Can better advertising bring about sustainable consumption? What effects will adverts have on consumption behaviour?

Adverts: informative, digestible, appealing, incentivize, empower
In relation to the climate change issue, it’s less about informing and more about empowering in my opinion. A small anecdote: The other day, I was chatting to a friend about climate change and he remarked: “At least pollution has reduced since the smoking ban”. For me, this highlighted some important points relating to advertising. Firstly, that my friend is the type of person that ads should target and engage. Secondly (and perhaps most importantly) “ordinary” people don’t need to know anything about the science; just how to go about practically reducing personal carbon footprints. Ads need to successfully present carbon footprinting as THE social norm. Carbon should be made visible to my friend and his segment so that they can associate everyday, mundane activity to carbon usage/savings. They need to be physically directed to CO2 savings. Why not use grand rhetoric such as: “You can change the world”? Having said all this, I don’t believe ads will have much of an effect unless followed up by participatory community workshops (carbon watchers anyone?!).

p.s. I came across an Act on CO2 ad in the Norwich advertiser last week. It is too big to scan and attach here so if you're interested I'll bring it along to this Friday's seminar.

Sam