The New Tree Sell

In the keenly competitive auto business, where advertising hyperbole often spouts like steam from a cracked radiator, the latest Datsun promotion offers a soothing change. It is a coolly understated print and broadcast campaign aimed at improving the environment and showing critics that automakers do care about ecology, as well as boosting sales. In one television commercial, Nature Photographer Ansel Adams strolls through a woodland scene, stresses the need to save the nation's forests and asks viewers to "Drive a Datsun, plant a tree."

That is the campaign's theme. The promotion calls for the U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., which makes Datsuns, to pay for a tree seedling to be planted by the U.S. Forest Service in the name of anyone who test-drives a Datsun up to Oct. 15. So far, company officials report, public response has been enthusiastic, although it is too early to tell how many nature lovers will be prompted to buy as well as test-drive Datsuns.

In any case, the promotion is calling attention to a little-known program under which the Forest Service permits the use of its name in ads and undertakes the tree planting in national forests if a company will pay for the seedlings (they cost 15-c- each). To ensure that it is not put in the position of endorsing a product, the service reserves the right to pass on each ad. The arrangement enables the service to use commercial ads to spread its prime message--the public must protect U.S. woodlands threatened by fire and commercial timber demands --while allowing companies to leaven their sales pitches with a pinch of altruism.

The service started the program about two years ago with Hunt-Wesson Foods, which offered to have a tree planted for every label it received from some of its most popular items. The national campaign, which is still going on, has drawn more than 1.6 million requests and cost Hunt-Wesson $83,000 for new trees. Similar regional promotions have been run by Sun Oil of Philadelphia, Elanco Products Co., an Indianapolis agri-chemical firm, Columbia Pen & Pencil Co. of New Hyde Park, N.Y., and Forkner Publishing Co. of Ridgewood, N.J. Beyond its immediate success, the program indicates that businessmen and naturalists could well work together in easing other ecological problems while benefiting themselves and the public.

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