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Lexus advertises its climate credo

Lots of ink on car advertising this morning, as The Guardian report Fiat are criticized by the Advertising Standards Authority for “boasting” about claims on low CO2 emissions. FIat were found to have breached “the CAP code on grounds of truthfulness, prices, comparisons, motoring and qualification of environmental claims.” That’s a lot of breaching.

Now then, I wonder which of these categories could be used against this ad from Lexus? Probably none, unfortunately. I spotted this ad as I was on my way to work the other day:

Ad agencies and their clients have responded to climate change in a number of ways. Many have been aggressive and counter to the general trend that there is more we can contribute in reducing our individual levels of consumption (e.g. the carbon footprint idea). Others have been more responsible.

Team Lexus have taken an approach that is not the worst I’ve seen, but it’s unsavoury. What’s unsavoury is the translation of its strapline: yes, we know we pollute, but let’s drive faster, let’s accelerate that pollution, and take a swipe at the carbon reduction community at the same time.

• Putting your foot down = accelerating, driving fast, getting there in a hurry, often in an emergency
• ‘Putting your carbon foot down’ = all of the above, but with the understanding that you’re sending carbon into the atmosphere at an increased rate.

So what is it saying?
What this advert is saying is that buy a hybrid, but get the performance. Buy green, assuage your guilt, and pollute freely. This for a car that, on its website, claims its green credentials. This is not an individual instance for Lexus. As Segnit and Ereaut noted in their Warm Words II report for the IPPR, “Ads for the… Lexus RX400H attempt a bolder piece of mythmaking: guiltless emissions.

‘High performance. Low emissions. Zero guilt’ (Lexus Dealers 2007)

This was, like Fiat’s, found guilty (the irony) by the Ad authorities last year for misleading people on CO2 emissions information. Lexus company spokesman Scott Brownlee said: “We weren’t trying to be misleading and any changes that are needed, we will certainly make.”

Well, they haven’t shifted their position too far, have they?

Writing in the London Review of Books John Lanchester argues that the ‘SUV driver is…trying at the same time to send a signal…that even if climate change comes she will be able to protect herself from it.’

And that is exactly what the Lexus advert is appealing to: the need to protect yourself from an emergency. Because somewhere buried behind the machismo of peak performance and thrusting acceleration, and why it’s so unsavoury, is that the advert conflates the emergency of changing our CO2 consumption habits (our carbon footprint) with the need to be able to drive fast in an emergency, to protect those inside.

SUV vehicles such as the Lexus are causing more and worse accidents: worse for the other driver (if in a  smaller, less builky vehicle) in the accident. SUV’s are sold on protection in emergencies, that is, for those inside. This is the anthropocentric mindset that, some theorists argue, is at the heart of the global system of exploitation that means a few million people own the world’s majority of capital; and the mindset that exploits the natural resources of our planet to continue to grow that capital ownership (it’s capitalism, by the way). But back to the ad.

So why has Lexus taken this approach?

Clue One: It may be an electric hybrid, but it ain’t that green by a long way: take a look at the top ten lowest emitters. So it cannot sell itself in a competition with the Honda Insight or Toyota Prius, so it has to maintain its market advantage: luxury performance. (It has a 3.3l V-6 engine, by the way).

Clue Two: The tone of the advert is permissive and bestows authority on the driver. It is not an imperative order, but written in a way that bestows control on the driver. Now think of the Lexus target audience: those who will be impressed and looking for a car that is top for security, top for brand and top for chauffeur-driven limos. Is Lexus going to alienate its audience with dictative eco-advertising: are they going to listen to being told to reduce their carbon footprint?

Clue Three: The scene is abstract, the road blue lit, futuristic, as Segnit and Ereaut continue, it represents “an unreal space that can remain pristine in the mind of someone not disposed to think in any great depth about the environmental consequences of driving an SUV… a ‘Settler’ sort of mindset, perhaps….” (the settler mindset is one of sustenance and protection for yourself first, and then other considerations come into play.)

How to look at adverts
My students often find the idea that texts and images can influence people–their wants and beliefs, and as such their social relations–difficult to understand. One of the better ways I’ve found of illustrating the point is to get them to think through not only what has gone in the ad, but also what has been left out. (Critical Discourse Analysis is in the same family of semiotics; together, they’re useful tools for this.)

For example, on the Lexis website, the car is sold on performance AND low CO2 (it is the hybrid petrol/electric engine). Whereas in the ad, it’s only the performance. The CO2 emissions are in that box in the top right (192 CO2g/km). Of course, thanks to the Alliance against 4×4s, that’s all got to change. So, rather than sell on its hybrid engine or clean energy credentials, the ad still goes for power and performance, at the expense of the atmosphere.

Then, if you think about the message in a different context:

• Jeremy Clarkson writes in The Sun: “we all need to think about driving faster, burning more fossil fuels, putting our carbon foot down” (or in his own words, “everything we’ve been told about [global warming] is a big bucket of nonsense”)

Now:

• David Cameron gets up at the Tory conference and says: “we all need to think about driving faster, burning more fossil fuels, putting our carbon foot down”

Now:

• Friends of the Earth’s Tony Juniper gets up at the Guadian’s Climate Change Summit and says: “we all need to think about driving faster, burning more fossil fuels, putting our carbon foot down”

Does A) Clarkson’s feel totally genuine but ignorant?; and B) Cameron’s feel weird but in some ways believable?; and C) Tony Juniper’s feel totally unbelievable?

Because of 1) who is saying it, 2) what is being said, and 3) the context in which it is being said. All of these three different combinations results in a different meaning.

And that’s no different for when advertisers communicate. For the luxury-affording Lexus driver, the ad hits the spot. For a non-driving environmental journalist and academic (who worked in advertising and got out), well, I hope I’m a little more critical with my consumption of the messages that are around me.