Integrity and Advertising

BC Hydro has a pipeline and a natural gas-fired electricity strategy that they need to sell. Their  advertising campaign is taking some tips from other companies whose methods and products are sometimes less exemplary.

Arthur Caldicott, http://www.sqwalk.com, November 20, 2000

Advertising is a fundamental part of our information culture.  It is used by anyone who can afford it, to sell products and sell messages.  It is, arguably, the most important vehicle today for getting messages to people.

The obvious barriers to access - that you need money to play the advertising game - have created an ethical problem for democracy and debate and the free exchange of ideas.  If the only messages being advertised, are those of the interests that can afford to advertise, then most of us are disenfranchised.

Advertising in its broadest sense extends well beyond paid space in a newspaper or paid time on television.  It includes sponsorship of events, product placement in movies, even underwriting materials and programs in schools.

Advertising uses subtle, often devious, messages to sell products.  Du Maurier in Canada sponsors some wonderful musical events, but what they really hope to achieve is to sell more cigarettes.  "Lifestyle" advertising - images of healthy happy people at play - are used to sell beer, tampons, and just about everything else.  Sometimes the techniques used are more cynical, more evil. "Cool" cigarette ads prey on the insecurities of youth.

BC Hydro is filling newspapers and television with expensive advertising this year.  What Hydro is actually selling is their strategy to supply present and future electricity demand in BC from natural-gas fired generation.  The economic costs and risks, and environmental downside of the planned plants and pipelines, are sidestepped completely.  But sell the strategy they are determined to do. 

BC Hydro's advertising approach has two themes.  The first is indirection.  Their ads talk about wind power and fuel cells and other technologies that Hydro has tokenised.  Their hope is that we won't notice the sleight-of-hand, and will be lulled into believing that they are focussed on sustainable technologies when all the while they're trying to ram through their gas plans.

The second theme is a less pleasant device.  Michael Costello is fond of saying that Hydro has "kept the lights on" for thirty years in BC.  The statement comes across like a threat - as if the lights will go out should the gas strategy fail.

This technique, of attempting to frighten British Columbians into acceptance of Hydro's plans, has been taken many degrees further into unscrupulousness in the United States. 

Calpine, a California-based merchant power company, is BC Hydro's partner in the Port Alberni Generation Project.  They are trying to build a big generation plant in San Jose, where there is strong public opposition to the project.  The company has produced a video, which they promoted to children and adult audiences, that  attempts to sell the message that hospitals will cease to function, if the plant is not built.

BC Hydro must ensure that there is integrity in the messages they deliver, and in the public debate about their strategies.