This Pear is a Rhetorical Tool: Food Imagery in Energy Company Advertising

Abstract

This essay examines the food imagery in three energy company advertising campaigns—Shell's “Real Energy,” Chevron's “Human Energy™,” and Waste Management's “Think Green®” – arguing that food images help essentialize the energy product. The advertising discourse relies on the historical context that ties food to energy through a growth model. This discourse likens each to the point of exchange from “raw” nature to “cooked” culture: food fills bodies as energy fills societies. The advertisements naturalize the companies’ essential role in supplying substance to bodies. By examining the connotations of energy as it relates to food, we not only can further identify the rhetorical strength of the “energy” product, but this paper also hopes to further critical inquiry into the general ties between food production and power supply production, particularly in relation to water use.