Transforming Cultures

It’s rare that I can point to really effective social marketing campaigns, especially ones that are targeted at youth, but once again the American Legacy Foundation (known for thetruth.com and its anti-cigarette marketing efforts) has done something very creative, and likely very effective. Its latest effort involves connecting the “cancer stick” with the character that everyone loves to fear: the zombie.

Not long ago, I proposed that the sustainability community should use the ever-lovable zombie to teach people about permaculture and sustainable living skills. And while some of my colleagues wondered whether zombies had eaten my brains, Legacy must have had the idea long before me. Just last week, in cooperation with MTV, it launched The Real World: Zombieville, airing one minute mini-episodes between episodes of The Real World: New Orleans.

The first Zombieville episode makes a good point about the absurdity of the cigarette warning label. Take a look below:

Imagine if we pasted warning labels on everything dangerous. Sure, it might help absolve the guilt of mobile phone makers if we put warnings on phones that say: “Warning: Using mobile phones while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk.” But would it change people’s behavior? Probably only those who got into an accident while on their mobile—just as Dante probably won’t underestimate zombies again after almost being eaten by one.

Additional Zombieville segments touch on other key points, such as secondhand zombie attacks and zombies in movies. “Nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. die each year from secondhand smoke. Secondhand zombie attacks may not be real, but the dangers of secondhand smoke definitely are.”

Legacy did a similar thing several years ago when it ran its funny Shards O’Glass Freeze Pops ad during the 2004 Superbowl. But unlike that ad, which was a one-off purchase that cost significant bucks (Superbowl ads run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars), working with MTV has allowed Legacy to better leverage its small marketing budget. By working with a media provider to create new content, not only did Legacy probably get a good deal (in part because MTV also most likely gets a tax write-off) but the content also has a viral quality, which should help the ads spread through cyberspace.

Legacy has also added a new “Shards O’Glass” commercial that airs during The Real World episodes. But while that might reinforce the key Legacy message (that tobacco companies are manipulating you), mixing the two campaigns might be counterproductive, confusing the two messages and brands. Better to stick with one campaign at a time (or at least use the Shards O’Glass spots during a different show).

But even with that small concern, this is an exciting development. It represents an effective social marketing campaign that should have a lot of bang for its buck. Most importantly, it should hopefully expand efforts to challenge the youth demographic to see the manipulative truth behind tobacco marketing, which may in turn keep teens from smoking.

And perhaps the campaign will even have a spillover effect, expanding young people’s media literacy more broadly (for more on media literacy, click here). Because, while the cigarette is deadly, so is a diet consisting of too much soda, candy, and fast food. And so is a culture that celebrates car ownership on a planet with an already taxed climate.

Perhaps the more that teenagers watch zombies with warning labels eat people, the more they’ll realize that these absurd juxtapositions abound everywhere. Like sports stars selling soda, or a clown that sells fatty food being the spokesperson for children’s hospitals. And noticing these, perhaps they’ll rebel against the consumer culture altogether. But then again, if these teens are watching The Real World, it may be too late. Zombies may have already eaten their brains.

Night Draws Over the Two Towers of Miami

In late July, a BBC reporter, Fernando Peinado, contacted me to ask my opinion about two colossal, 50-story towers that might be built in Miami that would be covered with electronic marketing screens. At the time, I hadn’t heard about the project, but after reading about it in the Miami Herald, my head filled with bone-chilling visions of Bladerunner, Minority Report, and Times Square.

By the time Mr. Peinado’s article came out this week, the planning process had been completed, and the towers were approved. That’s truly amazing, particularly in this time of “the Great Recession.” If I were a policymaker in Miami, recognizing that job stimulation is important but that climate change is looming, I would approve using more urban land for gardens. I would approve subsidies to convert parking lots into small farms. I would increase taxes on gasoline and parking spots, and funnel that money into strengthening public transit, which would also increase urban jobs. In other words, I would jump on the “green jobs” bandwagon and grow my economy by greening it and preparing for the increasingly unstable future.

But of course, that’s not where Miami is heading. Instead, the city is continuing to stimulate consumerism and the resultant consumer economy. It truly is naïve to think that we can perpetually grow the economy through stimulating consumption. Eventually either this model will fail economically—it’s a Ponzi scheme after all—or it will fail ecologically as it converts more and more of the ecosystem services we depend on into iPhones, cars, TVs, and processed food. So to invest more capital into giant towers that one day will look like the ruins out of Logan’s Run, is tremendously shortsighted.

But then again, perhaps I’m underestimating the urban planners of Miami. Maybe the towers will only be used for “social marketing,” reminding all citizens to use less energy, ride their bikes instead of drive, convert their lawns into gardens, and eat low on the food chain—which will help Miami citizens be healthier and more ecologically sensitive. But, oh wait, there’s no profit in that, so of course the towers will focus on marketing fast food, cars, cosmetics, and electricity-guzzling gadgets we don’t need, and hence, the ads will stimulate more of the very behaviors that we have to move away from if we expect a stable future.

The Two Towers and its Worshippers

I do find it fitting that it’ll be two towers, similar to the “two towers” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that symbolized two centers of conquest and projected the owners’ desire for dominion over all of Middle Earth—both people and nature. The two towers of Miami will also symbolize today’s expansionist consumerist ideology, whether the population wants to partake or not. But instead of the Towers of Orthanc and Mordor, they should be named the “Towers of Mindblank and Buymore.” Where are Fangorn and his band of ents when you really need them?

In early July, facing a projected deficit of $7 billion for 2010, the U.S. Postal Service proposed a combination of rate increases and cutting Saturday mail service. In part, this deficit is due to the 17 percent decline in deliveries, down from a high of 213 billion pieces handled in 2006.

But the recently created Affordable Mail Alliance (AMA) has announced its opposition to raising rates. Their argument: other carriers like FedEx and UPS are also suffering from budget shortfalls due to the recession, so the Postal Service’s deficit does not qualify as “extraordinary circumstances,” which are required for the Service to raise rates beyond inflation.

Yet what the AMA is really saying is that the Postal Service should not be able to control its own business decisions, even though it does not receive a single dollar of taxpayer support. Why? Because this rate increase will hurt the bottom line of AMA members—700 businesses and nonprofit organizations that bombard Americans with billions of unwanted catalogs, solicitations, and funding appeals every year. If rates increase, AMA members won’t be able to spam America as much and might make fewer sales.

What the American public (and the U.S. Congress) really needs to ask is whether this decrease would be a bad thing.

According to Earth911, about 19 billion catalogs are sent to Americans each year. The environmental consequences are huge: the deaths of 53 million trees, the use of enough energy to power 1.2 million homes for a year, the use of 53 billion gallons of water, and the release of 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Add to this the billions of other pieces of unwanted mail that Americans receive, and you have a major contributor to the nation’s environmental problems.

In its press release, the AMA gives lip service to the fact that this postal increase will hurt everyday Americans too—even though the proposed rate increases are limited to a few pennies and will therefore only significantly affect bulk mailers. But if this is really a concern for the coalition, how about this: let’s raise the rates just for advertising and direct mail solicitations. These increases can help keep the Postal Service solvent, minimize effects on individual Americans, and, in the process, reduce total junk mail and the resultant environmental impacts (not to mention mailbox clutter).

This is a model that has proved effective with cigarette taxes: the higher they go, the fewer cigarettes people buy (but not enough to reduce net tax revenue). So why not apply this formula to another problematic industry? Americans need a strong postal service, but certainly wouldn’t suffer from a reduction in Land’s End catalogs, car insurance quotes, and urgent appeals from their college alumni funds.

By now hopefully you’ve seen the newest Story of Stuff video, in which Annie Leonard takes the cosmetic industry to task. If not, hit play below and then keep reading….

Each video is getting more effective as the Story of Stuff Project and Free Range Studios work proactively with organizations to ensure that the videos don’t just change individual behavior but help advance a larger campaign. The goal of The Story of Cosmetics isn’t simply to get viewers to stop using leaded lipstick and hormone-disrupting shampoos but to lobby the U.S. Congress to amend the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act so that toxic ingredients are extracted from the many products we slather on our bodies.

Of course, the $50 billion cosmetics industry doesn’t want to change, as that’ll cost money, which is exactly why this video is great—hopefully it’ll serve to mobilize a so-far inactive grassroots force of cosmetics users, parents, and others who suddenly realize how dangerous getting ready for work in the morning is.

I was also impressed with how the video directly confronts some egregious abuses, including the absurd marketing rhetoric of toxic products like “Herbal Essences” shampoo. As Annie Leonard notes, a more accurate description would be “Petro Essences,” considering all the petrochemicals in it. Even better is Ms. Leonard’s attack on “pinkwashing:”

“Ooh, here’s Estee Lauder offering me a chance to help find a cure for breast cancer. That’s nice, but wait…they’re also using chemicals linked to cancer. Don’t you think the best way for Estee Lauder to fight cancer is to stop using those chemicals in the first place?”

I am always horrified to see the little pink ribbon on products that have a bunch of carcinogens or chemical additives in them. It’s shameful to trick people into thinking they’re helping when they’re actually perpetuating the problem. (Though we should also share a portion of that blame with the anti-cancer groups that claim to be fighting cancer. If they really wanted to make a difference they would be on the front lines advocating for safer cosmetics, healthier food, and more exercise rather than selling out and partnering with these peddlers of toxic products).

Finally, I was happy to see at least a brief mention of the fact that the cosmetic industry doesn’t just sell toxic products, but toxic messages “about what beauty is.” This is a key point, which could have been expanded significantly in the video. Billions are spent persuading us that our skin isn’t smooth enough, we smell bad, our hair is too curly or straight or not the right color, and that we’ll only be happy if we change our appearance (which is never free).

Ms. Leonard gives the example of hair relaxers and skin-whitening creams, which are some of the most toxic offenders. In the new documentary Good Hair, comedian Chris Rock goes into details about hair relaxer—the main ingredient of which is sodium hydroxide, which he shows at one point dissolving a soda can. This stuff is going on people’s heads, including children’s (Chris shows 3-year old girls getting relaxer treatments, and a product for sale called “Kiddie Perm”). Sigh.

Some countries, like Spain, are fortunately banning TV advertisements that reinforce “the cult of body,” which is an important step that will be essential in getting us to use fewer cosmetics (which, no matter how non-toxic, still have an ecological impact). Imagine if magazines weren’t filled with airbrushed models, and billboards and TV ads didn’t try to convince you that you weren’t physically inadequate, or that you’d attract more potential partners if you use certain body sprays. Perhaps then, the average woman wouldn’t use 12 products every day and men wouldn’t use six. Twelve products! All those toxic chemicals interact and make a toxic soup of women’s bodies—the same women who will eventually bear the next generation of humans. (Hence why even babies today are filled with toxic contaminants, though as Ms. Leonard notes, there are also toxic chemicals in baby shampoo, ugh.)

So, while it’s good to describe this and keep the focus on fixing the system, it would’ve added to the video to challenge viewers to cut that number down and make sure all of the products that viewers use are non-toxic. But since the video doesn’t offer that challenge, I will. Count how many products you use and halve that number, and then make sure those you do use are non-toxic. Me, personally, I’ve gotten down to what I consider the very minimum: three daily products, namely organic soap, natural toothpaste, and salt crystal deodorant (yes, basically a block of salt, which is not only cheap and lasts multiple years but is as non-toxic as a beauty product gets). I, of course, have short hair, so can get away with this number, but even getting down to 5 or 6—if they’re non-toxic—would be a fantastic leap forward, assuming of course, you’ve also sent a letter to your Senators and Representative advocating for the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010.

A few weeks ago, Worldwatch Institute launched the Brazilian edition of State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures—From Consumerism to Sustainability, with the help of Worldwatch Institute-Brazil and the Akatu Institute for Conscious Consumption.

I joined the press conference via video Skype, and subsequent news reports indicate that the Brazilian media paid attention—although the message they ran was a bit simple: the world consumes too much and this is unsustainable. That’s certainly true, but the deeper message—that the cultural norms that celebrate consumerism drive this consumption, and that these norms are spreading to Brazil—did not seem to get through at all. Judging from some recent news reports from Brazil, I am now starting to understand why.Let’s start with an article from the June 14 edition of Advertising Age. As Claudia Penteado explains:

“Much of Brazil’s explosive growth is being fueled by an emerging lower middle class that has grown to 95.4 million people. As they snap up cars, cell phones and new homes, this group is quickly becoming a prime target for marketers. The group, called the Clase C, earns between $600 and $2,600 a month and, through upward mobility in a growing economy, has become Brazil’s largest consumer group in a population of 192 million people.”

All this, for the average reader, is a good thing. People are earning more, spending more, buying cell phones, homes, and cars, and fueling overall economic growth, which we all know is an unquestionable positive. For Advertising Age’s audience, it’s even better news, because marketing expenditures are surely on an upward curve too. But Clase C’s spending habits show that even living with an income level of “just” $7,200 a year, the Earth cannot sustain our consumer lifestyles—a point discussed in “The Rise and Fall of Consumer Culture.”

Indeed, if all 7 billion of the world’s inhabitants lived at this income level, we couldn’t even sustain our current population, let alone the additional 2 billion people slated to arrive by 2050. And this article offers a glimpse at why. Penteado notes that car sales to Clase C grew 50 percent, that 50 percent of Samsung’s cell phone purchases are made by Clase C, and that Clase C is the large purchaser of LCD TVs (on installment of course) and “high-status” cell phones.

Considering how wonderful all this growth is, it’s not surprising that the Brazilian media isn’t tracing back the ecological devastation that this orgy of new consumer growth will have, or how it will irreparably shift cultural norms so that increasingly more time is spent in front of televisions, stuck in traffic, microwaving pre-processed frozen meals, and engaging in other socially and ecologically destructive behaviors. But perhaps looking at a starker example of the intentional spread of consumerism in Brazil will help.

NestlŽe's Mobile Nestlemarket

Nestlé—the company that is famous for its Crunch bars and its marketing of formula in developing countries leading to countless sick babies—is now bringing its hundreds of unhealthy foods directly to the heart of the Amazon forest via a riverboat supermarket.

As some, like Michele Simon, have commented, this is designed to hook a new demographic on Nestlé’s products, most of which are not healthy. And worse, Nestlé is selling the venture as an almost humanitarian action—“a service to the population of the Amazon,” as the CEO of Nestlé Brazil explains—giving these poor, isolated people access to yummy treats like ice cream and instant coffee (Really, instant coffee? In a tropical forest that can grow its own coffee beans?!?).

On the other hand, Marc Gunther, in a recent blog, defended or at least pardoned Nestlé’s actions, saying:

“And yet…to argue that Nestlé should stay out of the Amazon or sell only healthy products there is to say that we know better than the Brazilians what’s good for them. (Presumably, they are already getting plenty of fresh, locally grown vegetables.)”

Just what growing boys need...

Honestly, we do know what’s best for Brazilians—the same thing that’s best for all people: not eating packaged high-sugar, high-fat junk food. (And the corollary: Nestlé is driven only by what’s best for Nestlé: more profit.) We’ve already lost the ability to prevent this trend in the U.S., as junk food has become so central to our diet that many children no longer even know what a cauliflower is, let alone what to do with it. But this cultural shift can still be prevented or at least slowed in remote places.

Sure, Nestlé will profit if it hooks Amazonian children on Baby Ruths, and new jobs will be created—just as new jobs are created when more people become addicted to cocaine or heroin—but all this will come at the cost of ill health and significant increases in the ecological costs of producing food, all in a place that could produce most of its food locally. So while I agree with Gunter that it’s futile to discourage Nestlé from entering these new untapped markets, just as it is futile to ask marketers not to advertise to Clase C, we need—as quickly as possible—to find policy levers to prevent the consumerization of Brazil (not to mention reverse the consumerization of America), for the benefit of the Brazilian people and the planet as a whole. But I guess the good news is that what goes up must come down. And if the consumer class rises in Brazil, it’ll eventually come tumbling down—though surely not without a lot of pain and suffering in the process. Let’s hope policymakers can curb this growth before the consumer bubble floats any higher.

We in consumer cultures are always looking for the next cool fad. Exotic foods, the latest fashion, the finest liquor, the slickest gadget—oh, so many new gadgets!—and, of course, the most perfect cup of coffee. For a while, the last of these seemed like a good thing. Shade-grown, fair-trade, organic, small-batch coffees were the most attractive, and the most lucrative. Big players like Starbucks even prided themselves on integrating social and environmental responsibility into their coffee procurement.

But there’s a new trend, currently relegated to the extremely rich, that could convert sustainable coffee farms into CoCAFOs—Coffee Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Two recent articles, one in BBC News, one in the New York Times, describe how civet coffee—that is, coffee that has first passed through the digestive tract of a small mammal called a civet (I’ll leave it to your imagination where they find the beans)—is more flavorful than regular coffee. It’s currently selling at $500 a kilo. Yep, that’s about $475 more per kilo than your typical good coffee.

Young Asian Palm Civet in the Wild

When I first started reading about civet coffee, I was optimistic—especially when the BBC article noted that “Civets, related to the mongoose, are usually seen as pests in the Philippines and hunted for their meat.” I thought that perhaps this new trend would lead to the protection, rather than the extinction, of this predator. And I thought locals would have a new incentive to maintain the health of their ecosystems, making a living gleaning coffee from the feces of civets (and yes, for $500 a kilo, I personally wouldn’t mind sifting through civet shit).

But then I read the Times article, which describes how “entrepreneurs” are starting to capture civets and put them into cages. They’re still small operations, but at $500 a kilo, I could imagine these little civet farms blooming into large CoCAFOs throughout the Philippines. Of course, this will probably bring down the price to just $100 a kilo or so, but that’ll spur greater demand, as this new luxury item is suddenly available to upper-middle class consumers. Which in turn will mean even more civet farms. (This is exactly what happened with chicken: it was a luxury meat in the U.S. in the 1940s, to be enjoyed rarely, but all that changed with the birth of industrial meat farming, as the factory farm made the chickens as cheap as the grain they’re fed.)

Farmed Asian Palm Civet Eating Coffee Berries

So let us count the ways that civet farming is wrong. First, there’s the animal rights dimension of imprisoning a predator whose nature it is to stalk and hunt, and force feeding it coffee berries. (The Times article describes how one innovative farmer was able to raise dung production from 1 kilo a week to 3 kilos a day.) Second, these CoCAFOs could translate to a tripling or quadrupling (if not more) of the ecological impact of this type of coffee, as the civet population is artificially inflated through farming and has to be fed meat, rather than just the water and sunlight that standard coffee requires. On a finite planet, we need to find ways to reduce, not expand, the impacts of agricultural production.

I’m drawing attention to this marginal issue now not to play a Cassandra role, in which five years from today I walk into Starbucks and see all the hipsters drinking “sustainably farmed” civet coffee at 20 bucks a cup and sadly shake my head, but because I’m hoping that by drawing attention to this now, animal rights, conservation, and environmental groups can preemptively crush the market for farmed civet coffee, getting players like Starbucks, Illy, and others to agree never to start selling it, no matter how trendy and profitable the elite coffee celebrities make this unsustainable product. Getting this commitment now, before civet coffee becomes part of their business model, and while it offers some low-cost positive PR, may be quite effective with a bit of campaigning by NGOs.

And if conservation organizations are smart, they’ll also hop over to the Philippines, get their hands dirty in the wild civet coffee sector, and with their profits help quash the growth of civet farming. Some social enterprises funded by large conservation organizations could generate significant revenue, which could then be used to lobby the Filipino government to ban civet farming before an entire civet farming sector becomes entrenched and gains the resources to buy Filipino politicians, as the U.S. factory farm sector did to its politicians. So, NGOs, consider this a gauntlet tossed. Can you save the civet and use it to advance the animal rights, conservation, and environmental agendas? Or will we the next big trend be drinking farmed civet coffee in chic cafes as tens of thousands of civets suffer miserable lives in CoCAFOs living off of coffee berries and factory-farmed chickens shipped in from the US? I leave it to you to decide.