Badvert of the month: Toyota Hilux
Company: Toyota
Location: Bristol
Despite the apparent contradiction, it is rather common to come across adverts for polluting cars at bus stops or inside train stations. However, transport authorities have zero incentive to promote gas-guzzling SUVs on their estates. Research clearly indicates that doing so actively undermines their business interests. But advertising is so pervasive in today’s societies that it is rarely questioned whether it makes business sense to promote certain types of adverts, let alone whether they have the potential to be harmful to citizens and the planet.
Worse, it is often justified for the reasons that it helps generate some important revenues which in turn provide the necessary income to finance climate action.
At Badvertising, we have published countless evidence to prove that high-carbon advertising considerably undermines climate goals by normalising highly-polluting consumer styles.
Born to roam ..in a gas-guzzling SUV
Toyota’s Born to Roam imagery perfectly depicts the stereotypical SUV advert: a call to dominate nature by appealing to a sense of freedom combined with masculinity ideals of power and virility. This appeal to ‘rugged nature’ in the advert is the same messaging carmaker Ford used in the 1990s’ to promote their new Explorer SUV model. The car manufacturer went on spending around 9 billion dollars between 1990 and 2001 on this marketing campaign to persuade people to escape in the ‘purity of the wild’ even though the majority of buyers never needed the off-road 4x4 capability. As our own research shows, the appeal to outdoor life portrayed in these adverts is a myth given that most SUVs end up clogging the streets of big cities. Three quarters of new SUVs are indeed registered to urban addresses.
Furthermore, as our own research outlines, placing car adverts on public transport locations is counter-productive for local or public transport authorities as these incentivise the use of car ownership and deter people from options of active travel and public transport. At Badvertising, we have written to several transport bodies including TfL, Network Rail and Merseytravel, to demand they introduce a ban on high-carbon adverts, and car adverts in particular, in order to align with their objectives of public health, active travel and emission reduction targets.
Toyota under fire of critics for blocking climate action
Activists across European cities have recently denounced Toyota’s greenwashing advertising and its constant blocking of effective climate policies in a wave of ‘subvertising’ actions. The activists replaced over 400 billboards and bus stop posters with satirical artwork portraying the company as a climate criminal.
Since the launch of the Prius model over 25 years ago, Toyota has been using a ‘green’ rhetoric in adverts and marketing campaigns. More recently, the company used the #BeyondZero slogan to coincide with the launch of its one only battery-electric SUV model, the bZ4X. In reality, the company was repeatedly found to have been actively blocking or delaying efforts to move towards cleaner, zero emission vehicles. In a 2022 study released by corporate watchdog InfluenceMap on the 25 most Influential companies blocking climate policy globally, Toyota was ranked as the worst company in the transport sector - reaching the 10th position - for deliberately blocking climate legislation. According to Influence Map, the company is found to have repeatedly obstructed climate policies including the long-term phase out of internal combustion engine-powered vehicles and the introduction of zero-emissions vehicle targets in the UK, Japan, France and the U.S. during 2021-2022. In 2021, a coalition of environmental groups wrote to Toyota to demand it stop blocking legislative progress within the Biden administration on supporting investment and tax breaks for electric vehicles. In the same year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached a settlement with Toyota, including a penalty of £180 million for the car manufacturer, after it had failed to monitor its vehicles for emission controls as stated under the Clean Air Act.
This advert is a clear illustration of how Toyota is still actively pushing for the sale of fossil-powered vehicles as well as hybrids, which it lobbied hard to exclude from the UK Government 2035 internal combustion engines (ICE) phase-out target. Only a fraction of its vehicle fleet is fully electric-powered - about 0.4% - which pales in comparison with competitors like Tesla or even Volkswagen (whose EV sales are respectively 17 and 12 times those of Toyota).
Meanwhile, Toyota’s production of ICEs continues apace, with the company predicted to overshoot Paris Agreement-aligned targets for new ICE production by as much as 184%.
Company background:
Toyota is a Japanese multinational car manufacturer founded in 1937 and headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. At its origins, the company was focussed on loom works and later expanded to car manufacturing upon the instruction of the Japanese government which was in need of new vehicles to support its war with China. Based upon 2020 figures, Toyota reached the first rank as the world’s top car seller ahead of Volkswagen. In 2021, the company recorded over a billion vehicles sold in Europe, awarding it the second position for best-selling passenger car brands in Europe.