PepsiCo will tap solar energy to make chips

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: gains momentum.”

There is even a term, greenwashing, coined to describe the perceptions of consumers that a marketer is inappropriately adopting a green persona.

“This is a space that, frankly, everybody is trying to learn about, and we’re in that boat as well,” said Gannon Jones, vice-president for marketing at Frito-Lay in Plano, Texas. He is overseeing the creation of the SunChips campaign by Juniper Park, an agency in Toronto affiliated with the BBDO Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group.

As consumers express concerns for the planet, Jones said, “companies are scrambling to find out as much as they can and respond appropriately.”

“The companies and brands that are successful don’t treat green as a promotional strategy,” he added further. “They embrace it throughout their business strategy.”

Jones, as may be expected, places Frito-Lay among the marketers that have deeds behind their green words. Although he declined to offer details, he described the installation of the solar panels at the Modesto plant as a multimillion-dollar investment that exceeded the budget for the SunChips campaign.

That is significant because there are numerous examples of advertisers that spent more money on campaigns to tell the public about noble activities, like bringing out green products or making charitable donations, than was actually spent on the activities themselves.

“What we’re talking about is what we’re doing or what we’ve done,” Jones said of the campaign. “We’re not making claims we can’t back up because the wild claims have the potential to be harmful to the green movement over the long haul.”

The commercials in the campaign, which are to start appearing on April 4, feature girls and women frolicking in the sun as an announcer invites viewers to “imagine capturing the sun’s power and making chips with it.” The spots end with the words “SunChips, now made with solar energy,” and the brand’s theme, “Live brightly.”

One way green campaigns seek to avoid seeming too morally pure is to take a humorous tongue-in-cheek tack, and elements of the SunChips campaign follow that approach.

For example, the billboards are to be built so that the letters spelling out the brand name are attached above the signs upside down and backward. So, when the sun comes out, the brand name will appear, cast in shadow across the top of the signs.