Discourses of nature in advertising

Studies focused on advertising conducted from the early to mid-1990s suggested a considerable surge in the inclusion of environmental appeals in advertising; i. e., they provided evidence for a ‘greening’ of marketing to match the increase in media news coverage and public concern about environmental issues that characterized the late 1980s and early 1990s. Drawing on a range of media studies, and on an analysis of British television advertisements, this study shows that, while explicit environmental appeals and green marketing as such are now comparatively rare, nature imagery and appeals to the ‘natural’ are prominently deployed. It is argued that advertising, in this respect, makes an important contribution to ongoing public definitions of the environment, consumption, and environmental categories. Tracing the discourses of nature uncovered in a number of studies, an attempt is made to 1) examine how these change over time and 2) to explore how television advertising articulates and reworks deepseated cultural categories and understandings of nature, the natural, and the environment, and, in doing so, communicates important boundaries and public definitions of appropriate consumption and ‘uses’ of the natural environment