Friday, April 3, 2009

WaPo Wall of Climate Shame

Weekend update:
April 5
  • Target, partial color
  • GM, black&white
  • Safeway, color
April 4
  • none

Original post:
Here are today's full-page A-section advertisers supporting the WaPo's continued tolerance of climate lies:
  • Home Depot, full color
  • Shoppers supermarket, full color
  • Macy's, full color
Previously:
April 2
  • GM, black&white
  • Oil and gas industry, partial color
  • Shoppers supermarket, full color
  • Macy's, full color
April 1
  • GM, black&white
  • Verizon, full color
  • EADS (aerospace), full color
March 31
  • Lord & Taylor, black&white
  • Verizon, color
March 30
  • Chevron, color (also 1/4 on earlier page)
  • Verizon, color
  • Cato, black&white
  • IBM, color
March 29
  • VISA, partial color
March 28
  • none
March 27
  • Shoppers supermarket, color
  • Macy's, color
March 26
  • Oil and gas industry, partial color
  • Super Hornet strike fighter (Raytheon/GE/Northrup Grumman/Boeing), color
  • Bank of America, partial color
  • Shoppers supermarket, color
  • Saturn, black&white
  • Macy's, color
March 25
  • Jet Blue, color
  • Verizon, color
  • Macy's, color
March 24
  • none
March 23
  • Chevron, color (also 1/4 on earlier page)
  • Verizon, color
  • IBM, color

1 comment:

John Mashey said...

As per Climate Progress, but here:

Thanks for the work.

Ad revenues matter to papers; most blog opinions *don’t*.

Image matters to (some) companies, and you will have more luck affecting companies that might actually care, and if they change their ad placements, newspapers may notice.

Home Depot might be a good choice to contact, given their Eco advertising. A company like HD has widely-dispersed stores, and hence has a fairly broad geographic community connection (~2200 stores, ~$70-80B revenue), which not all companies do.

a) I have no idea whether that ad is part of a national placement, or a regional one, or even a relatively local one. For example, the page buy may be placed though some national ad agency … or a bunch of stores inside the Beltway may have gotten together to pay for the ad.

Here’s the HD Leadership Team, of whom
“Brad Shaw
Senior Vice President
Corporate Communications & External Affairs”
is probably located at HQ near Atlanta:

The Home Depot, Inc.
2455 Paces Ferry Rd. NW
Atlanta, GA 30339-4024
GA Tel. 770-433-8211
Toll Free 800-430-3376
Fax 770-384-2356

b) An angry letter to the local HD store may not be useful.
[Personally, I've often shopped at the local HD, had good service, and think their eco-advertising is at least partly real, not just greenwash. I generally like HD, although I haven't own their stock for years.]

It is rarely useful to blast a local employee for something they didn't do. On the other hand, passing along a message sometimes works.

c) But I might send a friendly note to HD that says something like:

“I think you are trying on the eco front, but HD is advertising in a newspaper that seems to have given up on facts regarding global warming, which HD may not realize. Still, I’m not encouraged to buy from companies that make a big deal of eco-friendliness and still advertise in WaPo."
Then summarize Will affair.

If you live in D.C. area, you might make up a little note to drop off at nearby HD’s, saying “I know it’s not your fault, but…”

Go to Google Maps.

In Search box, enter: home depot loc: Washington, DC

Which shows 11 HD’s inside the Beltway, and a similar number in the area outside.

Search box: lowes loc: Washington, DC

will show that Lowes is an alternative….

===
I am perfectly happy for newspapers to offer lots of opinions, whether I agree with them or not. I’m not happy when they give platforms to people offering at-best-ill-informed and clearly wrong opinions about science. I’ve long argued with local newspapers to discourage them from doing so, sometimes successfully.

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