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Green marketing: examples of ad campaigns focused on the environment
In recent years, saving the planet has become a key social and political issue, to the extent that it now also influences consumer choices. Businesses have therefore urgently started to roll out wide-ranging environmental responsibility policies, to show they are genuinely committed to protecting the Earth.
Many brands have chosen to take a clear stance on topics like recycling and waste reduction through a range of initiatives and environmental awareness campaigns. In this article, we’ll take a look at some successful examples of these, which show how using marketing techniques and a spot of creativity can push people to behave more sustainably and make a real difference to the environmental cause.
But businesses need to do more to demonstrate their green credentials than simply put together a good marketing campaign. The public is increasingly wise to marketing gimmicks, and to avoid greenwashing negatively affecting their reputation, companies must get involved in tangible plans and initiatives, which aim to enact real change in sustainability terms.
Barilla and Marie Kondo: breathing new life into pasta boxes
The famous Italian pasta brand Barilla recently signed an agreement with Marie Kondo, the renowned home economics advisor and author of the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, to promote the importance of recycling packaging. The Secondhand Box project features a series of tutorial videos on the brand’s social channels, in which the decluttering guru shows various ways of folding clothes to maximise cupboard space or to squeeze the second-hand garments and accessories you are selling into empty Barilla pasta boxes.
This initiative, launched on Global Recycling Day, shows how businesses can work with influencers and spokespeople to promote more responsible consumption patterns. Here, the key to the strategy’s success was jumping on the bandwagon of the current fashions for second-hand items and ‘ugly package’ culture that have spread thanks to Vinted – users are increasingly recycling old boxes to send objects they sell through the app. Barilla boxes, made with over 99% FSC-certified paper, are a perfect example of eco-friendly, recyclable and reusable packaging.
This campaign is part of a much wider sustainability drive that has seen Barilla working on a range of fronts: from creating an environmentally and socially sustainable supply chain to using renewable energy at its factories.
Ichnusa and Legambiente: fighting littering
The renowned Sardinian beer brand Ichnusa launched a multichannel marketing campaign entitled ‘Il nostro impegno‘ (‘Our Commitment’) to tackle the issue of people dropping empty glass bottles, using a reverse marketing[1] strategy to raise customer awareness on how to dispose of waste correctly and protect the environment. For some years, the brewery has supported various local environmental projects, and as part of the campaign it organised clean-up days in Sardinia’s most popular tourist destinations, where Ichnunsa staff and volunteers from the environmental group Legambiente Sardegna worked together to pick up litter.
The company also published its ‘10 rules of respect – for everyone who visits and loves Sardinia‘: a list of instructions on how to preserve the island’s beauty, drawn up in partnership with Legambiente, which appeals directly to consumers’ environmental conscience. The campaign, promoted through a video ad, posters and content shared on social networks, works very well for two reasons: it perfectly matches Ichnusa’s brand identity, which has always had strong links to the Sardinian region, and it leaves the product in the background, instead aiming to encourage more responsible behaviour. The message is powerful enough to go beyond local borders and inspire a change of habits on a wider scale.
IKEA and modern domestic heroes
I’m sure many of you have one particularly eco-conscious family member or housemate, who is always ready to step in and correct any poor environmental behaviour. IKEA decided to put together a multi-subject green advertising campaign focused on precisely these people, the modern ‘domestic heroes’ who, through small, everyday gestures, help the environmental cause, sometimes without realising it. Making you close the fridge you’ve left open too long, storing leftovers to reheat for your next meal, or teaching you to put your rubbish in the correct bin!
In its usual breezy and tongue-in-cheek tone, the Swedish firm celebrated the important role played by these ‘home activists’, reminding us that we can all make a difference when it comes to protecting our ecosystem. IKEA is another brand that is highly committed to sustainability, with various projects underway to promote the circular economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including a target to reduce the average overall impact of each of its products by 70% by 2030. Just like Ichnusa’s campaign, IKEA directly invited consumers to share its environmental commitment: ‘Join us to make the planet a better place to live’.
EDF and reducing energy consumption
The French energy giant EDF also chose to dedicate a multi-subject marketing campaign to environmental topics. A series of posters, launched in 2006, showed various wild animals turning off the TV or PC, replacing a traditional light bulb with a low-energy alternative, and even installing solar panels on the roof of a house.
The tagline – ‘If you don’t protect nature by using low-energy bulbs, who will?’ and the text beneath underline the importance of small ‘green’ acts, just like the IKEA campaign: ‘Today, through simple everyday actions, everyone can help protect the environment and save energy at the same time.’
As with the other examples we’ve looked at, the initiative is in line with the group’s mission: EDF produces 93% of its electricity using zero-carbon technologies, and aims to be carbon neutral by 2050. The key to the success of this campaign, which is still relevant almost 20 years later, was the use of an original and striking – albeit unrealistic – visual. Using animals that live far from Europe in a very human environment helps us grasp the issues caused by climate change and pollution with greater urgency.
To win the trust and loyalty of increasingly well-informed, demanding and eco-conscious consumers, today businesses must work hard on two fronts: on the one hand, they must make their entire supply chain more sustainable through programmes that aim to reduce their carbon footprint and consumption of natural resources. And on the other hand, they must encourage the public to adopt environmentally friendly behaviour through initiatives with a strong media impact. The green marketing campaigns we’ve looked at in this article show that these initiatives can be an effective way to promote change, using creativity to further a cause that benefits us all: the future of our planet.
[1] Reverse marketing involves inverting the strategy typically used in traditional marketing, which seeks to convince consumers to buy a certain product or service by praising its qualities. By positioning itself against its own brand or criticising its own products, a business hopes to use reverse psychology to encourage the public to do the exact opposite of what the tagline says.