Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green Bandwagon

Without wishing to open on the biggest book review cliché there is, it’s hard to do anything else in this instance. Because Alex Hesz and Bambos Neophytou’s Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green Bandwagon is about as fine an example of the old adage ‘never judge a book by its cover’ as one might find.

Ostensibly marketing’s latest rumination on the ever-complicating ‘Green Issue’, Guilt Trip is, in fact, a much broader treatise on the central role that emotional blackmail has long-taken within the field of advertising and mass communication. Only in the latter stages do the authors zero in on the consequences of environmental decline for marketing and consumers. And indeed only then do they begin to talk about the titular guilt trip that society is currently embarked on – a trip which has helped guilt to leapfrog fear as marketing’s thumbscrew of choice.

Instead, much of the book is concerned with setting up the argument that the emotion of fear has – to date – been the prime weapon for those indulging in mass communications. And the authors go way back to begin this set-up, the early phase of the book providing a brief history of what we might now call ‘broadcast media’ that takes in topics such as smoke signals, the Bayeaux Tapestry, and the remarkably 360º media approach of Rome’s power-brokers (which would probably make an interesting book in itself).

Mass communication duly defined and historized, the authors then begin their attempt to prove that its exponents have for some time now used fear as its primary driver.

To this end, they cite a number of relatively recent examples, such as:

•         The possibly apocryphal ‘50s ad slogan for ‘the tuna that won’t go pink in the can’ (worth a Google…)

•         The many ad campaigns leveraging what Susan Greenfield terms ‘frustrative nonreward’ (the promise or potential of a pleasurable or favourable event, which then does not happen) –such as L’Oreal’s ‘Because I’m worth it’

•         Contemporary political and propaganda based references, e.g  the ‘dodgy dossier’ of Tony Blair’s government

Fear as political tool is not a new contention and has been powerfully argued elsewhere – perhaps best by Adam Curtis in his documentary series ‘The Power of Fear’. But the authors’ belief in the primacy of fear as brand marketing lever is the newer news here.

Having set up fear as the ‘striker’ and ‘playmaker’ in the ‘team of techniques employed to convince us to do whatever it is they want us to do’, Hesz and Neophytou then suggest that there is a sexy new signing on the block. They begin to introduce the notion that guilt has now overtaken fear as the most effective tool for influencing consumers – and that this is due to the way that the consumer has been fundamentally changed by two very contemporary developments.

First of these is the new social awareness of environmental threat. Hesz and Neophytou believe that the ‘Green Fear’ is unique - for making us feel not just scared, but also guilty. And because it is capable of infecting every other decision we make –they suggest that we now continually ask ourselves ‘what are the other effects?’.

The second key shift referenced is the spread of information powered by technology, which means that we as consumers are ever more aware of the reality behind many brands and products, e.g the sweatshops in the Far East making our cheap fashion.

Hesz and Neophytou believe these changes have turned us into guilt-laden penitents with a desire to expiate our sins – penitents looking to governments and corporations to help us do just that.

For this reason, they suggest that those businesses which truly enable us to alleviate guilt will be the success stories going forward. This may be done by delivering genuinely responsible corporate behaviour (the Co-operative is held up as a good example of this), or by enabling us as consumers to actively work at reducing our guilt (airlines offering carbon offsetting being the key approach cited by the book). ‘Hollow’ responsibility messages will fail, creating a ‘Green Gap’ – the distance between what a brand says it will do, and what it truly actions. The book cites Marks & Spencer’s Plan A campaign as an example of such a situation.

Guilt Trip, then, is a wide-ranging review around the evolution of mass communication (and the evolution of the consumer) which contends that fear has long been the most important emotional tool at marketing’s disposal, but has recently been deposed by guilt. This, they suggest, has profound repercussions on how we should approach – and do – mass communication going forward. What the reader will not find within Guilt Trip, though, is a consideration of other powerful emotions which marketing can - and does - make use of. Their emphasis on fear and then guilt does require context, and would benefit from examination of the broader emotional landscape of the consumer – as well as the other emotional tools which the marketer might realistically utilise.