Advertising Their Hypocrisy

I recycle religiously. I use public transport all the time. I refuse to use standby buttons. I never jet off to sunnier climes. I try to minimise waste whenever I can. In all I'm the very model of the ecological citizen - most greens would kill for my dainty carbon footprint. And for this reason I'm pissed off at this example of conspicuous waste:

The first video advert inside a print title has been published inside the American magazine Entertainment Weekly. The small screen, built into a cardboard insert, contains an advert for Pepsi Max and trailers for US TV network, CBS. There are also in-built speakers, so the viewer can hear the advert too. "This is an extraordinary way to refresh how we interact with consumers," said Pepsi-Cola's chief marketing officer, Frank Cooper. (Story)

Frank Cooper is an idiot in need of a dictionary. Making a commercial extolling the virtues of Pepsi Max is not interaction. That has to be a two-way thing, duh.

But the waste of this enterprise eclipses Pepsi's moronic newspeak. It might only go out on a print run limited to a few thousand of Entertainment Weekly's subscribers, but the marketing gurus at Pepsi and CBS will be looking for a repeat once the costs have come down (at $20 per magazine, this doesn't come cheap). The raw materials, the manufacturing capacity, the pollutants and emissions, all for something completely unnecessary and useless.

Where does this leave the Pepsi Eco Challenge and CBS Cares? You know, their pledges and calls to meet "the challenge of environmental stewardship" and "help protect the environment - our children depend on it"?

Looking like corporate greenwash bollocks, that's what.