Misleading marketing communication

Abstract

Referring solely to the positive aspects of a product seems to be the modus operandi of many advertising campaigns and/or marketing communication pieces. This, of course, is justified by the very purpose of such media, combined with the short exposure time and the context of stimulus saturation. In other words, it is known to be challenging to craft communication that successfully delivers the desired content to the consumer market. Considering this, the adoption of appealing messages becomes frequent, using simple and short phrases, intentionally broad, yet designed to capture and retain the recipient's attention. The examples are numerous: "good for you," "natural," "chemical-free," "social," "environmental," "nature-friendly," or "environmentally friendly," among many others. Visual appeals add to the communication's composition, with symbols and colors alluding to the intended narrative.

Going further, there are attempts to associate products with "magical" human desires and wishes, such as the PET bottle launched with less plastic, which featured in its advertisement the phrase "Twist, make a wish, and attract good things" (WordPress, 2022). In such cases, the "poetic" freedom in constructing playful and attractive narratives is argued, aiming to generate consumer market engagement, even at the expense of the truthfulness of the message and the offer.

Examples like these were and still are very frequent in the marketing communications of many products and brands. These "abuses" have been pointed out and exposed for many years, though with little effectiveness. It should be considered that changes in society’s consumption perspective and in the social and environmental aspects of organizations were (and still are) slow and gradual processes.

The discussion around these issues gained momentum starting in the 1950s, supported by the evolution of the concept of organizations as open systems, a contribution from the Systems Approach, which broadens the organizational scope of action, as well as its responsibility. It is precisely in this decade that such questions converge, leading to the formation of the term Corporate Social Responsibility, which, in turn, brings the focus back to quality of life.

Despite this, there have been opposing manifestations to this paradigm shift. In a historically grounded article, Levitt (1958) draws on the thoughts of Lord Acton (1834–1902), who pointed out that in the 19th century, the dominant idea was that the market resembled a battlefield, and that social justice "hindered" this struggle, where strategy, boldness, and non-moral principles should guide actions. The author's perspective is made clear in the article's headline, which provocatively suggests that managers are being seduced by empty words and vague ideas, referring to accountability, and forgetting what they truly are: businesspeople. Moreover, the conclusion is emphatic, stating that despite demagogic criticisms, organizations must serve their primary purpose of long-term profit maximization.

Shortly thereafter, the book “Silent Spring” (Carson, 1962) was published, which, although initially focused on the context of food production and pesticide use, became a milestone in the discussion of organizations' socio-environmental responsibility. It spurred the emergence of various movements aimed at questioning social and environmental issues related to both organizational practices and consumption. During this period, the apparent inherent incongruity or even divergence between the existential (profit-driven) purpose of organizations and their responsibilities to their stakeholders began to attract attention. In other words, as highlighted in the first major global meetings focused on environmental issues, such as the Club of Rome in 1968, the initial paradigm was one of incompatibility between the economic aspect and the social and environmental dimensions (Lira & Fraxe, 2014; Andreoli & Prearo, 2022).

Another important milestone in this context was the publication, in 1987, of the book “Our Common Future: The Brundtland Report”, where the idea of sustainability is presented with distinctive properties and definitions, especially in proposing an economic model that aligns economic interests with social and environmental concerns (Lira & Fraxe, 2014; Andreoli & Prearo, 2022). This study resulted from the systematization of concepts conducted by the World Commission on Environment and Development, particularly the Nairobi Conference of 1982, indicating a path that began to influence the regulatory frameworks and laws of many countries (Japiassú & Guerra, 2017). The aforementioned report also laid the foundation for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992), which reinforced these new arguments (Nascimento, 2012; Andreoli & Prearo, 2022).

In this context, the marketing activities of organizations also come into focus, possibly due to being one of the administrative areas with the most interaction with the market. As a consequence, several concepts emerged around the 1970s to emphasize the importance of more responsible organizational actions, particularly in marketing terms. These include the concepts of Societal Marketing and later Green Marketing, which are understood as enhancements to traditional marketing practices through the incorporation of social and environmental values (Andreoli et al., 2021).

Moreover, during this period, Macromarketing was also consolidated, understood as the study of marketing systems and their interaction with society, especially in terms of their impact and potential consequences (Hunt, 1977). This is further reinforced by the creation of the “Journal of Macromarketing”, an important publication in the marketing field, which began in 1981. Its scope is defined as follows (Journal of Macromarketing, 2024):

“The Journal of Macromarketing examines important social issues, how they are affected by marketing, and how society influences marketing conduct. The journal generally focuses on the following topics:

• How markets and marketing systems operate;
• Classic and non-traditional examinations of marketing's role in socioeconomic development;
• The origins, growth, and development of marketing history as an activity and marketing thought;
• The commercialization of products, services, or programs to improve the quality of life for consumers, families, communities, countries, and regions;
• Explanatory theory, empirical studies, or methodological treatment of tests for topics of greatest interest to macromarketing scholars, including competition and markets, history, globalization, environment, socioeconomic development, ethics and distributive justice, and quality of life”.

More specifically, due to being the most visible part, marketing communication (i.e., the promotional variable of the marketing mix) becomes the target of scrutiny, especially when contrasted with the stance of the issuing organization. Thus, cases of irresponsible communication practices, which promote misleading marketing narratives, popularly known as “washings”, start gaining increasing notoriety.

The discussion around misleading marketing communications is relatively recent, spreading from the seminal expression “whitewashing” around the 1980s, used to describe the process of cleansing an organization's reputation by concealing corporate missteps (Andreoli, Costa & Prearo, 2022). Following this, various terms began to gain popularity, with different branches, all maintaining the use of the suffix “washing” to denote the process of washing, cleaning, covering up, or painting to keep a product, brand, or organization's image intact and/or to enhance some attribute.

For example, an advertisement from the 2010s claimed that the company's new vehicles polluted only 5% as much as those from the 1950s. However, the significant issue was that it was unclear what the previous pollution levels were, making it difficult to assess whether the new vehicles could truly be considered "green." Or, around the same time, but much more "blatant," a television commercial for a car whose name included the term "eco" depicted a fantasy world where the landscape transformed into nature as the car moved, suggesting its contribution to the creation and preservation of the environment. Notably, the transformative effect was emphasized in one of the main pollutants produced by the product—exhaust smoke—which was portrayed as turning into harmless cotton.

As an early exponent, the emergence of the term “greenwashing” is attributed to Jay Westervelt, an American environmentalist, in 1986 (Wang et al., 2023). Three decades later, a mapping of academic production (Andreoli, Crespo & Minciotti, 2017) revealed a still limited body of research on this topic, with around 40 articles, despite growing interest and a future outlook of expansion. Since then, there has been a proliferation of published studies, covering a wide range of perspectives and areas of application, justified by the academic, managerial, and social importance of the subject (Liu et al., 2023).

Despite this, the complexity associated with the practice of greenwashing can be observed through the recurring efforts to systematize and review academic production, which aim not only to consolidate current knowledge but also to highlight the existing research gaps (Freitas Netto et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2023; Liu et al., 2023; Montgomery & Lyon, 2023; Santos, Coelho & Marques, 2023). In this regard, in alignment with the mentioned authors, it is safer to assert that the understanding of the topic has not yet reached a fully satisfactory point, especially considering the continued proliferation of the practice within the organizational environment.

A report released by Terra Choice in 2009 became an important reference for identifying the practice of greenwashing, summarizing the main signs of its occurrence, known as the sins of greenwashing (Andreoli, Costa & Prearo, 2022). Despite this contribution, there is an increasing diversification of the practice, encompassing different marketing aspects, such as packaging and environmental labeling, promotional messages, and the disclosure of indicators, organizational performance reports, and balances with an environmental component (Wang et al., 2023).

This proliferation of characterization of "washing" forms related to a wide variety of sustainable development issues makes the practice of greenwashing more frequent, further complicating its identification by the consumer market. In this sense, Andreoli (2023) describes the current scenario as a vicious cycle: the effectiveness of greenwashing, with its proven ability to influence consumer behavior (who easily buys into the "falsely" marketed image), combined with the lack of effective regulation, acts as a stimulus for its replication and perpetuation. Moreover, there is an inherent difficulty in creating a regulatory framework, as the "appeals" in communications for various products do not exhibit enough regularity to form legislation. Thus, the encouragement of self-regulatory bodies is of fundamental importance.

Secondly, the term bluewashing emerges (with blue alluding to the UN's color and the Global Compact – UN, 2024), presented as a parallel to greenwashing, but focused on social issues. A recent mapping of academic production on bluewashing (Andreoli, 2024) illustrated growing interest in the topic, though with an almost complete lack of studies that had truly delved into the investigation. Although less frequent, other terms addressing the issue are also observed, such as socialwashing (Lanzalonga et al., 2023) and CSR-washing, referring to the washing of Corporate Social Responsibility (Boiral, Heras‐Saizarbitoria & Testa, 2017).

Bluewashing encompasses the organizational environment in a broad sense, in both directions: internal, when related to employees (Verbicaro, Silva & Simões, 2021), and external, concerning suppliers and in marketing communications aimed at the consumer market (Sailer, Wilfing & Straus, 2022; Andreoli, 2023). A recurring reference to bluewashing is related to the United Nations Global Compact, where organizations "wear the blue flag" to take advantage of the promotion of its sustainable principles, which are not effectively enforced or monitored (Andreoli, 2024; Berliner & Prakash, 2015).

Thus, considering the aforementioned points, the need for a deeper understanding of the social aspect of misleading marketing communication becomes even more evident. Moreover, new terms are beginning to proliferate as potential more specific branches of this misleading communication regarding organizational social responsibility. Some of the most prominent examples include “diversity washing”, related to diversity issues (Andreoli & Freitas, 2024; Lanzalonga et al., 2023); “pinkwashing”, which has a diverse understanding, referring either to its seminal definition related to breast cancer (Agostino & Middlemost, 2022) or more recently to the LGBTQIAP+ community (Sánchez-Soriano & Jiménez, 2020), also studied as “rainbow washing” (Wulf et al., 2022); and issues concerning the female gender expression audience (Venturelli et al., 2024), among many others.

It is important to mention that a similar process also occurred with greenwashing, with the emergence of terms such as “veganwashing” (Bertuzzi, 2022) and “organic washing” (Andreoli & Santos, 2023; Nunes, 2021). Also, organizations' exaggerations regarding their climate commitments, their performance in this area, or their claims of carbon neutrality are sometimes referred to as climate-washing (Chan et al., 2023; Ballan & Czarnezki, 2024; Law et al., 2024).  In light of this, more recently, new propositions have emerged, such as “SDG-washing” (Heras‐Saizarbitoria, Urbieta & Boiral, 2022), referring to the Sustainable Development Goals, and “ESG-washing”, related to Environmental, Social, and Governance practices (Todaro & Torelli, 2024; Huang et al., 2024). This profusion of terms related to misleading marketing communications highlights the problem involved in the practice, with severe managerial and social consequences.

An increasing number of organizations are aware of these pitfalls, as evidenced by the growing trend to deliberately minimize communications about environmental or social measures to avoid accusations of greenwashing or socialwashing. The widely publicized lawsuits against polluting companies that have exaggerated their environmental achievements have certainly contributed to this trend, sometimes referred to as greenhushing or brownwashing. (Kim & Lyon, 2015; Heras‐Saizarbitoria et al., 2020; Huang, Francoeur & Brammer, 2022).

It is also important to emphasize that, generally, there is a consensus among studies (in their various directions) pointing to the current alarming proliferation of “washing” practices. For this reason, it is undeniable that the understanding of this issue falls short of what is necessary. Therefore, among the various existing research gaps, it becomes essential to investigate and propose pathways that can help mitigate the aforementioned situation.

Once the reader has been introduced to the various types of potential misleading marketing communication, this special edition aims to address precisely this need, covering eight articles. The first article begins the discussion by presenting a systematic literature review on the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Brand Equity (BE), and Corporate Reputation.

Next, we have four articles focused on the theme of greenwashing, divided into two main directions. The first approach investigates eco-labeling and its influence on consumers' purchase intentions, as well as the study of the effects of greenwashing on purchase intention and consumer perceptions of quality. In the second section, there is an analysis of transparency in the communication of small sustainable fashion brands on Instagram, as well as an examination of corporate identity based on ESG actions promoted in luxury fashion.

The sixth article delves into a discussion on the focus on diversity, offering a systematic review centered on the theme of the “organizational diversity façade”, exploring the conceptualizations and dimensions present in academic literature. Even more specific, the seventh study investigates consumer reactions to “pinkwashing”, examined as false marketing discourse aimed at the LGBTQIAP+ community.

Concluding the edition, the final article presents a discussion on “greenhushing”, understood as the counterpoint to “greenwashing”, mapping and assessing the academic production on the topic.