Environment Advertising: and its Importance to the Culture of Climate Change

79 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Journalism and Communication Studies and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Arts, Spring 2016.The nature of advertising requires it to be a constant perpetuation of cultural ideals, flexible enough to frequently change to anticipate and capitalize on the needs and wants of a society. Increasingly, advertising is inescapable. It has leapt from the two dimensional frames of newspapers, and evolved to the point of tracking our internet usage. Consumers adapt to new forms of advertising and have also learned to have some control over the brands in their lives. This has caused brands to advance the ways in which they interact with and appeal to consumers, attempting to avoid negative criticism and offer more to customers who are dedicated to brands. The evolution of this balance of power between consumers and brands has created a dense and complicated set of marketing practices designed to cut through media that is already saturated with advertising. A popular way for brands to mean more to their consumers and add value to their products is by advertising the positive environmental value of their brand and its products. While some companies are truly interested in minimizing their impact on the environment, many are more willing to simply appear to be making a difference. This type of false environmental advertising is known as greenwashing, and often involves claims about products that are difficult to measure and verify, and equally difficult to litigate over if they are found to be dishonest. Additionally, these environmentally oriented practices used to add emotional brand value have combined and affected more scientific methods of measuring the environmental impact of products, creating confusion for consumers and corporations in dealing with limiting their impacts on the environment