Green Marketing — Are Your Claims Sustainable?
Sep
02
Ethical Corporation, Brands making green claims about their products need clarity on what they can and cannot say.
The recent surge in green marketing has left many brands searching for the right words to sell the environmental benefits of products.
But many advertisers still slip up by using vague terms that leave themselves open to charges of greenwash, as oil firm Shell has found to its cost.
In August, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled that Shell had misled the public by branding its Canadian oil sands operation “sustainable” in an ad in the Financial Times in February.
The watchdog ruled that “sustainable”, in the context Shell had used it, was “an ambiguous and unclear term”. It upheld a complaint about the ad from green campaigner WWF. The group promptly launched its own campaign accusing Shell of greenwash.
Green marketing terms remain ill-defined, and no successful attempt has yet been made to codify what advertisers can or cannot say when trying to promote goods with environmental benefits.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
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