Is the Australian fossil car industry dependent on manipulative advertising to sell vehicles? Could it survive if it had to sell its fossil fuel powered vehicles through word-of-mouth alone?
In 2023 there were a total of 1,170,664 light vehicles sold in Australia. Tesla is the only major car company that doesn’t spend a cent on advertising in Australia, and made up 46,116 sales of those sales. Excluding Tesla there were 40,884 additional EVs sold in 2023, making up just 3.6% of all non-Tesla vehicle sales in Australia.
According to advertising journal Mi3, the Australian car industry spent $661 million on advertising in 2023. With fossil fuel powered cars making up over 95% of all non-Tesla vehicles, the fossil car industry therefore spends over $500 per vehicle sold.
That is a staggering amount, especially in the context of a rapidly worsening climate crisis and overwhelming evidence of the devastating health impacts of petrol and diesel cars.
Belinda Noble, who runs Comms Declare and Fossil Ad Ban says there’s nothing natural or normal about demand for fossil cars.
“Demand for oversized gas guzzlers is not a mistake, it’s created by marketers pushing vehicles with higher profit margins.” says Noble.
“With transport our fastest growing source of climate pollution, surely it’s time to end the madness.”
Comms Declare is running a campaign called Fossil Ad Ban to raise awareness and build political support for a complete ban on advertising fossil fuel products.
Don’t blame us, we’re just giving people what they want
During the recent “debate” around the introduction of a vehicle pollution standard in Australia, one of the key messages pushed by the fossil car lobby (Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries) was that fossil car companies are simply responding to what customers want, as though there’s some kind of natural demand for fossil powered vehicles.
If that were the case, the why do these companies need to spend over $500 per vehicle convincing people to buy them? Could they maintain their sales numbers without advertising?
In a real market, “authentic demand” (as opposed to artificial demand) is driven by word-of-mouth as people talk to each other about the pros and cons particular products.
We generally trust the recommendations and advice on products from family and friends over strangers who may or may not be receiving some kind of incentive or commissions behind their recommendations.
In a world without advertising, products have to sell themselves purely on quality and price rather than the use of manipulative and emotive messaging beamed into millions of people’s living rooms.
Men in particular are targets of manipulative fossil car advertising. That’s why the top selling vehicles in Australia have names like “Raptor” or “Ranger” or “D-MAX” and are designed to look like Tonka Trucks. Marketers are tapping into the male sense of masculinity and ego.
You only need to look advertisements for Australia’s top selling vehicles the Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux to understand this. Word’s like “powerful” or “built tough” or “unbreakable” are used to appeal to the “little boy playing with his toy trucks in the dirt” that lives deep inside the Australian adult male psyche.
The result is that millions of Australian men feel compelled to buy these high-margin gigantic Tonka trucks. (And to be fair, so do some women, as some readers suggested when we last raised this issue).
In any case, this has led to Australian cities becoming clogged with millions of these Raptors and Tonkas, the vast majority of which are driving around with empty trays and spewing out copious amounts diesel exhaust pollution into the air we all breathe.
Mainstream media hooked on fossil car ad spend
At over half-a-billion dollars of advertising spend each year, the fossil car industry is a major revenue stream for Australia’s commercial media.
This is why commercial TV, radio and newspapers often skew story narratives in favour of fossil car makers despite the overwhelming evidence showing the devastating damage they cause to our health and natural environment.
Commercial media is also too often complicit in spreading misinformation about electric vehicles which they fear might pose a direct threat to their fossil car clients.
According to Forbes, the fossil car industry spent around $US12 billion in the US on advertising in 2023, around 20 times more than in Australia.
Time for a fossil car ad ban?
Once it became blatantly obvious that smoking was not only bad for smokers but also everyone else in the vicinity, countries around the world began to ban the advertising of cigarettes and banned smoking from workplaces, schools and other public spaces.
With the shear volume of fossil car pollution being pumped into our city air, the constant noise pollution, and the high emissions accelerating the climate crisis, the case can be made that like cigarettes, advertising of fossil cars should be banned. When framed in that way, it is in fact shocking that in 2024 fossil car advertising is still legal at all.
At $500 per vehicle, the fossil car industry is essentially being propped up by manipulative advertising campaigns. If that was removed, could these companies maintain their current sales numbers just through word-of-mouth?
If the fossil car industry really is just “giving people what they want” maybe they should put their money where their mouth is and find out if people still want their vehicles without paid advertising campaigns.
Highly doubtful.
Daniel Bleakley is a clean technology researcher and advocate with a background in engineering and business. He has a strong interest in electric vehicles, renewable energy, manufacturing and public policy.