Role of the advertising industry in promoting high carbon lifestyle choices
Some quotes from an article about advertising and flying: “More than half of Delta Air Lines’ approximately $151m ad spend from October 2022 to October 2023, for example, was spent advertising long-haul flights, encouraging travellers to rack up air miles to use for more travel, and pushing upgrades to premium classes, although the airline also spent tens of millions of dollars to advertise its commitment to “sustainable aviation fuels”. Qatar Airways, meanwhile, directed more than 85% of its advertising spend during the same year into marketing business class and long-haul flights exclusively. Short-haul flights are not necessarily environmentally preferable, particularly flights that could be replaced by a rail trip; they emit more carbon dioxide per kilometre than long-haul flights, making them more carbon intensive. However, long-haul flights emit more in total; they account for only 6% of total flights, yet are responsible for 51% of air travel emissions.” See the whole article.
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Ad industry grapples with role selling consumption in climate crisis
Does being an effective agency mean helping sell more products or can it mean helping mitigate climate emergency?
Amy Westervelt (The Guardian) @amywestervelt
21 Nov 2023
Some extracts from the article:
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And while a handful of agencies are looking to sell greener options, the actions of the industry as a whole seem to show a resistance to considering such things as their responsibility. The transportation sector, identified as probably the most significant area of consumption for the top 10% by Julia Steinberger, a professor of ecological economics at the University of Lausanne and the author of a 2020 paper on the topic, is a good example. “The categories of consumption that the wealthiest people over-consume or overspend on and that constitute the big difference in their emissions is really flying longer distances, and driving bigger cars longer distances, so transportation is really the big one,” Steinberger said.
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Similar trends are evident in the air travel industry. More than half of Delta Air Lines’ approximately $151m ad spend from October 2022 to October 2023, for example, was spent advertising long-haul flights, encouraging travellers to rack up air miles to use for more travel, and pushing upgrades to premium classes, although the airline also spent tens of millions of dollars to advertise its commitment to “sustainable aviation fuels”.
Qatar Airways, meanwhile, directed more than 85% of its advertising spend during the same year into marketing business class and long-haul flights exclusively.
Short-haul flights are not necessarily environmentally preferable, particularly flights that could be replaced by a rail trip; they emit more carbon dioxide per kilometre than long-haul flights, making them more carbon intensive. However, long-haul flights emit more in total; they account for only 6% of total flights, yet are responsible for 51% of air travel emissions.
Green consumerism may be a necessary step on the path to sustainable consumption, argues Solitaire Townsend, a co-founder of the sustainability agency Futerra. She points out, pragmatically, that the current situation is not surprising: “The highest carbon behaviours and products get the most advertising because they’ve got the biggest margins.” In short, big cars make big money for their makers, and for their advertisers.
Another part of the problem, according to Townsend, is that ostentation is desirable. “All throughout human history and all throughout the animal kingdom, wasteful overconsumption is used as a signal of desirability of a mate,” she said, citing a peacock’s feathers as a good example. “And so one of the things which marketers who know this very well can do is to kind of go: how can we make sustainable products that look ostentatious?”
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