1

To What Extent can Sustainable products be Advertised More Effectively Using Social

Media

Apr 17, 2022

Word Count: 1727

 2

To What Extent can Sustainable products be Advertised More Effectively Using Social

Media

In 2011, 83% of fortune 500 companies were using social media to connect with consumers, and

with 75% of internet-using adults in 2008 using social media regularly, the potential use of social

media as a means for advertising could prove fundamental in the growth of a company's sales

(Naylor, R. W., Lamberton, C. P., & West, P. M. 2012) (Stephen, A. T., & Galak, J, 2012).

Currently, mainly industries such as the fashion and food industry use social media as a source of

advertisement but the products being advertised on social media don't always have a positive

impact on the earth, for example, fashion company Boohoo uses influencer advertising to their

advantage and has doubled the sales of their fast-fashion products twice in 2017 and 2018. With

environmentally harmful products being advertised and sold using social media we ask to what

extent can sustainable products be advertised more effectively using social media (Monroe, R.

2021). I claim that we can use social media to promote the reinventing of unsustainable products

and sustainable practices and reduce the number of advertisements made by unsustainable

companies. To support these claims I'll use past studies based on various issues surrounding or

pertaining to my solutions and look at perspectives that include the economic, environmental,

and psychological lenses.

Most sustainably produced products are not advertised as effectively on social media as their

unsustainable competitors. A good example of this is the Boohoo Group, the boohoo group

uses extensive amounts of social media advertisements to spread their products and in recent

years have received a 663 percent in their online traffic since 2014, the company's annual sales
 3

also went from about 23 million to 510 million from 2016 to 2019 (Monroe, R. 2021). On social

media, the main form of advertisement used is influencer advertisement where companies will

pay for influencers to advertise a product or service to their audience. This form of advertisement

is effective because it uses envy to motivate consumers to buy products. While a consumer

cannot feel envy towards a person with an unattainable status (traditional celebrity) advertising a

luxury product, they can feel envy towards somebody with an attainable status (social celebrity)

motivation to have the possession they are advertising increases(S, V. J., Muqaddam, A., & Ryu,

E. 2019). Therefore influencers on image-sharing platforms such as Instagram can be more

effective in motivating consumers to buy a certain product and Boohoo's founder, Mahmud

Kamani, understood that media could be leveraged to do this while also being seen as ubiquitous

to the consumer. While influencers can be used to help advertise unsustainable products, they can

also be used to advertise sustainable practices. In a book called The Namesake, the main

character, Gogul, receives many gifts from his relatives on his birthday but he doesn't want any

of them, so, instead of throwing them away he keeps them to give to his relatives in India

(Lahiri, J. 2004). This is an example of a sustainable practice that would be advertised by

sustainable influencers. In a study done by researchers Sanaz Saghati Jalali and Haliyana Binti

Khalid from the Azman Hashim International business school, it is said that if an “influencer

talks about the lovely experience of staying in a green hotel or spending a day cleaning plastic

bags and gives advice about more environmentally friendly products, followers may have the

desire to develop the same approach and intent to be a green consumer.” But in the context of

America, we actually are already taking some sustainable practices and using them, In The

global environmental injustice of fast fashion, it's stated that “Clothing not sent directly to the

landfill often ends up in the second-hand clothing trade. Approximately 500,000 tons of used
 4

clothing are exported abroad from the United States each year” Using social media to influence

sustainable practices we can effectively increase the need for sustainable clothing as well as

increase other practices such as recycling.

Though, the use of influencer advertising by companies such as boohoo is detrimental as they are

the ones harming the environment the most. In the article by Rachel Monroe on fast fashion it is

said that “according to a 2017 poll, 41 percent of women ages 18 to 25 felt pressure to wear a

different outfit every time they went out.” This feeling of having to wear a new outfit every day

contributes to the problem of needing to buy more and more clothing at cheaper costs and

because of this problem, 85% of the clothing America consumes, nearly 3.8 billion pounds

annually, is sent to landfills as waste adding up to around 80 pounds of clothing waste per

American per year(Bick, R., Halsey, E. & Ekenga, 2018). In response to this, one solution to

negate the sale of fast fashion and unsustainable products through social media would be to

reinvent unsustainable companies with prominent social media followings as sustainable

companies by changing the way they handle processes such as manufacturing. A current example

of something like this can be derived from companies PepsiCo, Unilever, and Boohoo (Whelan,

T., & Kronthal-Sacco, R. 2019) (Sustainability. 2021). Unilever itself has reinvented its legacy

products and has started buying other smaller companies with loyal followings to join its

sustainable model. The Boohoo group, known for its unsustainable practices discussed earlier, is

also employing a similar plan to increase the sustainability of their products and production with

near 100% sustainable products by 2030.

Another form of advertising that most companies use is called targeted advertising, targeted

advertising is done by using a customer's personal information and basing decisions to advertise
 5

to them or not based on that information (Plane, A. Et all, 2017). this is extremely useful to

companies as using data from buyers they can find out which demographics buy more of their

products and what to advertise to them based on those preferences, but, because of the need to

take personal data and use it and how this form of advertising can be discriminatory based one's

job or gender, targeted advertising is currently facing ethical debates by groups such as

governments and companies (Tran, M.-D. 2017)(Plane, A. Et all, 2017). To prevent the use of

targeted ads for unsustainable products to increase sales and performance, we should prevent

them from using targeted ads on the basis that they advertise dangerous products or services.

Restrictions on advertisements already exist such as advertisements for illegal or dangerous

products, sexual acts, or misinformation but there are currently no restrictions on

environmentally harmful products, so, I propose to label unsustainable products under the

dangerous banner so that while unsustainable products cant advertise, sustainable ones can. This

will cause major losses in the fashion industry as many companies solely rely on social media

targeted ads for outreach thus making sustainable products more effectively viewed. There are

currently bills being set in place to limit the use of targeted advertising using 3rd-party data

though this would limit not only unsustainable products but sustainable ones as well ‌(Qureshi, S.

2022).

In a 2001 study by Zint, M and Frederick R, it's said that “Companies get involved in

greenwashing practices for reasons such as increasing their sales and market share.”

Greenwashing is a form of misleading advertising that's used in almost any type of platform or

media where a company can make questionable, incomplete, or deceptive claims about being

sustainable typically in industries with poorer environmental impacts. In research done in 2019,

it's been found that “products marketed as sustainable grew 5.6 times faster than those that were
 6

not. In more than 90% of the CPG categories, sustainability-marketed products grew faster than

their conventional counterparts”(Whelan, T., & Kronthal-Sacco, R. 2019). Though this does

sound good, many companies could be using greenwashing to ride on this wave of growth in the

last few years, and in this study done by Australian researcher Anne Brouwer of La Trobe

University, “Choice, Australia’s largest consumer organization, surveyed non-food items from

three different supermarket chains in 2008 and found that only three of the 630 environmental

claims made on packaging could be substantiated.” and in an educational article by Terrachoice,

an environmental marketing agency, surveyed seven Australian stores around 2008 and found

that out of 866 products with sustainable claims, only 5 of them did not engage in any type of

greenwashing. In a study done by researchers Astrid Sailer, Harald Wilfind, and Eva Strauss,

they view different greenwashing/bluewashing strategies and their effectiveness in the context of

Black Friday ads on Instagram, however, they also bring up a strategy used by green companies

called ethical consumerism.“Ethical consumerism thus frames consumption as a political act (cf.

political consumerism), drawing an analogy between sales receipts and voting ballots. From this

point of view, consumers cast a vote either in favor of or against people and the planet every time

they spend money. Sustainable brands use this notion to persuade consumers to choose

sustainable options over conventional ones to boost their sales. In effect, this idea of “consumer

democracy” cannot bring about fundamental change and can be considered greenwashing and/or

bluewashing”(Sailer, Astrid, et al, 2022) The results of ethical consumerism and how it cannot

bring about change is similar to a study done for Patagonia to see if they should engage in green

marketing where it is stated “Ultimately, greenwashing threatens the progress of real

improvements to sustainability”(Zint, M., & Frederick, R, 2001). Though not directly correlated

to social media, making greenwashing illegal would be a solution to this problem as

 7

greenwashing is the cause of ethical consumerism and misleading products which both halt the

improvement of sustainability in our world. however, a major flaw to this solution is that

greenwashing is already illegal in many countries. In a study by Ashley Lorance from Hofstra

University School of Law, it describes the U.S.’s laws on greenwashing and how they plan to

improve it. While the U.S. can accuse blatant lies by companies and retailers, they cannot accuse

those same places when they mislead people instead of lying.

Ultimately there are many ways that social media could be used to advertise sustainable

products, whether it's by advertising using influencers or encouraging sustainability that leads to

the purchase of those products, or simply waiting for change to happen there are many ways to

advertise sustainable more effectively using social media through the one that could bring the

most change the fastest would be the limiting of unsustainable advertisements as unlike the

solutions of changing legislations to provide encouragements to unsustainable companies, it only

requires changes in a websites workings which is not as large scale as a government, and unlike

the encouragement of sustainable practices, it provides more of an impact towards advertisement

of sustainable products on social media.

 8

Monroe, R. (2021, March). "Ultra-fast fashion is eating the world." The Atlantic,

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/ultra-fast-fashion-is-eating-the-world/61

7794/

Whelan, T., & Kronthal-Sacco, R. (2019, June 19). Research: Actually, Consumers Do Buy

Sustainable Products. Harvard Business Review.

https://hbr.org/2019/06/research-actually-consumers-do-buy-sustainable-products

Lahiri, J. (2004). The namesake. Mariner Books.

Naylor, R. W., Lamberton, C. P., & West, P. M. (2012). Beyond the “Like” Button: The Impact of

Mere Virtual Presence on Brand Evaluations and Purchase Intentions in Social Media

Settings. Journal of Marketing, 76(6), 105–120. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41714522

STEPHEN, A. T., & GALAK, J. (2012). The Effects of Traditional and Social Earned Media on

Sales: A Study of a Microlending Marketplace. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(5),

624–639. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41714453

S, V. J., Muqaddam, A., & Ryu, E. (2019). Instafamous and social media influencer marketing.

Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 37(5), 567-579.

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/MIP-09-2018-0375

Bick, R., Halsey, E. & Ekenga, C.C. The global environmental injustice of fast fashion. Environ

Health 17, 92 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-018-0433-7

 9

Plane, A., Redmiles, E., Mazurek, M., Tschantz, M., & Carl Tschantz, M. (2017). Exploring User

Perceptions of Discrimination in Online Targeted Advertising

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity17/sec17-plane.pdf

Claudio L. (2007). Waste couture: environmental impact of the clothing industry. Environmental

health perspectives, 115(9), A448–A454. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.115-a449

Zint, M., & Frederick, R. (2001). Marketing and Advertising a ‘Deep Green’ Company: The

Case of Patagonia, Inc. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 1, 93–113.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/jcorpciti.1.93

Sustainability. (2021). Boohooplc.com.

https://www.boohooplc.com/sites/boohoo-corp/files/all-documents/boohoo-group-sustain

ability-plan-15-09-21.pdf

Tran, M.-D. (2017). Privacy Challenges in Online Targeted Advertising. In Hal Archives.

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01555362/document

IN. (2022, January 20). US lawmakers introduce privacy bill against using personal data for

targeted advertising. Jurist.org; - JURIST - News.

https://www.jurist.org/news/2022/01/us-lawmakers-introduce-privacy-bill-against-using-

personal-data-for-targeted-advertising/
10
‌Qureshi, S. (2022, January 20). US lawmakers introduce privacy bill against using personal data

for targeted advertising. Jurist.org; - JURIST - News.

https://www.jurist.org/news/2022/01/us-lawmakers-introduce-privacy-bill-against-using-

personal-data-for-targeted-advertising/

TerraChoice. “The Sins of Greenwashing Home and Family Edition.” TerraChoice, 2010, pp.

1–31, faculty.wwu.edu/dunnc3/rprnts.TheSinsofGreenwashing2010.pdf. Accessed 17

Apr. 2022.

Sailer, Astrid, et al. “Greenwashing and Bluewashing in Black Friday-Related Sustainable

Fashion Marketing on Instagram.” Sustainability, vol. 14, no. 3, 27 Jan. 2022,

doi.org/10.3390/su14031494. Accessed 18 Apr. 2022.

Lorance, A. (2010). An Assessment of U.S. Responses to Greenwashing and Proposals to

Improve Enforcement. In Scholarly Commons.

https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=hof

stra_law_student_works