A content analysis of creative execution on green advertisements in Malaysia

Awareness among society members is a crucial point in promoting environmental issues in the world especially Malaysia. Various steps have been taken by the relevant authorities to increase awareness on environmental issues. One of the steps is to disseminate information through media. Another step is by executing environmental campaign through advertising whether in print or electronic. However, it would be a “wasteful” campaign if advertisement on environment in media is not effective or will not be able to attract public attention. Therefore, it is strongly believed that one of the essential criteria in the advertisement is creative execution. This paper aims to study the green advertising in Malaysia focussing on green print advertisement in four selected magazines published in March 2011. Five objectives are set which are to analyse (1) ad's characteristics in selected green advertisements, (2) ad's greenness contains in selected green advertisements, (3) ad's objectives in selected green advertisements, (4) ad's appeals contain in selected green advertisements and (5) environmental issues contain in selected green advertisements. Analytical framework introduced by Banerjee, et. al (1995) was adopted in this study.