Dr. Les Carlson, professor of marketing at UNL, will hold a special session at the 2011 American Academy of Advertising Asia Pacific Conference to include three papers about new directions in environmental advertising research. The conference was held in Brisbane, Australia 2011 from June 7-9.

The American Academy of Advertising is an organization of advertising scholars and professionals with an interest in advertising and advertising education. The academy fosters research that is relevant to the field and provides a forum for the exchange of ideas among its academic and professional members. An abstract for the paper that Carlson co-authored with two Ph.D. students from UNL and other colleagues from Clemson University is listed below.

A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF SUSTAINABILITY CLAIMS IN ADVERTISING

• Shannon Cummins, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
• Timothy M. Reilly, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
• Les Carlson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
• Stephen J. Grove, Clemson University, Clemson, SC
• Michael J. Dorsch, Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Abstract

This paper investigates sustainability in advertising by introducing a definition of sustainability and conducting a content analysis of environmental advertising. The authors investigate consumers’ perception of the depth of environmental advertising messages and ascertain if consumers can distinguish between sustainability and non-sustainability related advertising messages. This study also investigates the interaction between sustainability claims and the other environmental advertising typologies in order to determine if consumers perceive sustainable messages to differ in terms of their focus or clarity as compared to non-sustainable messages. This differs from previous work that utilizes specific environmental claims within advertisements as the unit of analysis.

• American Academy of Advertising