental obligation, there would be no sense of obligation available to be resolved

leading to the invitation of relief. The presence of nature in the commercials helps to assure the

audience that the company is more interested in the health of the environment than would be

suggested in a purely radical functionalism perspective.

Conclusion

In these ways the presence of animated nature in the IBM Go Green commercials allow

the invitation of relief in the audience to simultaneously be coherent with both radical

functionalism and radical environmentalism perspectives. For the functionalists, the importance

of progress and a utilization of nature as object are conveyed through the suggestion of human

control over nature. Such control is conveyed largely through in the animated state of nature. In

his book, The Ethics of Rhetoric, Richard Weaver discusses the rhetorical weight of several key

terms in “Contemporary Rhetoric.”34

In the section that addresses the term “progress,” Weaver

provides the following explanation:

Since the sixteenth century we have tended to accept as inevitable an historical

development that takes the form of a changing relationship between ourselves and nature,

in which we pass increasingly into the role of master of nature.35

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The relationship built between humans and nature in the commercials suggests this kind of

control because the depicted nature is of human creation. At the same time, however, the

animated creatures suggest an ideal Disney-like state of nature, in which nature is viewed as an

“entity that demands to be revered and respected as much as humans.”36

This aspect of the

animated state of nature incorporates the radical environmentalism ideological perspective. The

closeness that this perspective has to many understandings of messages of ecological conversion

allow for the moment of conversion in the commercials to be understood as a moment of

environmental conversion, not purely motivated by economic gains.

Presenting nature through themes of both ecological conversion and functionalist simple

step solutions allows the IBM commercials to bring a different perspective to Spangle and

Knapp‟s functionalism/environmentalism perspectives. Their perspectives have improved upon

previous environmental ideological models by allowing for the inclusion of scientific data into

all of the ideological standpoints. Unfortunately, one apparent shortcoming of their model seems

to be the rigidness of the different perspectives. Killingsworth and Palmer note that “any

persona has almost certainly experienced all of the various attitudes toward nature listed” on

their continuum.37

Spangle and Knapp, on the other hand, seem to put their perspectives in more

direct conflict, pitting functionalists against environmentalists, and considering the conditions

under which compromise between the two groups is more or less likely to occur.38

Similarly, the

IBM commercials allow for a blending of environmental ideologies that does not necessarily

occur in the traditional green advertisement. In the commercials, the boss and board members‟

focus on the economic benefits of the new green technologies represent a strictly functionalist

approach to nature and the environment. However, rather than keeping this ideology separate

from that of environmentalists, the commercials blend the two by infusing the situations with

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moments of ecological conversion. The marking of these conversions in the commercials, by the

introduction of nature, invites a feeling of relief that is built – at least in part – on the depicted

autonomy of the depicted nature. An understood sense of nature‟s autonomy invites feelings of

environmental ideologies to blend with the functionalists‟ importance of financial gain through

the adoption of green technologies.

By displaying aspects of both ecocentric and technocentric environmental ideologies, the

IBM commercials are able to construct persuasive messages for technology-based simple step

solutions. They also are able to present these messages from an environmentally interested

position. The use of simple step appeals alongside animated messages of relief may risk causing

uninterested audience response. In spite of these concerns, it seems that in the case of the IBM

commercials it is a worthwhile risk in order to convey the motivation behind the simple step

solutions as functionally-based, yet environmentally-driven.

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CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

Throughout this project the intersections of media, marketing, and contemporary culture

– in the form of green advertising campaigns – have been analyzed. The project sought to

examine the depictions of nature and the corresponding emotions that appear to be invited in the

audience through particular advertising texts. From a rhetorical standpoint the importance of

such a study does not end simply with a thorough understanding of the considered texts. The

appeals built from nature in green advertisements have significant implications for conceptions

of the environment and nature in contemporary culture. The origin of these connections and

implications can vary somewhat depending on one‟s approach to the material. Scholarship

launched from a rhetorical perspective, like Meister and Japp‟s Enviropop stresses textual

influence, considering what “popular culture teaches us,” about “nature‟s „use value.‟”1 Work

grounded in theories of advertising on the other hand suggests that societal values serve as a

cache from which advertisers can draw material to construct commodity signs.2

Due to these differences in perspective, attempting to determine the location of cultural

value for the depictions of nature in the advertisements studied would have been akin to a dog

chasing its tail: does the nature in the Toyota commercial have potential influence with audiences

because it was drawn from social values, or because it is presented to society as something that

should be valued? Rather than attempt to parse out this intersection, this study sought to

elucidate the complexities of several instances of intersection between green messages, nature

appeals, suggested audience emotions, and cultural values. Such an approach allows one to

move beyond the seemingly circular system of value formation and consider the potential

implications for these messages beyond the immediate advertisements in which they appear.

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The appropriation of nature in marketing appeals existed in popular culture prior to the

rise of green advertising. Advertisements dating back to the 1920‟s can be found in which

“Nature‟s landscapes were used to signify experiences or qualities that urban-industrial everyday

life failed to provide.”3 Goldman and Papson claim that green advertising did not take on its

contemporary form until the 1980‟s.4 The shift to green advertising in response to environmental

pressures produced advertising messages that:

Unlike traditional nature advertising, which used signifiers of nature to create signifieds

of desirable human traits (e.g., a „peaches-and-cream‟ complexion), green marketing

appears to position nature itself as the subject of the ad, while the signification of nature

is actually positioned to hail the viewing subject. Both the commodity and the

corporation are spoken about in terms of their impact on the environment or their

affection for nature, almost distracting attention from the subtle way in which nature

signifiers are mythified, that is, turned into markers of commodity sensibility.5

From these early green corporate advertisements, built on the signification of nature, green ads

have expanded to include a much more diverse set of cultural appeals as reasons for “buying

green.” Green advertising now includes everything from the money-saving battery-powered

engines of hybrid cars, to a concern for future generations present in environmental appeals

regarding water usage, or the impacts of global climate change. Although rarely applied to

appeals of consumption, there are even environmental messages rooted in a fear for national

security. In his Plan B books, Lester Brown explains a set of interdependent environmental

conditions in which shifts in climate could lead to shifts in crop availability, drastically

impacting global markets and security.6 Similarly oriented is a recent book by Robert Kennedy

on the Bush administration and their environmental programs and approaches.7

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Despite the many cultural values (economic savings, national stability, assurance for

future generations, etc.) that are available for application in green advertising campaigns, a large

number of these campaigns are built on the ideological significance of nature. One likely

explanation for the frequent use of depictions of nature in green advertising is nature‟s

versatility. Nature is a concept that can be depicted as both subject and setting. As subject,

nature can be presented as the benefactor of environmental improvement, or the verification of

the impacts of the adoption of green products. As setting, nature provides exigencies for

environmental improvement built on the uninhabited spaces it provides for human enjoyment,

exploration, and escape. Often, these presentations are collapsed into each other. Simultaneous

presentation allows for the construction of environmental appeals that will both protect nature,

and provide a space for human recreation. We encountered such an example in the Toyota

Camry Hybrid commercial.

Nature also can be depicted with an incredible variability in scope. There is nature to be

found and utilized in appeals from the smallest flower, or the stop-motion wings of a

hummingbird, to a scenic overlook, or even a picture of Earth from outer space. The

presentation of a single duckling in the Dawn campaign and the mountain views in the Camry

commercial are both appeals built on the natural occurrence of life beyond human existence or

manipulation. The relative power that nature is depicted to hold is also something that can vary

considerably in the construction of nature in green advertising. In some appeals nature is

completely harnessed by humans, while in others it is autonomous, unpredictable and beyond

control.

These diversities in the various aspects of nature from which appeals can be built in green

advertisements have implications for environmental communication beyond simply assuring

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variety in the messages of commercials for hybrid cars or compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Nature appeals in green advertisements construct the potential for a blending of environmental

ideological perspectives. Green advertisements utilize nature to invite a range of emotions, and

provide simple step solutions to many of the depicted environmental problems. These appeals,

assurances, and invited feelings construct a consumer driven environmental ideology.

Environmentalists often view such an ideology in a negative light. I contend that such a swift

dismissal should be avoided. A consumer driven environmental ideology appears to be

rhetorically valuable by virtue of its being made up of components from a multitude of

traditional environmental ideologies.

Undeniably, the ultimate goal of green consumer advertisements is one of increased

consumption – advertisers “see dollar signs in environmentalism.”8 As Goldman and Papson

note: “Prompted by the growth of the environmental movement and awareness that over-

consumption contributes to environmental destruction, mounting criticism has been directed at

advertising.”9 They suggest that green advertising arose out of a desire to reposition

consumption in order to present it as a solution to environmental concerns. Such repositioning

would not only directly stimulate “good” consumption. It would also simultaneously improve

the environmental reputation of the company. A greener company impression would indirectly

lead to increased consumption due to a consumer desire to support a green company – even if the

product being purchased was itself not green.10

These components of consumption are often

ones that lead to claims of corporate exploitation of the environment. While advertising studies

approach these conditions to examine them, environmental studies often attack advertising‟s

appropriation of environmental symbols. Beder, for example, makes no attempt to hide her

agenda in her book subtitle: “the Corporate Assault on Environmentalism.” Her critique of this

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“assault” continues unveiled throughout the book. She claims that consumerism is destroying

the environment and green marketing is “aimed at increasing consumption, not reducing it,” and

warns that “Green marketing does not necessarily mean green products, but false and misleading

claims can be hard for the consumer to detect.”11

The goal of this project was not to make another value claim regarding the legitimacy or

lack thereof implicit in green advertising. Such a claim would require the examination of

advertisement impacts well beyond the means of this project. It would also likely provide little

to the scholarly community beyond another vote for or against the rhetoric of green

advertisements. Without such goals for this project, a direct consideration of how green

advertising functions could be undertaken.

With such an approach in mind, this project was able to consider a variety of green

advertisements that will hopefully contribute to the understanding of environmental

communication. Considering the Toyota Camry Hybrid commercial allowed for the examination

of nature when presented as both subject and background. It was found in the commercial that

although nature exists on a plane seemingly equal in importance to the Camry, the desire for

freedom so familiar in car commercials remains problematic. When combined with the simple

step of purchasing a hybrid vehicle, the freedom to continue enjoying the current state of nature

limits discussions of environmental progress. Denying the possibility of improving the

environment beyond its current state detracts from its value as subject. This detraction places a

greater emphasis on “nature-as-backdrop,” which risks portraying “an anthropocentric,

narcissistic relationship to the biotic community . . . focus[ing] on the environment‟s utility and

benefit to humans.”12

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Concerns regarding the value or detriment of simple steps environmental appeals were

alleviated to some degree through the examination of the Dawn Saves Wildlife campaign.

Although these appeals are problematic in the Toyota Camry commercial, it is perhaps due to the

way they are combined. While simple steps may be problematic when paired with nature

appeals to freedom, they stand to be more beneficial when tempered by appeals to specific

depictions of nature. For as expansive as nature is depicted in the Camry commercial, it is

presented with an equal degree of containment in the Dawn campaign. The Dawn campaign

limits the scope of guilt and resolution appeals through depictions of nature that are small and

specific. The Dawn campaign also avoids accusations that providing shallow resolutions to

nature-based guilt collapses environmentalism into consumerism.13

The campaign achieves this

by constructing guilt appeals through nature that are connected to environmental donation but

separate from the act of consumption.

Understanding the Dawn campaign is particularly important in moving forward to the

IBM commercials. The Dawn campaign displays a seemingly legitimate use of simple step

solutions to environmental problems. Unlike the Toyota commercial, the Dawn campaign

appropriately tempers guilt appeals through the depictions of nature. It presents solutions that

have a meaningful impact without being overwhelming. Bearing in mind the potential positive

aspects of simple step solutions and depictions of nature in green advertising is crucial in

approaching the IBM commercials. Without examples of such benefits, the IBM commercials

would likely be dismissed as some of the most exploitative depictions of nature in contemporary

green advertising. The pieces of nature depicted in the commercials are all examples of nature as

controlled by humans. The animations are of human creation, and the existence of nature occurs

at the behest of the humans in the commercials – upon the moment of environmental conversion.

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Additionally, the commercials do not directly depict any benefit to nature. In each commercial

the setting is immediately livened and improved by the presence of nature. However, none of

this improvement takes place in nature, but rather occurs entirely in the business environment.

Under such conditions the depictions of nature appear to be manipulated and human-serving, and

the simple steps solutions seem grossly oversimplified: just plug in a server rack, and you‟ll have

nature popping up out of the floorboards in no time. This type of appeal may bring relief to

audiences, but it also greatly limits discussions of environmental concern beyond the

commercial.

Fortunately, such a reading is not the only possible interpretation of the IBM

commercials. The commercials utilized simple step solutions to explain the logic under which

others, specifically businesses, would rationally select environmentally beneficial technologies

options. In addition to assuring the adoption of environmental solutions by others, the

commercials also serve as rhetorical texts that mediate conflicting environmental ideologies. In

these commercials depictions of nature and presentations of simple step solutions to

environmental concerns intersect to construct messages likely appealing to a broad range of

environmental ideologies. The narratives of ecological conversion, and the voice given to nature

present appeals well suited to a radical environmentalism perspective that “personifies Nature as

a sacred entity.”14

At the same time the commercials capitalize on the notion of simple step

solutions, which speaks to the compromising focus present in both the resource

environmentalism and resource functionalism perspectives. Lastly, the utilization of nature, to

beautify the business space (a visual representation of the economic benefits of the green

technologies) presents the use of nature for human progress and benefits that is familiar to the

radical functionalism perspective.15

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The IBM commercials present green advertisements as possible spaces for the mingling

of different environmental ideological perspectives. Simultaneous presentations of both

functionalist and environmentalist (or technocentric and ecocentric) perspectives are possible in

large part because of the diverse depictions and applications of nature in green advertisements.

Killingsworth and Palmer orient the technocentric/ecocentric perspectives on a continuum that

moves from viewing nature as object, to nature as resource, to nature as spirit.16

As we have

seen, green advertising is capable of depicting nature in all three of these ways. If these different

depictions only occurred independent of each other, there would be nothing more to say on the

topic, other than to credit advertisers for their ability to appeal to various ideologies as best fit

particular advertisements. However, as this project has examined, green advertisers have

become adept at constructing green consumer messages that simultaneously depict nature in a

manner consistent with multiple environmental ideologies. In the IBM commercials an

invitation to feel relief through nature appeals stands to be drawn from audience members with

ranging environmental ideologies. The assurance that simple step solutions will solve

environmental problems can at once be relieving to environmentalists (as it confirms their self

appointed duty to protect nature) and functionalists (as the assurance of nature‟s health reinforces

their continued access to nature‟s resources).

The ability of green advertisements to construct appeals through depictions of nature that

align with multiple environmental ideologies has implications beyond broad consumer audience

appeal. It leads to the possibility of these advertisements to serve as unifying texts across

environmental ideologies. I am aware that suggesting green advertising as a locus for increased

or improved environmental communication may not be immediately well received by many

environmentalists. Those who view green advertising as an environmental hoax, and something

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purely for profit might even be insulted at the mere thought of this suggestion. In response to

these concerns, it seems that the common thread of consumption is one that can potentially bring

people to reorient their environmental views, or at least recognize views outside of their own.

While many environmentalists would likely not be prepared to accept green advertising

as a place for improved environmental communication, it seems they would at least acknowledge

the influence of green advertisements on contemporary culture. Such a viewpoint is widely held

by environmental communication scholars. It is the primary exigency behind projects rhetorical

projects such as Enviropop, and is also recognized in advertising scholarship. If the role of

advertising plays as significant a factor as suggested in the formation of cultural perspectives it

seems that green advertising should not be quickly rejected as mere corporate propaganda.

Meister, Chamberlain and Brown point to this undeniable value in their piece on the AVEDA

campaign:

The green movement can either continue to battle against the institutions and structures

that sustain and distribute commodity relations, or it can embrace them to further the

cause . . . . Because the commodity form operates in the realm of popular culture and

media . . . the success of the ecological movement seems to be largely dependent on the

use and mobilization of commodity culture rather than its rejection.17

I do not turn to this passage to suggest green advertising as the savior of the environmental

movement, but rather to underscore the impact of green advertising on popular culture and

contemporary environmental perspectives.

There are various ways of depicting nature in green advertising. Some ways are more or

less beneficial to improved or continued discussion about the environment. Nature depicted as

too perfect and awe inspiring may be understood as beyond environmental dangers. Similarly,

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nature that is too far ravaged could quickly be interpreted as beyond repair. The grounding

works on contemporary rhetorical culture and the environment suggest that these beneficial or

problematic depictions of nature impact the ways that audience members view nature in their

daily lives.

Together, the implications that green advertising has for environmental ideologies and the

diversity of available depictions of nature present a reason for the continuation of a diverse range

of green advertising appeals. In contemporary culture there may not be an abundance of

rhetorical places for people with vastly different environmental ideologies to converge. When

deployed appropriately, simple step environmental solutions constructed from appeals to nature

may allow for such ideological exchange. Although one person may be a radical functionalist,

and the other a radical environmentalist, they may be driven towards the same consumption

solution as a simple step towards environmental protection or improvement. In a contemporary

culture driven largely by consumption, it seems that nature may provide rhetorical appeals for

continued environmental discussion. What constitutes nature? What nature is worth saving?

How should societies prioritize the protection of nature? These are all questions that can be set

up for further discussion in contemporary culture through depictions of nature aimed at the

systematic invitation of emotional audience responses in green corporate advertising.

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Appendix

Camry Hybrid Commercial Shot Sequence Description

The following is a sequential list of the video clips, in the order the appear in the commercial:

(1) mountain tops backgrounded by a blue sky, the lower parts of the mountains covered by

clouds;

(2) an index finger pressing a Power button (assumed to be that of a Camry);

(3) a two-lane road through a mountain scene;

(4) the front end of a moving blue Camry (presumably moving down the same road);

(5) a white and blue flower displayed in quick succession;

(6) the same blue Camry driving through the woods;

(7) a motion shot of trees flying past the camera;

(8) a snow-filled mountain canyon;

(9) a wide, quite river with green forests lining the banks and rising valley;

(10) a child walking through moss covered trees;

(11) a full shot of the moving blue Camry;

(12) a still image of the “Hybrid” logo on the side of the car;

(13) a wide shot of a heavily vegetated and mountainous river valley;

(14) another moving Camry;

(15) the sky, with trees moving by along both sides, like the view from a sunroof;

(16) the actual view from a sunroof (the frame captures the ceiling of the car);

(17) a forward view of a boy looking up through a sunroof;

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(18) a red theater curtain and grass floor present an engine and exhaust system on a display

stand;

(19) the curtain opens the reveal an expanse of rolling green hills in the background;

(20) an aerial view of the blue Camry driving down the road, away from the camera.

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Notes

1. INTRODUCTION

1 Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalsim Revised ed.

(White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2002), 177.

2 Mark Meister and Phyllis M. Japp, “Introduction: A Rationale for Studying

Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture,” in Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric

and Popular Culture, ed. Mark Meister and Phyllis M. Japp (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 6.

3 M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer, Ecospeak: Rhetorics and

Environmental Politics in America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992); Carl

G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, ed., Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary

America (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996); Star A. Muir and Thomas L.

Veenendall, ed., Earthtalk: Communication Empowerment for Environmental Action (Westport,

CT: Praeger, 1996); Robert Cox, Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere

(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006).

4 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 24 & 239.

5 Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of

Advertising (New York: The Guilford Press, 1996), 191.

6 Mark Meister, Kristen Chamberlain and Amanda Brown, “Rejuvenating Nature in

Commercial Culture and the Implications of the Green Commodity Form,” in The Environmental

Communication Yearbook, vol. 3, ed. Stephen P. Depoe (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, 2006): 100-101.

7 Cox, Environmental Communication, 5.

110

8 Cox, Environmental Communication, 5.

9 Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality

(Boulder: Westview Press, 2000); Robert D. Bullard, ed., The Quest for Environmental Justice:

Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005); James

Garvey, The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World (New York:

Continuum, 2008); Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and

Environmental Justice (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007).

10 Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism, 91-95.

11 Beder, Global Spin, 177.

12 Stephen P. Depoe, “Good Food From the Good Earth: McDonald‟s and the

Commodification of the Environment,” in Argument in Controversy: Proceedings of the Seventh

SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, ed. Donn W. Parson (Annandale, VA: Speech

Communication Association, 1991), 334-341; Greg Dickinson, “Joe‟s Rhetoric: Finding

Authenticity at Starbucks,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2002): 5-27; Meister,

Chamberlain, and Brown, “Rejuvenating Nature,” 97-114.

13 Dickinson, “Joe‟s Rhetoric,” 11-16.

14 Dickinson, “Joe‟s Rhetoric,” 11.

15 Dickinson, “Joe‟s Rhetoric,” 13.

16 Dickinson, “Joe‟s Rhetoric,” 13.

17 Beder, Global Spin, 177.

18 Beder, Global Spin, 177.

19 Depoe, “Good Food from the Good Earth,” 337.

20 Depoe, “Good Food from the Good Earth,” 335.

111

21

Depoe, “Good Food from the Good Earth,” 339.

22 Meister, Chamberlain and Brown, “Rejuvenation Nature,” 97-98; italics added.

23 Meister, Chamberlain and Brown, “Rejuvenation Nature,” 98.

24 Meister, Chamberlain and Brown, “Rejuvenation Nature,” 99.

25 Mark and Japp, “A Rationale for Studying Environmental Rhetoric and Popular

Culture,” 1.

26 Meister and Japp, “A Rational for Studying Environmental Rhetoric and Popular

Culture,” 4; see Sut Jhally, The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of

Meaning in the Consumer Society (New York: St. Martin‟s Press, 1987).

27 Meister and Japp, “A Rationale for Studying Environmental Rhetoric and Popular

Culture,” 1.

28 Julia B. Corbett, “A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World,” in

Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture, ed. Mark Meister and

Phyllis M. Japp (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 143.

29 Alison Anderson, Media, Culture and the Environment (New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 1997), 4.

30 Meister and Japp, “A Rational for Studying Environmental Rhetoric and Popular

Culture,” 3.

31 Meister and Japp, “A Rational for Studying Environmental Rhetoric and Popular

Culture,” 3, italics added.

32 Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to

the Exxon Valdez (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991), 16. The argumentative trajectory of the

112

intersection of the environment, advertising, and popular culture in Wilson‟s book is also

concisely recapitulated in: Anderson, Media, Culture and the Environment, 110-111.

33 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, v.

34 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, vi.

35 Mark Meister, Kristen Chamberlain and Amanda Brown, “Rejuvenating Nature in

Commercial Culture,” 97.

36 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 187.

37 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 187-188.

38 For example, a magazine ad for a hybrid car that features green font and borders but is

set in a showroom and only makes mention of fuel efficiency should not be considered an appeal

to nature.

39 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 24; italics added.

40 Toyota Motor Sales, 2010 Toyota Prius TV Commercials,

http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/commercial.html.

41 Guilt, for example, can be quickly found in nearly every green advertisement product

category, however, choosing that emotion for the vehicles category would have come at the loss

of freedom, an emotion not nearly as prominent in other product categories.

2. FREEDOM AND THE TOYOTA CAMRY HYBRID

1 Beder, Global Spin, 177; from: Joyce Nelson, “Deconstructing Ecobabble: Notes on an

Attempted Corporate Takeover,” This Magazine 24, no. 3 (1990): 12-18.

2 Mark Rechtin, “Toyota Gets New Slogan; „Moving Forward‟ Theme Places Automaker

in Customers‟ Lives,” Automotive News, October 4, 2004.

3 Toyota Camry Hybrid Commercial, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIJn2gyUNCQ.

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4 Toyota Motor Corporation, Hybrid Synergy Drive: Achievements and Visions,

http://www.hybridsynergydrive.com/en/sales.html.

5 Cadillac Hybrid Commercial, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFS1gngd7o.

6 Cox, Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere, 373.

7 Take for example Ford‟s notable Super Bowl XL commercial for the Escape Hybrid;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQLiX_yqkfk&feature; Khara E. House, “Kermit the Frog

and Ford Team Up for Green-Friendly Super Bowl Commercial,” Associated Content: The

People’s Media Company, January 30, 2007,

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/137377/kermit_the_frog_and_ford_team_up_for.html.

8 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, vi.

9 George W. Bush, Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks, September 11, 2001,

John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara,

CA. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057.

10 I am using “implied driver” here to mean a shot of a car that captures its movement,

but is unable to get a clear view of the person behind the steering wheel.

11 Toyota Camry Hybrid Commercial, 2006,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zqPcAcAlr4.

12 I specify most audience members because for some (geological experts for example)

the shot could reveal further locational information from things such as apparent rock texture, or

peak formation. These visuals, interpreted by the correct viewer could allow the location to be

narrowed considerably. Perhaps the rocks are too jagged to be in the Appalachians, or too steep

to reside in another mountain range.

13 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 24.

114

14

Ford Motor Company, The Ford Story: Drive One: Take Four,

http://www.thefordstory.com/green/drive-one-take-four/.

15 Toyota Motor Corporation, Hybrid Synergy Drive: Nickel Metal Hydride Battery,

http://www.hybridsynergydrive.com/en/battery.html.

16 Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen, The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to

Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007); Crissy

Trask, It’s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith

Publisher, 2006); Josh Dorfman, The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green

Living (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2007).

17 Rogers and Kostigen, The Green Book, x.

18 Depoe, “Good Food from the Good Earth,” 339; here Depoe is specifically drawing

from: J. Ridgeway and D. Bischoff, “The Leveraged Buyout of Earth Day,” Village Voice (1990,

May 24), 24-30.

19 Depoe, “Good Food from the Good Earth,” 339.

20 Laura Johnson, “(Environmental) Rhetoric of Tempered Apocalypticism in An

Inconvenient Truth,” Rhetoric Review 28, no. 1 (2009): 35-36.

21 In the commercial, these lines are presented as a question: “When does the best-selling

car in America become the best car for America?” However, several seconds later in the

commercial the narrator answers his own question: “Introducing the first ever gas-electric Camry

with Hybrid Synergy Drive.”

22 Rogers and Kostigen, The Green Book, x.

23 Rogers and Kostigen, The Green Book, 111.

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24

Toyota Motor Corporation, 2010 Toyota Prius TV Commercials,

http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/commercial.html.

25 It could be argued that the nature depicted in the commercial presents environmental

improvement because the spaces are more “natural” or more environmentally healthy than other

environments. However, the combination of appeals to freedom and the lack of any visible

change seems suggest messages of maintaining current natural spaces for free exploration.

1 Cox, Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere, 374; here Cox draws from:

Jacquelyn A. Ottman, Green Marketing: Challenges and Opportunities for the New Marketing

Age (Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business, 1993), 48; and Goldman and Papson.

2 Proctor & Gamble, Dawn-Dish.com, “How Dawn Helps Save Wildlife,”

http://www.dawn-dish.com/en_US/savingwildlife/home.do; http://www.dawn-

dish.com/en_US/savingwildlife/faq.do; the dates for the campaign are based on the “program

dates” provided on the FAQ page of the Dawn Saves Wildlife website.

3 Proctor & Gamble, “Dawn‟s Everyday Wildlife Champions Program Elevates

Donations for the Holidays in Light of Recent Natural Disasters and Animal Rescue Efforts,” PR

Newswire. The presence of a corporate-backed advocacy group like Everyday Wildlife

Champions raises concerns for many studying environmental rhetoric, regarding whether a

corporate conglomerate like Proctor & Gamble can in good faith be the driving force behind a

group devoted to the health of the planet. It is these concerns that have supported rhetorical

studies of the “astroturfing movement.” Such concerns could easily fuel a lengthy study of their

own. Therefore, while the appeals that are presented on Facebook by the Everyday Wildlife

Champions will be important to this critique, primary importance will be given to the

116

advertisements themselves, rather than the authenticity (or lack thereof) that exists in the

presentation of the Everyday Wildlife Champions.

4 Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New York:

Harper Business, 1993); as quoted in: Beder, Global Spin, 177.

5 An index search through books such as Ecospeak, Earthtalk, and Environmental

Communication and the Public Sphere all come up relatively empty regarding any mention or

discussion of wildlife.

6 Bullard, Dumping in Dixie, 9.

7 Proctor & Gamble, Dawn-Dish.com, “Other Wildlife Organizations,” http://www.dawn-

dish.com/en_US/savingwildlife/otherorg.do.

8 The Big Spill, VHS, (Northbrook, IL: Coronet Film and Video, 1990).

9 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 14.

10 Arlene Plevin, “Green Guilt: An Effective Rhetoric or Rhetoric in Transition?”

Technical Communication Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1997): 125-139.

11 Ibid., 125.

12 J. Michael Hogan, The Nuclear Freeze Campaign: Rhetoric and Foreign Policy in the

Telepolitical Age (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994), 39-40.

13 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 130-131.

14 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 134.

15 Plevin, 133-134; Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990) 135.

16 Kevin Michael DeLuca, Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism

(New York: The Guilford Press, 1999).

117

17

Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 130-131.

18 Bush Address before Joint Session of Congress,

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=64731&st=&st1=; Christina M. Smith and

George N. Dionisopoulos, “The Abu Ghraib Images: „Breaks‟ in a Dichotomous Frame,”

Western Journal of Communication 72, no. 3 (2008): 313-315.

19 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 130-131.

20 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 127.

21 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 127.

22 Ibid., 134.

23 Plevin presents very similar statements from Rachel Carson (apocalyptic message) and

the National Wildlife Federation (guilt message); Carson: “this imagined tragedy may easily

become a stark reality we all shall know,” and the NWF: “We are facing a crisis.” Plevin,

“Green Guilt,” 128-131.

24 Johnson, “(Environmental) Rhetorics of Tempered Apocalypticism,” no. 1 (2009): 29-

46.

25 Johnson, “(Environmental) Rhetorics of Tempered Apocalypticism,” 36.

26 Ibid., 41.

27 Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Break Through: From the Death of

Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007), 106;

Katherine Ellison, “Turned Off by Global Warming,” New York Times, May 20, 2006.

28 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 31.

29 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 125.

118

30

Sierra Club, Sponsor a Wild Place: Great Gifts that Help Protect the Wild,

http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageServer?pagename=WildPlaces.

31 Nordhaus and Shellenberger, Break Through, 106.

32 Ibid.

33 Hogan, The Nuclear Freeze Campaign, 40.

34 In reality, it is unlikely these animals are ones that were rescued from an oil spill.

After several animals have been shown being cleaned, a single line of fine print appears near the

bottom of the frame, informing the audience that this specific use of Dawn to clean these animals

is actually a “simulated demonstration.” However, the hand washing of animals is something

familiar to general audience, and is depicted elsewhere in the Dawn campaign (in website photo

albums and on wildlife partner pages). Such conditions support the narrative fidelity of animal-

washing scenes.

35 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 128-129.

36 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 3.

37 Kathleen Kuehn, “Compassionate Consumerism: Healing African Through Gap‟s

Product (RED) Campaign” (paper presented as the annual internationals meeting for the

International Communication Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 22-26, 2008).

38 This slogan is on every bottle of Dawn that is part of the campaign, and is featured in

the commercial and throughout the website.

39 Proctor & Gamble, How Dawn Helps Save Wildlife,

http://www.dawnsaveswildlife.com.

40 Depoe, “Good Food from the Good Earth,” 335.

119

41

In Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere, Robert Cox draws from

Jacqueline Switzer‟s construction of greenwashing: “public relations campaigns . . . used by

industry to soften the public‟s perceptions of its activities,” Cox, Environmental Communication,

377; Jacqueline V. Switzer, Green Backlash: The History and Politics of Environmental

Opposition in the U.S. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997), xv.

42 Proctor & Gamble, How Dawn Helps Save Wildlife, http://www.dawn-

dish.com/en_US/savingwildlife/home.do; Frito Lay, SunChips: Healthier Planet,

http://www.sunchips.com/healthier_planet.shtml; guilt is a much less prominent appeal in the

Sun Chips campaign, as evidenced in part by pictures of trees and sunsets, rather than helpless,

oil-covered animals.

43 Plevin, “Green Guilt,” 125.

44 Ibid., 127.

45 Kuehn, “Compassionate Consumerism,” 6.

46 Kuehn, “Compassionate Consumerism,” 18; and Robert Goldman, Reading Ads

Socially (New York: Routledge, 1992).

47 Beder, Global Spin, 180.

48 Alan Thein Durning, How Much is Enough: The Consumer Society and the Future of

the Earth (London: Earthscan, 1992), 12; Wayne Ellwood, “Scandal!” New Internationalist,

January, 19, 1990.

49 Kuehn, “Compassionate Consumerism,” 18.

50 Kuehn, “Compassionate Consumerism,” 18.

120

4. RELIEF IN CONVERSION TO IBM

1 Michael Spangle and David Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth: An Exploration of

Persuasive Tactics and Appeals in Environmental Discourse,” in Earthtalk: Communication and

Empowerment for Environmental Action, ed. Star A. Muir and Thomas L. Veenendall (Westport,

CT: Praeger, 1996), 6.

2 IBM, IBM Archives: Internet History, http://www-

03.ibm.com/ibm/history/interactive/index.html#/EarlyAmbitions; IBM, IBM and the

Environment, http://www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/.

3 IBM, Energy, and Environment and IBM, http://www.ibm.com/ibm/green/index1.shtml;

I am aware that there is space in this justification for one to argue that these technologies are in

fact products that existed prior to environmental exigencies, and newer models of technological

products have merely been adapted to fit the green consumer desires. However, for this study I

am more interested in the rhetorical messages presented to audiences in the advertisements (and

the responses they invite), than in the historical development of the actual products. With this

goal in mind, new green technologies fit this third product category because they lend

themselves to being presented to the audience as products developed solely in response to

environmental exigencies.

4 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,”; Killingsworth and Palmer,

Ecospeak.

5 Timothy O‟Riordan, “Environmentalism and Education,” Journal of Geography in

Higher Education 5, no. 1 (1981): 5.

6 O‟Riordan, “Environmentalism and Education,” 5.

7 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 6.

121

8 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 11.

9 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 6.

10 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 7.

11 F. Marina Schauffler, Turning to Earth: Stories of Ecological Conversion

(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003): 6.

12 Economics could be utilized to argue for the importance of a system that would

decrease water waste – thus keeping down the price of water for farmers, which would allow for

stable crop and livestock prices. Similarly, a system that would increase oil efficiency would

lessen America‟s dependence on foreign oil, possibly reducing tensions in the Middle East, and

therefore improving national security.

13 Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of

Advertising (New York: The Guildford Press, 1996), 191.

14 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 192.

15 Gregory Clark, S. Michael Halloran, and Allison Woodford, “Thomas Cole‟s Vision of

„Nature‟ and the Conquest Theme in American Culture,” in Green Culture: Environmental

Rhetoric in Contemporary America, ed. Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown (Madison: The

University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 261-280.

16 Clark, Halloran and Woodford, “Thomas Cole‟s Vision of „Nature,‟” 262.

17 Clark, Halloran and Woodford, “Thomas Cole‟s Vision of „Nature,‟” 274; from:

Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875 (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1980) 5.

18 Schauffler, Turning to Earth, 76.

19 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 203.

122

20

These two differing positions can be understood as applied to Killingsworth and

Palmer‟s opposite ethical poles of contemporary North American environmental discourse: “One

group will view nature as a warehouse of resources for human use, while an opposing group will

view human beings as an untidy disturbance of natural history, a glitch in the earth‟s otherwise

efficient ecosystem.” See: Ecospeak, 4; and “Thomas Cole‟s Vision of „Nature,‟” 272.

21 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 6-7.

22 The Wizard of Oz, VHS, directed by Victor Fleming (1939; Culver City, CA:

MGM/UA Home Video, 1991).

23 Johnson, “(Environmental) Rhetorics of Tempered Apocalypticism,” 43.

24 IBM, Energy, the Environment and IBM,

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/green/index.shtml?cm_re=masthead-_-business-_-green.

25 Trask, It’s Easy Being Green, 8-9.

26 Trask, It’s Easy Being Green, 21 & 41.

27 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 40.

28 IBM, Smarter Planet: United States,

http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/?cm_re=masthead-_-solutions-_-asmarterplanet.

29 Berne Broudy, “Cut Your Carbon in Half,” Backpacker Magazine, September 2007.

30 The elevator commercial is the one exception. In this commercial the nature creatures

bombard the skeptic as he is being given the information that leads to his eventual conversion.

However, the remaining three commercials so clearly present nature as a confirmation of the

environmental conversion that there is reason enough the treat the elevator commercial as an

outlier, and analyze the implications of the remaining commercials.

31 Schauffler, Turning to Earth, 6-7.

123

32

Lester Brown presents this type of appeal at the end of his Plan B books: “The choice

is ours – yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over a global bubble

economy that keeps expanding until it bursts, leading to economic decline. Or we can adopt Plan

B and be the generation that stabilizes population, eradicates poverty, and stabilizes climate.

Lester Brown, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York:

W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), 222.

33 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 7; italics added to emphasize

the money saving focus of the commercials.

34 Richard M. Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1985), 211.

35 Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric, 213. Italics added.

36 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 7.

37 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 12.

38 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 7.

5. CONCLUSION

1 Meister and Japp, Enviropop, 1.

2 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, v-vi.

3 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 191.

4 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 192.

5 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 192-193.

6 Brown, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New

York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003).

124

7 Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., Crimes Against Nature: Howe George W. Bush and his

Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (New York: Harper

Collins Publishers, 2004).

8 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 194.

9 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 187.

10 Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, 187-195.

11 Beder, Global Spin, 177-178.

12 Corbet, “A Faint Green Sell,” 143.

13 The types of shallow resolutions of this guilt are discussed by: Goldman and Papson,

Sign Wars, 187-188; and Beder, Global Spin, 180.

14 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 7.

15 Spangle and Knapp, “Ways We Talk about the Earth,” 7.

16 Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 11.

17 Meister, Chamberlain, and Brown, “Rejuvenating Nature in Commercial Culture,” 97-

98.

125

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