Advertising can convince people to conserve?

On my morning commute I was listening to NPR and heard a short segment from Christopher Joyce on using social (in the traditional, not the online, sense) marketing to encourage energy conservation. I tweeted about it earlier today.

According to the piece, one of the most successful programs has been the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Program. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that third party labels are a powerful green marketing tool. Here's the ad that NPR put on their site as an example of good marketing convincing people to conserve energy:



Ah yes, good old humor. That ought to be more effective than fear, shame, greed and the other emotions, right? What do you think?

In all of the marketing efforts they discussed, what was the least successful method of getting people to conserve? Asking them to sacrifice.