Promoting Nature's Friends

"We took most of the lead out, to help clean up the air," boasts an ad for Esso Big Plus gasoline. Another ad reads: "A new gasoline--non-leaded Shell of the Future. Part of Shell's drive for cleaner air." A third is headlined: "How do you pick the right gasoline to help fight pollution? Choose lead-free Amoco Super-Premium."

Spurred by mounting public alarm over smog-choked cities and a generally threatened ecology, the gasoline producers are dashing to establish their credentials as nature's protectors. They are not alone. Environmental control has become one of the hottest themes on Madison Avenue, and it now appears in ads for firms as disparate as Westinghouse, International Paper and Procter & Gamble. What is the reason? "It is partly conscience and partly good business," says Adman James Durfee, president of Carl Ally, Inc. Adds Kenyon & Eckhardt's Sam Spilo: "It is fear. Businessmen see their corporations threatened for fouling the environment and realize that they have to do something about it."

Arm & Hammer Blows. To call attention to its antipollution efforts, Armco Steel ran an ad showing its Ashland, Ky., plant under sootless blue skies. The headline: "Imagine a steel company giving up smoking. Imagine Armco." Potlatch Forests, Inc., a lumber company, has ads with scenes of forests and wildlife. One shows a sparkling, pine-flanked waterway over the headline: "It cost us a bundle, but the Clearwater River still runs clear." The message: Potlatch installed a filter plant to remove wood and bark deposited in the river by its Idaho logging operations.

Charges that phosphates in detergents ultimately kill wildlife in streams and lakes have opened new opportunities for Arm & Hammer washing soda. Ads note that it is phosphate-free and, when added to ordinary soaps like Lux or Ivory, can transform them into heavy-duty cleaners. In the interests of "helping save our nation's waters," the ad lists nine detergents with high phosphate contents and advises housewives to switch away from them--in favor of Arm & Hammer and soaps.

The environment theme can have competitive disadvantages. Coca-Cola is running a series of messages urging customers to use returnable bottles and thus reduce litter. But Pepsi-Cola came out with an ad showing its own nonreturnable bottles. The punch line: "You'll never get a second-hand bottle from us."

Some executives assert that the public is not interested in paying for products that reduce pollution. General Motors, for example, has just spent $50,000 to promote and test-market in Phoenix a $20 exhaust-emission control kit for pre-1968 models. Out of 334,000 owners of such cars in the area, only 528 bought the kit. (Chrysler, on the other hand, reports brisk sales of a similar kit for its cars.)

Conservationists are pressing the Government to step into the advertising act. For example, Friends of the Earth has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission demanding that the Fairness Doctrine, which now applies only to cigarette advertising, be extended to cover promotions for gasoline and cars. Last week the FCC turned down the complaint, but Friends of the Earth intends to appeal to a federal court. If the demand were met, television and radio stations would have to provide free time for messages emphasizing the dangers of automotive pollution in much the same way that anti-cigarette ads warn about smoking.

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