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Teaching and Learning Resource (TLR)

1. Title

Environmental Analysis of Adverts

2. Keywords

Environment, advertising, mass media, media effects, nature, representation.

3. Introduction

According to Judith Williamson:

Advertisements are one of the most important cultural factors moulding and reflecting our life today. They are ubiquitous, an inevitable part of everyone’s lives: even if you do not read a newspaper or watch television, the images posted over our urban surroundings are inescapable. Pervading all media, but limited to none, advertising forms a vast superstructure with an apparently autonomous existence and an immense influence.(1)

Williamson goes on to discuss the functions of advertising. The most obvious of these is to sell us things, which involves telling us about some of the qualities and attributes of a thing, and – importantly – doing so in such a way that those qualities and attributes mean something to us and are valued by us. Thus:

[A]dvertisements have to translate statements from the world of things, for example, that a car will do so many miles per gallon, into a form that means something to people. Suppose that the car did a high mpg: this could be translated into terms of thriftiness, the user being a ‘clever’ saver, in other words, being a certain kind of person. Or, if the mpg was low, the ad could appeal to the ‘above money pettiness’, daredevil kind of person who is too ‘trendy’ to be economising. Both statements in question could be made on the purely factual level of a ‘use-value’ by the simple figures of ’50 mpg’ and ’20 mpg’. The advertisement translates these ‘thing’ statements to us as human statements; they are given a humanly symbolic ‘exchange-value’.(2)

Williamson was not writing specifically about the environmental content of advertising but, as her example makes clear, adverts may indeed contain ‘messages’ about the environment. Moreover, if we accept that adverts in general both reflect and shape consumer preferences and values, then it is at least plausible to suppose that adverts might play a role in shaping the environmental values of consumers.

4. Aim

The aim of this TLR is to encourage students to think critically about the different ways in which the environment/nature is represented in advertising; and about the social and environmental significance of such representations.

5. Learning outcomes

After using this TLR, students should:

• be aware that representations – implicit and explicit – of the environment/nature can be identified in a wide range of adverts.
• be aware that the ways in which the environment/nature is represented may vary widely from advert to advert; and, therefore, that adverts may differ greatly in the ‘messages’ they convey about the environment/nature.
• be able to analyse the environmental content of adverts - focusing, for example, on messages about what the environment is ‘really’ like, relationships between humans and the environment, assumptions concerning environmental value and understandings of environmental ‘problems’.
• be able to make an informed contribution to debates about the social and environmental significance of advertising.

6. Pre-requisites

Ideally students should have some knowledge of ‘environmental values’, and some ability to analyse the value content of texts. Where this is lacking, the following TLRs could be used prior to this one:

• Introduction to Personal Environmental Values
• Approaches in Environmental Ethics

The TLR does not assume or require any specialist knowledge of advertising or media studies (including semiotics and structuralism). However, if a class contains students who do have such knowledge, their informed contributions should be encouraged.

7. How to use TLR

The TLR has been designed to be used with a class of up to about 20 students broadly as follows.

Stage 1

i) Introduce the TLR, reviewing the nature of the content, the aims and learning outcomes, and the way in which the TLR will be used.

ii) Give each student a copy of the Briefing Sheet (see Appendix A) and instruct them to read the Introduction and follow the Instructions prior to the next session.

Step (i) and the first part of step (ii) would require about 15 minutes’ of class time. Step (ii) should be completed during independent study.

Stage 2

iii) In an all-class discussion, go through the students’ answers to questions 1 and 2 on the Briefing Sheet. (See Appendix A) (An indication of the kinds of answer that the students – collectively – should be able to produce in response to this and some of the following questions can be found in the Tutor Notes in Appendix B.)

iv)Go around the group, asking each student to display and briefly describe one of the adverts they have collected – focusing, of course, on the way in which the environment/nature is used to sell the product. If time permits, it may be worth asking students to display and describe a second or even third advert from their collection – but only if they feel it would make a significant contribution to what can be learnt about the ways in which representations of the environment/nature are used in advertising.

v) Compile a record (eg on a black/whiteboard, flip-chart or OHP) of examples identified by the students (of ways in which the environment/nature is used in advertising).

vi) Ask students if they can see any patterns in the examples they have produced and, more specifically, if they can see any way of ordering their examples within a taxonomy.

vii) Ask the students if any general conclusions can be drawn about the ways in which the environment/nature is used in advertising, and the environmental significance of advertising.

Steps (iii) to (vii) could be completed in as little as 60 minutes’ class time, but students are likely to gain more from the exercise if 90-120 minutes are spent on them.

8. Instructions to students

As directed by tutor.

9. Stimulus Material

Briefing Sheet (see Appendix A) – to be given to the students at the beginning of this exercise, and a collection of adverts collected by the students (according to the Instructions on the Briefing Sheet).

10. Degree stage

The TLR has been designed to be used at degree stage two or three.

11. Resource requirements

The TLR may require facilities for playing audio and/or video cassettes, if students choose to collect broadcast adverts (in addition to print-based adverts). At least one of the following will also be needed: black/whiteboard, flip-chart, OHP.

12. Preparation

This TLR does not require any special preparation.

13. Links with other TLRs

The aims and/or learning outcomes of this TLR are related to those of other TLRs listed in the following 'thematic cluster':

• Environment and the mass media

14. Follow-up activities

See Section 15 - Recommended reading and Section 13 - Links with other TLRs.

15. Recommended reading

For students who wish to learn more about the analysis of adverts, the following (non-environmental) introductory text is recommended:

• Williamson, Judith (1987) Decoding advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars.

For a seminal example of the semiotic analysis of the advertising of soaps and detergents, see:

• Barthes, Roland (1993 [1957]) Mythologies. Vintage, London. (“Soap-powders and detergents”, pp. 36-38.)

For students who wish to deepen their knowledge of the representations of the environment/nature in the mass media more generally, the following texts are recommended:

• Allen, S et al, eds (2000) Environmental Risks and the Media. Routledge, London. [See especially Chapter 9: Selling Control: Ideological Dilemmas of Sun, Tanning, Risk and Leisure (pp. 145-59) by N Coupland and J Coupland.]
• Anderson, A (1997) Media, Culture and the Environment. UCL Press, London. [Provides an accessible cultural analysis of news media coverage of environmental issues set within a context of pressure-group politics and the environmental lobby.]
• Burgess, J and Gold, J (eds) (1985) Geography, the Media and Popular Culture. London: Croom Helm. [See especially Chapter 4: Natural Hazards in Novels and Films: Implications for Hazard Perception and Behaviour (pp. 86-95) by Diana Liverman and Douglas Sherman.]
• Chapman, G et al (1997) Environmentalism and the Mass Media. The North-South Divide. Routledge, London. [Analyses the effect of cultural, political and religious context on the interplay of media coverage and public opinion / knowledge by means of a comparative study of the United Kingdom and India.]
• Gauntlett, D (1996) Video Critical. Children, the Environment and Media Power. University of Luton Press. [Provides a detailed investigation of the influence of television on children’s perception of the environment, based in part on an ethnographic study in which schoolchildren were invited to make their own videos about the environment.]
• Hansen, A (ed) (1993) The Mass Media and Environmental Issues. Leicester University Press. [Provides a collection of eleven papers on diverse aspects of media (especially news media) coverage of environmental issues.]
• Hochman, J (1998) Green Cultural Studies. Nature in Film, Novel, and Theory. University of Idaho Press. [Presents an analysis of the relationships between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ based, in part, on detailed investigations of three films (The Silence of the Lambs, Deliverance and Daughters of the Dust) and three novels (Women in Love, Beloved and The Conservationist).]

Appendix A

Environmental Analysis of Adverts

Briefing Sheet

Introduction

According to Judith Williamson:

Advertisements are one of the most important cultural factors moulding and reflecting our life today. They are ubiquitous, an inevitable part of everyone’s lives: even if you do not read a newspaper or watch television, the images posted over our urban surroundings are inescapable. Pervading all media, but limited to none, advertising forms a vast superstructure with an apparently autonomous existence and an immense influence.(3)

Williamson goes on to discuss the functions of advertising. The most obvious of these is to sell us things, which involves telling us about some of the qualities and attributes of a thing, and – importantly – doing so in such a way that those qualities and attributes mean something to us and are valued by us. Thus:

[A]dvertisements have to translate statements from the world of things, for example, that a car will do so many miles per gallon, into a form that means something to people. Suppose that the car did a high mpg: this could be translated into terms of thriftiness, the user being a ‘clever’ saver, in other words, being a certain kind of person. Or, if the mpg was low, the ad could appeal to the ‘above money pettiness’, daredevil kind of person who is too ‘trendy’ to be economising. Both statements in question could be made on the purely factual level of a ‘use-value’ by the simple figures of ’50 mpg’ and ’20 mpg’. The advertisement translates these ‘thing’ statements to us as human statements; they are given a humanly symbolic ‘exchange-value’. (4)

Roland Barthes writes about the advertising of soap powders in a similar vein:

‘Persil Whiteness’ for instance, bases its prestige on the evidence of a result; it calls into play vanity, a social concern with appearances, by offering for comparison two objects, one of which is whiter than the other. (5)

Instructions

1.Williamson mentions that adverts can be found on television, in newspapers and – by implication – on billboards. Make a list of any other media in which advertising can be found. (Note that not all advertising takes the form of the traditional tv or newspaper ad.)

2.Williamson makes a distinction between a product’s ‘use-value’ (ie ‘facts’ about what a product is or does) and its exchange-value (ie what it ‘means’ to us and, at least implicitly, why it would be good for us to purchase the product). In the examples she gives, we could label the exchange-value of the high- and low-mpg cars as thriftiness and carefreeness respectively. Make a list of any other exchange-values you can think of that are associated with well known products.

3.Williamson was not writing specifically about the environmental content of advertising but, as her example makes clear, adverts may indeed contain ‘messages’ about the environment. Collect a sample of two or three adverts (cuttings from magazines etc and/or recordings from tv/radio) which utilise – in some way or other – representations of the environment/nature. These representations might be verbal (ie written and/or spoken words) and/or non-verbal (ie audio- and/or visual ‘images’); and they might be fairly obvious (eg a car ads in which the car is pictured in ‘wild’ mountain scenery; a shampoo ad in which attention is drawn to the ‘naturalness’ of the shampoo’s ingredients) or not-so-obvious. For each advert, make a note of the name and nature of the product, and the way in which the environment/nature is used in the advert to help sell the product. (You will subsequently be expected to display and briefly describe your adverts to the rest of the students in your class/group.)

Appendix B

Environmental Analysis of Adverts

Tutor Notes

1. Forms of advertising

Adverts (with few restrictions on content) placed within - but not integrated with - other products:

• in newspapers, magazines, etc;
• on leaflets & posters;
• on TV & at cinema.

Adverts (content usually restricted to company name / logo) placed within - and in some sense integrated with - other products (eg via sponsorship or product placement), such as: awards; community projects; educational materials; exhibitions; festivals; films; plays; sporting events; TV / radio programmes.

2. Exchange-values

Can be almost anything, provided that it can be construed in some way as being ‘a good thing’. Examples include: accuracy, beauty, clarity, comfort, cost, decorativeness, durability, eco-friendliness, economy, educational appeal, entertainment appeal, excitement, exotic appeal, expense, family appeal, fashionability, glamour, healthiness, humour, independence, individuality, intellectual appeal, irony, luxuriousness, naturalness, novelty, power, purity, quality, reliability, safety, scarcity, sex appeal, sophistication, speed, strength, taste, technological appeal, toughness, tradition, warmth, wholesomeness.

3. Taxonomy of ‘uses’

See below for an illustrative taxonomy of the many different ways in which the environment/nature is used in advertising. (Note that this is but one of many possible ways of classifying adverts in terms of their environmental content. No claim is being made here about the virtues – or otherwise – of this particular approach.)

4. General conclusions

• The environment/nature is ‘used’ in many different ways.
• Its use is strategic (if it sells, do it).
• Adverts which promote the consumption of a particular product implicitly endorse the use of whatever ‘natural’ resources are involved in making that product. More generally, adverts implicitly endorse the very wide range of environmental impacts associated with the entire life-cycle (from ‘cradle’ to ‘grave’, or from the extraction of raw materials in the first place to end-of-life disposal) of the products (and services) whose consumption they promote.
• Advertising is implicated in the (re)production of consumerism, which is associated with: commitment to economic growth; intensification / extensification of market economy on global scale; commodification of the environment/nature; instrumental (especially economic) valuation of the environment/nature.
• The spread of consumerism tends to marginalise other cultures/ideologies (which might place greater emphasis on non-economic instrumental values and/or intrinsic values).

Representations of the Environment/Nature in Adverts: Illustrative Taxonomy

Notes:

(1) Williamson, Judith (1987) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (London: Marion Boyars), p11.

(2) Ibid, p12.

(3) Williamson, Judith (1987) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (London: Marion Boyars), p11.

(4) Ibid, p12.

(5) Barthes, Roland (1993 [1957]) Mythologies. Vintage, London. (“Soap-powders and detergents”, pp. 36-38.)