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Illustration 2: a green touch everywhere
Many products, when they are not coming with a substantial benefit for the environment, at least have a green message with some wildlife attached. An oecological jacket, audio tape, headlights, construction materials, paper, printers, scanners, drugs, even a house loan and off-shore banking.

This page shows some advertisements with a green dressing. The why is not always clear to me. Some writers must have been desperate.

© 
first published: xii.2000; updated: vi.2004

(1) 1982 – audio & video tape
(2) 1997 – car headlights
(3) 1992 – Offshore banking

Our first advertisement
(1) for audio and video tapes comes with a butterfly (a Colias species, very popular in advertising) and some ox-eyed daisies (Chrysanthemum). The long accompanying text doesn't give the faintest hint why they took this approach. Or it should be the closing sentence Try the new cassette and take your good music with you (orig. in Dutch). That fits with the cassette being equiped with handle and antenna. Now we must hope that the birds on that quiet picnic spot don't sing too loud.

Next we see
the announcement of a breakthrough in car headlight technology. The connection with the animals is clear. All are species by many people only known in a flattened state. How funny that is.

Innovation is also
a necessary requisite in financial planning … says the advert with the dolphins (3) and it explains why. Creationists beware. Here follows a long citation about evolution. The evolutionary cycle of the dolphin has bestowed upon it extraordinary intelligence and the ability to communicate. This has resulted in the dolphin being one of our most highly evolved species.
I won't go in depth now, but take it from me : Evolution never goes in cycles. And when it is about intelligence and communication why not take a nice human specimen ? Preferably female. Oops. Sorry !

(4) 1994 – film processor
(5) 1987 – artificial slates
(6) 1993 – wrist watch

The frog is
happy with the recycling module of the film processor. It is improbable however that developper and fixing fluid really concern this species. Colourful frogs and bear are very popular in advertisements.

Nature is never
boring. The text (5) explains how difficult it is to tell this man-made slate from the natural product. Enhanced with the obligatory butterfly. How true this slogan may be, I fail to understand the link.

The same holds
true for the watch with bear (6). The automatic attraction. The statement may be very true against the watch, but I can only guess about the relevance of the image. Is the fish attracted by the bear ? Surely not true. Is the bear attracted to the fish ? In a sense probably yes. But then a honeybee with a flower, or a cat with a mouse would perform equally well. Or should we read it as a double story, the upper panel being a fatal the lower an automatic attraction. Does that makes sense ? This doesn't clear the attraction problem, however.

(7) 2004 – Act on your instinct — automation

Act on your
instinct says No. 7 about a new file format that will give you, and me, outstanding production performance. The technology is open, intuitive and as smart as nature. I really don't see the connection. It is a clear case of an empty learned from Mother Nature song. The picture — to make things worse — is a mediocre digital composition. You can't miss it when you look a bit more closely at the wings and the feet.

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