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Running Head: WWF PERSUASION IN ADVERTISING STRATEGIESVisual Persuasion and Communicator Credibility in WWF Environmental Advertising CampaignsEllie Flanaganflanagea@dukes.jmu.eduJames Madison UniversitySchool of Communication StudiesWith all of the advertisements constantly interrupting our daily routine of enjoying our choice of media outlets, it is difficult to identify how exactly these advertisements attempt to persuade us. People are lead to question what advertisements are factual, what ads provide false information, and who is a trustworthy source. These persuasive advertisements often cause people to question what is important, what values they should hold, and what decisions will ensure a better future. Studying persuasion is important when analyzing advertisements because it is ever changing and subtle, subliminal messages are often included. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a perfect example of an organization using unique and effective advertising strategies to get their message across, a message that is extremely important but often ignored. WWF’s vision is to build a future in which people live in harmony with nature, and in doing so places great emphasis on advertising techniques that generate fear and sympathy and create a sense of identity for the readers of their ad campaigns. WWF is particularly effective not only due to their non-traditional tactics, but also because of their status as a credible source of information. The WWF takes advantage of their communicator credibility and applies a values-based approach including series of visual persuasion techniques including photography and art to create the aesthetically pleasing, eye-catching advertisements that frequent all sources of mass media outlets. The WWF is the world’s leading conservation organization whose mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on Earth. The organization works in 100 countries and is supported by 1.2 million members in the United States and close to 5 million globally (.) Their self-proclaimed duties include protecting species, conserving places, transforming businesses, tackling climate change, working with communities, and developing science-based solutions. Their advertisements have been featured on several “best,” “most unique” or “most inspirational” advertisements lists from respectable journals and periodicals. One of the most notable strategies used by the WWF in their advertisements is the use of photography as persuasion. Their advertisements often use pictures to evoke a feeling of disgust because as Nabi (1998) states in his study of the effect of disgust-eliciting visuals on animal experimentation, “disgust as opposed to other strong emotions creates a turning away.” In addition to stopping a negative behavior, Nabi goes on to suggest in his research that disgust may further adaptation by promoting physical health by preventing the consumption of spoiled food or toxic water and encouraging the maintenance of a sanitary environment. An example of this use of disgust through photography to persuade is a WWF advertisement featuring a nice dinner table set with a baby being served as the main course. The baby is surrounded by food and even has an apple in its mouth, conveying the image of a roasted pig about to be eaten. The caption on the ad says, “Consuming the Earth is consuming our future.” This particular advertisement will leave a sick feeling in the stomach of most of its viewers. It is somewhat horrifying to imagine what the picture suggests, but that was exactly the motive of the WWF when they created it. They wanted the viewers of the advertisement to be forced to imagine an unthinkable situation and compare it to the very real situation that is the deterioration of the environment. In addition to the use of disgusting images as a means of persuasion, the WWF also frequently uses fear appeals to scare their viewers into making a change. The fear appeals used by the WWF successfully cause their viewers to consciously consider making a change for their own personal future, not just the future of the environment. Photographic print advertisements using fear appeals usually contain one main strategy, catching the eye of the viewer. Adler (2002) states in his article about environmental marketing messages, “Environmental groups are learning a basic tenet of marketing – before you can get the people to change, you have to get their attention.” The purpose of fear appeals in environmental awareness advertisement campaigns, particularly those used by the WWF, is to paint the problem as a relevant fear to everyone. A WWF advertisement featuring an enormous beer can crushing New York City is an example of how these ads aim to remind people that it is their world they are ruining when they pollute. More importantly, these advertisements suggest to their viewers that they can indeed act upon this threat. One of the most blunt WWF advertisements that illustrates this idea features a close-up picture of a monkey pulled up on a computer screen with a hopeful look on its face and a pop-up giving the “viewer” the option “save” or “don’t save.” The WWF probably could not have come up with a simpler way of suggesting that the ability to preserve the environment and animal species rests solely in our hands. A series of advertisements from the WWF featuring the simple phrase, “You can help,” alongside pictures of destroyed and desolate territories with sickly and depressed animals clinging to life and looking straight into the camera. One such advertisement features a deserted, dimly lit park and a seal wrapped up in newspapers lying on a park bench. This advertisement not only evokes a sense of fear, but also offers a feeling of hope and motivation by implying that the power is in the hands of the people. Adler (2002) states in his article that “Environmental health advocates assert that ads should include strong recommendations for what readers can or should do – a call to action.” Although the WWF advertisements do not always give specific remedies for massive issues such as pollution and climate change, their imagery and simple to-the-point messages express most of what is to be done to generate sustainable change. When the EPA came out with a report that found 90% of the general public’s exposure to dioxin comes through food, particularly meat and dairy products, the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ) created an advertisement in June 2002 attempting to make a statement about the issue. CHEJ’s ad featured a picture of bacon and eggs with the caption “What are you eating for breakfast?” and a small statistic about the amount of dioxin present in meat and dairy. The advertisement proved to be a failure, and Adler (2002) attributes this to the avoidance of answering the question, “what do you do about it?” WWF ads specifically name the problem whether it is deforestation, global warming, or harmful pollutants in everyday food and products. In addition to naming the problem and foreshadowing its effects through photography, they offer a quick and easy action to take to combat the issues, which is making a donation. The techniques of WWF are superior to those of CHEJ in this example because while both organizations used photography to generate a sense of fear in their viewers, those who viewed the CHEJ advertisement were left with a feeling of doom and helplessness, and those who viewed the WWF advertisement became aware of the issue, and were given a simple solution to help fix it. The creation of a sense of identification with the issues illustrated and photographed in advertisements is another effective technique often used by the WWF to persuade their viewers. The production artists who work for WWF aim to make viewers identify with the threatening problems, and they do this by making advertisements relevant to them and putting captions and facts in terms they can understand. As Zoller (2011) states in his article about communicating health issues, “scientific discourses create barriers for environmental health by deflecting attempts to understand industrial sources of illness.” The WWF recognizes this need to steer away from scientific jargon. They are an organization that is particularly good at placing focus on the audience and designing the ads with that in mind. They not only make the issues easy to understand, but they make their viewers think outside the box when analyzing the eye-catching photography frequented in WWF advertisements. The WWF has recently launched the Strategies for Change Project that aims to re-examine some of the assumptions that underlie current environmental campaigning and focus on perfecting their advertising technique. The official WWF website page on the project states, “There is a large body of evidence that the values people hold and the goals people pursue are critically important in motivating ambitious change” (.) One WWF photo advertisement illustrating this identity-creation technique is a frightening picture of a man that has morphed halfway into a fish including the caption, “Stop climate change before it changes you.” This powerful advertisement is all about identity and attempts to remind viewers that they should identify with nature and the environment just as much as they identify with themselves, suggesting they are one in the same. Symbolic, visual persuasion is another strategy used by the WWF in the creation of their print advertisements. Iconicity in the advertisements is often used to represent something bigger than what they show. An example of this is the WWF advertisement that has no captions, statistics or words. The advertisement is simply a picture of two adjacent forests in the shape of lungs that are slowly dying out. This advertisement is especially powerful because it makes a statement about both lung cancer and deforestation. Along with creating a sense of identify for the viewers, it also gracefully symbolizes the deterioration of the Earth, all while making the viewer think outside of the box, see the bigger picture, and apply their creativity. Another WWF ad that uses the technique of iconicity is an ad that features a “deer” made out of trash that symbolizes the disintegration of nature and animal species. This advertisement is highly persuasive because people tend to have a soft spot for animals and do not like to see them in pain. While simultaneously hinting at the simplicity of recycling, this advertisement is a good symbolic representation of pollution, one of the main causes of global warming today. Perhaps the most commonly used technique in environmental awareness advertising campaigns today is the purposeful evoking of sympathy. WWF campaigns use images that evoke sympathy, and make a topic that often seems too broad and distant for most people to care about seem extremely relevant to them as well as life threatening. One specific advertisement that uses this strategy is an ad featuring a dying elephant lying underneath a bridge with a cloud of smog above it and amidst piles of trash. This particularly graphic and heart-wrenching image makes global warming seem more serious than many people wish to believe, and puts a “face” on the problem. The look on the elephant’s face is one of despair and desperation, and the drama of it is meant to aggressively pull on the heartstrings of its viewers. The viewer of this advertisement is made to feel that they are some kind of monster if they allow pollution to continue. The last mentionable advertising strategy on behalf of the WWF is the active use of their communicator credibility. Source credibility, or “ethos” can be defined by a number of characteristics, but the ones that apply most to the WWF are expertise, trustworthiness, likability, and goodwill. These characteristics can be largely attributed to the fact that the WWF is a non-profit organization and the world’s leader in proactive conservation efforts. They are not making any personal profit from their advertising, so they should be listened to, trusted, and taken seriously. They garner support from several non-related organizations in all areas of business from Ford automobiles to Kleenex. Support from businesses such as these is especially influential because their missions have nothing to do with promoting environmental awareness. This support further illustrates the likability and goodwill of the WWF, thus intensifying their communicator credibility. The WWF is comprised of and supported by experts and scientists from all areas of the field. The have links to the government, with their founder, president, and CEO all residing in Washington D.C. Adler (2002) in his discussion of the failure of the CHEJ dioxin advertisement blames the letdown on lack of communicator credibility, stating, “CHEJ didn’t have Washington lobbyists to make a campaign like that work.” Another example of advertising success due to source credibility is mentioned by Howarth (2012) in his study of environmental journalism. Howarth talks about a scientist named Professor Puzstai who created a documentary-style advertisement campaign series claiming GM potatoes to be an example of a personally and environmentally destructive new food technology. Due to his success in previous scientific investigations, this advertising campaign was successful. According to Howarth (2012,) “newspapers hailed Puzstai as an ‘independent’ scientist, an expert-consumer whose own research caused him to question government certainty claims about safe food, whose moral doubts led him to question the GM food.” Like Puzstai, The WWF is deemed by their viewers as credible in their advertising endeavors because of their highly respected team and knowledge base. Organizations aimed at both promoting awareness and generating fundraising efforts often use factual information to persuade and gain sympathy for the cause. In the past, organizations including the WWF have attempted to increase the number of advertisements they promote that include factual information. According to Adler (2002), this increase in that specific type of ad was mostly due to “a sense of frustration in the environmental community that the mainstream media has not paid enough attention to their issues.” Recently, there has been a new need to have an effort to present the most recent health-related science and to draw conclusions from it for journalists (Adler, 2002.) The WWF’s Strategies for Change project even suggests new evidence-based tactics for advertising as part of their new plan. In an article about the WWF’s launching of a new decade-long campaign to protect Canada’s marine life, the use of factual information, particularly through science, is mentioned as a tactic on behalf of the WWF that furthers their communicator credibility. The article states, “Using the best science available, WWF will work with coastal communities, governments, and other conservation groups and affected industries to identify which areas to protect” (Comeau, 2000.) When graphic, sympathetic, fear evoking photographic advertisement techniques and communicator credibility do not succeed, factual information prevails because it cannot be argued with. Howarth (2012) states the following in his article discussing environmental journalism, “Information facilitates participation, agency and power, and so holds the potential to mobilize consumers.” This quote is particularly powerful because it demonstrates how the simple act of giving out factual information can cause a great deal of public action aimed at generating change, whether it be in an environmental context, a political context, or a social context. An example of a WWF advertisement using factual information to persuade features a dramatic picture of an elephant with a captain stating that every year, hundreds of thousands of wild animals are killed because of pollution and illegal hunting for their skins. The caption, while still not using scientific jargon or cramming too much information, then goes into detail about how the food chain will become unhinged very quickly and chaos will erupt if an end is not put to poaching and pollution. Advertisements such as these are very effective because they present the reader with facts that are made relevant to them and that cannot be ignored or refuted. Going along with the use of factual information in environmental awareness advertising campaigns, it is important to discuss the use of statistics in these same advertisements. Statistics have historically been a popular persuasion strategy in advertising, particularly when the advertisements attempt to bring about awareness of some serious topic. Environmental awareness advertisements are no exception to this rule. The WWF is one of many non-profit environmental conservation organizations that use this tactic in their print advertisements to shock the reader and present them with more, undeniable evidence that supports their claims and mission. One such WWF advertisement features a colorful, vivid picture of a tiger that is being scoped out through the lens of a poacher’s gun. The main caption simply states “Save the wild animals,” but the blurb placed at the bottom of the picture provides the reader with a great deal of factual, statistical information that helps make relevant to them the issue of animal extinction. The blurb states, “Just a century ago, an estimated 100,000 tigers roamed the wild lands across Asia. Today, fewer than 5,000 tigers remain in the wild, the result of habitat destruction and illegal killing to satisfy a global market for tiger skins, fur, bones, and other body parts.” The strategic placing of these two statistics in this ad is a perfect example of the use of statistical information aimed at leaving the reader in a state of shock and awe, hopefully followed by some relevant course of action. Combined efforts on behalf of the WWF, its patrons, supporters, and experts have made their advertising legacy one to be remembered, respected, and adapted upon for years to come. The WWF’s highly credible status as a message communicator, along with its values-based advertising approach that uses persuasion through attention-grabbing, photographic and visual symbolism is an example of an organization who in a sense “has the whole package” and whose mission is pure, but urgent. ReferencesAdler, T. (2002.) Environmental advantage: Marketing the messages. Environmental HealthPerspectives, A538-A585Comeau, P. (2000.) WWF goes to the mat for canada’s oceans. Canadian Geographic, 120:4Howarth, A. (2012.) Participatory politics: Environmental journalism and newspaper campaigns. Journalism Studies, 210-225Nabi, R.L. (1998.) The effect of disgust-eliciting visuals on attitudes toward animalexperimentation. Communication Quarterly, 472-, H.M. (2011.) Communicating health: Political risk narratives in an environmental healthcampaign. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 20-43 ................
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