Seeing Red From the Green Police
Sunday night provided us with one of the great American spectator/armchair quarterbacking events: the Super Bowl advertisements. While there are plenty of folks commenting on this year’s crop as a whole, I have been exceptionally interested in one particular ad (and the fallout and discussion that has ensued). Here at From The Rooftops we are, as you’ve noticed, deeply passionate about authentic claims, sustainability and marketing. It should come as no surprise, then, that, right after the Audi Green Police ad [if you've not seen the commercial, I encourage you to watch it, as the rest of this post won't make as much sense without it] aired I received an impassioned text from Scott, asking if I’d seen it. While much post-Super Bowl revelry took place in the streets and bars, I took to my laptop and wound up spending much of the evening surveying the reception paid to the Green Police ad.
And what a reception it has received! Some proclaimed it as validation of the green movement while other responded that it’s no laughing matter and will be the new reality in an eco-fascist future. Others made the easy observation that, perhaps as much as anything, Audi was trying to be vague yet provocative so as to stoke the fire of conversation that we have witnessed in the following few days.
Before I weigh in too heavily, I’d like, for diversity’s sake, to call out some of the types of responses I’ve seen out there so far:
This is yet another reminder that the ‘green’ movement is a harbinger of a new age of fascism
“Is this what Al Gore’s presidency would look like?” — New York Times (comment)
“Audi’s bottom-line corporate message is that the Green State is here to stay and that capitulating to it — and capitalizing on it, as Audi has — is the path to survival. It’s no laughing matter, really.” — Michelle Malkin
Oh, great, now it’s going to be even harder for us to be taken seriously
“Ugh, Middle America just took another unneeded step away from feeling that sustainability is cool, easy, and normal.” — Triple Pundit (a generally great resource in the susbiz arena)
It’s okay, it’s a positive ad. Right? Right, guys?
Grist (another green resource with which I will sometimes disagree but highly recommend)
the Facebook status messages of many friends
OMG, did you really just make an indirect allusion to the Ordnungspolizei?!
“The implications of Audi’s choice of name for their campaign could be huge, especially since Audi is a German company. The first question is obvious – didn’t anyone at Audi’s PR or advertising arm/agency do any research?” — Danny Brown
“It is simply astounding that a German company would play against such a framing, making oblique references to a Nazi police unit and providing what many will see as a broadside against environmentalism as somehow fascist in nature.” — Daily Kos
It’s an ad. It got people talking about the brand. Ergo, the ad worked. Sorta.
“So what was the intent of the commercial? To get people talking about Audi, of course. And by that standard, it was a success. Did it make me want to buy one? No, but it did make me want to get a copy of Cheap Trick’s greatest hits.” — Blog of New Orleans
For our purposes here, I am less concerned with debating the merits of these various claims in order to reach a decisive position regarding the intentions of the Audi marketing team (they can speak for themselves here). Indeed, I think it’s orthogonal to the most important consideration: regardless of the intention of the ad team, how does the reception of this advertisement inform our understanding of authentic claims (in this case, concerning the characteristics of “green”).
I think it speaks volumes that, in the Wall Street Journal’s Super Bowl 2010 Best and Worst Ads, the Audi Green Police advertisement has, at least thus far, won the vote for Best Ad …and for Worst Ad. (as of 6:37pm on Thursday night: 2/11/10: 12.7% for Best and 16.8% Worst) It could be a Dickens story: “It was the best of ads, it was the worst of ads….” A tale of one advertisement being folded into multiple–and, seemingly, conflicting–narratives. I think that this, as much as anything, is the lasting legacy of the Audi commercial: we, as a message-receiving (and -filtering) body, have become hypersensitive to green claims–and for different (but often interrelated) reasons. So much is this the case that the intended audience (Green consumers) can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, and their antagonists (just do a Google search about this ad, you’ll find them) can’t decide whether to laugh or grab their torches and pitchforks. Seriously, if you’ve got the time, I encourage you to read the comments section of ANY of the links I’ve shared in this post–they are interesting, angering, funny, disconcerting, and, above all, illuminating studies in the post-Inconvenient Truth, mid-Tea Party green marketing landscape.
With regard to claims surrounding sustainability, agitation has started to encroach upon levity and message-makers (and, in the social web, we’re all message-makers) must tread very carefully, as our messages (and, apparently, footage of pollution-detecting[?] anteaters, even) are cast outward, and not projected into a blank-slate vacuum of doe-eyed but otherwise agreeable and passive viewers. Rather, modern messages are not projected at all–they are shared horizontally, from mouth to mouth and Twitter account to Twitter account. Whether intentional (or even desirable), or not, they are living, breathing invitations to participation. And participate we will: dissecting, sharing, commenting, remixing, and yes, flaming, our ways to a co-opted narrative, conforming with our evolving expression of how these claims speak to us. Especially when we start speaking back.
– Caleb
What do you think? Has Audi hurt their green messaging by putting their would-be customers on the defensive? Is all the extra attention worth it, regardless? What about their reference to the Green Police? They seem to have sincerely wanted to make sure that it was okay with the Jewish community, should they have changed the name to the “Eco Police”? (the Cheap Trick song would have been harder to tie in, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is for you to decide!) What does this mean for our ability to “laugh at ourselves” in the sustainability sphere? Is Audi even “one of us,” with making a name for themselves as green when their centerpiece is a (repackaged) diesel car?
Unfortunately, this seems indicative of a P.T. Barnum approach to marketing: there’s no such thing as bad press. For all of the genuine communications from green to green, it takes nothing more than a semi-legitimate claim couched in a questionable taste message/image to radically expand the listening audience. This ad plays to our culture rather than informing/transforming it. I’m not going to make a value claim regarding the commercial itself, but the surrounding dialog seems to be directly representative of the social polarization that somehow surrounds sustainability concerns, and to that end the advertisement has succeeded twofold: putting audi on our lips and raising the debate into the forum of pop culture independent of advocates and celebrities (though I’m not certain why I’m splitting this group).
Rather than raising the global warming/ climate change buzz-topic again and losing our attention as viewers, the Audi advertisement builds a dystopian, contextual, ‘sustainable’ society, and the telling of the big story makes the ‘threat’ real. I doubt sustainability advocates in any way seek the implementation of a green-stapo, and this would be the only genuine critique I can stand behind regarding the ad. While raising the consciousness of this discussion, Audi has simultaneously defined a domineering role for sustainability advocates the fill, pidgeon-holing the very movement that provides the opportunity for advantage Audi is exploiting with VW’s TDI technology. While this may ad benefit Audi in terms of brand awareness, biting the hand that feeds them is a dangerous policy. Raising the topic in a way that doesn’t benefit their advantage is bad marketing, sustainability aside.
Another thoughtful piece of commentary. I had many of the same thoughts and knew the ad was successful from a meme perspective because I remembered it was for Audi. As for “good” or “bad” for the “green/sustainability” movement…like the background of this blog, it’s somewhere in the gray area.