Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

The last few weeks in German advertising have seen an interesting backlash of people reacting to blatantly fake and dishonest brand communications. Brands that don’t seem to have a purpose, that don’t listen, but keep promising the same old stuff.

First it was the Vodafone campaign using bloggers as Advertising vehicles to gain credibility, only that the exact opposite happened. Now it is the backlash that is generated by Greenpeace commenting on the TV spot of one of Germany’s largest electricity utilities RWE.

The spot is subtitled by Greenpeace debunking the greenwashing ways of the utility with straight facts, such as enlightning people that RWE only creates 0,1% of its electricity with wind, and has no tidal power plants whatsoever, even though that is what they say. Also, the subtitles tell you that some of the power lines are from the pre-war era and that’s why they toppled over some winters ago, and this in fact the company creates 20% of Germany’s CO2 and facetiously asks: “Where are the nuclear power plants in this spot?”

Seriously, didn’t they think this through? Don’t these brands know that people can actually easily check into the facts and converse about their brand? A jolly green giant won’t sway people today. You need to listen, and act instead of wasting your money on an unauthentic TV spot to get people. RWE could have created more positive brand perception more cheaply by using a social media strategy to listening to people and transparently addressing their concerns instead of using their twitter channel to just disseminate press releases.

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