Imagine a hot afternoon mid-July. After running around all morning as a victim of your “to-do” list, you reach for a chilled swig of lemonade from the fridge. It says it’s organic. Therefore, it’s good for you, and it’s better for the environment, right? Well, not exactly. There are many advertising techniques such as this that cause consumers to question the ethics of advertising. Organic is frequently perceived as “better,” but it actually can be worse for the environment, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota who discovered that organic methods produce 25 percent less food than conventional farming on the same land, therefore using more resources.
Experts from Yale University say that the evidence is overwhelming that consumption is damaging the environment. Given that advertising fuels consumption, what is the role of the ethical advertising instructor?
“In a lot of advertising programs, the goal is to help students create advertisements that will sell more products,” says University of Oregon Journalism Professor Kim Sheehan. Every person in the U.S. is targeted with more than 3,000 advertisements per day, according to the storyofstuff.org, an online community of over 1 million people interested in making a healthier, more just world. On top of that, it says that the average American is consuming twice as much in expenditures as they did 50 years ago. Instead of perpetuating this cycle of consumption, Sheehan chooses to teach advertising from an ethical standpoint. She urges students to analyze the connection between what consumers purchase, and the depleting effects on the environment. In her classes, students look at how environmental resources are damaged by manufacturing, distributing and transporting products. Sheehan asserts that her role as an instructor is to teach students to get messages out that move people in a direction that is good for society.
Given the negative effects on the environment and increased awareness on the issue – the curriculum has evolved. Sheehan says today’s curricula include the topic of the hedonic treadmill. This is when a consumer buys exponentially more to feel better. The problem is that the treadmill goes faster and faster and consumers are left perpetually unsatisfied. “So what we try to do in our advertising program is break that idea of the hedonic treadmill,” she says. “And not think of advertisements as something to make you feel better when you’re in a bad mood, but rather advertisements that let you know about products and services that can add value to the parts of your life that you see as important.”
University of Oregon Advertising Professor Deb Morrison considers her students to be key players in the route to driving sustainable production. In her classes she encourages students to combat the issues of consumerism by holding them to a high ethical standard. She mentions how institutions across the country may only offer one or two classes on ethics, but ethics is her utmost responsibility as a professor and she teaches it in every class. “We’re not going to get rid of advertising,” she says. So, Morrison instructs her students to be smart, strategic, ethical, and caring towards the environment. She says her goal is to teach students to regulate the language in advertising so consumers will become more literate. Especially with terms like “greenwashing.” To teach this, she has her students investigate real advertising campaigns to see how organizations “greenwash,” which means pulling a veil over an issue when they are in fact harmful to the environment in some way, according to Forbes magazine.
Some professors in the University of Oregon’s advertising department think otherwise. Take professor Dave Koranda, for example, who believes that advertising is not the crux of the problem. “Saying advertising fuels consumption is a very easy thing to say,” he explains. “But the problem is in our education system, and it starts in kindergarten.” He says his role, as an advertising instructor at a highly professional school, is to teach students to think critically and rationally.
“How can you consider human beings to be so stupid to think that advertising is the root of all evil,” he says. “That’s assuming that human beings have no power to discern. So instead of making advertising a whipping boy, why don’t we help people think rationally.” He shows his students scientific evidence from neuroscientist Antonio Demasio, who discovered that decision-making isn’t logical; it’s emotional. He focuses his curricula on teaching his students to strengthen their rational capabilities so they become more discerning. In Koranda’s opinion, advertising is the engine of commerce. “If possible then there can be a greater good that helps the society, but that’s not the purpose of advertising.” Koranda explains how it’s trendy for people to try to turn advertising’s purpose into that, but he says many of those people haven’t been on the other side of the desk trying to make advertisements work.
“The importance of advertising is steadily on the increase in modern society.” This examination made by the Pontifical Council at the Vatican a quarter of a century ago is even more relevant today. Advertising isn’t going anywhere. In the era of consumerism that we are living in, the role of the ethical advertising instructor is more critical than ever.