'Greenwash' is losing its shine

Rebecca Swift, BBC The Green Room 18 Feb 08;

Simply being seen to be green will soon not be enough, says Getty Images' Rebecca Swift. In this week's Green Room, she argues that time is running out for advertisers who "greenwash" audiences with empty eco-cliches.

As a company that generates imagery for the news wires and the world of advertising, we could not help but notice a global shift in interest towards "green" iconography.

Photography has its fashions like everything else, but once in a while something "mega" comes along that touches nearly everything we see.

As we all go about our daily business we probably don't give it much thought, but after observing what is being transmitted over days, weeks and months, a trend starts to appear.

Our research team spent a year wading through all commercial imagery from around the world relating to the environment. We found that, in relation to what companies say they are doing versus what they doing, there has been a great deal of "greenwashing".

The fascinating thing is how many ads actually recycle the same narrow range of the colour green in an attempt to raise their eco-profile.

There are two spectrums: one is what we call "kelly green" (think Kermit the Frog), and the other is "forest green" (think Landrover Destroyer classic colour).

Naturally, by extension, green trees, green leaves and green grass abound as green icons.

These natural icons have become cliched icons for the environment. So why has this happened and why should we care?

Firstly, it is to do with what is called mass culture. Scientists and governments are telling us that we are destroying the Earth and we all need to consume in a new way in order to slow down the destruction.

We are told, in emotive terms, about the risks facing our children and grandchildren's futures and presented with graphic depictions of the potential effects of our lack of consideration for our planet.

Substance verses spin

As our social behaviour has shifted and we spend more time being careful about recycling, buying organic, composting and not using plastic bags, the mass media has used these considerations to differentiate and sell.

"Green", as a selling point, used to be the endeavour of an earnest few. Now it has become a necessary and lucrative element in promoting a brand; but green advertising is still searching for its visual language.

The advertising with the really impactful imagery is being used by campaign groups like Greenpeace and WWF, which have the advantage of not actually having to sell anything but awareness.

Commercial advertising is now borrowing imagery from the campaigners. We see polar bears on melting ice caps, penguins in urban environments and famous skylines under water.

Ordinary people going about their everyday lives are subjected to messaging and imagery that all feel the same and therefore diminish in meaning as time goes on.

The last time I remember something similar happening was the propaganda associated with the "millennium bug" as the world approached the dawn of 2000.

As well as communication that educated, there was a wide range of products and services available that could alleviate the potential aftermath of the bug's impact.

At the same time, there was a blue-washing of commercial imagery, a shade called "millennium blue".

The 1990s had been a time of exponential growth for the technology industry; it was a time in which anything seemed possible.

We moved towards 24/7 industry, business hours lengthened across all time zones and e-mail became the defacto communication tool.

The millennium bug was the first threat to our new technological future. The dot.com crash followed soon after. Socially and psychologically, we found ourselves stressed out and yearning for technology-free time-outs.

Brands at the time were looking for a way to attract customers, so they promoted the fact their products were the answer to combating stress.

Blue became the colour that represented something calming and relaxing; it evoked the feeling that we all wished (and wish) to feel.

Advertising adopted it as the imagery equivalent of practising yoga. Most of the time it was literally a wash across the image; other times it was an icon or element within the image.

So, with the overwhelming amount of communication about green issues, we do look to trustworthy brands to lead us in our environmentally friendly choices.

We should care about the "green-washing" of advertising imagery because we all need to differentiate between brands that embody green and others that have simply jumped on the bandwagon in a bid for a fast buck.

As with the millennium bug era, we will move out of the propaganda phase.

By all accounts, the environment issue will not disappear overnight as the "bug" did, but image producers like us and those that use imagery to say something about themselves are still searching for a more sophisticated language to communicate green agendas.

Expect imagery of the future to be any colour but green and imagery of the natural world to leave the cliches behind.

Rebecca Swift is global creative planning director for Getty Images, a global photo agency

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website