ABSTRACT
The past decade has witnessed an explosion of green marketing efforts by companies offering products and services ranging from household cleaners to shipping services. Targeting consumers in developed countries who increasingly demand corporate responses to mounting ecological crises, several global energy companies with problematic environmental records have developed television advertising campaigns attempting to reposition themselves as environmental stewards. These advertisements are particularly rich sites for ecomusicological inquiry into the ways that music has been used to construct pro-environmental rhetoric and narratives. Drawing upon recent marketing research into the demographic profile and attitudes of the typical “green consumer,” this paper explores the ways in which these advertising campaigns deploy music to appeal to the “green to be seen” attitudes, identified by marketing scholars as a key motivating factor in the purchasing decisions of many green consumers. Particularly, this essay builds on recent work on television advertising and news broadcasts to explore how pro-fossil fuel campaigns musicalize notions of “progress” and “modernization” in order to reposition these known polluters as green corporations. Finally, I consider how such musical rhetoric and narratives might raise valuable questions about the ethical considerations implicit in the use of music in green advertising.
