Vancouver hemp retailer

(February 3, 2003) The president of a hemp clothing company is angry with mutual fund company Ethical Funds over a recent advertising campaign he says is offensive to the environmental movement. Jerry Kroll of Hemptown Clothing in Vancouver is unhappy with a series of Ethical Funds print and billboard ads showing business professionals with the caption “I don’t wear hemp, burn incense or hug trees.”

Kroll calls the campaign “off the mark” and accuses the Vancouver-based company – the first distributor of socially responsible mutual funds in Canada – of trivializing environmental issues. “They’re stereotyping hippies and tree-huggers as being some sort of a fringe group, with incense and hemp,” Kroll told Advisor.ca. “It’s an unsavoury message when people are out there trying to make a difference.”

Kroll says Ethical Funds is trying to attract baby boomers by implying that consumers can make a healthy profit without changing their habits. “It’s ironic that in their attempts to seduce the aging, conservative investor, they have marginalized the environmental movement by dismissing them as a flaky fringe element,” Kroll said.

The ads may be well-intentioned, Kroll concedes, but send the wrong message by dismissing hemp, promoted by the environmental movement as a natural alternative to cotton. “They’re trivializing what is possibly one of the biggest pollution issues in the world today,” he says. “A staggering amount of pesticides are used to produce cotton.”

Despite his anger, Kroll says he’s willing to meet with Ethical Funds to discuss the issue. Kroll says he received a call on the weekend from Dave Mowat, president of VanCity Credit Union, a major distributor of Ethical Funds. Kroll says Mowat offered to set up a meeting with representatives from Ethical Funds. “I was greatly encouraged by that,” Kroll says.

A spokesperson for VanCity confirms Mowat spoke with Kroll in an attempt to understand his concerns. Mowat also agreed to take up the issue with the head of Credential, Ethical’s parent company, the spokesperson added.

Calls to Ethical Funds seeking comment were not returned.

Kroll says he’s not asking Ethical to pull the ads, which have been running for the past few months in several industry publications, including Advisor’s Edge. But he says he’d like to see a more positive message in Ethical’s next advertising campaign, perhaps including a reference to the environmental damage caused by the cotton industry.

“I’d like them to put a little more thought into their advertising to make it appeal more to ethical investors as opposed to pandering to old stereotypes,” Kroll says. “You don’t need Birkenstock’s to be an ethical investor, but that doesn’t mean you should ostracize those people.”

Filed by Doug Watt, Advisor.ca, dwatt@advisor.ca