Our Man In Washington
(Page 5 of 5)
January/February 1972
By Mike Kiernan
Rosenstiel makes it sound almost incidental that Westinghouse is using words like ecology and environment to demonstrate its concern for improving life at home, but critics in the media and among environmental groups are not so easily convinced.
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To several of these critics, Westinghouse's Homecology campaign is the most elaborate demonstration to date of a large company manipulating concern for the environment to sell its own products. In a six-page, fold-over, full-color advertisement, which has appeared or is scheduled to appear in TIME, NEWSWEEK and U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, Westinghouse peddles a variety of home appliances including a "mood bulb," a burglar alarm and a new can opener . . . all with the claim that such products produce "a better personal environment."
In probably the most unfortunate section of the ad, Westinghouse pictures a little girl in a white dress with a pink animal on her lap sitting next to a Westinghouse electric air cleaner. Beneath the picture, the caption reads: "Whatever it's like outside, home air should be clean-that's Homecology."
Other names also come readily to mind. It is all vaguely reminiscent of the 1950's when industry was telling us to be the first one on our block to build your own fallout shelter. There was a prevailing sense of exploitive defeatism about it all back then, and the sense continues.
In this present case Westinghouse seems to be playing—perhaps unknowingly—on the feelings of the apathetic consumer who thinks he can do nothing more than preserve himself and his home. That's Homecology. The environment outside, Westinghouse seems to imply, is unimportant or, worse, doomed.
One question which arises: if an irrevocable temperature inversion does happen in your town, do you grin knowingly and invite the neighborhood children in to share your electric Westinghouse air cleaner?
So much for speculation. The week Westinghouse ran its ad in TIME, the WALL STREET JOURNAL printed a stinging article on misleading environmental ads. The author, Raymond Joseph, said that the Westinghouse ad featuring "environmentally hip new gadgets" did little but exploit concern for the environment.
Rosenstiel's reaction: "Well, we expected some criticism from environmentalists, but we certainly did not expect the blast we got from the WALL STREET JOURNAL."
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