Can less flatulence this Christmas save the planet?

I’ve come across some odd people whilst writing my book on Ethical Marketing but the one I met recently takes the biscuit. As it’s Christmas we can write more off the wall blogs.

It started as an innocent conversation about Christmas vegetables. Discussing everything from cabbages to onions when I mentioned I love Jerusalem artichokes at Christmas – these are like knobbly small potatoes and taste devine. “No, you shouldn’t eat those they are bad for the environment.” I was a touch puzzled, after all as part of the sunflower family they produce beautiful flowers and not oil.

“Don’t you know what they do?” I was trying to consider various options, some involved nuclear weapons, others guns, but hadn’t considered the obvious. “They make you fart, a lot, like pulses”. Ever been in one of those situations when your jaw really does drop down? “I’ve stopped eating Jerusalem artichokes, pulses, cabbages and sprouts as flatulence is bad for the environment.”

He was deadly serious. Not even trying to be slightly funny or ironic. When a man is worried about the effect upon the planet of his wind at Christmas he really needs to ask himself if he’s lost the plot. As a devout vegan, I’m sure he’ll be enjoying a lovely bag of nuts on Christmas day, something he can relate to. Me? Turkey with sprouts and my favourite knobbly vegetables.

Is it better to shock consumers or to engage them?

This years DMA awards Grand Prix winner for Friends of the Earth by CHI is a fantastically engaging idea that got almost 200,000 people taking action – now that’s effectiveness.

By contrast The Barnados ad got almost 500 complaints. That’s neither good for them or the industry. In my house we find it irritating, so on goes the mute button. Most ads on TV these days are just boring or bad, but to be irritating has to be a dubious way to market a message.

10 years ago that approach may well have worked but today we are different. Advertising is now pull not push and intrusion is the last way to engage consumers. It's a powerful ad (as you’d expect from one of the world's best creative agencies) and well meaning (along with a million other causes) but couldn't it put it's point across in an engaging way rather than one that leaves you cold?

It feels like a social issue our government and social services should be tackling (and I think there’s a topical reason it’s been run). There's also a problem with getting people to be sympathetic rather than defensive and even critical of another class of people. Is she a victim we want to help or does she reflected the decaying standards of an underclass? Far better would have been to get this idea across via a soap – Eastenders for example.

If this was part of just one episode it’d get a brilliant reaction. Tucked between two Christmas themed ads during an entertainment programme it jars, but not in a good way.

It's the equivalent of someone throwing up in a nice restaurant. There are many smarter ways Barnardos could have executed this message, and many examples of similar causes being marketed in a way that engages consumers – just look at the Saatchi work for NSPCC – cartoons. 500 complaints says the public isn’t responding in a positive way.

Don’t kid yourself that people “are talking about the ad”, it’s a negative response. And just because people talk about an ad doesn’t mean they are going to respond. I feel using a sledgehammer to crack a nut rarely has good long term results. It’s the TV equivalent of those aggressive in yer face charity workers you meet in the street who try and use guilt to get you to sign away £2 a month.

Given the message, I wasn’t sure what I should be doing or how Barnardos was going to (borrowing NSPCC’s line) STOP the cycle. You told me the problem, so what’s the solution?

As it’s Xmas this seems a far less relevant message than St Mungos, Crisis or many other charities. I think the age of shock tactics (always defended by the reality claim or we need to shake people up) is past.

‘Brand suicide’ a new term for the recession.

7p an hour – how dumb are Primnark. Tesco and Asda? Especially given the appetite for exposure, the press, charities and NGS are all looking for those who are playing dirty and exploiting people. Given all the bad publicity over the last several years over using sweat shops, you’d think that any retailer with half a brain would make sure they are clean. A prime (or maybe Primark) example of ‘brand suicide’. Primark, Asda and Tesco have been named as exploiting people in Bangladesh, according to War on Want. They are also encouraging workers to take legal action against retailers in the UK. There’s no smoke without fire and all these brands are defending themselves but the damage is done and you can’t help thinking that Primark’s prices are hardly possible without exploitation. No doubt heads will roll and their CSR department, and CSR advisors may well be getting their P45s. The public may love a discount but the growing awareness of ethics means the consumer is shopping with a conscious. And even given a recession, surveys reveal we are actually becoming more people and community focused not less. In a BBC programme looking at cotton it was revealed that a retailer buys a t-shirt for less than $1.50. The rest is profit (the average mark up is 2.5x cost). That means a £2.50 t-shirt costs the retailer less than £1. When you look at the chain, it’s shocking how little the farmer, farm worker gets, just pennies. Even more shocking when you consider there are many millions of poor people are earning less than a dollar a day. Action Aid’s brilliant WHO PAYS? campaign has been one of the most successful in recent years to challenge supermarkets about exploiting third world labour. It asked a simple question, ‘who’s paying for the discount?’ and ‘when you pick up an apple do you think about who picked it off the tree?’ The campaign forced Sainsbury’s to announce in their ads they were paying for discounts on bananas. Another example of brand suicide is the failure of some banks to pass on rate decreases. The UK's biggest lender, HBOS, will only pass on 0.25 of a percentage point. Mix this with repossessions and you have an industry that really is behaving unethically. When the recession ends those financial institutes that put their “greed before the public need” will all be paying a bigger price – mark my words. The public and press will not forgive those banks and building societies that are repossessing homes – estimated to be up to 75,000 homes next year - and being unsupporting of the public in need. A recent story that a building society sold someone’s home for half price but then told them they still owed the difference is shocking and is one reason Brown has tried to get the financial industry to behave more ethically. Brands like Northern Rock bank and Bradford & Bingley are putting people before profits and are adopting a policy of waiting six months before repossessing any of their customers who fell into arrears. Northern Rock said it normally took 15 months to repossess a home anyway. I guarantee that post recession the word ‘repossesion’ will be the one word that judges all banks and building societies and will leave some brands damaged for generations – if you doubt me, consider that students still avoid Barclays. A public body, the Public Accounts Committee (CDC Group), has come under criticism for dual standards. They are suppose to be helping to tackle poverty in developing countries, though it seems to be spending most of its money helping senior executives get rich. It’s chief executive, Richard Laing, earns almost £1m a year! It’s been criticised for awarding it’s senior people pay well above acceptable levels. Their defense that pay was performance related may well be OK if performance was linked to reducing poverty rather than making money. Sadly the organisation highlights what happens when you put profit before people and planet. My view, fire the lot and redefine its values, a profiteering ethos in the world of poverty is plain evil. On a more positive note, the government are funding a £12m campaign to raise awareness of strokes as part of a three-year £100m stroke strategy in England. Good news for the Stroke Association. The campaign focuses on how an attack affects the face, arms and speech and launches in February. Strokes are the third biggest killer in the UK, behind cancer and heart disease - responsible for over 50,000 deaths a year. One of it’s causes can be stress – something most of us in advertising need to be aware of.

Are we going to see the end of both ads and print?

The end of print. Some people are predicting that we'll soon see the end of CDs, books and most other printed matter. Certainly people are turning to downloads instead of CDs and DVDs. iLiad, the electronic newspaper hasn't taken off with a bang. And even though online readers now out number many paper readers (the Guardian is a good example) the introduction of free newspaper (Metro, London paper, Lite) means we are reading more papers.

Even though most of us online people get news online, most of us still turn to the radio or TV for news and weather. Yes the media landscape is changing but we are tactile animals and need tactility. We like to feel the paper between our fingers. There's places you can take paper you wouldn't take electronics. And you can give it away. I can never see my doctor's surgery full of iLiads with the readers Digest on. But remember those that said by 2000 we'd have the paperless office? We now use more paper.

Or that vinyl was dead for ever, sales grow year by year. And finally, we need to remember that the world isn't populated by middle class, online media people like ourselves. The ordinary man in the street is still in the pub at 7pm watching the football on Sky, not blogging online. The end of ads. And excessive amount of advertising is starting to get it called a form of social pollution. As an industry we need to beware that we could see a backlash soon. A survey by GfK Roper (2000 people online in America) is not good reading for the ad industry. Top line, people don’t like ads.

Worse they find them annoying. None of us in the industry would deny that most ads are bloody awful. In fact over 9000 people have signed up to a Facebook site to ask Toyota (America) to stop running a TV ad because it was too irritating. The ad features computer graphics of a few Toyota cars moving past a big red Zero to a tune ‘Saved by Zero’ by 80’s band The Fixx. Yep, who? Rubbish animation and no idea, the ad has gained fame for all the wrong reasons, like Shake ‘n Vac. The GfK survey reveals that only 13% of viewers actually want to watch ads, of the 87% who don’t, most turn over, tune out or go and make coffee. Most classed advertising as annoying. Other media didn’t do very well either. Direct mail annoyed 52% of people, and bored 22%.

Email was very unpopular, only 4% found it acceptable, while 84% didn’t. 70% don’t like ads on mobiles. The oddest stat was that 17% cook while on the web? In another survey, believability of ads was just 17% but as soon as the ad had an environmental message it dropped to 14%. That's the greenwash effect. Given this dislike of advertising (OK it’s the US and their ads are general worse than ours) should the Tube be considering sponsorship ads on stations? I dread the idea of Cockfosters being sponsored by Durex or Paul Smith sponsoring St Pauls.