Is Climate Change advertising working?

By Anson Wu, ACE - 16th Feb 06

If you watch enough TV, you will have seen a few adverts selling the climate change message. If you haven't, they can be watched using the links below. Whilst I think they?re getting better, I'm still not buying it. Are you, or is anyone else?

Competing for attention with the big budgets from the likes of BMW, Nike and Loreal that offer prestige, style and eternal beauty sounds like a losing battle. But few people can ignore the high impact Think! Road Safety adverts, depicting accidents and their aftermath. Can this, however, translate to climate change, a more complex problem with far less immediate effects? 

The latest '2 minute film' from the Climate Change Communications Initiative tries to explain our relationship with climate change and it certainly looks impressive. Set to urgent, discordant music it shows nature at its best, then worst, making it clear we are the cause and we can do something. The problem is, I've never seen it on TV. If ubiquity is a key to advertising can we run such long adverts at such expense? And whilst it shows the wind turbines and solar panels, how do you make insulation look good? The best I could find is Thinksulation.

EST's 'save you 20%' campaign has memorable slogan and catchy music. But it's been a long time since I've sighted the main 30sec. The 10sec spots are more frequent but the message could be lost without the main ad. Even at just 30 sec, it seems too much to show it regularly. Should we leave it to those who have more resources such as BP's Global climate change and Ecological footprint?

There's no doubt marketing is extremely important but I?d like to know what direction it's taking and who is deciding. Should the adverts target children instead, or the affluent twenty somethings looking to buy their first home? And are we in danger of becoming a parody of ourselves ? have you seen The Day After Tomorrow?

Finally, where does fuel poverty figure in all of this?

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